Board Oversight of Alternative
Investment Products Roundtable

Co-hosted by the Center for Financial Policy and the Mutual Fund Directors Forum

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20004

The recent surge in the use of alternative investments by asset managers shows no signs of abating. Alternative investments, previously the province of institutional investors, are becoming increasingly popular with individual investors. Alternative funds – which can provide investors with exposure to investments beyond stocks and bonds or pursue trading strategies more common in hedge funds and similar products – present unique challenges for fund directors, particularly with respect to risk oversight. This program, presented jointly by the Mutual Fund Directors Forum and the Center for Financial Policy at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, will explore these issues and provide practical information for directors.

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Speakers

Geoffrey Craddock

Geoffrey Craddock is an Executive Vice President and Director of Risk Management & Asset Allocation at OppenheimerFunds. He is responsible for the company's independent risk management function and for oversight of asset allocation techniques and products. The role includes ensuring the effective identification and management of risk throughout the OppenheimerFunds complex, and the development and maintenance of a robust approach to asset allocation.

Prior to joining OppenheimerFunds in 2008, Mr. Craddock was a Senior Vice President and Head of Market Risk Management for CIBC, where he oversaw market risk management globally for the bank’s investment banking, trading and retail activities. In total, Geoff spent 15 years with CIBC in London, Toronto and New York in a variety of risk management and trading roles and 12 years prior to that in trading and brokerage positions with various investment banks in Europe and the United States.

Michael G. Doherty

Michael Doherty is a partner at Ropes & Gray LLP. He focuses his practice on the representation of asset managers. His practice spans a wide variety of products, and he is equally comfortable providing advice with respect to registered funds, unregistered products such as private equity funds and business development companies. Michael has considerable experience with the formation and ongoing representation of investment advisers, registered investment companies and their boards of directors, and privately offered investment pools and their sponsors.

Devin McCune

Devin McCune is the Head of Board Reporting & Compliance at Lipper where he has held various roles related to the advisory contract renewal process since 1998. He was the Director of Operations prior to being promoted to his current position. Devin has also managed the Lipper Fund Fact Sheet and online businesses, and continues to manage the Lipper Fund Flows business.

Devin frequently attends fund board meetings where he provides guidance related to Lipper’s reports and methodology, and addresses questions from meeting attendees.

Prior to Lipper, Devin worked for a third party administrator, concentrating on limited partnerships and real estate investment trusts. Devin holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

Neil Pearson

Neil D. Pearson is a professor of finance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He previously held a faculty position at the University of Rochester. His research includes both theoretical and empirical work on asset pricing and the valuation and hedging of financial derivatives and other financial instruments. Dr. Pearson has published papers in a number of academic journals, is an associate editor of the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Economics Bulletin and has written a book, Risk Budgeting: Portfolio Problem Solving with Value-at-Risk, published by John Wiley & Sons. He has consulted for a number of U.S. and international banks, working on term structure models, the evaluation of derivatives pricing models, and some issues that arise in the computation of “value at risk” measures. He received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ethan Powell

Ethan Powell is the Executive Vice President and Secretary of the Pyxis Funds. Prior to Pyxis he served as Senior Retail Fund Analyst at Highland Capital Management, L.P. Prior to joining Highland in April 2007, He spent most of his career with Ernst and Young providing audit and merger and acquisition services within the firm’s Transaction Advisory Services Group. His primary focus was acquisitions in the Energy industry. He received an MS in Management Information Systems and a BS in Accounting from Texas A&M University. He has earned the right to use the Chartered Financial Analyst designation and is a licensed Certified Public Accountant.

Elizabeth Reza

Elizabeth Reza is a partner at Ropes & Gray LLP. She advises investment advisers, investment companies, boards of trustees/directors, endowments, sovereign wealth vehicles, and private foundations in connection with regulatory and transactional matters and a range of products including open-end funds, closed-end funds, interval funds, and separate accounts.

Erik Sirri

Erik Sirri is an Independent Director at Natixis Funds. He also serves as a Governing Counsel member of the Independent Directors Counsel (IDC) and Professor of Finance at Babson College. From 2006-2009 he was the Director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where he was responsible to the Commission for matters relating to the regulation of stock and option exchanges, national securities associations, brokers, dealers, clearing agencies, transfer agents, and credit rating agencies.

Laura Starks

Laura Starks is the Charles E. and Sarah M. Seay Regents Chair in Finance and Associate Dean for Research at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and teaching interests include valuation of financial assets, portfolio management, corporate governance, the influence of institutional investors in financial markets, managerial incentives and environmental, social and governance investing. Her research on finance issues has appeared in leading academic journals including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Business, and Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, among many others. She is Independent Director of CREF Retirement Equities and TIAA-CREF mutual funds. She received her B.A. and Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin and her M.B.A. from The University of Texas at San Antonio.

Nancy Szmolyan

Nancy Szmolyan is a Senior Practice Expert in McKinsey’s North American Asset Management, Wealth
Management, and Retirement Practice and leads several proprietary research efforts including
McKinsey’s annual Asset Management Benchmarking Survey and recent efforts on the growth of
solutions, growth of alternatives, asset management following the crisis, the future of the US defined
contribution market, and risk management for asset managers. Prior to her current role, Nancy was an
Associate Principal in McKinsey’s London office where she served global wholesale banks, retail banks,
investment managers, and life insurers. Nancy has also worked as a consultant in McKinsey’s offices in
São Paolo and Toronto.

Nancy is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and has a Masters of Public Policy from Harvard University,
as well as a Bachelor of Commerce with distinction from the University of Calgary.

Laurie Thomsen

Laurie Thomsen is an Independent Director at MFS Funds. Previously, she served as an Executive Partner of New Profit, Inc., a venture philanthropy firm and as a co-founding General Partner of Prism Venture Partners, a venture capital firm investing in healthcare and technology companies.