Robert C. Pozen, who chairs the SEC Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting, is chairman of MFS Investment Management, which manages over $200 billion in assets for over five million investors worldwide.
During 2002 and 2003, Bob was the John Olin Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, teaching interdisciplinary courses on corporate governance and financial institutions. He also serves as a senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School.
In late 2001 and 2002, Bob served on President Bush’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security. He developed two models for closing the system’s long-term deficit: “Retiring on a Budget”, New York Times (Feb 2004), and “Arm Yourself for the Coming Battle over Social Security,” Harvard Business Review (Nov 2002). More recently, Bob’s proposal to restore solvency to Social Security, known as progressive indexing, has been endorsed by President Bush.
In 2003, Bob also served as Secretary of Economic Affairs for Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. He helped the Governor close the state’s large budget gap and reorganize its functions in business and technology, labor and workforce training and consumer affairs. In addition, he supervised the banking and insurance departments.
Bob was formerly vice chairman of Fidelity Investments and president of Fidelity Management & Research Company, the investment advisor to the Fidelity mutual funds. During Bob’s five years as president, Fidelity’s assets increased from $500 billion to $900 billion. From 1987 to 1996, Bob was managing director and general counsel of Fidelity Investments. In that role, he created Fidelity’s Charitable Gift Fund, launched Fidelity’s entry into the Japanese mutual fund business, and served as a director of its credit card bank.
Before joining Fidelity, Bob was a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Caplin & Drysdale, where he led the banking/securities department from 1981 to 1986. Prior to that, Bob was associate general counsel to the Securities & Exchange Commission from 1978 to 1980. Bob also was a law professor at Georgetown and New York University from 1973 through 1977.
In 1968, Bob graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College, which awarded him a Knox Traveling Fellowship. In 1972 Bob received a law degree from Yale Law School, where he served on the editorial board of the Yale Law Journal. In 1973, he received a JSD from Yale for his doctoral thesis on state enterprises in Africa.
Bob is an outside director of Medtronics, Inc. and Bell Canada. In addition, he is involved with various non-profit organizations, such as the Harvard Neuro-Discovery Center and the Commonwealth Fund. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of two commissions on global competitiveness. He was recently named chairman of a new SEC advisory committee on improving financial reporting.
Bob has published on a wide variety of subjects. In particular, he authored the first textbook comparing the regulation of banks to other financial institutions and the main textbook on the mutual fund business. He has also published articles on labor statistics (New York Times, July 8, 2003), health care (Boston Herald, March 20, 2005), hedge funds (Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2005), retirement plans (Wall Street Journal, November 15, 2006), earnings guidance (New York Times, March 3, 2007), and global capital markets (Financial Times, April 26, 2007).
Born in 1946, Bob lives in Boston, Massachusetts with his wife Liz, a psychotherapist and figurative artist. They have two adult children, Joanna and David.
