Lisa Suennen of Psilos Group discusses the new wave in healthcare venture capital: improved care quality while reducing costs.

Comparing the different editions of the Axioma Quarterly Risk Review for 4th Quarter 2011 leaves some fascinating insights. For example, it is becoming more difficult over time, in much of the world, for investors to create significant diversification within the (domestic) equity portion of their portfolio, because the correlations of stock pairs have been increasing.

Because of the furor over ABACUS and analogous transactions, the legislative mandate of the Volcker rule came to include a section 619, telling the SEC to ban underwriters or sponsors of asset-backed securities from engaging “in any transaction that would involve or result in any material conflict of interest with respect to any investor in a transaction arising out of such activity.” On Monday, February 13, the final day for comment on the proposed rule, some of the more fascinating comments spoke to this issue.

In keeping with our mission to provide a marketplace of ideas, today's post presents two views of a paper that deals with the banking rules, which directly affect the core of the financial services industry and its future stability.

James Rickards is a global expert on financial markets and global security. In this exclusive interview, he discusses some of the massive threats our financial markets face (internally and externally) and explains why he thinks "….all the tools in modern finance are basically false science. "

The Global Association of Risk Professionals has surveyed risk managers, analysts and academics to get a sense of the implications of the demise of MF Global Holdings for the role of risk managers. Its findings add to a growing sense that the firm’s last chief executive, Jon Corzine, a former New Jersey Governor and U.S. Senator, was an edge-dwelling trader at heart, eager (as Dealbook put it in an analysis in December) to play a “hands-on role in the firm’s high-stakes risk-taking;” indeed, a man enmeshed in a “romance with risk.”

Data on the endowments of institutions of higher learning shows a significant spread between the performance of the largest endowments and the lagging performance of the smaller. The return that endowments received on their use of alternative strategies, too, depends in part upon the size of the endowment doing the investing. Endowments under $25 million in assets under management made only 9.5 percent on this asset class in FY 2011, while those with more than $1 billion in AUM made a 16.9 percent return hunting in the same jungles.

Alpha is often found in the company of those investors who are earliest in seeing the first hints of future events unfolding. Topsy is a new source of that capability.

Letter to the Editor –John Brynjolfsson The intransigence of the Greek populace is no secret, or covert underground fringe movement. It’s near universal, but for 199 parliamentarians. Though the EU is trying to set up escrow accounts and other controls, it is time for EU to openly acknowledge what EU’s decisions over past six [...]

From Lynne Feldman, Director of Marketing at the CAIA Association: Introducing CAIA Conversations, a series of interviews with leading alternative investment experts that showcases current viewpoints on the alternative assets covered by the CAIA curriculum. The series launches with Erik L. Knutzen, CAIA, CFA, Chief Investment Officer, NEPC, who comments on the changing role of alternatives strategies [...]

Infrastructure is a perpetual investment, whether it's rebuilding old, existing underpinnings in developed markets or building the foundations that turn an emerging nation into a developing one. Preqin looks at this lesser known investment that underpins many alternative portfolios.

2011 was the year private equity managers learned to accept that what they got even if it wasn't always quite what they wanted. Investors talk about what they want and need in 2012.

The right question is not what were they thinking, but what were they feeling? Get organized about detailing what feelings are being acted out and you’ve landed on the missing link in risk prediction.

Emerging OTC derivatives in the emerging markets of Latin America and Asia are just one more sign that these countries are growing up.

"Farhaz Miah, of Preqin, sets out the numbers for private real estate fundraising in 2011, showing that the market continues to suffer from the impact of the 2008 crisis. He notes, also, that debt strategies have become increasingly popular, both in specifically debt-strategy funds and in opportunistic funds that employ debt strategies as part of a broader structure."