VIDEO TRANSCRIPTS FROM
‘A Practical Alternative’
Insights and Ideas for Advisors, featuring
Bob Rice, Senior Advisor to Neuberger Berman
A History of Outcome-Oriented Investing
Neuberger Berman is a private, employee-controlled asset
management firm managing a wide range of traditional and
alternative investments for individuals, advisors and global
institutions. Since 1939, we have worked to help clients achieve
their investment goals through a combination of independent
thinking, a focus on research and ongoing innovation.
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A Practical Alternative
Thoughtful solutions run
deep here. In 1950 we were
one of the first firms to offer
no-load mutual funds. Combined with our more than 20
years of experience as hedge
fund and private equity investors, 80 dedicated alternative
investment professionals and
more than $34 billion in alternative assets, we have substantial capabilities to help advisors
and their clients, institutions
and global funds participate
in the private and alternative
investment markets.
Today, our combination of
extensive experience managing
mutual funds plus our extensive
capabilities in the alternative
investments space means we
are uniquely positioned to help
clients gain exposure to nontraditional strategies via mutual
funds. In the last several years,
our suite of liquid alternatives
has expanded to include global
solutions in equity and debt,
featuring single managers as well
as multi-manager strategies.
Note: All opinions reflect those of Bob Rice/Rebecca Darst and are not to be construed as
advice or opinion from Neuberger Berman.
I
n this piece, we offer excerpts from a series of video discussions featuring
Bob Rice, senior advisor to Neuberger Berman and Rebecca Darst, president of
Trofast Media. Their discussion of the four persistent investor challenges—
income, growth, risk management and principal protection—comes to life in
video. This brochure seeks to convey the essence of the conversation, namely
that advisors need to understand how non-traditional (and traditional) investments can help solve investment issues. The views expressed in this document,
reflecting the video on www.practicalalternative.com, do not constitute advice
or necessarily represent the views and opinions of Neuberger Berman LLC. They
are illustrative discussions intended for educational purposes. For more on our
approach to alternatives, or to watch our series of videos on alternatives, please
visit www.nb.com/practicalalternative.
New Times. New Tools.
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e are living in unprecedented times. We’re seeing quantitative easing on a global scale, the
ultimate impact of which is unclear, the mammoth growth of worldwide debt, coexistent
inflationary and deflationary forces, and terribly impactful demographics in the developed world.
These broad global forces have changed the nature of the investing game in ways that we are
only beginning to understand. And this is creating tremendous uncertainty for investors.
ONE THING WE KNOW: The traditional asset allocation paradigm that divides a portfolio between stocks
and bonds no longer works the way it used to. What hasn’t changed? Your reasons for investing. What do
you want your money to do for you? In our thinking, there are four possible goals—or four challenges—that
your portfolio needs to address. On the following pages are thoughts on each of the challenges and
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how to think about portfolio construction given today’s markets.
The Four Persistent Portfolio Challenges
INCOME
GROWTH OF CAPITAL
RISK MITIGATION
INFLATION MANAGEMENT
1. The Search for Income
The number one question for many investors today is “How can I
generate current income, given today’s incredibly low interest
rates?” You’ve got junk bonds paying approximately 5%, Italian
government bonds barely at a premium to U.S. Treasuries. And it’s
not just that the yields are so low, they come with interest rate and
duration risk.
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o what can investors do? As I see
it, there are two pieces of the
puzzle. First, you want to try to
find income-generating investments that can increase their payout
year over year—that can alleviate some
interest rate risk. MLPs can fall into
that category and are broadly available.
Royalty trusts, farmland, timber, pools
of certain kinds of private debt—these
are all investments that can provide
increasing payments year after year,
cutting down on inflation risk.
Additionally, you can do what the
pros call “shorten your duration,”
which means limiting the amount of
time that your bonds are outstanding,
because the longer the maturity date
is, the greater their risk of losing value
if interest rates rise. One example:
Shorten the maturity of loans you hold.
Catastrophe bonds, also known as CAT
bonds, have shorter durations, as do
peer-to-peer loans, which are popular
with high net worth investors today.
Emerging market debt is a less exotic
option. With each of these, you want
to invest with an active manager with
significant experience in the area.
“The goals haven’t changed—income, growth, mitigating
risk, protecting principal—but the toolkit has expanded
significantly, and as such, provides advisors with a broader
suite of solutions.”
