IBC, Comcast, Cozen, Brandywine bosses join Franklin Sq. boards

Vanguard Group may be the nation's top mutual fund complex, with $3 trillion in other people's money and close to the entire industry's growth since 2008. But another Philadelphia fund family, Franklin Square, the Michael Forman-David Adelman partnership whose 220 employees (hiring 10/month) invests more than $12 billion in corporate debt, energy and other specialized investments for its own high-fee funds pitched to investors (in most states: minimum $70,000 yearly income+$70,000 savings, or no income+$250,000 in savings), has scored in signing up some of the most prominent Philadelphians as directors of its own fund group.

According to a list provided by Franklin Square, new directors include:
  Walter Buckley, CEO, Actua (ex-Internet Capital Group): FS Global Credit Opportunities Fund
  Stephen Burdumy, managing partner, Drinker Biddle and Reath LLP, FS Investment Corp. II
  David L. Cohen, executive vice president, Comcast: FS Global
  Walter D'Alessio, chairman, Brandywine Realty Trust, Independence Blue Cross (and a Peco Energy director): FS Energy and Power Fund II 
  Dan Hilferty, CEO, Independence Blue Cross: FS Investment Corp. III
  Steven Irwin, former Pa. Securities Commissioner, president-elect North American Securities Administrators Assoc.: FS Investment Corp. III
  Oliver Mitchell, former Carpenter Technology general counsel and trustee Pa. State Employees' Retirement System, FS Global
  Judah Sommer, former head of government relations at Goldman Sachs and United Healthcare, FS Energy and Power Fund II

Independent directors collect from around $35,000-$135,000/year, depending on how many boards they serve on and meetings they attend.

Why so little overlap among directors, unlike Vanguard and other groups who in the past have used many of the same faces on multiple funds? "This is best practices, based on conversations with the SEC," the man who helps recruit directors, ex-State Rep. Mike Gerber, Franklin Square's newly-promoted executive vice president for administration and public affairs and scion of a well-known Montgomery County family, told me.

Plus, "SEC doesn't like to see people serving on a lot of boards in the same fund complex if it might make them less independent. We don't have to do this but we choose to," Gerber added.

Forman and Adelman serve on all the fund boards and are what the SEC calls "interested directors." Tom Gravina (the GPX investment group) and Michael Heller (CEO of Cozen O'Conner and cofounder Steve Cozen's nephew) are also part of the business and "interested directors" on some of the board.

Previously appointed directors to various of the FS boards also include:
  Barbara Adams, general counsel, Philadelphia Housing Authority
  Brian Ford, director, Drexel, retired partner, Ernst & Young LLP
  Barbara Fouss, former SVP at Sun National Bank
  Michael Hagan, CEO, Lifeshield Security (formerly NutriSystem, VerticalNet)
  Jerel Hopkins, VP, Delaware Management Holdings Inc. (Phlia-based mutual funds co.)
  Mark Lederman, co-founder, NewSpring Capital
  Charles Pizzi, past CEO, Tasty Banking Corp.
  Pedro Ramos, partner, Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis, ex-Phila School Reform Commission chair
  Richard Vague, partner, Gabriel Investments, founder, Energy Plus, ex-boss, First USA Bank
  Richard "Dick" Williams, founder, Valquip, trustee, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.