News: 2006 1st Quarter

New Clients

  • State Board of Administration of Florida

    The State Board of Administration of Florida hired IFS to formulate a questionnaire for candidates seeking to act as the Board's investment consultant, regarding actual or potential conflicts of interest.

  • New York State Laborers-Employers' Health & Safety Trust Fund & New York State Laborers-Employers' Cooperation & Education Fund

    The Funds hired IFS as their ongoing investment consultant. IFS had previously completed an Operational Review and made recommendations regarding possible changes to each Fund's asset allocation, investment policy statement and investment managers.

  • Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union General Fund and Staff Retirement Fund

    The Funds hired IFS as their ongoing investment consultant. IFS is also the consultant to two other national funds-one a pension fund, the other a health and welfare fund-jointly sponsored by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and contributing employers.

  • American Federation of Musicians and Employers' Pension Fund

    The Fund has hired IFS to assist its Board in implementing its new Policy Statement and Protocols regarding securities class action litigation.

  • AIG Global Investment Corp.

    Consistent with the interests of several benefit plans sponsored by AIG, IFS has been hired to conduct an in-house asset management (INHAM) exemption audit with respect to investment management services AIG Global Investment Corporation provides to the plans.

  • Northwest Indiana Regional Council of Carpenters Pension Trust Fund

    The Fund hired IFS as an independent fiduciary and investment manager to effectuate a sale of a mixed-use real estate development. IFS was appointed pursuant to a consent decree the Fund entered with the U.S. Department of Labor.

  • Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation - Office of Inspector General

    The Office of Inspector General hired IFS to assist in evaluating aspects of the process by which PBGC sold its rights to shares of common stock of UAL Corporation in early 2006. As previously reported in the press, PBGC sold those claims to Deutsche Bank for $450 million.

Recently Completed Projects

  • School Employees Retirement System of Ohio

    IFS recently completed for the System an evaluation of the adequacy of compliance by its private asset managers with applicable investment guidelines and assisted in implementing prior recommendations regarding disclosure by the System's investment consultant.

  • State Board of Administration of Florida

    IFS recently completed the development of a questionnaire for candidates seeking to act as the Board's investment consultant, regarding actual or potential conflicts of interest.

IFS in the News

  • Fund Fire - January 19, 2006

    Consultants say the recent Securities and Exchange Commission probe into consulting practices in the pension industry has affected the hiring process they go through for pension funds. At the Opal Financial Group sponsored Public Funds Summit here, four consultants touched on issues regarding pay to play and consultant evaluation, among other topics. The SEC probe that spanned two years led pension plans to take another look at the types of activities their consultants were engaging in. In fact, according to most panelists, responding to a request for proposals post-SEC review, takes more time and more disclosure... The increased scrutiny means that some consultants may be scratched from potential business as some sponsors are staying away from firms that offer products to both managers and pensions, said Steven Harding, SVP at consulting firm Independent Fiduciary Services.

Conferences

  • The Pension Crisis Conference

    Andy Irving of IFS conducted workshops on March 17 on "Problems and Issues in Private Sector Pensions" as part of a program on The Pension Crisis sponsored by the Rutgers University Labor Education Center. The conference attracted almost 200 representatives of labor, management and government. The presentation summarized and placed in historical context the factors that have created stress on private sector pension plans and reviewed some of the legislative and regulatory responses being discussed. The focus of the presentation was identifying likely unintended consequences of various approaches to the issues and steps that plan fiduciaries, labor and management can take to avoid the error of applying short-term fixes to long-term problems.

  • Made In America Conference

    IFS was represented at the "Made In America" conference of Taft-Hartley funds in Las Vegas on February 14, 2006. In a presentation on "Selecting Investment Managers", IFS encouraged the audience to pick managers with an eye toward the managers' periods of worst performance as well as their best, to concentrate more on long term returns than on recent results, and to be ready for the inevitable periods when good managers trail their peers.

    In a presentation on "The Role of International Equities in Your Portfolio", IFS noted that it is getting harder to distinguish between "US" and "foreign" companies, and that more and more US workers are employed by foreign-owned corporations operating in the US. He reported that Taft-Hartley pension funds are allocating an increasing percentage of their equity holdings to non-US strategies, and predicted that the day is not far off when funds may divide their equity allocations evenly between US and foreign stocks (or rely instead on "global" mandates that combine stocks from all major markets).

  • Public Funds Summit - Phoenix

    Steve Harding of IFS spoke at the annual meeting of Public Funds sponsored by Opal in Phoenix in January. Steve spoke on the results of the recent SEC examination into consultant conflicts of interest and what public funds are doing about them.(See Fund Fire article above.)