The Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (APFC) is pleased to announce that it was awarded the recognition as Sovereign Wealth Fund of the Year in Hedge Fund Investments for 2017 at Institutional Investor’s Hedge Funds Awards Ceremony in New York City on Thursday, June 28. This event marks the second award for APFC’s industry leading investment capabilities after PEI awarded APFC its designation as North America’s Private Equity Institutional Investor of the Year for 2017 this past March.
Angela Rodell, Chief Executive Officer, notes “I am so proud of this group and the international recognition that they received. The Institutional Investor Award reflects the hard work and success of APFC’s hedge fund investment team, which steered the program away from fund-of-funds investments to direct investments into hedge funds two years ago.”
This recognition of APFC’s hedge fund program represents a successful milestone in the reconstitution of the program that began in early 2016. At that time, APFC Staff with support from our hedge fund consultant, Albourne Partners, and oversight from APFC’s Trustees put forth a new vision for the program. APFC implemented insourcing of hedge fund selection and portfolio construction that previously was performed by external fund-of-fund partners. The strategy was further focused in favor of truly uncorrelated managers. Since that time, the new direct hedge fund effort has resulted in significant fee savings and has achieved the stated objective of earning a real return of at least 500 basis-points with minimal correlation to traditional asset classes.
Marcus Frampton, Director of Real Assets & Absolute Return, comments “It took a real team effort to bring an external fund-of-funds approach to hedge funds in house with significant contributions from Legal, Finance and our Investment Team broadly. It is gratifying to receive this recognition from Institutional Investor less than three years into our new program, however, the real benefit to APFC is the asset allocation flexibility that is provided from having a focused, uncorrelated absolute return program that has the potential to earn attractive returns in a variety of market environments.”