2. The Hunt for Uncommon Growth
Historically, investors have looked to stocks to generate growth in their portfolios. By many standards,
today’s stock market is expensive and the amount you can reasonably expect to make at
these P/E multiples is lower than when the market is cheap. This is one important reason to look
outside equities for growth, but there are others.
That’s not to say that investors should
avoid stocks. Certain strategies can be
more effective in a more fully valued
market. One of the best examples is
activist investing, in which managers
take an active stake in directing the future of a company, whether it’s through
a merger or other corporate event.
We’re hitting record levels of mergers
and acquisitions. Finding managers
who can take advantage of those kinds
of events is an attractive option right
now, and it is widely accessible through
various funds.
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| VI DE O TRA NSCR IP TS
their infrastructures and create growth
opportunities. These regions can be
accessed through more than
equities. There is emerging markets
debt and private investments, which
can offer some insulation from the
immature and potentially volatile stock
markets in these countries.
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F
or example, everyone’s familiar
with the renaissance in the U.S.
energy industry. Much of that
value is not accessible to investors
through traditional public stocks, but
you can get it through MLPs. And there
are emerging markets like China and
other parts of Asia and Latin America.
Many emerging markets have burgeoning populations and a growing
middle class. Advanced technologies
are enabling these countries to update
“What should investors do under these circumstances?
Fortunately, there’s a range of investment tools available,
considerably more than simply traditional stocks and bonds.”
3. Risk Gets Relevant
Stocks and bonds have done well over the past few years. So why mess with success? Precisely
because you have done so well. Back in 2007 and 2008, the stock market was at historic lows.
It was historically cheap to buy. Now the market is getting progressively more expensive
and becoming riskier, and your need for downside protection is becoming greater.
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A Practical Alternative
ife insurance provides a good analogy. You wouldn’t conclude that, just because you’ve been paying life insurance
premiums every year and you haven’t died, you don’t
need that protection any longer, right? As you get older,
you need more insurance. It’s the same with the markets. Let
me give you three quick equity market valuation examples. The
Tobin’s Q indicator, which measures the replacement value of
the S&P 500, is significantly above its long-term average. The
Buffet Indicator, a GDP-to-market cap ratio, is two standard
deviations above its long-term average. And the Schiller P/E is
about two thirds above its long-term average. Bonds valuations
are similarly high.
What should investors do under these circumstances?
Fortunately, there’s a range of investment tools available to
investors today that historically were used by institutional
investors: pensions, endowments, foundations—the smartest
money in the world. Take a look at long-short equity—a classic hedge strategy. This can be a wonderful way of being in
the market while having cushion on the downside because
the short position can help protect you if the market falls.
Many opportunities like these are now available to average
investors in mutual fund formats with high-caliber managers.
For the full video selection visit www.practicalalternative.com.
We know that inflation, the stealthiest thief of wealth, is a
long-term risk for investors looking to hold onto the assets
they’ve accumulated. In today’s market the twin forces
of inflation and deflation coexist. I liken them to tectonic
plates in the earth that are pressing together. They’re both
incredibly powerful, but they’re deadlocked right now and
neither is moving. The problem is, just like tectonic plates,
if one slips, you could experience a rapid change, and either
one could overwhelm the other.
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eflation is a new but important
topic for investors to consider.
Different assets perform well
in inflationary versus deflationary environments. We’re looking
at a different set of dynamics, and it’s
important to do your homework and
think about how to construct your
portfolio. One possible solution is to invest in real assets that are also drawing
off current income. The reason: The income component can offer protection
in a deflationary environment, while
the real asset itself should increase in
value in an inflationary environment.
Timber and farmland are two particularly good examples. If you can’t invest
in these assets directly, there are funds
that focus on these areas
A classic asset class for this type of
environment is Treasury Inflation
Protected Securities, also known as
TIPS. They work as advertised in an
inflationary environment and, because
the amount of the principal never
adjusts below par, they also work well
in a deflationary environment. Some
institutional investors call them “real
assets,” even though they’re clearly not,
simply because they behave like some
income-producing real assets in an inflationary or deflationary environment.
It used to be that
stocks took care of
two of the challenges:
growth and inflation
management. Bonds
were responsible
for income and risk
mitigation. But those
assets don’t behave
as they used to,
so it makes sense
to augment the
portfolio with some
alternatives—some
that have been around
for a long time and
others that are newly
available to the
average investor.
