Finance Firms Still Lag on Hiring

From today's WSJ: Women and minorities remain underrepresented in most parts of the finance industry, according to a new report from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC report analyzed 2003 data from private-sector employers with at least 100 employees and was presented to the Financial Women's Association. Read the WSJ article HERE

New Private Equity Industry Report from Wharton

In private equity, opportunity can come in the form of distressed companies, wind farms, rapidly developing regions like Asia, or even an artificial stone manufacturer. In this special section of the Knowledge @ Wharton newsletter, Wharton faculty and experts from private equity and venture capital firms comment on the investment trends that are shaping the industry. Download the whole report or read parts of it HERE

Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index Improves Further in April

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index, which had increased in March, improved further in April. The Index now stands at 109.6, up from 107.5 in March. This is the highest level since May 2002 (110.3). Read the full report from the Conference Board HERE

Former investment banker overhauls TIAA-CREF

From the front page of today's WSJ: For nearly eight decades, TIAA-CREF was the big man on campus. It had a virtual monopoly on managing retirement plans for millions of college educators. Now it's being schooled by Wall Street in how to compete in the field it invented.

TIAA-CREF's share of its main market -- managing retirement funds for employees of universities -- has tumbled to 70% from essentially 100% in about a decade. The problem: While rivals innovated and clients demanded new services, TIAA-CREF's ways of doing business seemed frozen in time.

For the past three years, the task of reviving its fortunes has fallen to an unlikely leader for a firm founded as a nonprofit and steeped in the academic world. Former investment banker Herbert Allison, once a contender for the top post at Merrill Lynch & Co., arrived in late 2002 to transform the stodgy organization and go head- to-head with financial powerhouses such as Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab & Co. and AIG Valic, the retirement-plan arm of insurer American International Group Inc.

His plans at TIAA-CREF are ambitious. Mr. Allison, 62 years old, is launching an online brokerage arm. He is replacing a computer system so antiquated it's hard to find programmers to update it. (Mr. Allison jokes that it was "programmed in Aramaic.") To focus on the core business, he has dropped his predecessor's plan to market more to non- academics. In the biggest departure, he is hiring 500 financial advisers to persuade retiring university employees to keep their money at TIAA-CREF rather than roll it into a competitor's shop.

But missteps and controversies have hobbled the overhaul...read the whole article HERE

Foreign Stocks Are In, and So Is Indexing

From this week's Knowledge @ Wharton newsletter: Foreign stocks are soaring and Americans are pouring money into them. But although overseas equities have captured investors' fancy before, there's a twist this time: More investors are embracing passive, index-style investing, ignoring the long-held belief that active managers can beat indexers by uncovering bargains in inefficient foreign markets. Have conditions really changed enough to make indexing pay off as well in foreign markets as it has in the U.S.? It may be too soon to know for sure. But international equity markets and American investor behavior are clearly evolving, according to Wharton finance professors. Read the whole article HERE

Oil prices reach record high

Oil prices topped $71 per barrel today despite inventories being at an 8-year high. Combined with rising interest rates and a cooling housing markets, consumer spending is likely to be impacted. Read an article about this from the front page of today's WSJ HERE. Read a Business Week Online article HERE Read OPEC's latest monthly report, which has revised its demand-growth forecast for 2006 to 1.42 million barrels a day, down from 1.46 million barrels from their last report.

The Ancient Roots of Today's Financial Tools

From this week's Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Newsletter: From Egyptian papyri to high tech instruments, visiting Harvard professor William N. Goetzmann uses it all to study financial technology and innovation from ancient times to the present. His question: What made these innovations possible and what sustained them? Read the whole article HERE

2006 Pension Fund Study released

Milliman, an actuarial and business consulting firm, has completed their sixth annual study of the financial reports of 100 large U.S. corporations that sponsor defined benefit pension plans. As a group, these companies had pension plan assets of more than $1.1 trillion at the end of 2005. The 2006 Milliman study provides insight into the funded status of defined benefit pension plans and the impact of those plans on corporate earnings and financial statements. Read about and download the whole study HERE

Gold prices reach 25-year high

From today's Wall Street Journal: "Gold is the only major commodity that isn't produced primarily to be consumed in the economy -- like iron, copper, pork bellies or oranges -- but simply to be owned and admired. It is too heavy, soft and rare to have many practical uses outside of electronics and dentistry. Yet it is one of the earth's most prized objects, valued mostly because it is considered valuable. A look at gold's circuitous journey from the ground to refiner to bank vault to jewelry store -- and sometimes back again -- shows how the ancient world of gold is being shaken up by both markets and technology." Read the whole story HERE

And related articles from yesterday's WSJ:
Rush of Investors To Commodities Fuels Gold Rally--Read the article HERE

Gold-Jewelry Prices Are Surging In Lockstep With Commodities--Read the article HERE

