Seminar In Wealth Management: Investing For Family Offices, Endowments And Foundations

This seminar, taught by adjunct practitioners Kristin Gilbertson and Andrew Gundlach 01, focuses on portfolio management for family offices, public endowments and private foundations, and to a lesser extent pension funds. The class will introduce the various investment strategies employed, the development of an investment policy, asset allocation, risk management, the choice between active vs. passive management, consideration in evaluating fees and incentive structures, liquidity management, the manager search process, operational due diligence and ongoing performance monitoring. Public and private equity strategies (long only, hedged, PE, VC and direct investments in equities) will be the primary focus, though macro, event arbitrage and fixed income/credit will also be reviewed. Also to be discussed are asset allocation and implementation are influenced by important considerations such as investor tax status, philanthropic goals, societal values, liabilities and payout ratios. There will be guest speakers, and the final exam will be a semester-long project of relevance in the field. This is an application based course, which is not open to the bidding process.