Russell R. Wermers
Education
Ph.D. and M.B.A., finance, UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management
Summary of Experience
Professor Wermers is an expert on the hedge fund, pension fund, and mutual fund industries. His research interests include investment fund performance measurement, the impact of mutual funds on stock markets, closed-end funds, empirical tests of the efficiency of stock markets, and the role of institutional investors in setting security prices. Professor Wermers’s research has created new methods of measuring and attributing the performance of investment fund managers. His work also addresses whether investment managers who actively manage portfolios can consistently outperform passively managed funds. Professor Wermers has served as an expert witness in numerous matters, including challenges to mutual fund fees (Sivolella v. AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company) and ERISA class action cases challenging the selection and retention of investment funds for defined-contribution plans (Pledger v. Reliance Trust Company, Ramos v. Banner Health, and Baird v. BlackRock Institutional Trust Company). In Ramos, the judge credited his testimony with supporting the reasonableness of the Fidelity Freedom funds. He has also consulted to asset management companies and US government agencies. Professor Wermers was appointed to and serves as a member of the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Asset Management Advisory Committee, which was formed in 2019. He is coauthor of Performance Evaluation and Attribution of Security Portfolios, a scientific textbook on measuring portfolio manager performance.