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4. Defying Value Erosion
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Non-Traditional
Solutions for
Life’s Persistent
Portfolio Challenges
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now what you own, and why you own it. Ask
questions about that which you don’t understand.
Understand the fundamentals before venturing out
into the fray of investment strategies. What follows
are excerpts culled from the many “Language of Investing”
video shoots that Bob Rice and Rebecca Darst recorded and
are available on www.nb.com/practicalalternative.
The Language of Investing
Alpha
A
lpha is the Holy Grail for money managers, but what is it exactly? Simply put, alpha is the extra return that a manager can deliver to investors
in a fund, if the manager doesn’t take any additional risk to deliver that
return. If, for example, the S&P 500, is up 6% in a given year, and a
portfolio manager has delivered 8% in the same year without additional risk over
the average of the S&P 500, that’s 2% of alpha.
Generating alpha is difficult to do on a sustained basis over a period of years, particularly in a long-only portfolio. Other types of strategies, like long/short equity or
private equity and venture capital, for example, which require a high degree of skill
and a unique set of resources, are set up better to deliver alpha.
Over the last few years, active managers have had difficulty generating alpha,
leading many investors to question whether passive strategies are a better option.
I think we’re going to see more volatility and less correlation between stocks going
forward, which could create a better environment for stock pickers.
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A Practical Alternative
Alpha is the extra return that a manager can deliver to
investors in a fund, if the manager doesn’t take any
additional risk to deliver that return.
“Strategies like unconstrained bond funds and emerging
markets debt can help reduce your exposure to interest rate
and duration risk while diversifying your income solutions.”
Some people will say that it doesn’t matter because they plan to hold bonds to
maturity and they’ll get their money back. But there are two big issues. First, a lot of
people invest in bond funds which don’t have maturity dates, so the loss of value is
permanent. The second problem is that, by time a bond reaches maturity, inflation
may have eroded the value of the initial investment.
Strategies like unconstrained bond funds and emerging markets debt can help reduce
your exposure to interest rate and duration risk. Other strategies, like master limited
partnerships, which tend to pay out more each year, can also limit duration risk.
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or investors in alternative strategies, performance dispersion is one
of the more important concepts
to understand. In the long-only investment world, the difference between
the best and worst managers may not
be all that dramatic, particularly when
correlations are high. In the alternative
world, where there are more factors at
play, it can be 10X or 20X. The industry
is coming out with new tools to help
investors make comparisons between
managers more easily. Wilshire, for
example, has released a set of liquid
alternative indices. This is particularly
important because alternative strategies
come with extra fees and it’s important
to make sure the managers you invest
with are worth those extra fees.
For the full video selection visit www.practicalalternative.com.
| VI DE O TRA NSCR IP TS
O
ne of the most basic ideas in the investment world is that investment grade
bonds are safe investments. But even with U.S. Treasury bonds, there are
real risks these days. You’ll get repaid, but you have interest rate and duration risk. First, interest rate risk. Simply put, if interest rates rise, the value of
bonds purchased at lower rates will decline. Duration risk is also impacted by interest
rates, but is related to the maturity date of the bonds. The longer the duration of the
bond, the longer you have to wait until the repayment date, and the greater the loss
of value will be when rates rise. The lower the interest rate on the bond is to begin
with, the greater the loss of value will be when rates rise. This is a problem today
given historic low rates.
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Interest Rate and Duration Risk
Performance
Dispersion
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A Practical Alternative
“In essence, absolute
return funds give
you the opportunity
to do well, or relatively
well, in a choppy or
down stock or bond
market. The idea,
in principle, is to
generate returns in any
market environment.
To do this investors
need to give something
up. In general, you
sacrifice some upside
when the stock
market is on a tear.”
Hedge Funds
O
ne of the classic questions
today is “just exactly what is
a hedge fund?” And funny
thing is, it’s hard to answer,
because it simply refers to a legal structure that goes around an investment
pool. If you ask me what hedge funds
typically have in common, I would say
there are three things: 1) they invest
in relatively liquid securities, 2) they
use leverage to amplify returns and 3)
they use short selling to try to mitigate
downside risk.
We know Benjamin Graham as the
father of value investing. In the “roaring ‘20s,” he was concerned about
the frothy stock market. He wanted
to stay invested but with limited risk
and limited downside. That’s why he
evolved long/short funds, the mother
of all hedge strategies. By using shorts,
he was giving himself the chance to do
better than the market in a downturn.
