Pensions & Investments Podcast Series

James M. Delaplane is a partner in the benefits group at Davis & Harman, where he represents financial institutions, employers and public policy organizations on employee benefits, financial services and tax matters. He is also Pensions & Investments’ favorite Washington insider. In his keynote address at Pensions & Investments’ annual East Coast Defined Contribution Conference, Mr. Delplane dissects the current legislative and regulatory environment for DC plan sponsors. Among the nuggets he delivers: there will be little legislative action in 2010 that comes to fruition that will affect DC plans; however, plan investment issues are increasingly becoming a focus in Washington. Also, two marquee initiatives – the Auto IRA and expansion of the savers credit, are likely to see some sort of action.

Mark Anson was president of Nuveen Investments until early April, when he moved to Oak Hill Investment Management Group as managing partner and chief investment officer. In this program, a recording of his address at Pensions & Investments’ East Coast Defined Contribution conference held in early March, Mr. Anson discusses the investment environment of 2008 – when risk was punished – and 2009 – when financial markets returned to more normal equilibrium. And looking ahead, he says 2010 is about alpha capture – an investment environment that favors active management. Finally, he outlines his idea for a new, low-risk portfolio that 401(k) participants – and their plan sponsors – might find intriguing.

Using the wealth of survey data at his fingertips, Employee Benefit Research Institute president and CEO Dallas Salisbury separates fact from fiction – particularly in the area of what DC plan particpants did – or didn’t do – during the financial crisis of 2008-2009. This podcast is an excerpt from his keynote address at Pensions & Investments’ annual East Coast Defined Contribution Conference, held in early March.

Dallas Salisbury, Employee Benefit Research Institute president and CEO, knows the trouble most retirement plan participants are in - and why. And at Pensions & Investments East Coast Defined Contribution Conference, held in early March, he told the audience that participants better than most commentators gave them credit for. That’s not to say there’s room – a lot of room, in fact – for improvement.

Employee Benefit Research Institute president and CEO Dallas Salisbury separates fact from fiction. In this podcast, which is an excerpt from his keynote address at Pensions & Investments’ annual East Coast Defined Contribution Conference, held in early March, Mr. Salisbury tells the real story of companies freezing contributions to their defined contribution plans. The short answer: by and large they really didn’t.

In this program, we go beyond the numbers (assets of the 1,000 largest retirement funds fell $330 billion, or 5.2%, to $6.08 trillion for the 12 months ended Sept. 30) and discuss with two leading pension pros what factors drove last year's asset level changes and what retirement fund officials are doing today to improve their funds and prepare for the future.

The new CEO of Perkins Investment Management – a Chicago-based unit of Janus Capital Group – is just settling in wants to get the word out about its performance. In this podcast, Mr. Thompson discusses the reasons he moved over to Perkins and what investment opportunities he sees for institutional investors amid their rekindled focus on risk management.

Dire economic conditions are forcing many financial conglomerates to rethink their commitment to the money management business, but John Kim, President and CEO, New York Life Investment Management, is swimming against that tide. In this podcast, Mr. Kim discusses his outlook for the business, including hedge funds, and his vision for the next phase of liability-driven investing.

In Part one of our Sovereign Wealth Fund series, we examined the structure of sovereign wealth funds and how the global financial crises affected them. In this part, we discuss which money managers are likely to be the big winners as SWFs diversify their assets into such areas as alternative investments and equities. In addition, we look at the likely role investment consultants will play.

Based on a new survey by the Oxford University Center for Employment, Work and Finance, this podcast digs deep into these huge pools of capital and discovers how the global financial crisis has affected and changed them and what role they will play in the new financial services landscape. Here's a clue to the latter: a big one.

Defined contribution plans are under the gun. As account balances plunged last year, people started calling 401(k) plans "201(k) plans." Now Congress is raising questions as to whether these hugely popular plans should be reformed. Listen to a group of experts debate what changes might be coming from Washington.

In January - in the midst of the worst market collapse since the Great Depression - John Rogers took the helm of the CFA Institute. Recently, Rogers sat down with Pensions & Investments executive editor Joel Chernoff to discuss the regulatory overhaul being planned in Washington, the SEC's changing role, executive pay and other major topics facing money managers.

While hedge fund manager John Paulson was deservedly getting headlines and receiving accolades last year for his impeccable timing of the housing market crash - and his ability to profit from that call - Ray Dalio, co-founder of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates - was quietly wracking up his own solid returns. In this podcast, Mr. Dalio talks about how he and his team at Bridgewater navigated the treacherous markets of 2008, where he's looking for value today and what institutional investors need to do to recover from last year's drubbing.

Institutional investors - already battered by the credit crunch - are being further whipsawed by the prospects both for deflation in the short run and inflation in the long run. Both trends can be tremendously destructive to asset values and the economy. But protecting against both possibilities at the same time is extremely difficult. In this podcast, cut from our Feb. 10 round table called "what's next for asset allocation," a panel of leading money managers and institutional investors discuss the outlook for hedge funds, private equity and real estate in institutional portfolios.

In this podcast, Mr. Salisbury discusses some of the challenges facing defined contribution plan sponsors based on research his organization has completed in such areas as: how plan participants take their distributions (hint: very few take an annuity option); their expectations for life expectancy and retirement (hint: somewhat misguided) and their tendency to choose benefits for now (e.g., a house, a child's college education or health care) over benefits later (e.g., retirement). His bottom line? Despite much progress over the years, there remains much that DC plan sponsors need to learn to more effectively communicate with their plan participants. The podcast is a recording from Mr. Salisbury's speech at P&I's East Coast Defined contribution conference, held Feb. 8 through 10. On the day this recording was made, Mr. Salisbury received the EBRI Lillywhite Award, named for pension investment pioneer Ray Lillywhite. The award honors outstanding lifetime contributions to America's economic security. Mr. Salisbury joined EBRI at its founding in 1978. He also has served on several pension-related panels including on the Labor Department's ERISA Advisory Council and the PBGC Advisory Committee.