Bridgewater takes portable alpha route, urges clients to follow suit
Oct 30th, 2006 | Filed under: Portable Alpha & Alpha/Beta SeparationBy: Christine Williamson, Pensions & Investments
Published: October 30, 2006
Talk about industry leadership. According to Pensions & Investments, Bridgewater (manager of $165 billion) has sent letters to its clients saying that portable alpha strategies are such a no-brainer, that any client not buying in to the approach in the next 12 months will be, as P&I puts it, ”resigned”.
“Raymond T. Dalio, founder, president and co-chief investment officer of the Westport, Conn., firm, said Bridgewater has been sending letters about the firm’s portable alpha focus to clients now using what he called ‘constrained’ or ‘undiversified’ mandates, which don’t permit Bridgewater to freely move among asset classes. Those letters not only encourage clients to move their assets to portable alpha approaches, but also contain very gently phrased notices that accounts of clients unwilling to make the transfer will be resigned within 12 months.”
Letter recipients reportedly included:
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[…] As regular readers may recall, Alpha Male was at a hedge fund conference last fall involving a large number of institutional investors.  While the “main stream media” was not invited, AllAboutAlpha.com was able to report on a few general themes and some of the extra-curricular events. One of the speakers was Robert Zink of behemoth money manager Bridgewater Associates, managers of over $150 billion in AUM (and pioneers of alpha-centric investing). He brought with him a very interesting message, but we ran out of space and time to report on it back in October.  […]
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