Just Two Companies Accounted For Nearly 20% Of The Market's Entire 2019 Return

From Zero Hedge:

Two weeks ago, when looking back at 2019, Morgan Stanley concluded that the observed market action was indicative of one of the most bizarre years ever, because while the S&P ended up returning a whopping 29% in 2019, just shy of 2013's 29.3% and the second best year for the market since 1997, earnings actually dropped, which means that all the market upside came from multiple expansion. There was another bizarre aspect to 2019: it was a year when despite the blockbuster overall return of the S&P, "bullish" strategies actually underperformed.

Now, in his year in review weekly, Goldman's David Kostin makes some observations of his own, and reaches a similar conclusion to that from Morgan Stanley.

For one the S&P 500, which soared started in early October, just around the time the Fed launched QE4, reached 35 new all-time highs last year, with 20 of those days coming in the last two months. US equities also bested other major global markets, outperforming Japan (15%), Europe (23%), and emerging markets (15%).

So far so good, yet what is more notable is how the market reached its impressive returns, and here Goldman confirms what we already knew, namely that valuation expansion drove nearly all of the S&P 500 return in 2019. To wit, according to Goldman earnings growth explains just 8% of the S&P 500 return last year (others disagree, and Morgan Stanley for example observes that earnings were actually negative in 2019 meaning earnings growth subtracted from total returns). Instead, as Kostin notes, "three 25 bp Fed cuts helped lift company valuations. The S&P 500 forward P/E expanded from 14x to 19x and accounted for 92% of the index price gain."

But while it was largely known that the entire market gain was on the back of multiple expansion (and record buybacks), where things get far more interesting is the sectoral composition of the upside: here as Goldman notes, just one sector, Information Technology, posted a 50% total return and accounted for 32% of the S&P 500 index return. Financials contributed 14% to the index return, followed by Communication Services at 11%.

As a reminder, we also know who the source of stock buying was for most of 2019: companies themselves, which in 2018 and 2019 unleashed a record buyback spree, with IT, until recently sporting the most debt flexibility, buying back the most stock of any market sector funded with a tidal wave of debt issuance.

Away from tech, while all sectors posted positive double-digit returns, Energy fared the worst (+12%) due to weak earnings and volatile oil prices, although spot Brent rose by 23% during the year.

But what is most remarkable is just how skewed the market has become in representing the moves of just a handful of what Goldman calls large-cap “superstar” firms, which powered most of the S&P 500 return. While three Semiconductor companies – AMD (+148%), LCRX (+119%), and KLAC (+104%) – were the best-performing S&P 500 stocks, "superstar" firms AAPL (+89%) and MSFT (+58%) were the top two contributors to the S&P 500 index gain. In fact, combined the two firms accounted for nearly a fifth of the entire S&P 500 return, or 17% to be exact, in 2019. Extending that list, just the top 10 companies contributed over 10%, or exactly a third, of the S&P's total 31% return.

Not all superstars soared: regulatory scrutiny and slowing growth weighed on other superstar firms, although it's funny that Goldman says that GOOGL, which was up +28% and AMZN, up+23%, "lagged the index." Because up 28% is just so disappointing. At the opposite end of the spectrum, ABIOMED (-48%), Macy’s (-38%), and Occidental Petroleum (-28%) were the worst performing S&P 500 constituents last year.

What else? Well, as Kostin writes, "the 10th anniversary of the bull market has drawn parallels to the late 1990s."
Indeed, as discussed extensively here previously, in 1998, the Fed delivered 75 bp of “insurance cuts” and the S&P 500 rallied by 27%. And just like now, valuations exploded - from 18x to 23x - and accounted for nearly all of the index return. Furthermore, amid global economic turmoil - also just like now - investors flocked to US stocks. Back then, Russia defaulted on its sovereign debt and the hedge fund LTCM collapsed, as Treasury yields fell from 5.8% to 4.7%. And yes, just like now, Info Tech was also the best-performing sector (+77%) and accounted for 35% of index return.

Looking ahead, Goldman writes that "given the parallels between 1998 and 2019, many investors are looking to history as a potential guide for the future." Specifically, in 1999, the S&P 500 rallied by 20%, a number which Goldman thinks may actually be conservative because unlike late 1990’s, the current forward P/E of 19x is well below the 23x P/E at the start of 1999. Relative to interest rates, the current earnings yield of 5.3% is 341 bp above the 10-year yield of 1.9%. At the start of 1999, the earnings yield of 4.4% was 26 bp below the Treasury yield of 4.7%.

