Private Wealth Management

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Dates Location Tuition
Aug 16, 2009 - Aug 21, 2009 Philadelphia $9,250

Especially in the current market turmoil, many families seek more education on how to better protect their wealth. Wealth in transition may arrive predictably, or suddenly. Preparedness is a major concern for all families with substantial assets. For ten years, the Wharton School and the Institute for Private Investors (IPI) have helped families meet the complex challenge of wealth management education.

Many families find that investment decisions are difficult to make, especially after a family has sold a business or when younger family members are first asked to help make decisions about a family’s portfolio. To gain the foundation of knowledge necessary to oversee substantial private wealth, Wharton offers Private Wealth Management, a five-day residential program held twice annually at the University of Pennsylvania.

The program, first designed for IPI in 1999, allows participants to increase their depth of knowledge in key areas of wealth management, while having the unusual opportunity to meet and work with others, like themselves, who are part of a family with substantial assets. The case study for the program is directly related to private wealth management issues and current market challenges.

Tuition for Philadelphia programs includes lodging and meals. Prices are subject to change. Program Consultants are available to provide more information on course specifics and discuss how this program might meet your needs. Please contact them by telephone at +1 215.898.1776 or by e-mail.


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Through class lectures and interactive casework, participants will increase their depth of knowledge in key areas of wealth management.

The use of a "living" case study compels participants to come to terms with a wide range of investment issues that directly impact all families with significant wealth. Participants will call upon their own experiences, as well as knowledge gained during the week, to solve the problems presented. Learning is enhanced by the continual exchange among participants who have a common bond — that of the responsibility of significant wealth.

Private Wealth Management Session Topics

  • History of Financial Markets
  • Asset Allocation
  • Modern Portfolio Theory
  • Evaluation of Investment Managers
  • Alternative Investments
  • Family Governance and Wealth Transfer

Wealth Management Related articles

Wharton@Work:E-Buzz

The Private Wealth Management program will be for family investors only and held to a maximum of 35 participants. Class size is limited to allow for open and in-depth interaction. Candidates are selected on their ability to both benefit from, and contribute to, the program. Each candidate will be reviewed by a screening committee and notified of their acceptance or wait-list status within two weeks of their application.

We encourage families to send multiple members to leverage the application and value of the program. Additional cohort benefits are available when four or more participants attend a program.

Participant Demographics:

As of August 2008, 490 participants from 29 countries are graduates. Participants’ ages vary, ranging from 20s to 80s.IPI_piechart2007

After this program you will:

  • Gain a thorough understanding of Modern Portfolio Theory and its applicability to your family’s asset allocation decisions in today’s markets.
  • Understand performance measurement and attribution and be able to partner with your money managers in directing the future of your wealth.
  • Learn how to refine your own views of risk and financial goals in light of recent global financial events.
  • Gain insight and suggestions regarding the best practices in family governance and wealth transfer.
  • Develop a network of peers who face the same issues as you in managing substantial assets.

undefined RICHARD C. MARSTON, PhD
Academic Director
James R.F. Guy Professor of Finance
Professor of Economics
Director, Weiss Center for International Financial Research
The Wharton School

Dr. Richard Marston is the James R.F. Guy Professor of Finance at the Wharton School and the Director of the George Weiss Center for International Financial Research. He has a BA from Yale University (summa cum laude), BPhil from Oxford University, and PhD from MIT. He is the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship and a Fulbright Fellowship. Dr. Marston is the author or editor of six books, including International Financial Integration among the Industrial Countries, which won the Sanwa Bank Prize in International Finance.

Dr. Marston regularly participates in the Investment Management Consultants Association (IMCA) Program and the Advanced Management Program. He is also director of the Institute for Private Investors Program at Wharton.

