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MBA Investment Management
Conference Explores New Frontiers
"For budding entrepreneurs,
no one has yet solved the
liability side of the equation.
People want to use
their money—they want it
back," exclaimed Vanguard's
Managing Director F.
William McNabb III,
WG'83, keynote panelist
at the 2006 Wharton
Investment Management
Conference on October 27
held at the historic Union
League of Philadelphia.
"Creative solutions to this
represent the new frontier in
investment management."
The agenda reflected
those frontiers, addressing
hot topics from investing in
BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India,
China) to activist investing
to investing in energy.
To set the stage for what's
next, the keynote panel,
"Business of Investing," recounted
the dynamic advances
of the past 15 years:
the naissance of mutual
funds and 401Ks, the evolution
of hedge funds, and
the demise of defined benefit
plans. Retired Vice
Chairman at T. Rowe Price
Group and Chairman of
Penn's Board of Trustees,
James Riepe, W'65,
WG'67, noted that the focus
of investment managers has
remained constant: gather assets
from clients, invest those
assets, and serve those clients. Riepe believes that the
only barrier to success for an
investment manager depends
on the quality of products
and services the firm offers.
In the spirit of globalization,
"Investing in BRIC"
broadened the conference's
scope to include a discussion
of the latest international
investments afforded
to investors. The four countries
featured in BRIC represent
a combined 50%
of the global population
and 20% of GDP world.
Co-founder of Firebird
Management, LLC, Harvey
Sawikin, mentioned that the
sizes of money being moved
into these countries have
sparked an intellectual interest
among global players.
Latin America, what was
once thought to have been a
strictly monolithic region, is
now on the brink of investment-
grade opportunities,
added Stephen Trent, C'91,
Vice President of Citigroup
Investment Research. While
each of the panelists expressed
concern over the
risk associated with such investments
in the short-term,
they believed that careful
decisions could lead to long-
term profitability.
Co-chair of the conference,
Noah Mayer, WG'07,
was proud of the conference's
four to one ratio of students
to professionals. He didn't
want the event to turn into "a
networking opportunity for
professionals to pitch their
favorite stock." Instead, he
hoped "to educate and to provide
a venue for students and
professionals to interact so
that students might better understand
the reality of a career
in investment management."
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