Incompetence rules
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook, which he started in 2001. Mr. Sorkin is The New York Times’s chief mergers and acquisitions reporter, a columnist and co-anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box. In addition, Mr. Sorkin is an assistant editor of The New York Times business and finance news, helping guide and shape the paper’s coverage. Follow him on Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
A new study by professors at the University of Oxford is causing a stir in the staid pension investment industry, highlighting the subpar performance of most consultants and, more important, the lack of disclosure that would allow the public to even know about it. Would you invest $10,000 in a mutual fund without knowing its past performance? Probably not. Yet, if you were in charge of $13 trillion of pension money, would you accept the recommendation of an investment consultant without knowing its performance record? The answer is yes. It happens every day.Welcome to the bizarre world of pension funds and investment consultants. At a time when individual investors are increasingly demanding transparency in performance track records, the biggest slice of the investment world — pension funds — has conspicuously turned a blind eye to demanding track records from their most influential advisers, investment consultants. Read the rest of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s piece.
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