Last Week to Nominate Your Picks for the 2019 CIO Innovation Awards

Photo by Margarita Corporan

For 10 years, CIO has honored the accomplishments of you, the chief investment officers, with our Industry Innovation Awards.

On Thursday, December 12, at the New York Public Library, CIO will once again bring together institutional investors and those who provide for them.

It’s time to nominate deserving asset owners and asset managers/servicers for this year’s awards.

Since we started these awards in 2010, “innovation” has perhaps become an overused buzzword. While others may confuse innovation with change, we do not: Our goal is to highlight the truly innovative approaches to asset management and asset owning, separating the merely different from the meaningful.

When nominating, ask yourselves, who has done something that is truly different, that may have changed the way we think about this business?

To nominate, please follow the survey directions here.

What You’ll Need:

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To make a nomination, you’ll be asked whether you’re nominating an asset owner or asset manager, the name and title of the person or entity you’re nominating, their location, email address and to choose which category they fall into.
The asset owner CIO categories fall into plan size and type, as well as special categories for ESG and Collaboration. Asset manager categories fall into a full array of topics of expertise. You can make more than one nomination, and you’ll do this by indicating if you’re done or ready to nominate another. Please feel free to make as many nominations as you’d like.

THE DEADLINE TO SUBMIT YOUR NOMINATIONS IS AUGUST 3.

To verify nominees, CIO editorial team will consult an advisory board of former and current chief investment officers, consultants and allocators including Chris Ailman of CalSTRS; Raphael Arndt of Australia’s Future Fund; Paul Ballard of Texas Treasury Safekeeping Trust Co.; Harshal Chaudhari of IBM; Dan Chu of Sierra Club; Matt Clark of South Dakota Investment Council; Anne Dinneen of Hamilton College; Jonathan Grabel of LACERA; Rosalind Hewsenian of Helmsley Charitable Trust; David Holmgren of Hartford HealthCare; Robert Hunkeler of International Paper; Kim Lew of Carnegie Corp.; Allan Martin of NEPC; Sam Masoudi of Wyoming Retirement System; Jacque Millard of Intermountain Healthcare; Chad Myhre, Portfolio Manager of Hedge Funds and Domestic Equities, Public School and Education Employee Retirement System of Missouri (NextGeneration winner of 2018); Mansco Perry of Minnesota State Board of Investment; Susan Ridlen of Eli Lilly; Anthony Waskiewicz of Mercy Health, St. Louis.

Hartford HealthCare CIO David Holmgren will chair the board.

Click here to view CIO’s 2018 Industry Innovation Award winners.

Tags: CIO, CIO Innovation Awards, Endowments, Foundations, Innovation Awards, Pension

So the economy is doing well, unemployment is low, and no big threats appear to be looming for the US. Yet the Federal Reserve’s policymaking panel on Wednesday is expected to lop short-term rates by a quarter percentage point. Why?

Insurance. That’s the take from Alan Greenspan, former Fed chairman, and other interest rate observers. When he ran the Fed, “we cut rates not because we thought that it highly probable that it would be necessary,” but just in case things go wrong, he told Bloomberg TV.

Indeed, as Fed head, Greenspan sliced the benchmark federal funds rate, which affects short-term rates for bank and other consumer lending, with three quarter-point cuts in 1994 and early 1996. That was to offset a perceived weakness in the US economy and abroad. Later, in 1998, he followed with another such trio of cuts, due to the Russian debt crisis and the collapse of hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.

Of course, that was a different era, when inflation and interest rates were higher: The Consumer Price Index was 2.5% in 1995 and 2.7%, versus 1.6% in 2019, as of June. Meanwhile, the federal funds rate was 6.0% before the 1995 reductions and 5.5% prior to the 1998 easing. Right now, the top of the Fed’s target range is 2.5%.

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To critics like Jason Brady, CEO of Thornburg Investment Management, reducing rates now is “stupid.” Pointing to the low unemployment rate (3.7%) and other positive indicators, he asked, “What are we cutting for? We’re solving a problem that doesn’t exist.”

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, in a speech in Paris two weeks ago, made much the same argument as Greenspan did, citing economic “uncertainties,” such as the US-China trade war, the mess of Britain’s exit from the European Union, and a global growth slowdown.

“They’re trying to extend” the US’s economic expansion, said Scott Colyer, CEO of Advisors Asset Management. “They don’t want to murder the economy,” referring to past instances where the Fed kept rates too high, only to invite a recession.

Certainly, the biggest cheerleader for Fed easing is President Donald Trump, who claimed that rate cuts would be “rocket fuel” for the economy. Trump obviously wants to ensure that the economy is doing well as he seeks reelection in 2020.

The Fed took short rates to near-zero during the 2008-09 financial crisis, and the Fed under Janet Yellen and then Powell sought to restore them to more normal levels. But after the Fed’s December 2018 hike, a lot of criticism arose that current conditions were too shaky to endure that.

According to the CME futures market, the odds are nonexistent that the Fed will do nothing on Wednesday: 75.5% favor a quarter-point cut, and 21.4% a half-point reduction.

Hey, Maybe the Fed Should Cut Interest Rates

What Would It Take for the Fed to Lower Rates? Very Bad News

Tags: Alan Greenspan, Donald Trump, Federal Reserve, Interest Rates, Jerome Powell