Media Releases

Rotman School research on pension plans honoured by the Toronto CFA Society

March 6, 2012

TORONTO, ON – A research paper by two pro­fes­sors at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment was hon­oured last week with the 2011 Cana­di­an Invest­ment Research Award pre­sent­ed by the Toron­to CFA Soci­ety and Hills­dale Invest­ment Man­age­ment. The paper, “Is Big­ger Bet­ter? Size and Per­for­mance in Pen­sion Plan Man­age­ment,” was co-writ­ten by Profs. Alexan­der Dyck and Lukasz Pomors­ki, with the sup­port of the Rot­man Inter­na­tion­al Cen­tre for Pen­sion Man­age­ment.

The Toron­to CFA Soci­ety and Hills­dale Cana­di­an Invest­ment Research Award is open to glob­al researchers con­duct­ing research relat­ed to Cana­di­an cap­i­tal mar­kets, includ­ing both aca­d­e­mics (pro­fes­sors and stu­dents) and prac­ti­tion­ers. The win­ning research paper, received a $10,000 prize.

Profs. Dyck and Pomors­ki used CEM Bench­mark­ing data cov­er­ing more than 800 glob­al defined ben­e­fit pen­sion plans to assess the impact of size on a pen­sion plan’s per­for­mance. “Larg­er DB plans earn bet­ter returns across the board, but the advan­tage of size appears to be more pro­nounced in plans with strong gov­er­nance prac­tices,” said Prof. Pomors­ki. “Most of the out­per­for­mance is dri­ven by cost sav­ings aris­ing from in-house invest­ment capa­bil­i­ties and supe­ri­or returns achieved by invest­ing in alter­na­tives to stocks and bonds,” he said. The researchers con­clud­ed that “big­ger is bet­ter when it comes to pen­sion plans.” Read a full press release on the paper from Sep­tem­ber 2011 here.

Alexan­der Dyck holds the ICPM Pro­fes­sor­ship of Pen­sion Man­age­ment and is a pro­fes­sor of finance and busi­ness eco­nom­ics at the Rot­man School. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he was an assis­tant pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Busi­ness School and holds a PhD from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. Lukasz Pomors­ki is an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of finance at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment. He received a PhD in Finance and an MBA from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, and his award-win­ning research has been cov­ered in The Finan­cial Times, The Wall Street Jour­nal and The Wash­ing­ton Post.

Oth­er fac­ul­ty from the Rot­man School, which is CFA Pro­gram Part­ner, have been hon­oured recent­ly by the CFA Insti­tute. Kei­th Ambacht­sheer, the direc­tor of the Rot­man Inter­na­tion­al Cen­tre for Pen­sion Man­age­ment received the CFA Institute’s Award for Pro­fes­sion­al Excel­lence in 2011. In the same year, an arti­cle by Profs. John Hull and Alan White on the “The Risk of Tranch­es Cre­at­ed from Mort­gages” received a Gra­ham and Dodd Scroll Award for an out­stand­ing arti­cle from the CFA Institute’s Finan­cial Ana­lysts Jour­nal (FAJ) Advi­so­ry Coun­cil and Edi­to­r­i­al Board.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions.  The School is cur­rent­ly rais­ing $200 mil­lion to ensure Cana­da has the world-class busi­ness school it deserves. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Office: 416–946-3818
E‑mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter — www.twitter.com/rotmanschool