FiduciaryX Expert Blogs
New Report on the Endowment Model
Susan Mangiero
Jul 18, 2010
In a new study by the Tellus Institute, wealthy college and university endowments are described as being over zealous with respect to investment risk-taking in recent years. Related losses during the financial crisis arguably account for school staf...
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BP Investments - The Role of Ethics and Risk Management
Susan Mangiero
Jun 20, 2010
The current situation with British Petroleum ("BP") raises a bevy of thorny questions, not the least of which is how pensions and other types of institutional investors should deal with the asset allocation fallout. Let's start with the facts about i...
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Cows, Elephants and Pensions
Susan Mangiero
Jun 20, 2010
In addition to a few days of productive meetings in London, I had the pleasure of seeing brightly colored elephant statues throughout the greater environs of the city. Apparently, these "for sale" collectibles are meant to draw attention to the...
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5 Ways to Overpay Your Asset Manager: #1 Ignore Innovation in the Marketplace
JenniferCooper
Jun 14, 2010
Innovation is considered to be a primary driver of growth in economies. Since investors tend to focus on economic growth, one would think that investors would take note of innovation and – perhaps more than others - embrace innovation. Some...
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Quo Vadis, Public Pensions?
Norman Ehrentreich
Jun 09, 2010
On May 15th, 18 minutes before a deadline, Minnesota’s governor Tim Pawlenty signed an omnibus retirement bill into law that he had opposed earlier as it lacked “significant reform, continues to provide for future increases, mandates additional costs ...
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Healing Power of Gratitude
Susan Mangiero
May 29, 2010
I happen to have a window office in a local corporate park that overlooks a sculpture garden. Every night, I have a front row seat to the majesty of pink and purple hues as the sun sets behind a billow of clouds. It is an amazing reminder of all ...
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Is your Portfolio in the Land that Time Forgot?
JenniferCooper
May 26, 2010
Despite all the changes in the investment industry over the past 20 years, a few things have stayed the same. There remains a perception that smaller institutional investors (those having assets less than $100 million) are doomed to pay h...
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Multi-Manager Portfolios
JenniferCooper
May 19, 2010
Multi-manager investment portfolios can be managed in a cost-effective manner. However, multi-manager investment portfolios are not often well-constructed or managed to be cost-effective for the asset owner. Some portfolios that are not cost-effe...
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Not 21 But Lots of Great Opportunities Ahead
Susan Mangiero
May 17, 2010
A man is not old until his regrets take the place of dreams. - - - - John Barrymore, "Good Night, Sweet Prince" 1943 If Betty White can rock Saturday Night Live to its highest ratings at the age of 88 and Sunset Daze is media gold for the se...
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Risk Management and 404(c)
Lynne McAuley
May 12, 2010
Risk Management and ERISA Section 404(c) "One of the key implementation issues that must be addressed is how to overcome a corporate culture that is lacking or even negative toward risk management."" Edmund Conrow, Author on Risk Ma...
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The Monkey Shirt Won't Fit No Matter What You Say
Susan Mangiero
May 05, 2010
I'm one of those optimistic souls who still believes in good customer service. I regularly reward vendors who go out of their way to provide what used to be considered the norm but increasingly falls into the "unusually superior" ...
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Can Great Cards Overcome a Complex Strategy?
Susan Mangiero
May 02, 2010
Thanks to my husband's astute coaching, I'm becoming a big fan of bridge. Each hand presents a new challenge. In addition to deciding how to play my cards, I have to take my partner's thirteen into account as well as what we need to succes...
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The Lawyers Are Coming
Susan Mangiero
Apr 30, 2010
Law scholar, author and derivatives pundit Frank Partnoy had an interesting piece in the Financial Times on April 19, 2010. In "Wall Street beware: the lawyers are coming," Mr. Partnoy warns that the floodgates of litigation are about ...
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I really dislike geometric average returns ...
Norman Ehrentreich
Apr 26, 2010
as a proxy for long-term funding costs of DB pension plans. However, NASRA’s recent brief that the long term investment returns of public plans beat their return assumptions shows that among public pension officials, the connection between long term a...
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Negative Swap Spreads - Trouble On the Way?
Susan Mangiero
Apr 11, 2010
If you missed "Will negative swap spreads be our coal mine canaries?" by Gillian Tett (Financial Times, March 30, 2010), it's a worthwhile read, especially given the pervasive use of triple A-rated sovereign bond yields as a proxy for the "risk-...
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Hedge Fund Valuation and Performance Reporting
Susan Mangiero
Apr 11, 2010
According to "Offshore hedge fund is trouble for Seattle's pension fund" by Rami Grunbaum (Seattle Times, April 11, 2010), the Seattle City Employees' Retirement System ("SCERS") got a nasty surprise when they asked again for overdue financial in...
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Roosters Guarding the ERISA Hen House
Mitchell Shames
Apr 07, 2010
In a boon to Wall Street and the mutual fund industry, the Pension Protection Act of 2006 ("PPA") now allows brokers and financial planners to recommend affiliated and proprietary investment products to plan participants. (I'm not sure where the...
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Are Pension Performance Numbers Upside Down?
Susan Mangiero
Apr 07, 2010
In a recent interview with Pittsburgh Tribune-Review journalist Debra Erdley, I pointed out the folly of relying solely on point in time actuarial numbers. As I state (below), no single metric is a substitute for a robust risk management process. ...
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Public Plans Beat their Return Assumptions - Yet still Failed
Norman Ehrentreich
Apr 07, 2010
On March 15th, the National Association of State Retirement Administrators (NASRA) published a report that showed that the median investment returns for the 20? and 25?year periods that ended on 12/31/09 exceed the most?used investment return assumpti...
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Return, Liquidity and Valuation
Susan Mangiero
Apr 07, 2010
More than a few of our recent conversations with pension, endowment and foundation decision-makers focus on hard-to-value investing. At a time when 2010 beckons with the hope of a buoyant market, institutions seek returns from alternatives such as hed...
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