CAIA InfoSeries Webcasts

Description: The Portfolio for the Future simultaneously represents a “back to basics” mantra and a forward-looking view of where our industry and capital markets are headed. What defined success over the past decades may very well be at a tipping point at a time where many of these secular trends may be challenged moving forward. Rising inflation, tightening monetary policy, low and volatile interest rates, and high valuations mean that the Portfolio for the Future will be defined by five distinct “marks”: Broadly Diversified, Less Liquid, Rooted in a Fiduciary Mindset, Actively Engaged, and Dependent on Operational Alpha.

Panelists: Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association, John Bowman, CFA, Executive Vice President, CAIA Association, and Jo Murphy, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Industry Relations, CAIA Association

Description: In this webcast, learn from fellow CAIA Member and Media Alternative Asset Manager Adam Guy Orlebar Garrett on how the increased competition from Amazon, Apple, and Disney+ has irrevocably changed the media industry, as well as discussions on what opportunities have opened up for investors looking to diversify their portfolios, the important risk factors for entering the media industry for the first time, and practical advice for investors based in Asia wanting exposure to this burgeoning asset class.

Panelists: Adam Guy Orlebar Garrett, Chief Investment Officer, New Asia Ferrell Asset Management, Jo Murphy, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Industry Relations, CAIA Association, and moderated by Theresa Han, CFA, CAIA, Managing Director, Absolute Return Strategies, CAIA Hong Kong Chapter Executive

Description: Our new report “CAIA Insights: The Rise of India’s Private Equity Market” has been released, where we showcase insights, spotlight opportunities, and summarize our call to action for this fast-evolving sector. Combining commentary penned by leading PEVC industry specialists, alongside CAIA’s crafted content, and supported by our knowledge and data partner – Venture Intelligence – we position tangible insights, actionable intelligence and provide knowledge on a market too big to ignore. To coincide with the report’s release, our launch webinar brought together a number of its authors to spotlight key themes, discussed why India’s emergence as one of the world’s most entrepreneurial and technology-orientated nations presents massive opportunities, and showcased India’s growing and increasingly sophisticated alternative investment industry.

Panelists: Ninad Karpe, Partner, 100X.VC, Arun Natarajan, Founder, Venture Intelligence, Harsh Singhal, Senior Investment Professional, Sridhar Sankararaman, Managing Director, Multiples Alternate Asset Management, Shreekant Daga, CAIA, CFA, FRM, Associate Director, Liaison Office, India, CAIA Association, John Bowman, CFA, Executive Vice President, CAIA Association, and moderated by Jo Murphy, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Industry Relations, CAIA Association

Description: Quantitative investors have long used traditional data sources, such as income statements and balance sheets of public firms, to drive stock selection models. With the explosion in the amount and diversity of data in the last five years, alternative data sources are quickly revolutionizing quantitative investing. Alternative data sources can include natural language processing of news and social media content, review of credit card transactions and consumer emails, and geolocation data using cell phone signals and satellite images. Listen in as the Japan Alternative Data Accelerator Association and Financial Data Professional Institute have a discussion on the applications of alternative data in financial markets.

Panelists: Masashi Tsujinaka, CEO, Nowcast Inc., Keith Black, PhD, CFA, CAIA, FDP, Managing Director, Program Director, FDP Institute, Joanne Murphy, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Industry Relations, CAIA Association, Wendy Leung, Assistant Director, Asia Pacific, External Relations, CAIA Association, and moderated by Akira Yamamoto, CAIA Japan Chapter Executive

Description: There are many methods for conducting performance attribution with portfolios containing only liquid assets. A lack of periodic asset return data and a clear definition of what constitutes an appropriate market benchmark thwarts efforts to perform similar types of attribution analyses for portfolios of private equity funds (and other illiquid investments). This presentation covered a proposed methodology for decomposing private fund portfolio performance in an article, “Private Portfolio Attribution Analysis,” published in the Fall 2021 edition of The Journal of Alternative Investments.

