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Carol Blackwell, CFA, has been hired to manage trust assets for Blanchard Investments. Blanchard's trust manager, Thaddeus Baldwin, CFA, has worked in the securities business for more than 50 years. On Blackwell's first day at the office, Baldwin gives her several instructions.
Instruction 1: Limit risk by avoiding stock options.
Instruction 2: Above all, ensure that our clients' capital is kept safe.
Instruction 3: We take pride in our low cost structure, so avoid unnecessary transactions.
Instruction 4: Remember that every investment must have the quality to stand on its own.
Baldwin realizes that many of the firm's practices and policies would benefit from a compliance check. Because Blackwell recently received her CFA charter, Baldwin tells her she is the 'perfect person to work with the compliance officer to update the policy on proxy voting and the procedures to comply with Standard VI(B) Priority of Transactions.' Baldwin also wants Blackwell to evaluate whether the firm wants to, or can, claim compliance with the soft dollar standards. Baldwin hands Blackwell a handwritten outline he created, which includes the following statements:
Statement 1: CFA Institute's soft-dollar rules are not mandatory. In any case, ' client brokerage can be used to pay for a portion of mixed-use research.
Statement 2: Investment firms can use client brokerage to purchase research that does not immediately benefit the client. Commissions generated by outside trades are considered soft dollars, but commissions from internal trading desks are not.
During a local society luncheon, Blackwell is seated next to CFA candidate Lucas Walters, who has been assigned the task of creating a compliance manual for Borchard & Sons, a small brokerage firm. Walters asks for her advice.
When Walters returns to work, he is apprised of the following situation: Borchard & Sons purchased 25,000 shares of CBX Corp. for equity manager Quintux Quantitative just minutes before the money manager called back and said it meant to buy 25,000 shares of CDX Corp. Borchard then purchased CDX shares for Quintux, but not before shares of CBX Corp. declined by 1.5%. The broker is holding the CBX shares in its own inventory.
Borchard proposes three methods for dealing with the trading error.
Method 1: Quintux directs additional trades to Borchard worth a dollar value equal to the amount of the trading loss.
Method 2: Borchard receives investment research from Quintux in exchange for Borchard covering the costs of the trading error.
Method 3: Borchard transfers the ordered CBX shares in its inventory to Quintux, which allocates them to all of its clients on a pro-rata basis.
When updating the proxy-voting policy to conform to CFA Institute recommendations, which of the following recommendations is least appropriate for Blanchard to adopt?
The Wyroman International Pension Fund includes a $65 million fixed-income portfolio managed by Susan Evermore, CFA, of Brighton Investors. Evermore is in the process of constructing a binomial interest-rate tree that generates arbitrage-free values for on-the-run Treasury securities. She plans to use the tree to value more complex bonds with embedded options. She starts out by observing that the yield on a one-year Treasury security is 4.0%. She determines in her initial attempt to price the two-year Treasury security that the value derived from the model is higher than the Treasury security's current market price.
After several iterations Evermore determines that the interest rate tree that correctly values the one and two-year Treasury securities has a rate of 5.0% in the lower node at the end of the first year and a rate of 7.5% in the upper node at the end of the first year. She uses this tree to value a two-year 6% coupon bond with annual coupon payments that is callable in one year at 99.50. She determines that the present value at the end of the first year of the expected value of the bond's remaining cash flows is $98.60 if the interest rate is 7.5% and $100.95 if the interest rate is 5.0%.
Note: Assume Evermore's calculations regarding the two-year 6?llable bond are correct
Evermore also uses the same interest rate tree to price a 2-year 6% coupon bond that is putable in one year, and value the embedded put option. She concludes that if the yield volatility decreases unexpectedly, the value of the putable bond will increase and the value of the embedded put option will also increase, assuming all other inputs are unchanged.