In short, Goldman expects at least another year of superstar returns before the late 1990s comp ends... and everyone remembers what happened in 2000.

What may catalyze the second tech bubble bursting? Perhaps it will be the key political event of 2020 - the November presidential elections. As Goldman concludes, "looking ahead to 2020, politics will be the key focus for investors."

Following the recent rally, we expect S&P 500 will hover around 3250 until November. Prediction markets currently imply that a divided government is the most likely election outcome. Democrats are expected to maintain control of the House (71%), and are slight favorites to win the presidency (52% probability), but appear unlikely to regain control of the Senate (30% likelihood). A divided government would limit the prospect that legislation is passed reversing the 2017 corporate tax cut." 

And while Goldman expects the election to resolve policy uncertainty and lift S&P 500 by 5% to 3400 by year end, should there be a surprise and Democrats succeed in sweeping Washington, and eventually reversing the Trump tax cuts, under a higher corporate tax rate regime, 2021 estimated EPS would equal $162 (v. Goldman's baseline estimate of $183), the P/E would compress to 16x, and S&P 500 would end at 2600.

Of course, now that Trump knows just how to manipulate the market, stocks may soon explode higher as the president dangles "optimism" over a Phase 2 deal, which may potentially push the S&P as high as 3,600 - 4,000 by the election, before the Fed finally admits it has blown the world's biggest ever asset bubble and everything comes crashing down. The only question is whether Powell will follow the advice of Bill Dudley and burst the bubble before the election, or does so just after.

Helicopter Money Is Here: How The Fed Monetized Billions In Debt Sold Just Days Earlier

From Zero Hedge 1/2/2020

The Fed's charter prohibits its from directly purchasing bonds or bills issued by the US Treasury: that process is also known as monetization and various Fed chairs have repeatedly testified under oath to Congress that the Fed does not do it. Of course, the alternative is what is known as "Helicopter Money", when the central bank directly purchases bonds issued by the Treasury and forms the backbone of the MMT monetary cult.

But what if there is at a several day interval between Treasury issuance and subsequent purchase? Well, that's perfectly legal, and it's something the Fed has done not only during QE1, QE2 and QE3, but is continuing to do now as part of its "QE4/NOT QE." 

Here's how.

On December 16, the US Treasury sold $36 billion in T-Bills with a 182-day term, maturing on June 18, 2020, with CUSIP SV2. And, as shown in the Treasury Direct snapshot below, of the total $34.3 billion in competitive purchases, Dealers acquired $23.7 billion.

What happened next?

For the answer we go to the Fed's POMO page, which shows which specific T-Bill CUSIPs were purchased by its markets desk on any given POMO day when Dealers sell up to $7.5 billion in Bills to the Fed.

Exhibit 1: on December 19, just three days after the above T-Bill was issued and on the very day the issue settled (Dec 19), Dealers flipped the same Bills they bought from the Treasury back to the Fed for an unknown markup. Specifically, of the $7.5BN in total POMO, the SV2 CUSIP which had been issued earlier that week, represented the biggest bond "put" to the Fed, amounting to $3.9 billion, more than half of the total POMO on that day, and by far the most of any CUSIP sold to the NY Fed's markets desk on that day.

But wait, there's more.

Exhibit 2: during the next POMO conducted the very next day, or December 20, and just four days after the issuance of T-Bill SV2, which as a reminder saw $23.7 billion in Dealer purchase, those same Dealers flipped more of the same Bills they "bought" from the Treasury back to the Fed. Why? To once again pocket the unspecific markup the Fed generously provided to them just because they are Dealers. Of the $7.5BN in total POMO held on Dec 20, the SV2 CUSIP once again represented the single biggest bond "put" to the Fed, amounting to $1.6 billion, the most of any CUSIP sold to the NY Fed's markets desk on that day.

So what is going on? Well, for all those saying the US may soon unleash helicopter money, and/or MMT, we have some 'news': helicopter money is already here, and the Fed is now actively monetizing debt the Treasury sold just days earlier using Dealers as a conduit... a "conduit" which is generously rewarded by the Fed's market desk with its marked up purchase price.

In other words, the Fed is already conducting Helicopter Money (and MMT) in all but name. As shown above, the Fed monetized T-Bills that were issued just three days earlier - and just because it is circumventing the one hurdle that prevents it from directly purchasing securities sold outright by the Treasury, the Fed is providing the Dealers that made this legal debt circle-jerk possible with millions in profits, even as the outcome is identical if merely offset by a few days. 

