Kristian Fok is the Chief Investment Officer of Australia’s A46B ($35B USD) Construction & Building Industry Superannuation Fund, or CBUS. Prior to joining CBUS in 2012, Kristian spent 14 years consulting to Australian Super Funds at Frontier Advisors.  Australia’s Superannuation program mandates that employers contribute 9.5% of its employee salaries into a Super Fund, which is owned by the employee, like a 401k in the U.S., and grows with investment returns until retirement. The employees, in turn, have a choice of providers to invest their savings. The model has been one of the most successful in the world in preparing the population for retirement. Our conversation starts with Kristian’s path to the CIO seat at CBUS and focuses on the hybrid investment model blending internal and external management. We discuss the transition to internal management as assets scale, example of CBUS’ internal property company, economics of internal management, talent recruiting and retention, portfolio structure, external manager selection, people management, and investment with a long time-horizon. Discuss the show and Read the transcript   Join Ted's mailing list at CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com   Write a review on iTunes   Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides   For more episodes go to CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/Podcast

Ben Reiter is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated and the author of Astroball:  The New Way to Win It All.  He joined SI in 2004 a few years out of college and has written for them ever since. In 2014 Ben wrote a cover story for SI entitled YOUR 2017 WORLD SERIES CHAMPS featuring the then sorry Astros who were the laughingstock of baseball at the time.  Three years later, his prediction came true. His book chronicling the journey has been dubbed Moneyball 2.0. Our conversation blew me away in how closely the parallels have been between baseball management and fundamental investing over the last 15 years.  From the incorporation of data to the challenges in managing people, I suspect if you just change the names of the players and the labels for the process, this could be a full blown conversation about investing. Baseball may even be ahead of the data revolution in investing, and the story of the Astros could hint at lessons that money managers will need to apply going forward.  Discuss the show and Read the transcript   Join Ted's mailing list at CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com   Write a review on iTunes   Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides   For more episodes go to CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/Podcast