Richard Lacaille is on the move. The global CIO for Boston-based asset management firm State Street Global Advisors has been flitting among the firm’s 11 investing centers in ten countries, talking to asset-class CIOs about how to respond to the market chaos. Lacaille, 47, a quantitative research expert who joined State Street in 2000 and became global CIO last month, admits that he’s also become a bit of an expert in panic selling. Recent volatility, Lacaille says, is similar to the indiscriminate deleveraging of the early 1970s. Yet he’s quietly optimistic: He doesn’t think the markets have begun to price in the effect of cash flows that will come from government-sponsored recapitalization programs. When that money starts to mop up devalued commercial paper and structured products, liquidity may finally begin to ease. “In the end, we will need real-money buyers of some of these products — long-term, value-oriented institutions with hard cash that are hungry for the potential returns, despite the high-risk environment.”
