Richard Johns, executive director of the Structured Finance Industry Group, injected some levity at the opening panel of IMN's ABS Vegas conference Tuesday morning with a Family Feud-style game pitting a team of issuers against a team of investors.
Using buzzers, investors and issuers tackled a number of weighty and not-so-weighty topics related to structured finance, such as which asset class would be the next big thing (marketplace lending, also called peer-to-peer lending, was the number one answer) and what excites a securitization lawyer the most ('nothing' made the top five list).
It was a lighter moment in a four-day conference that has otherwise been dominated by discussions of the impact that regulation is having on various asset classes.
Bob Behal, principal and co-head of ABS/CMBS investments at Vanguard Group, ended the session on a more serious note, however.
“We are just trying to do the right thing for our shareholders,” he said. The prospect of helping people get to college with their invested funds is what Behal said drove him to enter the regulatory ring and get investors a better deal in the changing securitization environment.
Incidentally, the investor team won.
