Pioneering Portfolio Management

Pioneering Portfolio Management

Author: David F. Swensen

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2009-01-06

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 1416554033

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the years since the now-classic Pioneering Portfolio Management was first published, the global investment landscape has changed dramatically -- but the results of David Swensen's investment strategy for the Yale University endowment have remained as impressive as ever. Year after year, Yale's portfolio has trumped the marketplace by a wide margin, and, with over $20 billion added to the endowment under his twenty-three-year tenure, Swensen has contributed more to Yale's finances than anyone ever has to any university in the country. What may have seemed like one among many success stories in the era before the Internet bubble burst emerges now as a completely unprecedented institutional investment achievement. In this fully revised and updated edition, Swensen, author of the bestselling personal finance guide Unconventional Success, describes the investment process that underpins Yale's endowment. He provides lucid and penetrating insight into the world of institutional funds management, illuminating topics ranging from asset-allocation structures to active fund management. Swensen employs an array of vivid real-world examples, many drawn from his own formidable experience, to address critical concepts such as handling risk, selecting advisors, and weathering market pitfalls. Swensen offers clear and incisive advice, especially when describing a counterintuitive path. Conventional investing too often leads to buying high and selling low. Trust is more important than flash-in-the-pan success. Expertise, fortitude, and the long view produce positive results where gimmicks and trend following do not. The original Pioneering Portfolio Management outlined a commonsense template for structuring a well-diversified equity-oriented portfolio. This new edition provides fund managers and students of the market an up-to-date guide for actively managed investment portfolios.


Market Players

Market Players

Author: Gail Rolland

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-10-04

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1119990378

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The global financial markets are not just driven by the big investment houses and fund managers. Along with these, private banks, insurance houses, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and a range of boutique investment managers, regional institutions and brokers of different sizes and nationalities all operate and interact to form the bedrock of the global financial infrastructure. Because of this, it is essential that practitioners and observers of the markets fully understand the linkages, objectives and functions of these institutions, and the new and dynamic environment they are working in. Market Players provides a complete roadmap to the institutions and intermediaries operating in today's global financial landscape, illustrating what they are, how they work, how they interact and importantly, their motivation. It explains the core financial market business of these institutions and considers how they have become the firms that we see today, providing readers with a clear understanding of which market sectors are likely to see the most involvement from the different types of institution and, importantly, why they are involved in these market areas. Key features include: a series of case studies looking at examples of some of these institutions including an explanation of the EIB and the UK agency UKFI. They also look at the financial crisis and the impact on AIG and Northern Rock, two institutions that clearly illustrate what can go wrong and how the other market players have to step in when this happens. an international perspective looking at representative institutions from Europe, Asia and North America, showing global similarities and differences. a Post Financial Crisis perspective on the structure of international banks in today's markets. coverage of the major players on both the buy and sell side of the market Written in plain English, Market Players is an accessible and much needed guide to financial institutions, equipping readers with the knowledge to better understand how the global financial markets really work.


Corporate Governance Failures

Corporate Governance Failures

Author: James P. Hawley

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-04-15

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 0812204646

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Corporate governance, the internal policies and leadership that guide the actions of corporations, played a major part in the recent global financial crisis. While much blame has been targeted at compensation arrangements that rewarded extreme risk-taking but did not punish failure, the performance of large, supposedly sophisticated institutional investors in this crisis has gone for the most part unexamined. Shareholding organizations, such as pension funds and mutual funds, hold considerable sway over the financial industry from Wall Street to the City of London. Corporate Governance Failures: The Role of Institutional Investors in the Global Financial Crisis exposes the misdeeds and lapses of these institutional investors leading up to the recent economic meltdown. In this collection of original essays, edited by pioneers in the field of fiduciary capitalism, top legal and financial practitioners and researchers discuss detrimental actions and inaction of institutional investors. Corporate Governance Failures reveals how these organizations exposed themselves and their clientele to extremely complex financial instruments, such as credit default swaps, through investments in hedge and private equity funds as well as more traditional equity investments in large financial institutions. The book's contributors critique fund executives for tolerating the "pursuit of alpha" culture that led managers to pursue risky financial strategies in hopes of outperforming the market. The volume also points out how and why institutional investors failed to effectively monitor such volatile investments, ignoring relatively well-established corporate governance principles and best practices. Along with detailed investigations of institutional investor missteps, Corporate Governance Failures offers nuanced and realistic proposals to mitigate future financial pitfalls. This volume provides fresh perspectives on ways institutional investors can best act as gatekeepers and promote responsible investment.


Guide to Financial Markets

Guide to Financial Markets

Author: Marc Levinson

Publisher: The Economist

Published: 2018-07-24

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1541742516

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The revised and updated 7th edition of this highly regarded book brings the reader right up to speed with the latest financial market developments, and provides a clear and incisive guide to a complex world that even those who work in it often find hard to understand. In chapters on the markets that deal with money, foreign exchange, equities, bonds, commodities, financial futures, options and other derivatives, the book examines why these markets exist, how they work, and who trades in them, and gives a run-down of the factors that affect prices and rates. Business history is littered with disasters that occurred because people involved their firms with financial instruments they didn't properly understand. If they had had this book they might have avoided their mistakes. For anyone wishing to understand financial markets, there is no better guide.


