Rebecca Baldridge
From marketing collateral to white papers, research, digital copy and more, Rebecca has conceptualized, crafted and edited financial content across asset classes and distribution channels. She contributes regularly to Forbes Advisor and Business Insider as well as numerous other publications. Here is her portfolio of published work. Her latest piece for Forbes delves into the intricacies of investing in fine wine.
Global Innovation Centers This brochure highlights how BNY Mellon seeks to fuel innovation through collaboration.
Build Bridges This short paper from Capital Group seeks to help financial advisors identify prospective retirement plan clients.
Hedging Currency Exposure This two-page note outlines the long-term benefits of hedging currency exposure in Franklin Templeton’s Mutual Global Discover Fund.
Innovation Investing This white paper discusses how investing in innovation is the key to growth in the Franklin Templeton DynaTech Fund.
CFAI Infographic This infographic highlights results from a survey conducted by the CFA Institute.
MDM Annual Report The 2005 annual report for MDM Bank, headquartered in Moscow, Russia.
Municipal Bonds A short topic paper on developments in the municipal bond market.
Russia Retail Report A comprehensive industry report prepared for a Moscow-based, American-owned hedge fund.
S&A Global Contrarian A newsletter highlighting some of the most notable contrarian trades of all time.
Volatility Surface Product sheet for a Thomson Reuters tool that generates implied volatility surface charts for equity derivatives traders.
Cross Border M&A This white paper, based on research by the Economist Intelligence Unit, discusses trends in cross-border M&A transactions.
In from the Cold This book on Russia’s capital markets was written by multiple experts. Rebecca Baldridge contributed the chapter on corporate governance. She also edited the book in cooperation with Dr. Peter Westin, then of Aton.
Thomas Lavrakas
Samples of editing are a bit of a gray area: they are only effective as a before-and-after proposition, in which one disdainfully reveals the client’s pile of infelicities and fawns over the polished jewel that emerged from one’s own hands. It’s a bit rude to the authors, brainy types without fail, and could well violate confidentiality agreements. Fortunately, our Head of Editorial is also a freelance writer, and over the last two years he has ghostwritten over 1,000 pages for one of Quartet’s clients. Lately, they’ve been giving him a byline, offering Thomas a chance to show his flair and level-headed business sense. Here are three of his most recent articles:
Shifting Sands: Coronavirus, Regulatory Changes and the Insurance Business
Insurance brokers are developing creative solutions – of Gordian complexity, at times – to serve clients in an era of extreme regulatory change, most recently driven by the government’s response to COVID-19. The challenge, explains Thomas, is to keep clients and agents alike from getting lost in the trees. In a memorable style that’s easy for an over-informed audience to digest, he provides a sound foundation for grasping the latest shifts, along with the techniques used to positively exploit them.
Advisory Expertise: Aiding Clients Worried About Unemployment
This article is part of a series launched by Thomas to help financial industry operatives – advisors, estate planners, insurance agents and all the rest – serve specific niches of their client base. Advisory Expertise has addressed marketing and business communications techniques, managing clients’ personal crises (death, marriage, even mental health) and modalities for maintaining long-term client relationships, among many others.
Don’t Be Scared, Be Prepared: Short-Term Succession Planning Issues in the Coronavirus Era
Writing during the worst moments of the coronavirus scourge, Thomas encouraged readers – professionals and their clients alike – to think hard and act fast to master the crisis. Lessons learned in these hard times can carry over when business returns to the usual, much to the benefit of those who seize the opportune moment.
Davíd Lavie
For close to a quarter-century, Davíd has done three things for satisfied clients in the realms of finance, law, marketing and the arts: translation, editing, writing. He authors evergreen financial content for leading publications, including Forbes Advisor, Yahoo Finance, Robb Report, Business Insider and Seeking Alpha.
Culture and the Arts
Davíd has won commissions to translate records of major events in the arts, such as the Sotheby’s catalog for the once-in-a-generation sale of the Forbes collection of Fabergé eggs to Viktor Vekselberg.
Law
For one habitually high-stakes project, Davíd selected and managed a team of ten from Ukraine, Russia, the US and Canada – ensuring that a 200K-word, fluid, sensitive text for a then ongoing, high-profile international court case was conveyed into English at the highest level of fidelity in weeks.
Finance
Working closely with clients’ DTP departments, Davíd has translated the annual reports of some of Russia’s largest blue-chip companies – RAO UES, Severstal, Polymetal, Atomredmetzoloto, et al – as well as hundreds of financial research publications into English.
Publishing
Davíd was the developmental editor on two finance-focused books: Mastering the Moneyed Mind, a Wall Street psychologist’s guide to surviving in a money-mad world, and Out of The Red: Diary of a Post-Soviet Investor, a history of Russia’s financial sector, 1998-2012, written from the trenches by the founder of a prominent Russian hedge fund. An excerpt from the book proposal he created for Mastering the Moneyed Mind tells the reader that, “Money can leaven or leaden a life, make or break a worldview, build someone up or hold them up on the way to balance and contentment. In the pages that follow we will meet people elevated by money’s sway and swayed by its power to corrupt and eviscerate the soul; we will witness a cavalcade of sane, decent folks turned into compulsive addicts, hard-working strivers choked by getting what they wished for – their inner balance disturbed by money’s force field, their minds discombobulated by its propensity to put values, beliefs and relationships to the test. We will also have a chance to cheer for them from our court-side seats, as they struggle back to reality, normality, psychological health and truly successful lives."
Science
Davíd is the editor of record on a series of cutting-edge research papers coming out of the MBA Program at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Here are two recent papers:
Temporal Trends in the Linguistic Complexity of Financial Reporting An analysis of studies that have found relationships between the readability of financial reporting – whose steady erosion in recent decades poses a substantial challenge to the efficient-market hypothesis – and corporate performance in different domains.
Word of Mouth in the Diffusion of Digital Products in Online Social Networks: Broadcast vs. Peer-to-Peer. A sui generis work proposing a theory and methods to understand the role of word-of-mouth mechanisms in the adoption of new products.
Blogging
Enjoy Davíd’s recent pieces on topics as varied as crypto, wealth management, bank insurance and belonging.
Don’t miss his latest take on finance people and the people who love them – in Quartet’s The Journal.