Perhaps during Fed Chair Powell's next Congressional hearings, someone actually has the guts to ask the only question that matters: why is the Fed now monetizing US debt, and pretending it isn't doing so just because it grants Dealers a 3-day "holding" period, for which it then rewards them generously?

The Leftist Cult vs. The Trump Cult: Similarities And Differences

From Alt- Market

Political demagoguery is a valuable and effective weapon in the arsenal of the establishment elites. As long as there is a wide ideological division between groups in society, biases and desires can be tapped and manipulated.  This allows those in power to direct vast portions of the public down one path or another. When fear of an enemy and the drive to “win” become more important than truth and evidence, the population has tied its own puppet strings and handed them over to the spin doctors.

This is why the false Left/Right paradigm has been so useful to the establishment for so long. Anytime the public starts to wake up to the web of control, all the elites have to do is push one or both sides of the political spectrum towards extremism and let the people rage at each other instead of picking up their torches and pitchforks and tearing down the oligarchy. This method of division and diversion keeps the masses occupied and feeling as though they are accomplishing something while actually accomplishing nothing.

As Carroll Quigley, globalist insider and mentor to Bill Clinton, admitted in his book 'Tragedy And Hope':

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy....Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”

The false Left/Right tactic has become more and more exposed in the past decade to the wider public, and so the elites had to change their methods to adapt to the growing awareness. Conservatives in particular have started to leave the plantation, and something had to be done to drag them back. The liberty movement has become a force in western life with tens of millions of members. It is an unpredictable element that the establishment needs to lock down and redirect if they ever hope to achieve their goal of a “new world order”.

The elites have used two tandem strategies in this effort:

First, they pushed leftist indoctrination towards full bore cultism.

Second, they have attempted to co-opt the leadership of conservatives and the liberty movement using a political puppet figure in order to bottleneck our energy and momentum.

Leftist culture has become increasingly erratic and unhinged (even more so than usual), informed by elements of a new social justice fanaticism; a kind of religious fervor where faith in ideological gatekeepers is more important than facts. The majority of the left, while not necessarily part of this “woke” religion, is still influenced by SJW rhetoric. Delusional notions of “patriarchy” and “inherent racism” and “inherent sexism” are woven into the Democrat mindset today. They see oppression everywhere, and victim group status has become the social currency they use to acclimate to a fantasy world where big government and entitlements are the solutions to all the world's ills.

The conservative side of civilization doesn't participate in the oppression fantasies of the left. We don't even speak the same language, as the left's very vocabulary has shifted into an academic babble-language they simply made up to describe social dynamics that don't exist and gender politics that are biologically and scientifically absurd. Reconciling with leftists in any meaningful way has become nearly impossible, and fear of their fanaticism is causing conservatives to assume that whatever these people hate, must be good.

Enter Donald Trump, a kind of artificially created focal point machine, a figure that is designed to absorb liberty movement talking points and then regurgitate them in an alphabet soup puddle on Twitter. This rhetoric is relatively effective in that many conservatives recognize parts of the soup and find comfort that Trump “must be on their side”.

I have outlined in numerous articles Trump's dubious background and behavior. To summarize, we often hear lip service from Trump on anti-globalism and anti-elitism, even though it is an undeniable fact that he has saturated his cabinet with globalists and elitists.

We heard anti-banker talking points from Trump during his campaign, even though Trump has a longstanding relationship to the Rothschild family and works side-by-side with Rothschild and Goldman Sachs bankers in the White House. We heard lots of anti-Federal Reserve discussion from Trump and observations that the current economy is an explosive bubble engineered by them; yet he now openly demands that the Fed inflate the bubble further while he takes full credit for the fake stock market rally.  We also heard many promises that US troops would be coming home and the long wars in the Middle East would end for America; this has not happened and likely will not happen as tensions with Iran continue to grow.

In other words, Trump is a skin job. A robot. A false conservative and false prophet of the liberty movement. He tells us what we want to hear while his actions say something entirely different. Yet, a lot of conservatives still listen to him, because they despise the collectivist religion of the left, they desperately want mainstream recognition and representation, and because they want to believe that there is a white knight out there in Washington defending their interests and their future.

The establishment understands these desires and exploits them. They understand that the more extreme the left becomes, the more tempted conservatives will be to jump blindly on the Trump bandwagon.

