Operations Initiatives

The AMG Weekly Report is pleased to report on four of the current operations initiatives of The Asset Managers Forum. For questions on the initiatives described below, please contact any members of the staff.

Successful Roundtable on Overdrafts On Thursday, March 15th, The Asset Managers Forum hosted a members' Roundtable on Overdrafts for over 50 members. AMF Steering Committee member Gary Nussenbaum of Lord Abbett moderated the session and spoke about the importance of industry best practices. Lisa Ilaria of New York Life Investment Management presented some of the causes of overdrafts; Shawn Brady of General Motors Asset Management discussed the impact of overdrafts to the business; Paul Parseghian of Prudential Investment Management discussed how to identify and resolve overdrafts and Bill Filonuk of The Bank of New York spoke on overdrafts from the custodian bank perspective. The AMF would like to thank the above-mentioned individuals for their work and insight on the topic of overdrafts. See photos of Roundtable below.

Educational Event on Corporate Actions On Wednesday, April 18, 2007, the AMF will host an intermediate training class on Corporate Actions offered by GFMI (Global Financial Markets Institute). This training class comes on the heels of the AMF's Corporate Action Best Practices Initiative, which recommends operational enhancements related to the collection and processing of corporate actions data. This class is being offered to the membership of The Asset Managers Forum and The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and will cover the following: Overview and process flow of mandatory and voluntary corporate actions; examination of characteristics, flow and potential risks of mandatory and voluntary actions; international corporate action process flow and how is it different from domestic; and corporate actions - what can go wrong and why?

Click here for information and to register

Fails Working Group Robert Kemp of Morgan Stanley Investment Management serves as Chair of the AMF Fails Working Group. The Working Group is focused on developing a standardized fail report and is currently discussing creating metrics which would identify root causes of fails. The Group's work will be published for comment through a draft "Advice Paper" that would be shared with other relevant constituencies. Yesterday, the AMF provided an update on its initiative at a SIFMA Government Operations Committee meeting.

Collateral Management Workshop On May 23, 2007, the AMF will host a Workshop on Collateral Management. At this Workshop, asset managers, broker/dealers and custodians will participate on panels that will address monitoring collateral, tracking of positions, margin calculations, managing margin calls, removing excess collateral when over collateralized, among other topics. AMF Steering Committee Members Steve Chittenden of Loomis Sayles and Ila Eckhoff of BlackRock will lead the Workshop. Please contact Diane Trupia at 646.637.9270 for more information or to register.