From the Editor...
There is a lot of change going on right now in government and a lot of uncertainty about how things are going to shake out generally and shape up at the SEC in particular. We wait and see and hope for the best. In the meantime, it's a perfect opportunity to revisit some of the many evergreen topics with which mutual fund boards always contend. With that in mind, we're excited to have launched a new series of articles by Buddy Donohue that explore various aspects of conflicts of interest in the fund industry.
Last week we brought you Buddy's first installment, an overview of what he'll explore over the coming weeks and why identifying and dealing with potential conflicts are important to the industry and those charged with overseeing America's mutual funds. Starting next week (and on a fortnightly schedule going forward), we'll begin publishing Buddy's five-part series on potential conflicts in specific sectors of the business, including funds, advisers, broker-dealers, service providers, and more. Given Buddy's decades in the industry and breadth of perspectives during his career, we're excited for what's to come—and we hope you are too.
In other news, we recently presented readers with a one-on-one interview with Lord Abbett Funds Chair Eve Guernsey. Our conversation was great, and we hope you find the resulting article interesting. Like many fund boards that have been around for a while, Lord Abbett Funds has been dealing with generational shift in recent years, and Eve gave us some insight into the board's approach to succession planning and recruitment. She also spoke about some recent upgrades to the board's governance practices and what she expects the board will be dealing with in 2025.
We've also reported on changes in the Duff & Phelps closed-end funds boardroom, where a few long-serving independents are retiring and a new one has been nominated to join, and published a 10 Things... list about merging boards. And finally, we've published our latest issue of FBV Monthly, which actually includes stories from both December and January (the issue is combined due to our end-of-year publishing break).
Reach out if there's something you want to write about for our Viewpoints section or if there's a topic you want to know more about. We love to hear from you!
On a personal note, we were saddened to hear recently that Edward Boudreau passed way at the end of October. Boudreau served on the Columbia Funds board for 14 years, including two years as independent chair, before retiring at the end of 2019. During his professional career, Boudreau spent 32 years at John Hancock Financial Services, including serving as chairman and CEO of what is now John Hancock Investments from 1988 to 1999. Here at FBV, we considered Ed a friend; we'll miss him.
For now,
Hillary Jackson, founding editor