Quotes About Fiduciaries

John Maynard Keynes criticized fiduciaries for preferring to "fail conventionally" rather than taking, as Swensen so often does, direct responsibility for independent, even pioneering thought and action.

Some fiduciaries will recommend the Royal Bank of Canada or other Canadian banks, since they have been rated as some of the best and safest in the world. (The United States saw more than 9,400 banks collapse during the Great Depression and almost 500 in the recent Great Recession. Not one bank failed in Canada!)

Fiduciaries are people who hold legal obligations of trust, like a trustee of a trust. A trustee must act in the beneficiary's best interests and not his own. If the trustee fails to do that, the trustee can be removed, even if what the trustee has done is not a crime.

At the heart of Erisa is the requirement that plan fiduciaries act with an 'eye single' to funding the retirements of plan participants and beneficiaries. This means investment decisions must be based solely on whether they enhance retirement savings, regardless of the fiduciary's personal preferences.

A dearth of fiduciaries willing to place client interests foremost forces individuals to take responsibility for their investment portfolios. In the profit-motivated world of Wall Street, fiduciary responsibility takes a backseat to self-interest. What benefits the stockbroker (commissions), the mutual fund manager (large pools of assets), and the financial advisor (high fees) injures the investor. When profit motive meets fiduciary responsibility, profits win and investors lose. Understand

Awareness of the breadth and seriousness of agency issues constitutes the first line of defense for fund managers. By evaluating each participant involved in investment activities with a skeptical attitude, fiduciaries increase the likelihood of avoiding or mitigating the most serious principal-agent conflicts.

The role of private equity as fiduciaries is certainly to make money.