Dr. Marston has given presentations in more than a dozen countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. He has also given presentations for a number of securities firms in the United States, including most recently Merrill Lynch, Lincoln Financial, and Smith Barney. His work has been widely cited in the press, including publications such as Barron's, the Financial Times, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal, and he has also appeared on television programs such as the Nightly Business Report and on CNBC.
undefined CHARLOTTE B. BEYER
Founder and CEO
Institute for Private Investors

Charlotte Beyer founded the Institute for Private Investors (IPI) to change the way investors work with advisors, and advisors work with investors, for the benefit of both. The appeal to the 350+ families — four out of five overseeing $50 million or more — is education and networking all within a "safe harbor." Two hundred firms also are members of IPI. More than 50 events are held each year, and members electronically participate through Memberlink®. Surveys on investor members' attitudes and behaviors include the annual Family Performance Tracking®, often a trend indicator of investor expectations. IPI offers no investment recommendations or consulting services, and membership dues and educational fees are the sole source of revenue.
Christopher C. Geczy, PhD CHRISTOPHER C. GECZY, PhD
Adjunct Associate Professor of Finance
Academic Director, Wharton Wealth Management Initiative
The Wharton School

Christopher C. Geczy is an assistant professor in the Finance Department of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. His current research focuses on various topics including risk management, multifactor models, the performance of managed funds, various aspects of equity lending and short-selling, and shareholder agreements among parties to firms. His work has appeared in various books and scholarly journals including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Journal of Political Economy. It has also been covered in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Financial Times, Forbes, SmartMoney Magazine, on CNBC's Squawk Box, and in numerous other media outlets.

Professor Geczy is a Fellow of the Wharton Financial Institutions Center and has been the New York Stock Exchange Fellow and the Geeweax-Turker Fellow at the Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research at Wharton. He has a BA in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in finance and econometrics from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. Before his studies at Chicago, Professor Geczy worked for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Washington, D.C., in its Division of Research and Statistics. He regularly teaches investment management, and co-created the first full course on hedge funds at the Wharton School along with a number of executive education courses. He has taught AIMR-accredited professional risk management courses through the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. Dr. Geczy also has appeared often in the annual Institute of the Securities Industry Association®, speaking about hedge funds and alternative investments. He is on the Economic Advisory Board of the NASDAQ, serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Alternative Investments, is a founding board member of the Mid-Atlantic Hedge Fund Association, and serves on the curriculum and exam committees of the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Association.

Professor Geczy has consulted for clients in the areas of asset allocation, hedge fund portfolio analysis and development, financial risk management, and the development of investment and trading strategies.
Jeffery Jaffe, PhD JEFFREY JAFFE, PhD
Associate Professor of Finance
The Wharton School

Jeff Jaffe, a leading authority on asset allocation, has written widely on the topics of investment styles and stock returns, international investment returns, market anomalies, and the effects of information on security prices. He has been recognized for his outstanding teaching. Professor Jaffe has co-authored several textbooks on finance and is a frequent contributor to finance and economic journals.
undefined A. CRAIG MACKINLAY, PhD
Joseph P. Wargrove Professor of Finance
The Wharton School

A. Craig MacKinlay has been a faculty member at Wharton since 1984. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Journal of Investment Consulting Advisory Board, a member of Morgan Stanley Institutional Equity Trading Academic Advisory Board and a former member of the Board of Directors of the American Finance Association and the NASD Economic Advisory Board. His research interests include empirical implementation and validation of asset pricing models, measuring investment performance, pricing of futures contracts, microstructure of financial markets, assessment of credit risk, and statistical methods in finance.

Professor MacKinlay has coauthored two books, one entitled the Econometrics of Financial Markets and another entitled A Non-Random Walk Down Wall Street. He has also published in numerous journals, including the Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Financial Economics. His honors include the Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security, and the Oxford University Press Century Publication Celebration 100 Best Papers of All Time Award.
undefined KATHY PEARSON, PhD
Adjunct Associate Professor, Operations and Information Management Department
The Wharton School