Managed Futures for Institutional Investors

Managed Futures for Institutional Investors

Author: Galen Burghardt

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-05-03

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 1576603741

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A practical guide to institutional investing success Managed Futures for Institutional Investors is an essential guide that walks you through the important questions that need to be addressed before investing in this asset class and contains helpful direction for investors during the investing process. Backed by years of institutional experience, the authors reveal the opportunities offered by managed futures. They also include information on practices in the managed futures area and present the various analytical tools and building blocks required to use managed futures effectively. The book also contains insight on the issues that must be addressed when building and evaluating portfolios. Shows where to find data to evaluate managed futures and explains how managed futures are regulated Offers guidance on how to apply classic portfolio construction tools to managed futures Reveals how managed futures investments can help investors evaluate and meet risk, return, and liquidity objectives Managed Futures for Institutional Investors provides all the practical information to manage this type of investment well.


Treynor On Institutional Investing

Treynor On Institutional Investing

Author: Jack L. Treynor

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-07-13

Total Pages: 566

ISBN-13: 1118160703

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Praise for TREYNOR ON INSTITUTIONAL INVESTING "Jack Treynor has a mind of his own. I mean that as the highest compliment. Jack Treynor sees what no one else sees, thinks what no one else thinks, explains what no one else explains. You will learn more in fifteen minutes with Jack Treynor than in a full hour with most pundits. You will work hard but you will see things, think things, and understand things as never before. This book is a most valuable treasure, gleaming with Jack Treynor's brilliance." -Peter L. Bernstein, author, Capital Ideas Evolving "Vintage Treynor. This is a must-own reference for anyone involved in institutional asset management. It assembles - in one place - many of the important insights of one of the most provocative and creative players in the finance world over the past half-century." -Robert D. Arnott, Chairman, Research Affiliates, and Former Editor, Financial Analysts Journal "As a practicing investment manager, Treynor always preferred brilliance to soundness. Identifying the flaws in conventional thinking, he shows both the theorist and the practitioner where to invest time in their search for excess return." -Perry Mehrling, Professor of Economics, Barnard College, Columbia University, author, Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance "Jack Treynor's new book brings together a lifetime of exploring the important questions surrounding the sophisticated investor's task. Readers of Treynor on Institutional Investing will be richly rewarded by the insights the author has developed about both the practical and the conceptual keys to successful investing." -Samuel L. Hayes, III, Jacob Schiff Professor of Investment Banking Emeritus, Harvard Business School


Hedge Funds

Hedge Funds

Author: Jess Lederman

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This guide provides strategies for coping with volatile returns and profiting with this exciting new asset class. Specific topics include: Profiles of major funds; Historical performance of hedge funds; Hedge funds as a part of the institutional portfolio; Selecting a hedge fund manager; Legal, tax and accounting issues.


Investment Beliefs

Investment Beliefs

Author: K. Koedijk

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2010-12-08

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 0230307574

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Having the right investment beliefs and putting them into practice is key to delivering the right results. Decision makers in the investment industry should worry less about the stocks and products they pick for their clients and more about getting the big picture right; developing investment beliefs are instrumental in making the right choices.


Unconventional Success

Unconventional Success

Author: David F. Swensen

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2005-08-09

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 074327461X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The bestselling author of Pioneering Portfolio Management, the definitive template for institutional fund management, returns with a book that shows individual investors how to manage their financial assets. In Unconventional Success, investment legend David F. Swensen offers incontrovertible evidence that the for-profit mutual fund industry consistently fails the average investor. From excessive management fees to the frequent "churning" of portfolios, the relentless pursuit of profits by mutual fund management companies harms individual clients. Perhaps most destructive of all are the hidden schemes that limit investor choice and reduce returns, including "pay-to-play" product-placement fees, stale-price trading scams, soft-dollar kickbacks, and 12b-1 distribution charges. Even if investors manage to emerge unscathed from an encounter with the profit-seeking mutual fund industry, individuals face the likelihood of self-inflicted pain. The common practice of selling losers and buying winners (and doing both too often) damages portfolio returns and increases tax liabilities, delivering a one-two punch to investor aspirations. In short: Nearly insurmountable hurdles confront ordinary investors. Swensen's solution? A contrarian investment alternative that promotes well-diversified, equity-oriented, "market-mimicking" portfolios that reward investors who exhibit the courage to stay the course. Swensen suggests implementing his nonconformist proposal with investor-friendly, not-for-profit investment companies such as Vanguard and TIAA-CREF. By avoiding actively managed funds and employing client-oriented mutual fund managers, investors create the preconditions for investment success. Bottom line? Unconventional Success provides the guidance and financial know-how for improving the personal investor's financial future.


The World Guide to CSR

The World Guide to CSR

Author: Wayne Visser

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-08

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13: 1351278908

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The World Guide to CSR is the first book to provide comparable national profiles that describe the evolution and practice of Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility (CSR) for 58 countries and 5 global regions. Each regional and national profile includes key information about the relevant CSR history, country-specific issues, trends, research and leading organizations. The purpose of the book is to give CSR professionals (including managers, consultants, academics and NGOs focusing on the social, environmental and ethical responsibilities of business) a quick reference guide to CSR in different regional and national contexts. The need for the book is premised on the fact that CSR professionals and researchers more often than not have a multinational remit and are required to benchmark performance internationally, but find that country-specific CSR information is ad hoc, limited or non-existent. Even where national CSR research exists, it is often hidden in academic journals that practitioners cannot access or do not have the time or inclination to read. The book is an edited volume, with expert contributors from around the world, all of whom have been screened and selected on the basis of their qualifications and experience in CSR. Each regional/country profile includes the following subsections:CSR in context Priority issues Trends Legislation and codes Organizations Case studies Educational institutions References This unique resource will be an essential acquisition for all organisations who need to benchmark their CSR strategies throughout different regions and cultures and want the best possible intelligence on the key issues and concerns relating to corporate social responsibility in all of the markets in which they operate.