On Monday, May 19, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (Council) hosted a conference on the asset management industry and its activities to help inform the Council’s ongoing assessment of potential risks to U.S. financial stability. During the conference, practitioners – including CEOs, treasurers, and risk officers – as well as academics and other stakeholders discussed a variety of specific issues that relate to the industry.
Opening the conference, Treasury’s Under Secretary for Domestic Finance Mary Miller noted that the Council was established to “bring regulators from across the financial system together to collectively identify, monitor, and respond to potential threats to financial stability.” She went on to note that Council members did not “come to today’s conversation with any predetermined outcome.”
Under Secretary Miller emphasized that if the Council identifies risks to financial stability posed by asset managers or their activities, it has a number of policy responses. She said: “the Council’s authorities include highlighting potential emerging threats in its annual reports to Congress, making recommendations to existing primary regulators to apply heightened standards and safeguards, and designating individual firms on a company-specific basis. If we identify risks that require action, we will seek to deploy the most appropriate remedy.” However, “it is possible that at the end of this comprehensive review, the Council may choose to take no action.”
Following her remarks, and before moving on to the panels, Norm Champ, the Director of the Division of Investment Management at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), gave an overview of the asset management industry. The SEC’s presentation is available here.
The conference then moved on to the panels, each of which was moderated by a senior official of a Council member agency. The first panel, which was moderated by John Worth, Chief Economist, National Credit Union Administration, provided a discussion of investment activities and risk management practices within the asset management industry. The panelists were Kent Daniel, Professor of Finance, Columbia Business School; William De Leon, Global Head of Portfolio Risk Management, PIMCO; Itay Goldstein, Joel S. Ehrenkranz Family Professor, Professor of Finance, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; Michael Mendelson, Portfolio Manager, Risk Parity Strategies, AQR; and John Rogers, President and CEO, CFA Institute; Member, Systemic Risk Council.
The second panel focused on industry characteristics and the interaction of asset management activities with the broader financial system, and was moderated by Nellie Liang, Director of the Office of Financial Stability Policy and Research at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The panelists were Sarah Breeden, Head of Market Sectors and Interlinkages Division, Financial Stability, Bank of England; Ken Griffin, CEO, Citadel; Barbara Novick, Vice Chairman, BlackRock; David Scharfstein, Edmund Cogswell Converse Professor of Finance and Banking, Harvard Business School; and Kim Schoenholtz, Professor of Management Practice, New York University Stern School of Business.
Finally, the third panel discussed key operational functions and what obstacles, if any, exist to resolving a failing manager or fund in a rapid and orderly manner, and was led by Lawranne Steward, Senior Counsel of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The panelists were John Gidman, Chief Information Officer, Loomis, Sayles & Company; Alan Greene, Executive Vice President, U.S. Investor Services, State Street Corporation; Andrew Metrick, Deputy Dean & Michael H. Jordan Professor of Finance and Management, Yale School of Management; Philip Prince, Treasurer, Pine River Capital; and Peter Stahl, Associate General Counsel, Fidelity Investments.
For additional information on the Council, please visit this link