Panelists: Tyler Johnson, CFA, Managing Director, StepStone Group, and Jo Murphy, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Industry Relations, CAIA Association

Description: There are currently over 11,000 cryptocurrencies and digital assets. With many experiencing price volatility of over 100% per year, or five times the volatility of stocks, there is substantial disagreement on how to value these assets. Some valuation models used for traditional equity valuation can be used to price these assets. Investors may also find it useful to understand business models, emerging industries, and oligopolistic models.

Panelists: Keith Black, PhD, CFA, CAIA, FDP, Managing Director, Program Director, FDP Institute, and moderated by Jo Murphy, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Industry Relations, CAIA Association

Session 1: Private Markets: An Update
Description: Prime advertising airtime is now being purchased by private firms rather than public firms. Still little is known to the general audience about the size, scope, and extent to how big the private markets are! In this webinar, a presentation was provided covering Private Equity and Venture Capital looking at key features across investments size, top deals, volume, cheque sizes, sector focus and more. The presentation also summed up the activity of larger players and looked more closely at the buzz surrounding Unicorns. Finally, our session concluded with a look at exit types and size pointing to the recent trends.
Panelists: Vinoth A, Head of Research, Venture Intelligence, Arun Natarajan, Founder, Venture Intelligence, and Shreekant Daga, CAIA, CFA, FRM, Associate Director, Liaison Office, India, CAIA Association 

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Tuesday, November 30, 2021, 5:00 pm Time zone: IST
Session 2: The Fundamentals of Venture Capital
Description: In this presentation, Aaron Filbeck discussed Private Equity (PE) investments and also focus on Venture Capital (VC). Aaron shared insight into the life cycle and performance of VC funds and present a framework for the PE investment process, from the development of portfolio objectives, through liquidity management, and manager selection. Our session concluded with a look at the risks involved in VC investments.
Panelists: Aaron Filbeck, CFA, CAIA, CIPM, FDP, Managing Director, CAIA Association, and Wendy Leung, Assistant Director, External Relations, Asia Pacific, CAIA Association

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Wednesday, December 1, 2021, 5:00 pm Time zone: IST
Session 3: Private Investor Insights
Description: The world saw Governments pump some US$14 trillion of fresh capital into markets in 2020. Record inflation numbers have been registered across the globe and a point in instance of 5.4% in the US in both June and July 2021. Asset valuations have been at an all-time high with new metrics being suggested to justify the rationale. Private markets are considered the main street whereas the private investors as the falcon in the sky for spotting opportunities. 
Panelists: Hemal Naran, Co-founder, Mkoba Private Equity, Ninad Karpe, Partner, 100X.VC, and moderated by Deepti Sagar, CAIA, Director, Atom Privé Financial Services

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Thursday, December 2 – 5:00pm Time zone: IST 
Session 4: Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) in India
Description: Stock market listing of SPACs is an important technique for raising equity capital. Both listing and fund-raising by SPACs reached all-time records between 2017 to 2021. According to spacdata.com so far in 2021, a record 547 SPAC IPOs in the US have raised nearly US$150 billion. Full-year 2021 SPAC issuance in the US is likely to surpass the record numbers in 2020. SPACs were nearly two-thirds of all US IPOs in 2021. The equity funds raised by SPACs are used to invest in a wide variety of businesses including startups, growth stage enterprises and in new categories. The growth of the SPAC market in the US has had a contagion effect in many markets which are also contemplating the creation of domestic SPAC markets in countries such as India, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Panelists: Vikas Bagaria, Leader, Global Capital Markets Group, Deloitte Haskins & Sells LLP, D Muthukumaran, Chief Financial Officer, Renew Power, and moderated by Arvind Mathur, CFA,FRM, Chairman, Private Equity Pro Partners

