Morningstar Advisor - June/July 2012 - (Page 38)

Spotlight Family Matters By Laura Pavlenko Lutton Morningstar shifts the focus of the Stewardship Grades to parent from child. Distinct traits usually run in families—height, hair color, skin tone. The same thing is true of mutual fund firms. Their funds often look similar when it comes to manager turnover, managers’ investment in fund shares, and fees. Given these similarities, Morningstar is shifting its Stewardship Grade methodology from individual funds to fund families. The goal of the Stewardship Grades is to show advisors and other investors which fund firms are likely to be strong long-term partners, treating investors’ capital as if it were the firm’s own, and which have room for improvement. The grades, which are available in Morningstar Office and Morningstar Direct, reflect hours of in-depth research that typically includes onsite visits, lengthy interviews with the firm’s corporate management, a governance discussion with funds’ board of directors, and deep analysis of operational and performance data. The latest shifts to the Stewardship Grades, which Morningstar introduced in 2004, are not a major departure from the past. The grades have always evaluated key traits related to fund families’ care of capital. Of the five areas that Morningstar considers when determining a Stewardship Grade— corporate culture, manager incentives, fees, regulatory history, board quality—three of them address firm-level traits. In its evaluation of corporate culture, for example, Morningstar’s analysts determine whether the driving force behind a firm’s culture and behavior is care of shareholders’ capital. Firms with shareholder-focused cultures have strong, repeatable investment processes, a stable roster of fund managers and researchers, and a lineup of funds that investors can employ easily and successfully in their portfolios. On the flip side, firms with poor cultures, in Morningstar’s view, are those that are primarily concerned with gathering assets and growing profits by launching funds that jump on unsustainable trends or by leaving too-large funds open to new investors. In addition to examining corporate culture at the firm level, the Stewardship Grade methodology also considers whether the funds’ board of directors acts in shareholders’ best interests by negotiating low fees, signing off on sensible new funds, and closing those that have reached capacity. Finally, Morningstar studies the firm’s history with regulators to determine whether there have been violations, and if so, how they were addressed by the funds’ senior management and board of directors. The two remaining areas of the methodology— manager incentives and fees—were largely evaluated at the fund level, but Morningstar found that most funds in a family looked similar on these quantitative measures. For example, managers’ investments in fund shares—which are considered along with the criteria used to determine the managers’ bonus compensation—are fairly consistent across a firm’s funds. A firm’s managers typically either make big investments in their funds, or they invest relatively little or nothing at all. Managers make big investments in their funds at American Funds, Janus, and Royce, while they are less likely to do so at American Century, JP Morgan, and Vanguard, for example. Measuring Skin in the Game With this in mind, Morningstar now determines a firm’s Manager Incentives Grade by looking primarily at the percentage of a firm’s fund assets that are run by a manager with more than $1 million invested in fund shares. “More than $1 million” is the highest manager ownership range reported annually to the Securities and Exchange Commission and, thus, an industry best practice. When manager ownership is deep and broad—specifically where more than 80% of the firm’s assets have more than $1 million of manager investment, the firm now earns a Manager Incentives Grade of A. Firms with fewer assets in the “more than $1 million” range get lower grades. When it comes to fees, firms also are relatively consistent in pricing. Either the firm is committed to offering low-cost funds (the case 38 Morningstar Advisor June/July 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Morningstar Advisor - June/July 2012

Morningstar Advisor - June/July 2012
Contributors
Letter From the Editor
Be Worth Remarking About
How Important Is Stewardship?
From West Point to Points East
Where a Fund’s Secrets Lie
Getting Fund Directors on Board
Managers Prep for Housing Rebound
Four Picks for the Present
Investment Briefs
A Hedge Against Career Risk
Natural Gas Reaches Capitulation
Family Matters
How Good Stewardship Predicts Superior Performance
Stewardship Goes Back to the Fundamentals
On the Go for Fixed Income
Where Shareholders Ride First Class
Dangers Lurk in Exchange-Traded Notes
Stocks on Sale in a Strong Market
A Good Steward Is Easy to Find
Our Favorite Mutual Funds
50 Most Popular ETFs
Undervalued Stocks With Wide Moats
Buffett Rule’s Biggest Losers

Morningstar Advisor - June/July 2012