Family Office & Private Wealth Management Forum 2016

New Alternative Investment Strategies: The Demand for a Higher Level of Portfolio Diversification and Efficiency

• How should investors of significant wealth think about diversification today?
• How much diversification is too much?
• What are the benefits and pitfalls of diversification?
• Efficient portfolios are those said to provide the greatest expected return for a given level of risk, or conversely the lowest level of risk for a given expected return.
• How do these ‘new’ alternative investments figure into the mix? How should investors evaluate them in the context of an efficient portfolio?
• How should investors think about alternatives in terms of their overall asset allocation?
• How should investors evaluate/select ‘new’ alternative investments? What should they focus upon?
• How should investors evaluate the performance of any investments they make in these alternatives?
• What are the defining characteristics or unique risks associated with these new alternative investments?
• What are the ‘best practices’ that you feel investors would do well to consider or adopt when sourcing or selecting ‘new’ alternative investments?

 

Cyber Security

With cyber security dominating the headlines, how should families and advisors prepare for the unanticipated and often unimaginable?

• Understanding the nature of the risk – how stolen data is used (and resold) and the rise in “ransom ware”
• Designing Appropriate Security Protocols to Match Processes
• Preparing for All Contingencies
  • Inadvertent breaches
  • Deliberate breaches
  • Educating all users
• Cyber security in an RFP Process
• Use of Private Servers (!) and Domains
• Actions in the event of a breach (it will happen, just a question of when!)
• How threats to infrastructure from EMPs and hybrid warfare can affect your cyber security planning

Thinking Outside the Box – Investing in Non-Correlated Alternative Assets:

• With increased globalization are there assets that are truly uncorrelated?
• Do strategies really exist that are uncorrelated, can provide downside protection and generate real returns?
• What alternative asset classes are well suited for the current market environment?
• Is the hedge fund party over? If not, where are the opportunities?
• What about Renewable energy? Precious metals? Infrastructure? Real estate? Real assets? Life settlements? Venture?
• Can a niche within the same industry perform very differently?
• When you consider alpha, does investing in private or direct alternatives offer a premium significant enough to warrant the perceived or real risks associated with these investments?

Real Estate in Private Equity

• Underwriting the sponsor: Because the “Who” is just as important as the “What”
• Where is the smart money heading in 2016?
• Cusp of another bubble? Are we getting overheated in multiple asset classes?
• Individual projects or diversified fund investments?  What is best for your family?
• Asset Management: How can PE funds extract better returns with better management?
• Deal Flow: How can your family office secure access to the best opportunities?

How to Structure your Family Office: A strategic Planning Mechanism for Family Offices.

• Structuring Issues When Setting Up a SFO
• Structuring Issues in the Existing SFO
• Best Structuring Practices

Traditional Real Estate Investing

• Real Estate Allocation as part of a well balanced portfolio
• Do recent articles and commentaries overstate the frothiness of today’s market?
• Investing in a rising cap-rate environment
• Repositioning of assets as a core investment strategy
• Repositioning in prime and urban markets
• Repositioning in secondary markets
• Does institutional investors’ bias towards ultra- core assets represent a buying opportunity in other areas?
• Crowd Funding for Real Estate: Is it finally mainstream and is it a good fit of your family?

 

Private Equity and Venture Capital – Opportunities and Threats

• With more firms and capital chasing large the same or fewer deals, is now a good time to invest in PE?  Does size matter? Will large outperform small? The opposite is true historically in public markets.
• Family Offices are more involved in direct deals.  Do they have different holding periods and return objectives than institutional Private Equity players?
• Where are the best opportunities in Private Equity and Venture now?
• Tech Venture’s obsession with Unicorns: a viable strategy or attempt to justify fund sizes?
• Who will be the natural buyers for the large illiquid asset portfolios of the mega PE firms, Blackstone, Apollo, Carlyle, etc. now that banks are out and sovereigns and pensions are investors in those funds?

Investment Opportunities in Hedge Fund Strategies

• Why have hedge funds, in general, been struggling to perform?
• How have due diligence methods changed over the past year?
• What specific hedge fund strategy/sector is positioned to outperform in the next few quarters?  Which should be avoided?
• Should families consider “alternative or smart” beta strategies?
• Have fund terms (e.g., fees, gates, liquidity) been more flexible?  Should they be?  How can families negotiate the best deals?

Opportunities in Private Credit

• Why look beyond “traditional” Fixed Income investments?
• What is Private Credit?
• What are the key investable areas of Private Credit (Commercial Finance, Consumer Finance, Real Assets)?
• What unique strategies are available in Private Credit?
• How should an investor choose a Private Credit manager?

