U.S. Dollar Cost Of Funds Index 0.921% At 5 Years, Up 0.036% Today
Bonds, Portfolio Strategy, Banks, risk management
Seeking Alpha Analyst Since 2009
Donald R. van Deventer is a Managing Director in the Center for Applied Quantitative Finance at SAS Institute, Inc. Prior to the acquisition of Kamakura Corporation by SAS on June 24, 2022, Dr. van Deventer was the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Kamakura Corporation. He founded the Kamakura Corporation in April, 1990. The second edition of his book, Advanced Financial Risk Management (with Kenji Imai and Mark Mesler) was published in 2013. Dr. van Deventer was senior vice president in the investment banking department of Lehman Brothers (then Shearson Lehman Hutton) from 1987 to 1990. During that time, he was responsible for 27 major client relationships including Sony, Canon, Fujitsu, NTT, Tokyo Electric Power Co., and most of Japan's leading banks. From 1982 to 1987, Dr. van Deventer was the treasurer for First Interstate Bancorp in Los Angeles. In this capacity he was responsible for all bond financing requirements, the company’s commercial paper program, and a multi-billion dollar derivatives hedging program for the company. Dr. van Deventer was a Vice President in the risk management department of Security Pacific National Bank from 1977 to 1982. Dr. van Deventer holds a Ph.D. in Business Economics, a joint degree of the Harvard University Department of Economics and the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. He was appointed to the Harvard University Graduate School Alumni Association Council in 1999 and served through 2021. Dr. van Deventer was Chairman of the Council for four years from 2012 to 2016. From 2005 through 2009, he served as one of two appointed directors of the Harvard Alumni Association representing the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Dr. van Deventer also holds a degree in mathematics and economics from Occidental College, where he graduated second in his class, summa cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa. Dr. van Deventer speaks Japanese and English.
The U.S. Dollar Cost of Funds IndexTM measures the trade-weighted cost of funds for the largest deposit-taking U.S. bank holding companies. The index is a credit spread, measured in percent and updated daily, over the matched maturity U.S. Treasury yield on the same day. The current bank holding companies used in determining the index are Bank of America Corporation (BAC), Citigroup Inc. (C), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), and Wells Fargo & Company (WFC). The index is an independent market-based alternative to the Libor-swap curve that has traditionally been used by many banks as an estimate of their marginal cost of funds. Kamakura Corporation is the calculation agent, and the underlying bond price data is provided by TRACE and the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Today's on the run values for the U.S. Dollar Cost of Funds Index are shown below.
Disclosure: The author has no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.