In recent years the field of finance has exploded with innovation. New products, services and techniques abound. The risks of inflation, the volatility of interest rates, the deregulation of financial intermediaries and the unbundling of financial services have combined to present investment managers with challenges and opportunities far greater than in the past. For trustees and managers of pension, trust, endowment, and similar funds, the task of meeting the challenges and exploiting the opportunities is much more difficult. These fiduciaries must measure their investment decisions against constrained interpretations of a legal standard--the prudent man rule--that have caused it to lag far behind changes in investment theory and the marketplace. Drawing on financial history, a major opinion survey of institutional investors, and comprehensive reviews of the law and of the lessons of modern portfolio theory for prudence, this book presents a powerful case that the prudent man rule as elaborated in legal treatises and much of the case law would virtually compel a fiduciary to act imprudently in terms of financial theory and marketplace reality. In proposing a modern paradigm of investment prudence, the book uses illustrations drawn from such traditionally suspect categories of investment fiduciaries as securities lending, real estate, venture capital, options and futures and repurchaser agreements. An unusual examination of the interaction of the worlds of law and finance, this work will be of interest to fiduciaries who are subject to some from of prudent man rule and all others, including judges, lawyers and investment managers, who are called upon to interpret and apply that legal standard.

“An incisive history of the venture-capital industry.” —New Yorker “An excellent and original economic history of venture capital.” —Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution “A detailed, fact-filled account of America’s most celebrated moneymen.” —New Republic “Extremely interesting, readable, and informative...Tom Nicholas tells you most everything you ever wanted to know about the history of venture capital, from the financing of the whaling industry to the present multibillion-dollar venture funds.” —Arthur Rock “In principle, venture capital is where the ordinarily conservative, cynical domain of big money touches dreamy, long-shot enterprise. In practice, it has become the distinguishing big-business engine of our time...[A] first-rate history.” —New Yorker VC tells the riveting story of how the venture capital industry arose from America’s longstanding identification with entrepreneurship and risk-taking. Whether the venture is a whaling voyage setting sail from New Bedford or the latest Silicon Valley startup, VC is a state of mind as much as a way of doing business, exemplified by an appetite for seeking extreme financial rewards, a tolerance for failure and experimentation, and a faith in the promise of innovation to generate new wealth. Tom Nicholas’s authoritative history takes us on a roller coaster of entrepreneurial successes and setbacks. It describes how iconic firms like Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia invested in Genentech and Apple even as it tells the larger story of VC’s birth and evolution, revealing along the way why venture capital is such a quintessentially American institution—one that has proven difficult to recreate elsewhere.

In spite of theoretical benefits, Markowitz mean-variance (MV) optimized portfolios often fail to meet practical investment goals of marketability, usability, and performance, prompting many investors to seek simpler alternatives. Financial experts Richard and Robert Michaud demonstrate that the limitations of MV optimization are not the result of conceptual flaws in Markowitz theory but unrealistic representation of investment information. What is missing is a realistic treatment of estimation error in the optimization and rebalancing process. The text provides a non-technical review of classical Markowitz optimization and traditional objections. The authors demonstrate that in practice the single most important limitation of MV optimization is oversensitivity to estimation error. Portfolio optimization requires a modern statistical perspective. Efficient Asset Management, Second Edition uses Monte Carlo resampling to address information uncertainty and define Resampled Efficiency (RE) technology. RE optimized portfolios represent a new definition of portfolio optimality that is more investment intuitive, robust, and provably investment effective. RE rebalancing provides the first rigorous portfolio trading, monitoring, and asset importance rules, avoiding widespread ad hoc methods in current practice. The Second Edition resolves several open issues and misunderstandings that have emerged since the original edition. The new edition includes new proofs of effectiveness, substantial revisions of statistical estimation, extensive discussion of long-short optimization, and new tools for dealing with estimation error in applications and enhancing computational efficiency. RE optimization is shown to be a Bayesian-based generalization and enhancement of Markowitz's solution. RE technology corrects many current practices that may adversely impact the investment value of trillions of dollars under current asset management. RE optimization technology may also be useful in other financial optimizations and more generally in multivariate estimation contexts of information uncertainty with Bayesian linear constraints. Michaud and Michaud's new book includes numerous additional proposals to enhance investment value including Stein and Bayesian methods for improved input estimation, the use of portfolio priors, and an economic perspective for asset-liability optimization. Applications include investment policy, asset allocation, and equity portfolio optimization. A simple global asset allocation problem illustrates portfolio optimization techniques. A final chapter includes practical advice for avoiding simple portfolio design errors. With its important implications for investment practice, Efficient Asset Management 's highly intuitive yet rigorous approach to defining optimal portfolios will appeal to investment management executives, consultants, brokers, and anyone seeking to stay abreast of current investment technology. Through practical examples and illustrations, Michaud and Michaud update the practice of optimization for modern investment management.

Environmental harm is commonly associated with companies that extract, consume, and pollute our shared natural resources. Rarely are the 'unseen polluters,' the financiers that sponsor and profit from eco-damaging corporations, placed at the forefront of the environmental debate. By focusing on these unseen polluters, Benjamin Richardson provides a comprehensive examination of socially responsible investment (SRI), and offers a guide to possible reform. Richardson proposes that greater regulatory supervision of SRI will help ensure that the financial sector prioritizes ethically-based investments. In Socially Responsible Investment Law, he suggests that new governmental reforms should encourage companies to participate in socially responsible investments by providing a better mix of standards and incentives for SRI through measures that include redefining the fiduciary responsibilities of institutional investors to incorporate environmental concerns. By doing so, Richardson posits that corporate financiers, including banks, hedge funds, and pension plans, will become more accountable to the goals of ensuring sustainable development.