Mainstream media outlets like CNN have taken to referring to Trump's base as a “cult” recently, which of course is the pot calling the kettle black; but it does not mean that the accusation is wrong. Trump's base is indeed acting more and more like a cult, but primarily in reaction to the cultism of leftists. The crazier the left gets, the more Trump becomes a folk hero to the right. The more the media promotes fabricated Russiagate nonsense or Ukrainian conspiracy narratives, the more conservatives assume that the establishment is “trying to take down” Trump.

It is rather rudimentary reverse psychology – If the establishment media attacks Trump, then he must be "anti-establishment". If the leftists hate Trump, then he must be good for conservatives. Nothing could be further from the truth, but if anyone points this out they will be immediately attacked as disinformation agents and purveyors of CNN talking points.

A common argument in defense of Trump is to ignore his associations and behavior entirely and focus on the prevailing circus surrounding him instead. People state indignantly that:

“Trump is under attack! They are trying to impeach him! How can he be working with the globalists if they are trying to get rid of him...?”

I would point out that there is a usefulness to political theater that goes far beyond trying to remove a president from office. Again, the media viciously attacked Trump during his election campaign, but if one understands that public trust in the mainstream media has collapsed in the past ten years, then one also understands that media attacks on Trump would only cause more people to like him and vote for him. The question then needs to be asked: Does the establishment understand this inverse relationship in public psychology? Or, did they completely overlook it?

I seriously doubt they are overlooking it.

If this is the case, then the frothing leftist rage against Trump, while partially real, is also 4^th Generation warfare designed to trick conservatives into developing their own cult-like fantasy that Trump is our fearless leader fighting the good fight even though his presidency is tightly intertwined with global elitists. The impeachment itself comes at a time when a large portion of the liberty movement is waking up to the Trump con game and is questioning many of his activities and associations.

The establishment has put a lot of effort into creating the Trump versus Leftist circus, and they really hate the idea that a number of people are refusing to pick a side.  For them, there is nothing worse than free thinkers who organize their own side separate from the false paradigm.

The impeachment, like Russiagate, is not designed to get Trump out of office. It is a Hail Mary attempt to pull liberty minded conservatives back into the Trump fold; to keep us predictable and under control. It is also designed to keep leftists feeling justified in their insanity. Remember, the crazier the left acts, the more fearful and malleable conservatives become.

The establishment likes Trump right where he is, and he will not be going anywhere, at least not until he has completely served his purpose. Whether that will be in the next year, or in another four years, it's hard to say at this time. Obviously, the elites have to keep the left/right sideshow going at full volume until they are done using Trump as a distraction. They will “attack” him as often as needed to create the illusion that he is anti-establishment, and Trump will continue to play along to please his masters, many of them standing over his shoulder everyday in the White House.

The Leftist Cult and the Trump Cult are similar in their refusal to accept facts and reality, as well as their ability to double and triple down on delusions that are consistently debunked.

I have witnessed people on the Trump-train dismiss every blatant piece of evidence of Trump's collusion with globalists on the basis that he is "keeping his enemies close".  I have seen them ignore his support for Red Flag gun laws, his refusal to pull US forces out of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen, his hostility towards Iran, his support for totalitarian governments like Saudi Arabia, etc.  They call it "4D chess" and simply move on.  I have seen them shrug off endless data showing economic decline and proclaim instead an "economic boom".  I have seen them completely absorbed and distracted by the trade war and China while forgetting all about the banking elites that engineer most of the calamity in our society.

They act this way because they are afraid.  The political left frightens them, they are searching for a hero to save them, and they are willing to overlook almost any skeleton in Trump's closet in order to make their fantasy version of him real.  But, the leftists are nothing more than a symptom - They are useful idiots, not the source of the disease.  And, Trump is not the hero conservatives are looking for anyway.  In terms of the liberty movement, Trump is irrelevant.  He's a footnote.  The real work is being done by millions of activists breaking through decades of propaganda and exposing the truth.

The difference between the Leftist Cult and the Trump Cult is mostly intent: Leftists double and triple down on their lies because they are infatuated with collective power and they see the truth as an obstacle to the "greater good". The Trump cult ignores facts and evidence on Trump because they are hyperfocused on collective defense. Leftists are seeking to micromanage the thoughts and behavior of the world while conservatives are seeking to solidify enough political protection to ensure they are left alone. The Leftist Cult wants to burn everything to the ground, erase history and rebuild the world in their image. The Trump Cult is trying to keep the last structures of American heritage alive; they have simply put their faith in the wrong champion.