The majority of hedge funds are not
trying to hit home runs. Indeed, the
vast majority of hedge funds aren’t
even designed to beat the stock market
when it’s on an absolute tear. The key to
understanding what hedge funds seek
to do is that they’re using short-selling
to mitigate risk. If you’ve got assets
allocated to the short side, it’s basically
an insurance premium.
There are, of course, some hedge funds
that are risk-seeking. They shoot for
the highest conceivable returns, and so
they take big positions in risky things.
Sometimes that turns out very well.
George Soros famously broke the Bank
of England doing that and set the reputation of hedge fund managers. Some
hedge fund managers did very well
betting that the subprime bubble would
burst, and they were right. But many, if
not most, hedge fund managers aren’t
trying to take those kinds of risks, and
most institutional investors—the “smart
money”—have over a trillion dollars in
the less risky strategies. As they say, they
are investing to stay rich, not to get rich.
They’re investing to limit the downside.
In essence, absolute return funds give
you the opportunity to do well, or
relatively well, in a choppy or down stock
or bond market. The idea, in principle,
is to generate returns in any market
environment. To do this, investors need
to give something up. In general, you
sacrifice some upside when the stock
market is on a tear. On the other hand,
if the stock market is choppy or down,
then an absolute return fund should, in
principle, outperform. These strategies
can sit within an equity allocation or they
could be used as a bond replacement,
depending on your situation.
Because absolute return funds make
use of many strategies and asset classes,
it’s challenging for a single individual
to manage alone. It takes significant
investment acumen to excel in one area,
let alone the several that may be covered
in a single absolute return fund. For that
reason, many portfolio managers will
hire subadvisors that have expertise in a
particular area. In that way, the fund is
managed by a constellation of portfolio
managers who cover different styles or
asset classes.
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Long-Short Equity
ong-short equity is a classic hedging strategy that we’re seeing in a number
of liquid alternative mutual funds today. For a quick refresher, how does
shorting work? It’s a big mystery to most people. The idea is simple: Let’s say
I borrow shares of Apple from you today that are valued at $100 a share. I
then turn around and sell those shares in the marketplace and keep the $100 per
share. But I still owe you those shares. My hypothesis is that the shares will fall in
value so I can buy the shares back for less than $100 (for example, $90 each), give
them to you and realize the $10 per share profit.
Generally, the longs and shorts don’t cancel each other out. In other words, managers won’t evenly match their portfolio’s long exposure with short exposure. There’s
something called net exposure. If you’re 60 percent long and 40 percent short, then
your net exposure to the stock market will be 20%.
Net exposure can be all over the map from fund to fund. Some managers will use
leverage to increase their long exposure—up to 150% for example. The lower the
net exposure, the lower the total portfolio risk. If a manager has low net exposure
and is able to deliver solid performance with some consistency, then you’ve found
a good manager. The other interesting thing about low net exposure is that it tends
to deliver steady-Eddy returns. Some people look at low net exposure long/short
funds as an income replacement strategy, in place of a bond fund but without the
interest rate or duration risk.
It’s important to perform proper due diligence when choosing a manager. Net
exposure is critical as is the manager’s personal track record managing long-short
strategies. You tend to see a greater difference between the best and worst long/
short managers than between the best and worst long-only managers.
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| VI DE O TRA NSCR IP TS
T
hroughout history, investment
management has used specific
benchmarks to measure success:
the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, the
Bar-Ag, among others. Performance
versus a benchmark represents relative
returns. Absolute return funds are different. They’re not tied to a specific benchmark, asset class or investment style.
As a result, investors in absolute return
funds have the advantage of spreading
their investments across different styles
and asset classes.
“These strategies can sit within an equity allocation
or they could be used as a bond replacement fund,
depending on your situation.”
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Absolute Return
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Beta
n some respects, beta is the
opposite of alpha. It’s the portion
of a manager’s performance that
is due to the overall movement
of the stock market, while alpha is
the portion by which the manager
outperforms the market. A portfolio
that moves in tandem with the
market has a beta of one, while
one that has no correlation to the
market has a beta of zero and one
that moves in the opposite direction
has a negative beta.
Beta is the directional movement
in both up and down markets. For
example, if stocks move exactly the
same as the market, both up and
down, the beta is one. If they move
twice as far as the market then
they have a beta of two. They’re
still correlated to the market,
because they’re moving in the same
direction, but farther, and on both
sides, up and down.
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High beta stocks are more volatile.
