“How the Financial System Fails Investors and How to Fix It From a Structural and Governance Perspective”
Tuesday, November 1, 2016 at 9:30am to 12:00pm
Center for the Arts, Gore Recital Hall 110 Orchard Road, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19711, USA
Financial/investing institutions form the bedrock of the U.S. economic system. Without them, the economy can’t grow and our capitalistic system would grind to a halt. However, few believe that our financial/investing institutions work as well as they could. Critics argue that misalignments promote the interests of the financial sector itself above those of society, the real economy and the individual citizen investors whose pensions and savings are entrusted to these institutions. They argue that errant expertise and incentives; gaps in accountability, transparency and governance; poor regulation and a misreading of economics combine to impose a huge stealth tax on individual savings and national economic promise. Further, they say that these structural and governance misalignments create systemic pressure for short-termism in the boardroom and within investing institutions.
Stephen Davis and Jon Lukomnik, two of the three authors of What They Do With Your Money: How the Financial System Fails Us and How to Fix It, will be joined by John Bogle, legendary founder of Vanguard, and Jennifer Taub, Professor of Law, Vermont Law School, for a robust, provocative discussion of how to fix our financial/investing institutions so that they serve individual citizen investors and the real economy.
Among the issues that will be discussed are: How have short-term oriented capital markets, the scores of financial intermediaries, and executive compensation structures both in financial/investing institutions and in our corporations combined to reduce long-term corporate investment in America? What are the consequences of governance gaps in investing institutions? What about the governance structures of pension plans and their plan sponsors? Should there be a shift in the governance paradigm to give individual citizen investors more transparency and more of a voice?
The discussion will also showcase potential solutions that range from the narrow and technical, such as potential revisions to the tax law, to the big and ambitious, such as fresh models of governance and transparency for financial/investing institutions and for pension/savings plans.
Please join us for a fascinating discussion peering behind the curtain of finance to understand why the capital market works the way it does. And how it can potentially change for the better.
A complimentary lunch will follow the program.
Click here for more information and to register for the event.