A gloomy barometer: Iraq's stock exchange

From today's New York Times: "If stock markets are any measure of a nation's confidence, then the numbers at the nascent Iraq Stock Exchange show that faith in the country may be at its lowest ebb. The bear has dug its claws in deep: the market index has lost almost two-thirds of its value in the past year, closing these days below 30, from a high of 74 in March 2005. The exchange, which opened in June 2004, lists 94 companies, from hotels to date merchants to a maker of animal vaccines. It is perhaps Iraq's keenest expression of American-style capitalism: scores of investors and traders, some in pinstriped suits, others in ankle-length robes and head scarves, gather every Monday and Wednesday." Read the New York Times' article through the International Herald Tribune site HERE or through LexisNexis.

FDIC opens public hearing on Wal-mart's bank application

The FDIC opened a rare public hearing on Monday, April 10th, to help them decide whether to allow Wal-Mart to own a bank despite misgivings by labor unions, consumer groups and other bankers -- and over the objections of another key federal bank regulator, the Federal Reserve Board. Read this April 7th article from the Washinton Post HERE (or use LexisNexis)

Although Wal-Mart has applied to use the bank exclusively to perform back-office transactions, critics argue the retailer would move to offer a full range of customer services through bank branches in its stores. Read a brief article from today's Wall Street Journal HERE

Dairy farmers picket the Merc

From today's CNNMoney site: A small group of dairy farmers, some dressed as cows, staged a protest outside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Monday, claiming that a handful of traders at the exchange were behind the low price of milk. Read the whole article from CNNMoney HERE

CEO Compensation Survey

From a special report in today's Wall Street Journal: The annual CEO compensation survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting for The Wall Street Journal has just been published.

Using a tool called "tally sheets," boards are discovering how much their CEOs are really making; The numbers are shocking directors -- and changing pay practices. Read the article on tally sheets HERE

More articles from the special report:

Who made the biggest bucks?

Milestones or Missteps? A rundown of some of the most dubious deeds in executive pay that occurred or surfaced during 2005

For more on this special report, just ask the library!

Hollywood vs. the SEC

From today's Wall Street Journal: Media companies are fighting a proposed SEC rule that would require them to publish salary details of some of their top talent. The proposed regulation, under consideration by the Securities and Exchange Commission, would require a corporation to publish the salary details of as many as three nonexecutive employees whose total compensation exceeds that of any of its top five officers. Companies currently have to disclose only the pay of the chief executive officer and the next four highest-paid officers.

The new rule, which the SEC is expected to decide on later this year, would apply to all listed companies but would likely have the most impact in industries such as media, financial services, technology and pharmaceuticals, in which star performers can earn more than CEOs.

Read the whole article HERE

Are Commodities Futures Too Risky for Your Portfolio? Hogwash!

From this week's Knowledge@Wharton: Everyone uses commodities such as wheat, cocoa, crude oil, butter, coal and electricity. But most investors know that speculating on commodities in the futures markets is only for the pros, and no sensible amateur would bet his retirement or college funds on sugar, silver, orange juice or feeder cattle. But are commodities really that risky? Using the most comprehensive data on commodities futures returns ever assembled, Wharton finance professor Gary Gorton and K. Geert Rouwenhorst, finance professor at the Yale School of Management, have reached a surprising conclusion -- that commodities offer the same returns as investors are accustomed to receiving with stocks.

Read the Knowledge@Wharton article HERE

Gorton and Rouwenhorst present their findings in a paper titled, "Facts and Fantasies about Commodity Futures." Download the entire paper HERE

Investors warned about global market liquidity

From today's Financial Times: Bill Rhodes, vice-chairman of the Institute of International Finance, said that plentiful liquidity in global capital markets might be blinding some Latin American governments to the need for more structural reform and leading investors to underestimate risks. Read the article on the FT website HERE or find it through LexisNexis HERE.

The Competitive Advantage of Global Finance

From today's Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge series: Relatively few multinational companies truly understand or take advantage of international finance. Professor Mihir A. Desai tackles the subject in a new book, International Finance: A Casebook. Here’s a Q&A. Read the whole Working Knowledge article HERE

The book itself is on order and will be added to the library's collection shortly. If you're interested in obtaining another copy, just let the library know.

What housing bubble?

From today's New York Times: Two economics professors from Pomona College recently presented a paper at the Brookings Institution called "Bubble, Bubble, Where's the Housing Bubble?" Their bottom line was: "Buying a house at current market prices still appears to be an attractive long-term investment." Download a .pdf of the full Brookings paper HERE

Read the full article on the NYT website HERE (registration may be required) or access it through LexisNexis by selecting General News and Major Papers and searching on housing bubble in the Headline and Lead Paragraph and Damon Darlin as author (just ask the library for help if you have any questions!)