So if you’re worried about the
market, you may want to find a
fund or an investment that shows
lower beta. Further, if you’re looking
at an investment with a beta of
one, you might want to consider
whether it’s worth paying a big
management fee.
Risk-Adjusted Returns
G
oing into an investment, people seem to understand clearly that there’s
a relationship between risk and reward. Higher-risk investments tend to
have higher returns. But in hindsight, people tend to forget that relationship and instead look only at the absolute returns and say, “I wish I
had been in that asset class, because it paid more.” Then they’ll chase the one that
delivered better returns last year.
That’s a mistake on numerous levels. Most importantly, it tends to ignore how much
risk a manager took on to achieve the return. That’s what the risk-adjusted return
means. You might well say that a conservative manager who generated a five percent
return is actually a better manager than one who got a seven percent return but was
investing in very risky stocks all along.
How do you measure risk? Academics tend to equate risk and volatility, and it’s an
important relationship to understand. Other valuable traditional return metrics include
Sharpe and Sortino ratios (described below).
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Sharpe and Sortino Ratios
here are a number of ways to
measure risk-adjusted returns
that can be invaluable to investors looking to evaluate alternative portfolio managers. The most
common is the Sharpe ratio, which
takes a manager’s returns and divides
it by the risk that he or she took to get
those returns. The lower the risk, the
lower the denominator, so a higher
Sharpe ratio generally equates to a
better-quality manager.
Of course, consistency isn’t everything.
Sharpe ratio shortchanges managers
who deliver large but irregular gains.
There’s another version of the same idea
called the Sortino ratio. Instead of penalizing the manager for all volatility, the
Sortino ratio only penalizes the manager
for downside volatility. After all, no one
minds volatility on the upside, right? This
makes the Sortino ratio a more interesting metric to me, and one that I prefer to
the Sharpe ratio for exactly that reason.
Of course, that still requires finding
an objective way of measuring risk.
Academics equate risk and volatility.
They look backward and, if a manager
has had erratic returns, they say that’s
indicative of risk. So if you want to boil
down Sharpe ratio, you might even
say it’s returns divided by consistency
because the Sharpe ratio really rewards
you for consistency of returns.
Both Sharpe and Sortino ratios offer
excellent ways to measure risk-adjusted returns but, however you measure
them, keep in mind that it doesn’t pay
to look only at gross returns. It is essential to weigh the amount of risk that a
manager took to generate those returns
in the first place.
“In recent years, stocks have been highly correlated to each other, regardless
of which section of the style box you chose, which has reduced their utility
as the backbone of a truly diversified portfolio.”
Correlation
There are three major categories of REITs. Equity REITs are the traditional “apple pie”
REITs. Mortgage REITs are a little racier—a higher-octane type of investment. And then
there are non-traded REITs, a riskier, less-illiquid investment that I think investors would
want to consider very carefully before investing.
The classic REITs, publicly traded equity REITs, may own or lease property. There are
subcategories of publicly traded equity that invest in specific areas like health-care
facilities, hotels or entertainment properties, for example.
Mortgage REITs tend to be a pure interest-rate play. They borrow with short-term
money and invest in mortgages, which are long-term instruments. That tends to
work well while interest rates are moving in a particular direction. During these
periods mortgage REITs can provide healthy returns. If interest rates start to reverse
quickly, however, they can be extremely volatile.
Ideally, your portfolio will include investments that are uncorrelated to the
stock market as well as uncorrelated
to each other. While, in a true crisis,
correlations of many asset classes tend
to come together, most of the time
we’re not experiencing a true crisis. In
the majority of market environments,
a well-diversified portfolio is very important. In crisis conditions, however,
divergent strategies like global macro
or long-short strategies can provide
less correlated returns.
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| VID EO TR AN SCRI P TS
A
REIT is a passive investment company in the sense that it can’t go out
and develop real estate. Instead, it’s taking in rents and other types of
income streams from real estate projects. It is not taxable at the corporate level, which is a great benefit, and it is required to pass the majority of its income directly to investors every year. As a result, REITs can produce nice
annual yields.
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Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
orrelation is the degree to which
investments move in lockstep
with each other. It is the enemy
of diversification, because
what most people want is a variety of
investments that perform differently in
different economic conditions. In recent
years, stocks have been highly correlated
to each other, regardless of which section of the style box you choose, which
has reduced their utility as the backbone
of a truly diversified portfolio.
“But most investors don’t need 100% liquidity. When was
the last time you liquidated your entire portfolio in a day?”
