Sign up today and take advantage of member-only content — the kind of timely, cutting edge industry insight that only IMWeekly.com can deliver.

• Exclusive Online Only Content
• Weekly Email News Alerts
• Industry White Papers
• Expert Analysis

Investment Manager Profile Section

News

UVa. Drops $100M More in February

The endowment for the University of Virginia (UVa.) has reported a roughly $100 million loss for the month of February. The fund has dipped from $5.1 billion to $3.76 billion in the past eight months, equaling a 26% drop, according to a report by The Daily Congress. Despite this, UVa. intends to maintain it current investment scheme. Last month, the University of Virginia Investment Management Company (UVIMCO) placed $600 million of its investment portfolio in cash and…

Hard Times Could Spell Good Fortune for NewOak

Times are hard in America these days, and for the moment at least, Ron D'Vari likes it that way. D'Vari is co-founder and CEO of NewOak Capital, a New York-based fund management and advisory firm founded last summer that is focused on investing in distressed assets. 'There's a whole new world coming in terms of financial structure,' said D'Vari, who came to this timely new venture from a position as head of structured finance at BlackRock…

Ohio PERS Names New Director

Christopher DeRose has been named executive director of the $73 billion Ohio Public Employees' Retirement System...

CIO at Houston Muni. to Retire

Neal Wallach, CIO of the $1.4 billion Houston Municipal Employees' Pension System, will retire at the end of the month...

RCM Hires for Public Funds

Victoria Grissom has joined RCM as the head of public funds sales, confirmed an official at the firm.

More

Articles

Eagle Asset Sees Hope in Fixed-Income

The credit crunch that has left many bond funds reeling isn't causing James Camp to lose any sleep. This managing director and fixed-income portfolio manager at Eagle Asset Management said that the crisis that brought down venerable Lehman Brothers investment bank and that forced the government to activate a $700 billion financial system bail-out program has produced 'the best environment, for what I do, than I've seen in 20 years.' Comparing recent financial industry experiments with products like credit default swaps and other creative derivatives to the new CERN super-collider particle accelerator's experiments seeking to reproduce the conditions of the 'Big Bang,' Camp said, 'There was some concern that the accelerator might create a black hole that would pull in surrounding matter. Wall Street investment banks were engaged in similar experiments over the last decades. Instead of atoms, though, they accelerated mortgage assets, leverage and securitization into each other to create a 'financial matter black hole' that has pulled down domestic and now global economies.'

Robeco Sees Value in Large-Cap

If you are a portfolio manager with a strategy of looking for individual companies that are undervalued and that stand a good chance of showing significant appreciation over the long term, you might think that right now, with the broader market and the Dow both down close to 40%, it would feel like being a kid in a candy shop. But it's not that simple, said Mark E. Donovan, co-CEO (with Jay Feeney) of Robeco Investment Management, the U.S. arm of Rotterdam-based Robeco Group. Donovan, who is portfolio manager of Robeco Boston Partner's Large-Cap Value Equity strategy, said that before a company can be added to the strategy's portfolio, it must meet three stringent criteria to establish its credentials as a value investment.

Odds & Ends - September 29, 2008

* Thomas Gahan has joined Providence Equity Partners as president of the private equity firm's newly established capital markets group, where he will focus on debt in the media, entertainment, communications and information companies sectors. He will be based in New York. Prior to joining Providence, Gahan spent nine years with Deutsche Bank, most recently as CEO of Deutsche Bank Securities. Before his time at Deutsche Bank, he spent 11 years at Merrill Lynch, reaching the position of global head of credit trading in the fixed-income division.

Follow the Leader

Some portfolio managers in these uncertain economic times see opportunities in specific sectors. Others see buying opportunities in a market set to rebound. But John Lekas, founder CEO and portfolio manager of Leader Capital Management, sees an economy in dire straits. His advice to clients: invest in short-term debt and wait for an inevitable quantum leap in interest rates. 'I think in this environment, keeping your shirt is the story line,' Lekas said. Lekas sees a U.S. economy in crisis, the result of efforts by the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan, since late 2001, to prevent recession by slashing interest rates.

Invesco Vet Talks Quants,130/30

In the wake of the credit crisis and the collapse of equity markets that began about a year ago, it hasn't been a great time to be a 'quant.' After all, those fine proprietary computer models are supposed to spot these things, but many failed miserably, and now many managers in the space are keeping their heads down. But not Russ Kamp, CEO of Invesco Quantitative Strategies (IQS), an institutional investing division of Invesco. 'We're really kind of a hybrid in the industry,' he said. 'We take a quantitative approach to investing, but we have had a fundamental underpinning for every stock in our portfolio now for 25 years.'

More