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The Federal Circuit's effort to address en banc the district court's rejection of the applicability of patent law to a fairly commonplace hedge against settlement risk seems to have broken down in confusion. This may have profound implications for both the traditional and the alternative asset management industry.
Lawyers argued an intellectual property issue of great significance to our readers before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals en banc, on Friday, February 8, 2013. They were disputing a patent claim that, if upheld, will make life a lot more complicated than it already is for those attempting to provide the infrastructure of the alternative-investment industry.
Rene Levesque looks at risk management and absolute return from an industry practitioner's point of view.
Fifty-eight percent of the pension investment consultants included in a recent report have one or another sort of red flag in their present or their past: many of them because they run their business in a way that generates conflicts that ought to be of concern to pension plan sponsors.
The directors of a corporation selling itself have a duty to their shareholders to familiarize themselves with all the material facts, and they are to be discouraged from stuffing wax in their ears in order to avoid hearing anything inconvenient.
Charles J. French, CAIA, discusses the intricacies of negotiating finals with Christopher Van Dyke, CAIA, CFA, Advisor, Arnerich Massena, Inc. (CVD); Kweku Obed, CAIA, CFA, Principal, Mercer Investment Consulting, Inc. (KO); and Thomas H. Dodd, CAIA, CFA, FSA, President, Stratford Advisory Group (TD).
As a McGladrey white paper issued this spring makes clear, reporting entities now must disclose quantitative information about the unobservable inputs used in Level 3 Fair Value measurements. These may include: prepayment rates; credit risk adjustments; default rates; control premiums; loss severities.
Shane Brett takes a look at operational due diligence and recommends letting the sun shine in.
After an October 29, 2008 discussion with Tucker, Diamond wrote a note for the file saying that the Bank of England official had said that "it does not always need to be the case that we appeared as high as we have recently" in connection Barclays' Libor submissions. What are we to make of this?
The return of assets to the realm of hedge funds comes with enhanced scrutiny. As Todd Groome, chairman of AIMA, says: “Following 2008, a much greater investor focus on liquidity, portfolio transparency, control and fund governance was clearly evident.” In common with legislative/regulatory changes, this requires transformation.
The meat of the guide addresses what AIMA Canada considers sound practice in marketing and promotion, such as in the calculation and presentation of returns, in selecting a benchmark relevant to a specific strategy, and in explaining the various ratios used for the same purpose. It notes that the Association for Investment Management and Research’s Performance Presentation Standards (AIMR-PPS) recommend using a time-weighted method for the calculation of returns, a model otherwise known as the Modified Dietz method.
