- Advisory services
- Product/service development or review
- Policies and procedures
- Thought leadership
- Engagement
- Benchmarking
An Actual Capital Markets Thought Leader
Asset owners, asset managers and capital markets participants from the Netherlands to Australia have asked Sinclair to help them adopt policies and procedures aligning their investments to their beliefs about how to keep the capital markets healthy. Why? Sinclair’s principal, Jon Lukomnik, wrote the book about system level Investing. Literally. It’s called “Moving Beyond Modern Portfolio Theory: Investing That Matters”. From creating branded thought leadership to advising in activist situations to assisting fintech start-ups, Sinclair Capital has been the quiet ingredient for success in scores of situations across four continents.
What Can We Do for You?
- Fiduciary Reviews
- Creditor Committee Representation
- Service as Independent Fiduciary
- Crisis Management
Putting Your Money First
Whether it’s reviewing policies, procedures, and their implementation for institutional investors, or jumping headfirst into the restructurings of multi-billion-dollar enterprises, we always act according to fiduciary standards. It’s your money. We just help maximize it.
What Can We Do for You?
- Self-Diagnosis and Firm Positioning
- Product Development
- ESG Integration
- Policy and Procedure Review/Development
Differentiated Actionable Advice
Sinclair’s projects succeed because we begin by deeply understanding the client. We suggest how to reach goals in an actionable way; within the constraints, resources, strengths and sensitivities of the client. Being high-touch means we’re not the least expensive. But it also means our recommendations are adopted and used.
What Can We Do for You?
- Corporate Board
- Investment Committee
- Private Company
- Advisory Board
Independent Thinking, Collaborative Output
We are frequently called upon when skilled board members are needed the most — for a start-up, in conflicts, during a crisis, when a major new program/product is due to launch. The result? Our founder, Jon Lukomnik, has been honored three times by the National Association of Corporate Directors.
Jon Lukomnik
The Brandmeyer Fellow and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, Jon Lukomnik is credited by Forbes as “one of the pioneers of modern corporate governance.” He is also one of the creators of system-level investing, which seeks to improve absolute return by addressing systemic risk as well as security selection and portfolio construction.
A long-time institutional investor, Jon has been the investment advisor or fiduciary for more than $100 billion and has reviewed policies and procedures for asset owners and asset managers with aggregate assets under management of more than $1 trillion. Jon chairs the audit committee for the Board of the Van Eck Mutual Funds and serves on the Deloitte Audit Quality Advisory Committee.
He served as Executive Director of the IRRC Institute for more than a decade, commissioning and overseeing 80 research reports examining capital markets issues. In 2020, Jon was the Pembroke Visiting Professor of International Finance at the Judge Business School, Cambridge, U.K. he is a member of the Standards and Emerging Issues Advisory Group of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
Jon co-authored with Professor James P. Hawley, “Moving Beyond Modern Portfolio Theory: Investing That Matters” which provides the academid finance theory behind system-level investing. He is also the co-author of “What They Do With Your Money: How the Financial System Fails Us and How to Fix It,” and “The New Capitalists” (which was a pick of the year by the Financial Times. He has written more than 200 articles for practitioners and academics.
Jon is one of the only people in the world to have run a top ten pension fund (New York City), been a managing director of a top ten hedge fund (CDC), and to have served on the creditors’ committee rehabilitating one of the world’s largest frauds and bankruptcies (WorldCom). He co-fonded the International Corporate Governance Network and Govenance Metrics International (now part of MSCI), was interim chair of the Executive Committee of the Council of Institutional Investors, and has served on various Boards of Directors, advisory committees, official creditors’ committees and litigation trusts.
Jon was awarded the lifetime achievement award from the International Corporate Governance Network and has been honored three times by the National Association of Corporate Directors (US) as one of the 100 most influential people in corporate governance. Other honors include awards from Ethisphere, Global Proxy Watch and others.
Publications
Moving Beyond Modern Portfolio Theory: Investing That Matters tells the story of how Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) revolutionized the investing world and the real economy, but is now showing its age. MPT has no mechanism to understand its impacts on the environmental, social and financial systems, nor any tools for investors to mitigate the havoc that systemic risks can wreck on their portfolios. It’s time for MPT to evolve.
The authors propose a new imperative to improve finance’s ability to fulfil its twin main purposes: providing adequate returns to individuals and directing capital to where it is needed in the economy. They show how some of the largest investors in the world focus not on picking stocks, but on mitigating systemic risks, such as climate change and a lack of gender diversity, so as to improve the risk/return of the market as a whole, despite current theory saying that should be impossible. “Moving beyond MPT” recognizes the complex relations between investing and the systems on which capital markets rely, “Investing that matters” embraces MPT’s focus on diversification and risk adjusted return, but understands them in the context of the real economy and the total return needs of investors.
Whether an investor, an MBA student, a Finance Professor or a sustainability professional, Moving Beyond Modern Portfolio Theory: Investing That Matters is thought-provoking and relevant. Its bold critique shows how the real world already is moving beyond investing orthodoxy.
“This fine book provides remarkable insights into what has gone wrong in our financial institutions and markets. In its call for action by us—we investors who collectively own corporate America—the authors offer clear and actionable steps that we can take to build a corporate world that serves our own interests, not Wall Street’s.” —John C. Bogle, founder and former chief, The Vanguard Group
“Not content simply to identify the problem, the authors propose creative (principles-based) solutions. If you care about the role of finance in today’s economy, read this provocative, compelling book.” —David Swensen, Chief Investment Officer, Yale University
“A new book by three of the best thinkers in financial sustainability . . . does an outstanding job of fusing the public necessity and investor rationale for sustainable investment. . . . The timing of this book is impeccable, and it is required reading.” —Hugh Whelan, ESG Magazine
“Pick of the Year” – Financial Times
“Companies have become as vital to society as governments, but their managers face intensifying pressure to be accountable. Finally, here are insights into the ways investors are making that happen. In The New Capitalists, corporate executives, shareholders, politicians, and citizens alike will find the pointers they need. The reward is nothing less than the chance to make globalization safe for both profit and social equity.” — James D. Wolfensohn, Chairman, Wolfensohn & Company, LLC, and former President of the World Bank
“…a fine, richly reported account of how things do and should work in a very imperfect shareholder democracy.” – BusinessWeek