A
chief investment officer of a public company told us recently that one of her
favorite consultants in the industry is Virgilio “Bo” Abesamis III, of Callan,
for his vast experience and wisdom. And so, with some of her suggested questions in hand,
we reached out to Callan for an interview with him. Over the course of the
interview, we will explore due diligence, technologies, board onboarding, and
ask him the things chief investment officers should most be paying attention
to.
Abesamis
has been with Callan since 1987, and is an executive vice president,
shareholder, and the manager of Callan’s Implementation Solutions group. He is
spearheading the research around digitization and total cost analyses and also
specializes in operational due diligence in the areas of safekeeping, asset
servicing, trade processing, and portfolio restructuring, including securities
finance, according to the consultant firm’s website. His other areas of responsibility
include passive and index portfolio, and short-term cash management manager due
diligence in support of Callan’s Global Manager Research group.
His
experience is quite vast within the firm, starting from when, in 1987 he assisted
in the development of Callan’s performance measurement tools, then moved to the
Capital Markets Research group with responsibilities involving asset/liability
modeling, manager structure, benchmark and database reviews, style analysis,
and research. He also worked on the analytics involving non-traditional asset
classes, namely international, alternative investments, and real estate among
other things.
Abesamis holds an MBA with a double major in finance and
international business from the University of San Francisco, and a BS in
accounting and finance from Ateneo de Manila, Philippines.