Guest Speaker: Andrew Ward CIO Of Boeing
Guest speaker Andrew Ward discusses his role as the CIO of Boeing with Streetfins students during financial literacy month.
Chief Investment Officer, Boeing
Search every verified Andrew Ward interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote โ each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Andrew Ward, Chief Investment Officer at Boeing, spoke to Streetfins students in April 2021 about his role and the company's pension plan. He described Boeing's pension plan as the largest corporate pension plan in the country, with nearly $140 billion in assets. Ward explained that if the plan's fixed income portfolio generates a negative return, the pension plan becomes healthier because its liability is fully exposed to interest rate risk, stating that "we are rooting against fixed income to improve our pension health." Ward also discussed challenges during the pandemic, noting that the biggest challenge was providing liquidity for uncertain demands. He said Boeing had to reduce its workforce and offer lump-sum payouts, requiring the plan to maintain high liquidity while still achieving strong returns. Ward previously worked for an insurance company called Aeon, where he focused on alternative investments including private equity, hedge funds, and real estate, before joining Boeing about 20 years ago.
“The Boeing company is the largest corporate pension plan in the country, and as of April we had close to 140 billion dollars of assets in our retirement plans.”
“We believe in diversification... diversification is the only free lunch in investment, and that's true but we also believe it within asset classes.”
“If our fixed income portfolio generates a negative return we're actually going to be healthier as a pension plan because our liability is 100 percent exposed to that interest rate risk.”
“The biggest challenge I had in the last year was providing liquidity for uncertain demands upon that liquidity... I didn't know what was going to be called out of the portfolio and so I had to maintain that really high level liquidity but also achieved great returns with that liquidity.”
Guest speaker Andrew Ward discusses his role as the CIO of Boeing with Streetfins students during financial literacy month.
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