mallowstreet University Dinner: The Rise of Smart Beta

Sponsored by

Franklin Templeton Investments

Investing in Social Infrastructure: a Dual-Return Opportunity

Social infrastructure is real estate that maintains and strengthens social services, for example: healthcare, education and other civic facilities and social housing. Such projects were once the sole province of European governments, but funding gaps and rising demand have left a multibillion-euro shortfall. There is now an opportunity for institutional investors to participate in the social infrastructure sector and potentially make a dual return: long-term stable, inflation-linked cashflows as well as the impact return of social and environmental benefits to communities.

About Franklin Templeton Investments

Everything we do at Franklin Templeton is focused on delivering better client outcomes. It’s why we’ve built a world-class investment firm that aims to offer the best of both worlds: global strength and boutique specialisation.

We bring together an unmatched collection of independent specialist investment managers to provide our clients deep expertise and specialisation—within and across asset classes, investment styles, and geographies. We boast extensive multi-asset capabilities. And we offer hundreds of strategies across active, smart beta and passive approaches—in a full range of vehicles. All this gives us the ability to provide options best-suited to the unique needs of every client, institutional or individual.

Specialisation and customisation backed by the strength and resources of one of the world’s largest independent asset managers. Reliable, technology-driven, and tailored service. A commitment to doing what’s right for clients at all times. These are among the reasons we’re one of the world’s largest asset managers with clients in more than 160 countries, and over £2.0 trillion in assets under management.*

*As of 31/3/21. Assets under management represent combined assets of Franklin Templeton, Legg Mason, and subsidiary investment management groups. Franklin Templeton acquired Legg Mason on 31/7/20.

mallowstreet University Dinner: The Rise of Smart Beta

Smart beta is one of the fastest-growing investment strategies in recent years. Pledging to replicate at lower cost what fund managers are doing already, smart beta ETFs attracted US$534bn in investments by end of January 2017*, and the market is predicted to reach US$1tn globally by 2020.

However, in a world where there are no guarantees, how smart really is smart beta? Over dinner, Franklin Templeton will look at how investors are evaluating this new approach to investing and what place should it hold in institutional portfolios. As it evolves from single to multi-factor strategies, can smart beta deliver on the promise of outperformance in the long term, when compared with market cap weighted passive strategies?

Speakers

Todd Mathias CFA Senior ETF Product Specialist
Todd Mathias is a Senior ETF Product Specialist. Todd is responsible for positioning the firm's strategic beta ETF investment products internally and externally to clients. His responsibilities also include the strategy and development of the global ETF platform.
Todd has 10 years of industry experience. Prior to joining Franklin Templeton in 2016, he spent almost 6 years at BlackRock as an ETF Product Strategist working in both the San Francisco and more recently the London office. He partnered with distribution teams to differentiate more technical products, inclusive of the global strategic beta suite. Prior to BlackRock, Todd worked in global manager research at Callan Associates and in defined benefit sales at Vanguard.
Todd earned his B.S. in business from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Charterholder.

Program

6:30 PM Guest arrival

Welcome drinks
7:00 PM Seated for dinner
9:00 PM End

mallowstreet University Dinner: The Rise of Smart Beta

Speakers

Program

6:30 PM Guest arrival

7:00 PM Seated for dinner

9:00 PM End