William Birdthistle - "Empire of the Fund"
The key tools in our 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts are mutual funds, which have ballooned to hold more than $16 trillion. But these funds pose dangers to our savings in three ways: through structural vulnerabilities that give money managers the incentive to focus on marketing over investing; through the very human challenges of managing our savings decades into the future; and through the peril of financial professionals behaving badly, to our economic harm.
Though Americans often hear of the importance of low fees in fund investing, few are aware of the remarkable panoply of ways that some financial advisers have illegally diverted money out of mutual funds: from abetting hedge funds to trade after the legal deadline, to inflating the assets on which they are paid a percentage, to paying kickbacks for brokers to sell their funds. This book attempts to forewarn and forearm Americans by illustrating the structural flaws, perverse incentives, and litany of scandals that have bedeviled mutual funds.
And by setting forth a pair of policy solutions to improve Americans' financial literacy and bargaining power, it will also attempt to safeguard our individual financial destinies and our nation's fiscal strength.
About the author: William Birdthistle is a Professor of Law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, where he specializes in investment funds and corporate law. Previously, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and practiced law at Ropes & Gray LLP. Birdthistle was born in Cork, Ireland and raised in Libya and Malaysia. He came the United States to attend Duke University and Harvard Law School, where he served as managing editor of the Harvard Law Review. Birdthistle lives in Chicago with his wife and children.
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