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Friday, December 3 – 5:00pm Time zone: IST 
Session 5: Intermediary Insights on PE/VC Transactions
Description: Law of large numbers ensures flattened generalisation which is often not the case for focused private market players. Service intermediaries can provide a distilled test of state of the union since they draw their strength from several focused enterprises. In this webinar we brought together senior industry voices representing experts in the fields of valuation, legal, tax and structuring. Each shared their insights and observations. The webinar focused on providing a holistic conversation on the temperature of Indian private markets.
Panelists:  Rishi Aswani, CFA, Managing Director, Alternative Asset Advisory, Duff & Phelps, a Kroll business, Vidushi Gupta, Partner, Corporate, M&A and Private Equity Practice Group, Khaitan & Co, Tushar Sachade, Partner, Price Waterhouse & Co LLP, and moderated by William Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association

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Monday, December 6 - 5:00pm Time zone: IST
Session 6: Cryptocurrencies and Digital Assets
Description: In this presentation, Keith discussed the digital asset and cryptocurrency markets and the innovative solution to build a global, decentralized, and secure network that facilitates payments and other transactions. Keith explored how proof-of-work, such as Bitcoin mining, and proof-of-stake protocols, such as Cardano, are used to secure networks and complete transactions. Behind many of these currencies are real businesses, such as projects built on top of Ethereum smart contracts that facilitate borrowing and lending as well as options and futures trading. Stable coins pegged to USD or EUR can earn yields of up to 7% with minimal volatility. Returns and volatility data was presented, as well as evidence on how digital assets can add return to a diversified portfolio without adding to portfolio volatility. Risks of digital assets was also discussed, including regulatory risks, technology risk, and valuation risk.
Panelists: Keith Black, PhD, CFA, CAIA, FDP, Managing Director, Program Director, FDP Institute, and moderated by Shreekant Daga, CAIA, CFA, FRM, Associate Director, Liaison Office, India, CAIA Association

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Tuesday, December 7 - 5:00pm Time zone: IST
Session 7: The Case for Liquid Alternatives
Description: Investing is challenging as it is both complex and complicated. Each point requires continuous learning and updating of mental frameworks. Conflicts and contradictions are found everywhere. For example, data from the mutual fund industry shows that most funds fail to outperform their benchmarks, but investors in hedge funds allocate primarily for alpha generation as shown by the latest JP Morgan industry survey. If mutual funds do not generate any alpha, why should hedge funds? Perhaps the assumption is that hedge funds have more flexibility with regards to investing, which provides for a greater opportunity to generate alpha. However, they also charge high fees that directly reduce alpha. Fortunately for investors, many classical hedge fund strategies have become available in low-cost mutual fund and ETF formats, which might represent the best of both worlds. In this webinar, we compared liquid alternatives and evaluated the benefits of adding these to an equity portfolio.
Panelists: Nelson Lacey, Director of Examinations, CAIA Association, and moderated by Mirjam Dekker, MBA, MS HRD, Project Manager, FDP Institute

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Wednesday, December 8 - 5:00pm Time zone: IST
Session 8: Careers in Alternative Investments
Description: The idea of this webinar is to take an academician’s approach to career building advice, observations seen in recruiting patterns, usage of various types of resources (online and off), focus and importance of various types of skill sets (hard / soft / combination) and how to extract the maximum value t from various educational course (MBA, Charters, Certificates, Corporate Training), etc. We had distinguished speakers - both local and global – who shared best practices a young professional should consider to chalk out an ambitious career.
Panelists: Peter Mackay, Assistant Professor of Finance, HKUST, Abhilash Misra, Chief Executive Officer, NSE Academy Ltd., and moderated by Seydina Fall, CFA, Associate Director, CAIA Association

