The valuation of portfolio securities is the cornerstone of the investment management industry. Securities valuations represent a significant day to day responsibility for fund management and directors. However, market timing scandals, increasingly interlinked capital markets and a broadening of securities held in mutual funds have brought to light new thinking and new rules about the fair valuing of portfolio securities. I worked closely with professionals in Deloitte’s financial services and investment management practice to help author this white paper which discusses why fund managers and trustees must now operate within a broader context and apply fair value procedures in a fund’s daily operations rather than as a contingency procedure applied when the fund’s board and or management believes pricing or other valuation irregularities might be present.

Reaction to the wave of late trading and market timing scandals came in the form of the SEC’s compliance program for investment managers and advisors. This white paper which I helped author for Deloitte was written for compliance officers, c-level executives and board members of fund companies and provided them with a broad overview of the issues and implications issuing from this new regulatory initiative.

Though the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was made law in 2002, years later directors, chief executives and chief financial officers debate its meaning and its impact on the relationship between boards of directors and the management teams they monitor. In this piece, I worked with PriceWaterhouseCoopers summarizing the views of these constituencies as expressed in a syposioum held in New York City during the spring of 2004.