Multi-Asset Class Investment Strategy

The book explains that instead of asset allocation being set in an isolated and arbitrary fashion, it is in fact the way in which specific hurdle investment returns can be targeted, and that this approach is already in use in the US (and has been for many years). It involves extended and detailed financial analysis of various asset class returns and proposes a five-asset class approach for future use.

Opening with a study of the historic asset allocation practice of UK pension funds, the book shows how the current approach has led to the present funding crisis. It goes on to compare and contrast the UK approach with that of the US and to propose a new approach to UK asset allocation: the five asset class approach ("MAC Investing").

The book reviews and analyses different asset classes based on historic returns, examines risk, and concludes with a suggestion of the five asset classes to use; Quoted equities (both Domestic and foreign), hedge funds, private equity and property. This book also includes benchmark performance figures never previously published.

The book explains that instead of asset allocation being set in an isolated and arbitrary fashion, it is in fact the way in which specific hurdle investment returns can be targeted, and that this approach is already in use in the US (and has been for many years). It involves extended and detailed financial analysis of various asset class returns and proposes a five-asset class approach for future use.

Opening with a study of the historic asset allocation practice of UK pension funds, the book shows how the current approach has led to the present funding crisis. It goes on to compare and contrast the UK approach with that of the US and to propose a new approach to UK asset allocation: the five asset class approach ("MAC Investing”).

The book reviews and analyses different asset classes based on historic returns, examines risk, and concludes with a suggestion of the five asset classes to use; Quoted equities (both Domestic and foreign), hedge funds, private equity and property. This book also includes benchmark performance figures never previously published.

GUY FRASER-SAMPSON has twenty years’ experience of the investment industry across a range of asset classes, most notably private equity. His career has included a spell as Investment Controller with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and setting up and running for several years the European operations of one of the world’s leading fund of funds managers.

Guy is a well-known figure on the conference circuit, both as a speaker and as a panellist. His first major speech on MAC investing (to the UK’s National Association of Pension Funds in 2005) sparked media attention around the globe and helped to establish MAC investing as one of the current hot topics of the investment world. He is the inventor of the Total Funding Model, by which pension funds can calculate their target rate of investment return, and previously developed a model for analysing the performance of buyout managers.

Guy Fraser-Sampson has an LLB with Honours from King’s College London and an MBA majoring in finance from Warwick Business School. Originally a practising lawyer, he was made an equity partner in a City of London law firm at the age of 26, having been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts a year earlier. Guy has contributed many articles over the years to investment and pension publications, but this is his first book.