But a former fund manager who worked at Putnam from the late 1980's into the mid-90's said that he knew many of its managers were trading aggressively for their own accounts while they were managing money for clients.
At first he proposed outsourcing the management of these companies to other outfits, including the Italian utility Enel, and giving these management companies options to buy equity stakes in what they were managing.
"After Shopkorn left, with the size of the assets under management and with the equity exposure they had, we felt they were managing too much money," said Mark Kenyon, the president and chief executive of Union Bancaire Privee Asset Management in New York, a unit of U.B.P., a privately held bank based in Geneva.
Although HFMCs had previously been involved in management of user fee revenues, the total amount of funds they were managing increased with HSSF.
By mid-afternoon, they were managing to keep a step ahead of the voters.
Only 5 percent said they were managing to save toward a deposit.
"But I tried to make sure they understood we had a national asset they were managing".
What seemed clear was that they were managing it better and suffering less.
They were managing to make the functioning democracy in their town a little more productive.
"They were managing it supposedly the same way they were managing everything else, but it wasn't growing the way they said the assets were growing over all," he said.
His grandfather had given them the family house and relatives were helping them, so they were managing, he said.
