The New York City Pension Fund, the nation’s fourth largest pension fund, conducts business with diverse managers. The pension funds, valued at $175 billion, provides retirement security for New York City’s teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other city employees. New York Comptroller Scott M. Stringer is custodian to the fund.
Robert “Bob” Greene, CEO and president of the National Association of Investment Companies, says a lack of familiarity is a reason institutional investors don’t hire diverse firms.
He says another reason is if they do know diverse managers, their perception of the risk and performance attributes of investing with that manager is often not enough to overcome the tendency to invest with well-known asset managers such as BlackRock or The Carlyle Group. “It’s easier for them to stick with the household names that they’ve known for many years.”
“We do whatever it takes to get the decision-makers to see that we are long past the point of this being a ‘supply problem’; it’s a demand problem, and we push to improve the demand for minority talent,” says Robert Raben, DAMI’s director. Greene and Ibargüen are co-honorary chairs of DAMI.
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