In its First Edition, this classic treatise called attention to the duty of reasonable care, the duty of loyalty and the public duty of fiduciaries to the marketplace. Grounded in the idea that prudent investing is to be defined by professional practices accepted as appropriate at the time of investment by the management, thereby permitting such practices to adapt to changing conditions and insights, the field of investment management law and regulation has at its center the goal of a common standard of care for investment.Now in its Second Edition, this definitive guide to investment management law and regulation helps you to profitably adapt to today's new and changing conditions and anticipate tomorrow's regulatory response.Here are just a few of the reasons why Investment Management Law and Regulation will be so valuable to you:Explains and analyzes all the ins and outs of the law, clarifies the complexities, answers your questions, points out pitfalls and helps you avoid themCovers the entire field in one volume, saves you valuable time and effort in finding information and searching through stacks of referencesEnsures compliance with all relevant regulations, makes sure nothing is overlooked, protects you against costly mistakesUpdates you on the latest important changes, tells you what is happening now and what is likely to happen in the future Investment Management Law and Regulation is the only up-to-date volume to offer a comprehensive examination of the field of investment management law, covering everything from financial theory and legal theory to the various aspects of hands-on fund management. It's the only resource of its kind that:Identifies and explains the financial theories that control the development of investment management law across management activitiesGives critical judicial, legislative, and regulatory history that makes recent law and regulation more comprehensibleCovers all areas of regulation governing the activities of investment managers, including marketing, suitability, advisory contacts, fees, exculpation and indemnification, performance, fiduciary obligations, conflicts of interest, best executionProvides the practical tools that help predict more effectively how regulators will respond to new marketplace developments and productsIntegrates investment management law and regulation for all institutional investment managersAnd more Whether you are a manager, broker, banker, or legal counsel, a seasoned professional or just starting out, this treatise will quickly become your most trusted guide through the intricacies of this complex, critical, and closely scrutinized area

An examination of clean technology entrepreneurship finds that “green capitalism” is more capitalist than green. Entrepreneurs and investors in the green economy have encouraged a vision of addressing climate change with new technologies. In Planetary Improvement, Jesse Goldstein examines the cleantech entrepreneurial community in order to understand the limitations of environmental transformation within a capitalist system. Reporting on a series of investment pitches by cleantech entrepreneurs in New York City, Goldstein describes investor-friendly visions of incremental improvements to the industrial status quo that are hardly transformational. He explores a new “green spirit of capitalism,” a discourse of planetary improvement, that aims to “save the planet” by looking for “non-disruptive disruptions,” technologies that deliver “solutions” without changing much of what causes the underlying problems in the first place. Goldstein charts the rise of business environmentalism over the last half of the twentieth century and examines cleantech's unspoken assumptions of continuing cheap and abundant energy. Recounting the sometimes conflicting motivations of cleantech entrepreneurs and investors, he argues that the cleantech innovation ecosystem and its Schumpetarian dynamic of creative destruction are built around attempts to control creativity by demanding that transformational aspirations give way to short-term financial concerns. As a result, capitalist imperatives capture and stifle visions of sociotechnical possibility and transformation. Finally, he calls for a green spirit that goes beyond capitalism, in which sociotechnical experimentation is able to break free from the narrow bonds and relative privilege of cleantech entrepreneurs and the investors that control their fate.

Now in its second edition, Nonprofit Resources is a handy reference tool for all nonprofit professionals. With more than a thousand entries pointing readers to a wide variety of references in the nonprofit field, this accessible guide will provide users with a running start on researching any topic. Unique, user-friendly, and compiled by industry experts, Nonprofit Resources will point readers to key information sources on dozens of topics ranging from accounting to lobbying to volunteers.

Fiduciary law is one of the most important areas of law, governing a wide range of relationships that affect people in their daily lives. These new and innovative essays explore the foundations of fiduciary relationships and the duties of loyalty fiduciaries owe to their beneficiaries.

India is ageing. One response of Indian policy makers has been introduction of the New Pension Scheme (NPS), a defined contribution pension scheme which is mandatory for civil servants and voluntary for the rest of the population. Given the size of the target population, even if take-up is modest, NPS savings may soon provide huge amounts of capital to India's economy. However, challenges are abound. What governance structure will best achieve the ultimate policy goal of serving the needs of savers? What business processes and information technology design will serve members best? How effectively will the NPS attack the problem of old-age poverty? In this book, a multi-disciplinary international team, comprising of economists, lawyers, pension management experts, and capital market experts, explore these and other questions. The book proposes significant legal, regulatory, and governance reforms for the NPS and other existing pension schemes, as well. It finds that current NPS business practices cannot keep pace with potential growth of the system and makes suggestions on how to take better advantage of information technology. Based on review of experience elsewhere and state-of-the-art economic-demographic modelling, it warns that the NPS in its current form does not address the retirement income needs of the lifelong very poor, suggesting that it is only one in a range of responses needed to cope with the challenges of population ageing in India.