Robert Sturgeon is an Equity Portfolio Manager at Export Development Canada (EDC). EDC is Canada’s export credit agency, offering commercial solutions to help Canadian exporters and investors expand their international business. EDC’s knowledge and partnerships are used by nearly 7,000 Canadian companies and their global customers in up to 200 markets worldwide each year. EDC is financially self-sustaining and is a recognized leader in financial reporting and economic analysis.
An Interview with Isela Bahena, TIAA-CREF
Tags: Limited Partners, LPs, Profiles
Isela Bahena is a Director of Alternative Investments at TIAA-CREF. TIAA-CREF is a national financial services organization and the leading provider of retirement services in the academic, research, medical and cultural fields with $374 billion in combined assets under management (6/30/09). TIAA-CREF’s investment strategies cover a wide spectrum of asset classes, from traditional equity and fixed income to real estate and other alternatives, including venture capital and private equity investments in Latin America and around the globe. TIAA-CREF’s Alternative Investments team has been investing in alternative assets since 1997. As of June 30, 2009, these investments total $13 billion in commitments across a wide spectrum of funds including venture, buyout, energy and infrastructure, timber, secondary and distressed.
Read more
Citigroup Sells Colombian Pension Fund Manager to PE Consortium
Tags: Colombia, Deals, Limited Partners, LPs, Pension Funds
Citigroup has announced the sale of its Colombian pension fund manager Citi Colfondos to a private equity consortium, according to the Wall Street Journal. The consortium was led by Colombian investment firm Grupo Copatria through its private equity arm, and also includes private equity firms Linzor Capital Partners of Chile and Palmfund Management of New York.
Friederike Hofmann, SIFEM
Tags: Limited Partners, LPs, Profiles
Friederike Hofmann is an Investment Manager at the Swiss Investment Fund for Emerging Markets (SIFEM), where she focuses on Latin America and Global Debt Finance. SIFEM manages the investment portfolio of the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and invests in private equity funds and financial institutions in emerging markets, with a focus on small- and medium-sized enterprises. As of June 2009, SECO had $370 million in commitments outstanding, with roughly $60 million invested in Latin America. In Latin America, SIFEM focuses a majority of its investments under its mandate from SECO primarily on Central America, Colombia, and Peru, and looks opportunistically elsewhere in the region. Its most recent investment was an $8 million commitment to Altra Private Equity Fund I, which invests in mid-market companies in the Andean region.
Executive Briefing: A New Revolution Among Latin American Pension Funds?
Tags: LAVCA, Limited Partners, LPs, Pension Funds, regulatory watch
One of the key issues affecting the development of private equity and venture capital investment in Latin America is the availability of capital from local pension funds – private capital firms in Brazil, Colombia and Peru have succeeded in raising new funds in 2009 even as institutional investors in the US and Europe have remained on the sidelines.
Jesús Argüelles, from CalPERS, gives his view on PE investments
Tags: Limited Partners, LPs, Profiles
LAVCA spoke with Jesús Argüelles, a Portfolio Manager in the Alternative Investment Management Program of the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), to get his view on the asset class and the Latin American Region.
