Investment Management

This national, not-for-profit organization had worked with a local advisory firm for years. The advisor put itself in the role of selecting outside management firms to manage the portfolio for this organization. The result was layers of management and layers of fees. The firms that were hired by the advisor used proprietary products, which resulted in conflicts of interest and higher fees.

This client owned a number of individual stocks and, on his own, hired a number of individual money managers. In our analysis, we discovered that the one manager had more than 300% turnover in a taxable portfolio. The after-tax returns, in the late 1990’s, were significantly impacted by this strategy. Further, we found that some of the managers owned many of the same stocks (significant overlap).

This regional, not-for-profit organization had worked with a large national brokerage firm for years. The firm had the portfolio invested with four separate account managers – one bond manager and three equity managers. The total fees were 1.60% annualized in a 50/50 balanced portfolio strategy, which is high.