Patricia Dunn, 46
Chairman, Barclays Global Investors
"It's a tough, disillusioning message that investors don't like to believe. Academic studies that try gauging the real performance of pension funds always have to rely on estimates and fudge factors because they can't get the hard data. That's because in this industry, all the information we rely on to obtain a sense of performance comes from the sellers of investment services. None of it shows the experience of the buyers.
"If I had all the time and access to all the information in the world, I'd create the definitive source of information on the performance realized by investors, as opposed to investment managers. I'd throw away all the performance data that investment managers and consultants publish and instead ask the pensions funds: What has your actual performance been over the past 10 to 20 years, taking into account all the changes you've made in your investment manager lineup, and all the fees and other costs that have been paid? You'd see a completely different performance picture than the one we carry around in our minds."