Christopher Robinson, chairman of the board of directors for a private endowment fund, believes that the endowment fund for which he is responsible has diverged too far from its stated objectives. Over several years the board has increased the size of the fund's equity position beyond the stated limits of the investment policy statement. In an effort to realign the fund's investments, Robinson has elected to choose a mortgage-backed security (MBS) for inclusion in the endowment's portfolio. After surveying the MBS market, Robinson has selected four MBS securities to present as potential investments at the next investment committee meeting. Details on the selected MBS securities are presented below:

Valentine notes that a share of Trailblazer's stock is currently priced at $32. Moreover, she expects the dividend for next year to be $1.47 and forecasts that the price of one share of Trailblazer stock at the end of the year wilt be $35.
In her report, Valentine makes the following statements about Trailblazer dividends:
Statement 1: Trailblazer is expected to pay a dividend next year and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Statement 2: The required rate of return for Trailblazer stock will likely exceed the growth rate of its dividends.
Statement 3: Trailblazer is in a mature sector of its industry, and accordingly,
I expect dividends to decline to a constant rate of 4% indefinitely.
In speaking to a colleague at her firm, Valentine makes the following additional statements after her report is released:
Statement 4: Trailblazer has a 10-year history of paying regular quarterly dividends.
Statement 5: Over a recent 10-year period, Trailblazer has experienced one 3-year period of consecutive losses and another period of two annual losses in a row but has been extremely profitable in the remaining five years.
Valentine is concerned about the theoretical validity of using the APT to obtain an estimate of the required rate of return on equity. She decides to attend a conference dealing specifically with estimation techniques that analysts can employ. At one of the conference seminars, the following points are made:
Statement 6: The APT is a better approach than the CAPM because even though the factor risk premiums are difficult to estimate, the CAPM is more problematic because it relies on a single market risk premium estimate, which in turn leads to greater input uncertainty.
Statement 7: Model uncertainty is a problem with the APT but not with the CAPM.
Valentine is also analyzing the stock of Farwell, Inc. Farwell shares are currently trading at $48 based on current earnings of $4 and a current dividend of $2.60. Dividends are expected to grow at 5% per year indefinitely. The risk-free rate is 3.5%, the market risk premium is 4.5%, and Farwell's beta is estimated to be 1.2.
Are Statements 6 and 7 correct?
Galena Petrovich, CFA, is an analyst in the New York office of TRS Investment Management, Inc. Petrovich is an expert in the industrial electrical equipment sector and is analyzing Fisher Global. Fisher is a global market leader in designing, manufacturing, marketing, and servicing electrical systems and components, including fluid power systems and automotive engine air management systems.
Fisher has generated double-digit growth over the past ten years, primarily as the result of acquisitions, and has reported positive net income in each year. Fisher reports its financial results using International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
Petrovich is particularly interested in a transaction that occurred seven years ago, before the change in accounting standards, in which Fisher used the pooling method to account for a large acquisition of Dartmouth Industries, an industry competitor. She would like to determine the effect of using the purchase method instead of the pooling method on the financial statements of Fisher. Fisher exchanged common stock for all of the outstanding shares of Dartmouth.
Fisher also has a 50% ownership interest in a joint venture with its major distributor, a U .S . company called Hydro Distribution. She determines that Fisher has reported its ownership interest under the proportioned consolidation method, and that the joint venture has been profitable since it was established three years ago. She decides to adjust the financial statements to show how the financial statements would be affected if Fisher had reported its ownership under the equity method. Fisher is also considering acquiring 80% to 100% of Brown and Sons Company. Petrovich must consider the effect of such an acquisition on Fisher's financial statements.
Petrovich determines from the financial statement footnotes that Fisher reported an unrealized gain in its most recent income statement related to debt securities that are designated at fair value. Competitor firms following U .S . GAAP classify similar debt securities as available-for-sale.
Finally, Petrovich finds a reference in Fisher's footnotes regarding a special purpose entity (SPE). Fisher has reported its investment in the SPE using the equity method, but Petrovich believes that the consolidation method more accurately reflects Fisher's true financial position, so she makes the appropriate adjustments to the financial statements.
If Fisher Global decides to purchase only 80% of Brown and Sons, under 1FRS they will have the option to:
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