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Thursday, December 9 - 5:00pm Time zone: IST
Session 9: Onshoring the Offshore with International Financial Services Centres (IFSC) Authority
Description: This session provided an update about the maiden International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in India. The IFSC Authority (IFSCA) has been established in 2020 as a unified regulator for development and regulation of financial services, financial products and financial institutions in the IFSCs in India. The senior officials from IFSCA provided an overview of the priorities of IFSCA, recent developments and the emerging opportunities at the IFSC, particularly relating to fund management activities. The session focused on the regulatory framework for Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) in the IFSC, the benefits for AIFs in the IFSC, steps taken by IFSCA and other authorities to onshore the fund management activities and a brief overview of the ongoing policy reforms with respect to fund management in the IFSC.
Panelists: Arjun Prasad, Deputy General Manager, Manoj Kumar, Executive Director, Mihir Upadhyay, Deputy General Manager, and moderated by Jo Murphy, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Industry Relations, CAIA Association

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Friday, December 10 - 5:00pm Time zone: IST
Session 10: Tokenisation
Description: Tokenisation approaches have vast potential for addressing the challenges related to investment in illiquid asset classes, with advantages including:
- improved liquidity
- faster, cheaper transactions
- greater transparency
- broadened access to more investors
While increased liquidity should be generally beneficial, the industry and its regulators must continue to ensure that investors are equipped to understand the quality and risks inherent in each tokenised investment. In this webinar we took a dive into tokenisation of assets with a panel discussion in the second half.
Panelists: Jonathan Cheung, Director, HKbitEX, and moderated by Jo Murphy, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Industry Relations, CAIA Association

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Description: Listen in as CAIA Association’s Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Industry Relations, Jo Murphy, and Shreekant Daga, CAIA, CFA, FRM, Associate Director, India Liaison Office, provided an update on the private equity industry and introduced CAIA Association. Further, Wendy Leung, Assistant Director, Asia Pacific, External Relations, at CAIA Association, had a conversation with CAIA Member, Aswini Bajaj, CEO of Leveraged Growth about his CAIA journey.

Panelists: Jo Murphy, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Industry Relations, Shreekant Daga, CAIA, CFA, FRM, Associate Director, India, Aswini Bajaj, CAIA, CEO, Leveraged Growth, and Wendy Leung, Assistant Director, Asia Pacific, External Relations, CAIA Association

Description: ESG is no longer a mere add-on in a portfolio or investment strategy. For an increasing number of investors in alternatives, a thoughtful approach to ESG issues has become table stakes. As the industry continues to define the role of ESG and develop approaches to measure and analyze the effect of these issues on their portfolios, industry professionals must continue to educate themselves about the key trends and developments related to ESG across alternative asset classes. CAIA, in partnership with Nuveen, hosted a thought-provoking webinar series organized exclusively for the benefit of institutional investors across the world. In this third session, we discussed how real assets participants can protect themselves from transition and physical risks associated with climate change.

Panelists: Katie Vaz, Managing Director, Clarion Partners, Suzanne Tavill, Global Head of Responsible Investment, StepStone Group, and moderated by Derek Jun, CFA, CAIA, Head of Investment Risk, Nuveen Real Assets

Description: In this presentation, Keith Black discussed the digital asset and cryptocurrency markets and the innovative solution to build a global, decentralized, and secure network that facilitates payments and other transactions. Keith explored how proof-of-work, such as Bitcoin mining, and proof-of-stake protocols, such as Cardano, are used to secure networks and complete transactions. Behind many of these currencies are real businesses, such as projects built on top of Ethereum smart contracts that facilitate borrowing and lending as well as options and futures trading. Stable coins pegged to USD or EUR can earn yields of up to 7% with minimal volatility. Returns and volatility data was presented, as well as evidence on how digital assets can add return to a diversified portfolio without adding to portfolio volatility. Risks of digital assets were also discussed, including regulatory risks, technology risk, and valuation risk.

Panelists: Keith Black, PhD, CFA, CAIA, FDP, Managing Director, Program Director, FDP Institute, and Jo Murphy, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Industry Relations, CAIA Association