Portfolio Consultant - Capitol Innovations, LLC

Michael Underhill

Michael Underhill throughout his investment professional career, has endeavored to bridge the worlds of academic theorists and financial markets. His success in doing so has resulted in a reputation as one of the world’s most provocative and respected financial analysts. Michael has pioneered several unconventional portfolio strategies that are now widely applied, including listed infrastructure, listed timber, and listed agribusiness investment strategies

In 2007, he established Capital Innovations, LLC as a research‐intensive asset management firm that focuses on innovative alternative investment products for institutional investors. Capital Innovations provide customized separate accounts for investors through publicly traded investments. The firm operates worldwide from their headquarters in North America and actively invests worldwide.

Capital Innovations explores novel approaches to real asset investment, optimal portfolio construction, and more efficient forms of capital deployment. Capital Innovations distributes investment products worldwide in partnership with leading financial institutions and invests on behalf of some of the largest government pension, sovereign wealth funds and family offices in the world.

Michael Underhill’s investment strategies have been featured in The New York Times, Pensions and Investments publication, Institutional Investor Magazine, The Financial Times, CNBC, Investments and Pensions Europe, The Economist, and Mr. Underhill is a regular contributor to Bloomberg’s Market Sense program.

Michael has been a frequent contributor to leading financial journals and books. He has published numerous whitepapers in journals for the CFA Institute, EDHEC University, Family Office Forum, Institutional Real Estate News, NAREIT, and Private Wealth Magazine, Financial Advisor Perspectives.

An intrepid investor, Michael’s investment career spans the last two plus decades working for some of the most prestigious asset management firms in the world. Prior to founding Capital Innovations, he was a Vice President at Alliance Bernstein Institutional where he worked with some of the world’s largest corporate defined benefit plans. Prior to that, he was a Vice President at INVESCO in a similar role, with additional exposure to sub-advisory account management for large financial institutions. Prior INVESCO he was at Janus Capital where he built up the nascent institutional fixed income money management capabilities as a complement to their burgeoning mutual fund business in the mid 1990’s. Michael started his career at Lehman Brothers as a quantitative analyst utilizing his statistical econometric background to construct financial models.

Michael graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in Economics with a curricular emphasis in statistical econometrics. In addition, he has completed post-graduate coursework from Pepperdine University, Stanford Law School and participated in the Latin American Mercosur Economic studies at the Universidad Del Salvador in 1998.
Michael sits on the real assets committee for the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) Association, where he is responsible for helping to set the global standard for educating investment professionals in the areas of real assets (infrastructure, timber and agriculture) across alternative investments. His expertise is being used to develop curriculum that is used as testing materials for level I and level II of the CAIA certification.

Michael is a founding member of the Steering Committee for the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment. The Steering Committee, together with the United Nations Secretariat, bears the ultimate responsibility for the Infrastructure Work Stream, related outputs, and regular reporting to the PRI Advisory Council.

He is author of the bestselling “The Handbook of Infrastructure Investing” (Wiley 2010) and a frequent guest speaker at the CFA Institute and a faculty member at Ecole De Hautes Etudes Commerciales du Nord (Paris, France) where he is a Professor of Infrastructure Investing and Alternative Asset Allocation.