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U.S. fixed income ex-cash strategies reported net institutional inflows of +$33.98 billion for FY 2019 to eVestment Asset Flows. Institutional investors generally preferred core fixed income, eschewing strategies focused on credit.

Each month, eVestment Private Markets crunches the numbers on public pensions’ reported commitments to private funds, digs into notable activity, and produces the Private Markets Monthly Monitor. Check out the latest edition here.

There has been a steady rollout of investment products catered to various ESG factors and no shortage of media attention. While there remain questions regarding how to properly incorporate ESG principles, the supply side of the equation does not seem to be a serious constraint.

eVestment Market Lens documents highlight a growing interest among investors in moving beyond negative screening towards more impactful ESG actions like shareholder engagement and proxy voting.

Market Lens documents show last year 341 private equity GPs captured 42% of public plan commitments, raising $62 billion in capital from 112 plans. In contrast, 109 traditional equity managers captured just 9% of public plan commitments, but raised $46 billion in the process.

While divestment from fossil fuels entirely remains rare, eVestment Market Lens documents show that some investors see better returns without coal.

EM equities have rebounded modestly YTD through Q3 2019 after a substantial drawdown in the prior year with the MSCI EM up +6.23% through Sep 30. There has been significant dispersion in EM equity returns YTD with Europe outperforming Asia and Latin America, large caps outperforming mid and small caps, and growth outperforming value.

Public plans have increasingly been looking to private markets in recent years as a means of earning higher returns. We reviewed asset allocation documents from 180 U.S. public plans and 57 U.K. public plans through Q3 2019 and found that U.S. plans were almost fully allocated to private alternatives whereas U.K. plans had room to enter into further commitments.

Since MSCI started including China A-Shares in its EM Index, institutional investors and consultants using the eVestment platform have been increasingly reviewing strategies focused on China and Hong Kong.

We rank eVestment’s 300+ primary universes using net flows, AUM, profile views and screening data to determine which universes consultants and institutional investors in different parts of the world cared about most heading into Q4 2019.