The 2005 UCLA Anderson AASM Conference will feature the following panels:

Investment Management at the Personal Level
Themes and Topics: Personal investment management among the African American community has seen some disturbing trends in recent years. Savings rates among the community are at an all time low, which is going to lead to tremendous problems as expected life-spans continue to increase. If these trends do not change, an entire class of elderly citizens will be left without means to support themselves through their later years. Part of the blame for these trends rests in the poor levels of education in wealth management and wealth creation. Instead of allocating disposable income to savings and investments, people are consuming their wealth on items that do not hold value. This panel will focus on these trends and the efforts being made to reverse them.
Speaker: Prominent African-American financial advisor with urban community focus.

Investment Management at the Community Level
Themes and Topics: Many financial institutions that serve African American communities are committed to a double bottom line: profitability and community development. Through financial services, loans and other development activity, these socially responsible financial institutions work to ensure that underserved communities have the necessary inflows of capital to support homeownership and small business development, the traditional American vehicles for upward mobility. Novel financial products such as community reinvestment notes, development deposits, micro-loans and small business incubators are attracting new influxes of seed capital into African American communities. This panel will focus on how this new market can be encouraged and harnessed.
Panelists: Representative from the SBA, owner of local black owned bank, local small business owner, representative from a micro-lender/socially responsible bank, and member of Inglewood city council.

Investment Management at the Entrepreneurs Level
Themes and Topics: While government agencies like MESBIC and the SBA have historically provided loans and equity for African American businesses, these agencies have recently shifted their investment screening mechanisms in an effort to focus on businesses with existing revenue streams of over $1 million; these types of firms make up only 3% of all minority owned businesses. Unfortunately, highly innovative firms pursuing new technologies do not tend to fit this profile which means that African American entrepreneurs pursuing high tech endeavors have one less potential source of capital. Additionally, African American owned firms continue to be under-represented in the portfolios of venture capital and private equity firms. This panel will focus on the issue of where innovating African American entrepreneurs are going to go for equity investment in risky new ventures and whether or not opportunities exist to help foster entrepreneurial risk-taking.
Panelists: Member of venture capital and private equity community as well as local entrepreneurs.

Social Responsibility at the Corporate Level
Themes and Topics: As multi-billion dollar corporations and investment management funds continue to generate supernormal returns as a result of their consumers and the environment created by our societal systems, more corporate initiatives have started to focus on fulfilling civic responsibility obligations. These efforts have manifested themselves in myriad ways, ameliorating problems at both the individual and community level. While a homebuilder like KB Home focuses its efforts on improving urban communities through real estate initiatives, a company like Arial Capital Management has focused its efforts on educational initiatives. This panel will focus on trends in the types of socially responsible activities being pursued at the corporate level as well as trends in the participation rate among corporations.
Panelists: Investment fund executive, executive from KB Home, executive from GE capital, and community development officer from General Mills.