Ron Barin joins 300 Club

Ron Barin joins 300 Club

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Alcoa's Ron Barin has joined The 300 Club, an independent group made up of leading investment professionals from across the globe.

Based in New York, Ron is vice president and chief investment officer, pension plan investments at lightweight metals leader Alcoa. He is responsible for the investment strategy for the firm’s US retirement benefits plans as well as the Alcoa Foundation, overseeing total assets of $13bn.

“I’ve long admired the 300 Club and believe that the need to question the conventional investment paradigm has become more urgent," said Barin.

Barin explained that he'd already put some of his investment beliefs into practice by evolving Alcoa’s pension & Foundation investment strategies to a risk factor portfolio construction approach.

"This allows for enhanced portfolio diversification relative to the equity risk premium by allowing us to harvest a wide array of long term risk premia coupled with downside risk management – we’re on an exciting journey to attempt to move beyond the best practices of the endowment model," said Barin. 

"Our approach also challenges the prevailing assumptions of existing portfolio and economic theory – rational expectations and stable equilibrium don’t exist in the real world – which has some interesting implications for how we quantify and manage investment risk.”

Prior to joining Alcoa, Ron served as senior director, pension investments, for pharmaceutical firm Pfizer, where he was responsible for assets totalling $22bn in Pfizer’s global benefits plans and its Foundation.

“Ron is currently responsible for investing assets on behalf of a significant workforce and during his career he has gained extensive experience in this regard for a number of leading global companies,"said Lars Dijkstra, chairman of the 300 Club. 

"With his experience Ron steered the Alcoa Pension Plan and Alcoa Foundation from the typical 60/40 asset mix to a more long term, diversifying portfolio that is directly tied to its strategic objectives. I am sure he will be of great value for the 300 Club.”

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