I
Illiquidity Premium
nvestors have a huge preference for liquid investments,
and it’s easy to understand why. But sometimes liquid is
not better. If you gave me two investment options that
were precisely identical but one was liquid and one was
illiquid, of course, I would take the liquid one. But we live in
a capitalist society, and the laws of economics apply. Liquidity
drives prices higher.
If you truly require complete liquidity in your portfolio, then
you must have it, regardless of what the expected returns
look like. But most investors don’t need 100% liquidity.
When was the last time you liquidated your entire portfolio
in a day? It’s rare. The point is, if you can withstand some
illiquidity, why not spend some of your investment dollars in
less-liquid investments and get lower multiples and better
expected returns?
That extra you’re going to earn for choosing to tie up your
capital is called the illiquidity premium. It’s important to
remember, of course, that just because something is illiquid
doesn’t make it a great investment. But fearing illiquidity is
its own trap that, over time, can drive poorer overall investment performance.
What are some examples? The most traditional less-liquid
asset class for public investors is real estate. Institutional investors look at private equity, venture capital, oil and gas drilling,
other kinds of investments that will pay back over time, but
which are not liquid on day one.
From Defined Benefit to Defined Contribution Plans
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e’re seeing the decline of
private defined benefit
plans continue... to
decline. More and more
workers have to rely on 401(k) and other
types of defined contribution plans
instead. So what should plan sponsors
and fiduciaries be thinking about?
The retirement industry has shifted over
time from defined benefit to defined
contribution plans such as 401(k) plans.
As more and more workers are relying
on defined contribution plans to fund
retirement, plan sponsors need to be
thinking about how to present the best
possible retirement outcomes. What
concerns me right now is that, as we’ve
moved away from defined benefit
plans, we’ve shifted investment respon-
sibility from professional managers with
the entire universe of investment options available to them to employees. In
doing so, we’ve also limited the number
of investment tools available to them to
prepare for retirement.
for in traditional retirement planning.
Target date options mitigate market
timing risk, but they don’t address the
core issues of a very fully valued stock
market, of duration and interest rates,
and of bond valuations.
Specifically, I think that many fiduciaries
and plan participants are confusing two
ideas that are very different: familiarity
and safety. Just because something
is familiar doesn’t mean it’s safe and
effective for retirement planning. In the
world we’re in right now the traditional
idea of migrating to a 60/40 portfolio
over time can create potential risk.
Bonds offer interest rate and duration
risk today. People nearing retirement
today could see bond valuations fall
significantly, something not accounted
To me, the solution is to look back to the
defined benefit world and evaluate the
planning tools and solutions that were
available, that we’ve lost in the defined
contribution world. Why shouldn’t plan
participants have the opportunity to
invest in long-short funds to mitigate
risk? Why shouldn’t they have exposure
to private equity or emerging markets
debt? Why have we taken those options
away simply because we’ve pushed the
responsibility over to the participant?
For the full video selection visit www.practicalalternative.com.
New Solutions for a Changed World
The world has changed dramatically in recent years and the traditional investment
paradigm no longer works as advertised. Fortunately, the industry is catching up with
the times, and investors of all stripes now have access to a much broader tool set than
was once available, enabling them to diversify their portfolios beyond equities and fixed
income. Given a difficult, more choppy environment with persistent low rates, adopting
a more panoramic portfolio that includes allocations to alternative strategies, can help
investors address their persistent portfolio challenges.
A Practical Alternative and The Language of Investing™
Neuberger Berman engages with thousands of advisors
and their clients every day. The challenge of developing
an outcome-oriented portfolio is a driving force behind
the firm’s PRACTICAL ALTERNATIVE program—
education for advisors.
Working with Bob Rice,
Neuberger Berman is bringing
its message of understanding
alternatives and non-traditional
strategies to a wider audience.
| VI DE O TRA NSCR IP TS
company (the successor to his
own startup); and a trial lawyer
for the U.S. Department of
Justice. He currently serves on
boards of registered investment
advisors that manage over
$2 billion of assets.
3
Bob Rice is a recognized expert
in the world of alternative
investments. He is the author
of The Wall Street Journal bestseller, The Alternative Answer,
and a frequent guest on national
business news programs. He has
25 years of experience of the alternatives world: as a lawyer, investment manager, banker and
entrepreneur. Bob has served
as a financial products partner
at Milbank Tweed; the CEO
of a publicly traded technology
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