AMG To Present Buy Side Agenda in Boston on September 18

Last week, the Steering Committee of the Asset Management Group met in California and made decisions on many of its market practices and advocacy agenda items. The AMG:

-- Approved draft guidelines for Fixed-Income Best Execution that would apply to asset managers;

-- Discussed the potential for regulatory reform in the U.S. and the potential for mutual recognition among regulatory regimes in the U.S., Europe, and Asia;

-- Discussed global competitiveness issues particularly around issues such as multiple accounting standards, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, and lower trading volume in some U.S. securities markets;

-- Reviewed a common baseline SAS 70 scope for asset managers;

-- Agreed to work with DTCC to mobilize asset managers and major custodians in order to be responsive to this new DTCC request for input regarding the next phases of the development of the Trade Information Warehouse for derivatives.

-- Heard an update on the progress of the operations initiatives of The Asset Managers Forum, including the development of a standard form to report transaction fails; work toward global STP solutions; and proposed best practices applicable to information flows regarding corporate actions and a new initiative that will focus on "collateral management" solutions to ease operations burdens between counterparties as more new products get introduced into the marketplace.

THE ABOVE-ACTIVITES WILL BE ADDRESSED AT A SPECIAL BUY SIDE CONFERENCE ON SEPTEMBER 18. ASSET MANAGERS AND ALL MARKET PARTICIPANTS THAT WORK WITH THE BUY SIDE SHOULD CONSIDER ATTENDING THIS EVENT IN BOSTON.

Click here to view the AMG Conference Agenda on 9/18/07.

Click here to register for AMG Conference on 9/18/07.

AMG Welcomes Four New Members

The Asset Management Group welcomed Deutsche Asset Management, McKinley Capital Markets, Northern Trust Global Investments, and T. Rowe Price as new members to the Group. Collectively, the AMG represents more than $18 trillion of assets under management. Asset management firms that are interested in participating in the AMG should contact Joseph W. Sack, Managing Director of SIFMA at 646-637-9265 or at jsack@sifma.org.

New Working Group on Collateral Management

The Asset Managers Forum is launching a new Working Group on Collateral Management. This new working group comes as a follow-up to the May 2007 Collateral Management Workshop where asset managers and dealers agreed there was a need to develop and implement collateral management procedures to track collateral pledged and released between market participants. Also, regulators are focusing on collateral issues including adequacy, pricing and concentration issues to protect the viability of participants in a credit event.

The Collateral Management Working Group will be composed of asset managers, dealers, prime brokers and custodians. The working group will discuss the pain points experienced by market participants in the life cycle of collateral processing including pledging, releasing, segregating, valuing and reconciling positions. The Working Group will study the problems in order to focus on developing best practices to improve the industry's overall collateral process.

The suggested issues are:

1. Requirements for 1940 Act funds (and ERISA accounts)
2. Segregating versus co-mingling collateral
3. Cash as collateral
4. Timely release of collateral after the quarterly resets and novations
5. Preserving the counterparty's security interest
6. Timely and complete reporting
7. Valuation and concentration of collateral
8. Periodic reconciliation by asset managers, custodians and dealers

The Working Group will be chaired by Ken LeGall of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.The first meeting will be convened in September 2007. If you would like to sign up to participate in this working group, please contact Diane Trupia of the AMF staff at dtrupia@sifma.org.

Important Publications:
SIFMA Update
Washington Weekly
Legal, Regulatory and Market Practices Action Line
Weekly Report of the American Securitization Forum
SIFMA SmartBrief (past five issues)