Fiduciary management is a way of organizing the management of sizable investment portfolios. In the last few years, the concept of fiduciary management has become very popular among institutions looking for ways to better handle their massive portfolios. Fiduciary Management begins by offering some history behind why the investment community has turned to having only a select number of people or firms manage money. It also discusses the relationship between this theory and pension plans. Pension plan managers set the scene first for fiduciary management by limiting the number of players who were responsible for the funds. Soon, the theory spread beyond just pension funds. The book also offers guidelines as to who is a fiduciary management and who isn’t. For example, the book provides the following four principle functions of a fiduciary manager: 1. develop the asset-liability model; 2. portfolio construction; 3. selection and oversight of investment managers; and 4. performance measurement and benchmarking.
Book Details:
- Author: A. van Nunen
- ISBN: 9780470171035
- Year Published: 2008
- Pages: 288
- BISAC: BUS027000, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS/Finance
About the Book and Topic:
Fiduciary management is a way of organizing the management of sizable investment portfolios. In the last few years, the concept of fiduciary management has become very popular among institutions looking for ways to better handle their massive portfolios. Fiduciary Management begins by offering some history behind why the investment community has turned to having only a select number of people or firms manage money. It also discusses the relationship between this theory and pension plans. Pension plan managers set the scene first for fiduciary management by limiting the number of players who were responsible for the funds. Soon, the theory spread beyond just pension funds. The book also offers guidelines as to who is a fiduciary management and who isn’t. For example, the book provides the following four principle functions of a fiduciary manager: 1. develop the asset-liability model; 2. portfolio construction; 3. selection and oversight of investment managers; and 4. performance measurement and benchmarking.
At the turn of the 21st century, investors were growing weary of plan sponsors and other institutions in terms of management structure. Fiduciary management has since become a buzz word among investors who want to hire either a firm or a person whose main objective is to look after their financial well-being. The mounting interest in the fiduciary manager approach reflects the beginning of an historic shift in the way many institutions are organizing the outsourcing of their investment management activities. After several decades of expanding the range of actors involved in managing an institutional portfolio, there is increasing recognition of the problems that this large cast of characters creates. When many are involved, it turns out, no one is fully responsible. Many investment management firms have already caught onto the growing trend. Goldman Sachs Asset Management, for example, has more than $15 billion under management in its Fiduciary Manager product.
Author Support. Dr. van Nunen intends to rally support among his clients and offer bulk sale discounts. He also plan to purchase a few hundred copies of the book for free distribution among clients, colleagues, and opinion leaders in the global investment management community. He will also hold a conference on fiduciary management that centers around the book. Strong Media Ties. Shapiro will leverage his very strong media ties for coverage of the book. Shapiro works for Institutional Investor, and he has ties to The New York Times Magazine, as well as many other publications. Hot Trend in Investment Community. A growing number of investment consultants and asset management firms are offering a Fiduciary Management product, making it necessary for professionals to familiarize themselves with this concept.
About the Author
Harvey Shapiro (New York, NY) is currently Senior Contributing Editor of Institutional Investor magazine and Senior Advisor to Euromoney/Institutional Investor, Inc. He has written for a number of leading magazines and newspapers in the United States and around the world. Shapiro has contributed to The New York Times Magazine and Book Review, and he was formerly the Personal Finance columnist for The New York Times. He has also served as Senior Editor of Infrastructure Finance Magazine, and he has written a monthly investing column for Hemispheres, the in-flight magazine of United Airlines. Shapiro created and taught the nations first course on financial writing at Columbia School’s Graduate School of Journalism. Anton van Nunen (Holland, The Netherlands) has headed Van Nunen & Partners, a consulting firm serving both institutional and individual investors, since 1998. His clients have included a number of major institutional investors in the Netherlands and beyond. Van Nunen has not only spelled out the concepts of Fiduciary Management, he has implemented them at such institutions as VGZ-IZA, a major Dutch health insurance company, the Campina Pension Fund, and the Yarden Insurance Company. He earned a Ph.D. in economics at Tilburg University, where he went on to spend 12 years as an assistant professor. His academic work has focused on macroeconomics, banking, and financial markets.