 

Insurance Dedicated Funds: How Families Invest in Hedge Funds and Other Asset Classes Tax Efficiently…

• What is an Insurance Dedicated Fund (IDF)?
• State of the Market? Global and Strategic Developments in the Space
• Estate Planning Implications of these structures and other practical applications
• PPLI/PPVA Frequently Asked Questions
• What investment strategies make sense in an IDF?
• How do I get started?

Marketplace Lending

• Best of Class Managers: Where are the opportunities, where are the risks?
• Worldwide View: How Brexit impacts the opportunity set.
• Maximizing risk adjusted returns through deal structure.
• Lending Club: How lending clubs speedbumps impact the opportunity set. Has the environment changed, and if so, do greater opportunities exist?

Investing in The Cannabis Industry

• Private vs. Public?
• Ancillary non-regulated businesses vs. regulated “touching the plant” business investments?
• Importance for cannabis to be part of your investment portfolio
• What are additional diligence items and risks important for investing in this business category?
• Should I invest in a fund or into specific companies as a direct investment?
• What are the ranges of opportunities both domestically and internationally?

The Entrepreneur and Philanthropist as
the Catalyst for Change

• Why are we doing this? How should we deploy resources to do the most good?
• Solutions Vs Performance: Big Bets; Rigorous Systems, under collateralized leverage.
• Reasons for giving: social obligation or financial motivation to improve talent attraction, morale, and retention;
• Innovation and Legacy; two inseparable entrepreneurial objectives for forthcoming generations.
• Theory of Values today to accommodate change in future demand as possible paradigm shifts.
• Strategic and operating structures employed by entrepreneurial philanthropist to accomplish their vision.
• An APP for Philanthropic Entrepreneurs: How might millennial philanthropists allocate and direct assets?
• Cases as samples of motivations and values that drive entrepreneurial philanthropist

Investing in the Evolving Real Asset & Energy Market:

This panel will examine the real assets and energy markets including, timber, precious metals, land mitigation, and oil and gas exploration.

• Is there a magic strategy which will provide steady stable returns that outperform traditional equities?
• Which strategies should families consider within the energy/hard asset space?
• How can we identify managers who will diversify returns from mainstream portfolios without adding additional risk to the portfolio?

Impact Investing 2.0: Investing with Value and Purpose

• Investing is Habitual as much as Analytical
• UN PRI – Responsible Investor Movement
• Portfolio Approach and Asset Allocation – We aren’t trying to do anything different than traditional space
• Impact Investing – Long term consequences of what we should have been doing all along
• PRI (Program Related Investments) – Direct investing for specific impact and how you actually make it happen
• Risk Management – The academics side, opportunity exists, a way to address biggest problems we face globally
• Why Shareholder Engagement must be part of the solution and you should demand as an investor
• We will give you concrete examples in renewable energy, health, education and more across asset classes
• Engaging the Next Generation – Not if but when and doing it in a in meaningful way

 

Direct Investing / Co-Investing: The Family Office Perspective

• What is your strategy and what makes it unique opposed to other investments i.e stocks, bonds.
• What are your investment criteria when looking at an investment?
• How do you find deals?
• What is your DD process like?
• Are you passive or controlling investors?
• Are there any key trends that investors should be wary off?
• Families are doing more direct investments. Do you guys allow direct investments?
• What is the process? Are there advantages vs. disadvantages compared investing in funds?
• What are some of the deals that went wrong and what did you learn?

Investing in Growth: New Strategies for Investing in Emerging and Frontier Markets

• Brexit- How will it impact the Emerging Markets genre?
• Will the Zika virus stultify any chances of growth in Emerging Markets
• Which emerging markets provide the best current opportunities and why?
• Are there ways to invest in emerging markets while moderating risk?
• What should I look for when selecting an Emerging Markets manager?
• We invested in Emerging Markets Private Equity pre-financial crisis and still haven’t gotten our capital returned. Why should we double down now?

• Should I invest in EM via passive or active vehicles?
• What approach makes sense, GEM portfolios or a collection of country/regional specialists?
• What are the pros/cons of investing in EM via private equity?

Investing in Technology

• Positive Deal Selection – What advantages and disadvantages do SFOs and MFOs have for getting into and vetting the best deals?
• What are the best practices?
• How to build Relationship Capital and an ecosystem like the best tech investors.
• Deal Attributes – How to balance and diversify a portfolio yet leverage strengths in region, industry, tech sector, and investment stage
• Disruption – of the IPO market, of valuations, of growth equity, of every industry. How disruption can play to long-term trends and strengths.