Kathy Pearson, PhD, serves as an adjunct associate professor in the Operations and Information Management Department at the Wharton School. She has taught operations management courses in the MBA program and Executive Master’s of Technology Management program as well as probability and statistics, simulation modeling, and other courses for the department and the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, Dr. Pearson is a senior consultant and director, Executive Education, for Decision Strategies International (DSI), a management consulting firm focused on scenario-based strategic planning and decision making. She specializes in subject areas such as critical thinking, scenario planning, strategic decision making, project management, and stakeholder analysis. Dr. Pearson has also worked with executives from a wide variety of industries and has taught at CEDEP at INSEAD in Fountainebleau, France.
Todd Sinai TODD SINAI, PhD
Associate Professor of Real Estate
The Wharton School

Todd has been with Wharton since 1997 and is currently Associate Professor of Real Estate and the Abraham Mitchell Term Assistant Professor of Real Estate at the Wharton School. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1997and his BA from Yale University in 1992. Todd has also served as a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research since 1999 and a Visiting Scholar of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia since 2000.

His current areas of research focus include housing prices; public policy and housing markets; the airline industry and air traffic delays; real estate investment trusts; the internet and the demand for local goods; low-income housing; and public economics. He is the recent author of an expert report on the demographic makeup of Low Income Housing Tax Credit recipients. Current projects include why airlines do not report accurate flight times; owner-occupied housing as a way of avoiding risk; house price bubbles; and housing in the financial portfolio.

Todd is the recipient of several teaching and other awards, including the Post-Doctoral Fellow award from the Homer Hoyt Institute in 2001; the Ballard Teaching Award in 2001; and the HUD/AREUEA Best Paper Award in 2001.
smetters KENT SMETTERS, PhD
Boettner Associate Professor; Associate Professor of Insurance and Risk Management
The Wharton School

Kent Smetters is the Joseph E. and Ruth E. Boettner Associate Professor and Associate Professor of Insurance and Risk Management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He was appointed assistant professor in 1998 and was promoted to associate professor (with tenure) in 2004.

Kent received his PhD in economics in 1995 from Harvard University and worked for the U.S. Congress from 1995 to 1998. He was a visiting professor at the Stanford Economics Department during the 2000-1 academic year and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy of the U.S. Treasury from July 3, 2001 until August 30, 2002. Kent remains active in Washington, DC, and recently served as a member of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Dynamic Scoring for the Joint Committee on Taxation of the U.S. Congress.

"Thank you for the challenging, stretching and ultimately rewarding educational experience of the Wharton Private Wealth Management Program. As you know, there is absolutely a need for the program you have created…. One of the best features is that it is a comprehensive look at all of the major concerns in private wealth management, and thus clears up the question, 'Is there anything I have forgotten to consider?' Thank you."
– A May 2008 graduate

"I need to tell you how profound this past week was. I could never have predicted it was going to be the way it was, and it was such a great experience for many of us. Even if we go home and quickly disappear into our lives, I just know there is much that happened on such a deep level that it will persist for many years. In fact, I think many lives will end up being affected, in very positive ways. (For example, one of my peers may finally have a family meeting with his estranged sister and parents, a meeting he couldn't even dream of having before this week – and we role played with him in the bar until the wee hours, using what we learned with the behaviorists.) So thanks."
– A May 2007 graduate

"The Wharton program was out of this world. I loved everything about it — the quality of the instructors, the fact that it really fills a void, the interaction with the other participants, and spending a week with my family. Frankly, I found it so beneficial that I want to do it again."
—An August 2006 graduate

"[Wharton] was basic enough for the nonfinancial family members and an excellent refresher course for those with extensive financial backgrounds. It also touches on nonfinancial issues faced by families of wealth that are often overlooked in courses of this type, which can help the nonfinancial and the financially trained members of a family understand each other better."
—Recent graduate

"Thanks so much for an incredible learning experience last week. It was a real privilege to be taught such important skills by such high-caliber professionals."
—A 2006 graduate

"The best investor education I know is to attend the Wharton program. We have sent all of our children AND their spouses. It has been a homerun for our family. Even my art-loving daughter-in-law now wants to know how the managers are doing and what changes are being made in the asset allocation."
—A 2004 graduate