Study Group: Private Equity Valuation Specialists(?)

Institutional investors must ask hedge funds how they are assessing counterparty risk and what that means in terms of collateral management.

1. Plan sponsors should take a leadership role in promoting best practices and good pension governance. 2. Pension fiduciaries should embrace accountability and transparency. 3. Arguments against excessive government regulation apply today as well as they did fifty years ago when Atlas Shrugged was...

1. Many financial institutions are reporting losses related to valuation problems. 2. Institutional investors are on the hook to properly vet external asset managers. This includes asking tough questions about their valuation processes.

1. Pension fiduciaries must ask tough questions about a hedge fund's valuation policies and procedures. 2. There are many "tricks" that can be played when reporting valuations of "hard-to-value" instruments.

1. Pension fiduciaries must understand how their external asset managers value "hard-to-value" assets. 2. Fiduciaries could face personal and professional liability for failing to do proper oversight of external money managers with respect to asset valuation. 3. Model risk is real and must be addressed...