98th Annual Conference Keynote Speaker, Yu (Ben) Meng

Published by Delia Richardson at June 12, 2020

Wednesday Keynote Speaker

Yu (Ben) Meng

Chief Investment Officer, California Public Employees’ Retirement System

Yu (Ben) Meng rejoined CalPERS in January 2019 as chief investment officer (CIO). He oversees an Investment Office of nearly 400 employees and manages investment portfolios of roughly $400 billion, including the Public Employees’ Retirement Fund and affiliate funds.

Yu, a U.S. citizen born in China, returned to CalPERS after more than three years as the deputy CIO at the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), the largest asset pool in the world with assets under management of over $3 trillion U.S. dollars.

Prior to his time at SAFE, he served at CalPERS for seven years with his last role as the investment director of Asset Allocation. He also was a portfolio manager in fixed income.

Before joining CalPERS in 2008, Yu worked at Barclays Global Investors as a senior portfolio manager, Lehman Brothers as a risk officer, and Morgan Stanley as a fixed-income trader. He also serves as a member of the Future of Finance Advisory Council (CFA Institute) and is an associate editor for the Journal of Investment Management.

In 2014 Yu was the recipient of the Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching at the Haas School of Business. He holds a master’s degree in financial engineering from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and a doctorate in civil engineering from the University of California, Davis.