As institutional investors navigate complex markets and demanding governance requirements, Grace Uniacke, director of alternatives solutions at Russell Investments, suggests they move their portfolios from disconnected compartments towards integrated, connected systems.
“This can be done in incremental tweaks, but more so as a structural upgrade to how we design, construct and manage institutional portfolios,” she said during a session at the Canadian Investment Review’s 2025 Alternative Investment Conference.
The most immediate benefit of blending public and private markets is diversification across the liquidity spectrum, she said, with illiquid assets modelled and managed alongside public exposures. “That opens new ways to combine return streams, proactively manage liquidity and prepare for stress events before they hit.”
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Now is the right time, added Uniacke, not only because of the macroeconomic backdrop but also the structural shifts in markets. Alongside repeated shocks from geopolitics, inflation and technological disruption, volatility has become more persistent, straining governance and complicating liquidity. At the same time, private markets have become central to institutional portfolios, she said, with many Canadian investors leading the way in real estate and energy transition, infrastructure and private credit.
But while these allocations have grown, integration has lagged, said Uniacke, noting if public and private exposures are managed in parallel rather than in concert, it creates friction. “You’re seeing obscured risks, slower liquidity decisions and [difficulty in making] strategic pivots. In a world where responsiveness is at a premium, fragmentation just isn’t viable. So that’s why fusion matters.”
However, there are barriers to entry, she noted, including that many investment organizations run in separate teams and separate lines of reporting for public and private markets; they face liquidity and governance constraints; and there are gaps in investment expertise and resources.
In addition, Uniacke highlighted measurement as a classic pain point, with public assets typically marked daily with very transparent benchmarks and private assets marked quarterly or less frequently and often bespoke or custom benchmarks. “The result is trustees, investment committees and [chief investment officers] struggle to see a consistent and comparable total portfolio view. That slows your decisions and can bias choices towards what’s easiest to measure, rather than what best served outcomes.”
Read: Expert panel: The different pathways to pursuing a total portfolio approach
These barriers are surmountable with the right framework, governance alignment and integration of tools, she said, recommending institutional investors start the shift by documenting exposures, governance pathways and data flows in both their public and private portfolios. Next, she suggested they create a unified dashboard that brings both exposures into one view, evolve governance and decision-making and then align benchmarks and execution tools.
“Fusion is not about perfection here. It’s just about progress. It moves portfolios from disconnected parts to integrated systems. With fusion, you should see enhanced risk-adjusted returns, improved resilience, dampened volatility, broaden access to growth and innovation and [be able to] deploy capital more flexibly and efficiently.”
Read more coverage of the 2025 Alternative Investment Conference.