Lessons from the Tate - investment committees
Tags: Finance for trustees
Heather Lamont
Heather Lamont is a client investment director at CCLA, who has worked in voluntary sector management since qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1992. She has held senior positions as a charity finance director, chief executive, and auditor, and for five years was editor of Charity Finance magazine.
Since 2005 she has focused on investment management, joining CCLA in July 2008 from the charities team at HSBC. Heather is a trustee of three different charities.
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Heather Lamont sets out measures for creating good investment expertise on your board.
With the immediate shock of the credit crisis receding, charity investors are taking stock of the damage and working on recovery plans, says Heather Lamont.
In many charities, trustees seem to forget the principle of collective decision-making and collective responsibility when it comes to financial matters.
In many charities, trustees seem to forget the principle of collective decision-making and collective responsibility when it comes to financial matters.
Heather Lamont asks whether the recent stock market revival reflects a sustainable economic recovery, or a return to boom and bust. After an extended period of share prices declines, especially over the winter of 2008-09, this spring equities at last began to show an improvement. What investors want to know now is whether the recent rally marks the beginning of a sustained recovery, or whether we should be bracing ourselves for a relapse.
This time last year, many charities were enjoying interest income of five per cent or more from their cash holdings. With the dramatic fall in the Bank of England base rate to historic lows, this year's budgets look markedly different. How should we respond?
For some endowed charities, falling stock markets may bring serious problems – and not just on paper. The severe decline in share prices over the last two years is bad news for just about every charity with investments. Nevertheless, if you are a genuinely long-term investor with no intention of selling equities in the near future, you may be able to remain calm while the storm passes over. Even as their share prices fall, plenty of companies are still paying dividends, and it is to this income that many charities look when budgeting their annual expenditure.
It seems like yesterday that Heather Lamont and I were scratching our heads to devise the structures and processes for the Charity Awards. In fact it was a prior millennium and this year on 11 June is its tenth anniversary. How time flies when you’re having fun! The programme we put together then has proved robust and rigorous and has required virtually no amendment over the past decade. It sets out to identify and celebrate excellence in charities and to promote the conviction that well planned, effective management leads to better outcomes for beneficiaries and more efficient use of scarce resources.