The sad reality is, leftists and conservatives are likely far too alien to each other now to ever come to a diplomatic solution. The division in society is very real; it's the division at the top that's Kabuki theater. The liberty movement is the key to everything, as we are the constant target of establishment 4^th Gen propaganda. If we didn't matter, then the elites would not be spending so much time, money and energy trying to keep us in line. They need us to buy into the theater, otherwise we become an unknown element, a third party, a time bomb that could explode unexpectedly on them at any given moment.

How to Make Money: Buy Companies That Are Worthless

byMish

1 day-edited

Companies with tangible net value of less than zero have increasingly outperformed the market for decades.

Bloomberg comments Capitalists Without Capital Are Ruling Capitalism

Some 40% of public stocks quoted in the U.S. have negative tangible book value, meaning that their tangible assets aren’t worth enough to repay all their debt. Two decades ago, this was only true of 15% of companies, according to Vincent Deluard of INTL FCStone Inc., who has carried out intensive research on the subject.

Such companies sound dreadful. In tangible, material terms their share certificates aren’t even worth the paper they are written on. And yet, incredibly, a “negative-value” fund, composed of the shares of companies with negative tangible book value, would have beaten the main U.S. stock market, represented by the Russell 3000 Index, by 24% over the last 20 years. That outperformance has almost all happened since the financial crisis — before that, the negative-value fund had roughly tracked the benchmark.

Extreme Zombification

This is of course a result of Fed-sponsored zombification by keeping real interest rates negative for most of the last decade.

Real Interest Rates

Real means inflation-adjusted.

I created the above chart by subtracting year-over-year Consumer Price Index (CPI) from the Effective Fed Funds Rate.

Yet, the CPI is a fatally-flawed measure of inflation.

It fails to factor in housing prices and dramatically understates the rising cost of medical care.

Yet, even though inflation is hugely understated, real interest rates have been mostly negative since 2002.

This encouraged speculation in spades.

Meanwhile, thanks to Fed bubble-blowing policies, companies that have no tangible value can keep rolling over debt and even adding to it to pay the bills.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/how-to-make-money-buy-companies-that-are-worthless-76H8OAcvhEGLyyly5bZSwg

INSIGHT: Bad Guys Use Tech to Defraud Companies; Legal Investigation Teams Need It, Too

From Bloomberg Law:

Companies need to take advantage of corporate data, technologies that process that data, and their legal department’s investigative professionals to fight fraud, write Samantha Parish and Bill Pollard with Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP. They say legal investigations teams need to break down silos, apply diverse tech-enabled techniques, and use predictive capabilities to fight and prevent bad behavior.

As companies develop digitally-connected ecosystems and extended networks of third parties, the challenge to recognize and solve deeper or broader problems becomes increasingly difficult. Often in larger and more complex organizations, the mechanisms to fight fraud and misconduct effectively can lag considerably.

Companies have yet to take full advantage of their three greatest assets: available organizational corporate data, technologies that can sense and read signals within vast data populations, and the legal department’s investigative professionals. If bad actors can take advantage of technology to defraud your organization, legal teams trying to stop them must too.

To combat fraud using an enterprise-wide, tech-enabled approach that combines the power of the computer with the business–and tech–savviness of legal team investigators, consider the below.

Get Investigator Groups Out of Silos

While legal teams typically lead investigations, some also involve human resources, compliance, security or internal audit. And, as more functions get involved, coordination and communication between them often seems to disappear, usually for confidentiality reasons. Unfortunately, this can result in disjointed efforts that can lead to potential fraud risks being missed, improperly identified, and under analyzed.

For example, while supporting a corporate investigation into employee-vendor corruption, we later discovered earlier risk assessments by the organization’s internal audit team had identified similar types of issues elsewhere across the organization at different points in time.

If the company had created a process or leveraged shared case management technology to communicate issues and analyze them through a broader lens, internal investigators might have developed a better understanding of the true nature and scope of a larger corruption scheme, as we later did.

Try a Tech-Enabled Portfolio Approach

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners found that 40% of investigations can take a month or longer to close using traditional methods. But a tech-enabled approach wielded by investigative specialists can often generate results in a fraction of that time, offering better efficiency and more effective insights.

Applying a diverse portfolio of tech-enabled investigative techniques and approaches guided by experienced investigators and other professionals well-versed in business can help unearth wrongdoing hiding in ever-increasing data sets.

For example, investigators—along with any data scientists or business specialists they involve—can discern how outlier activities compare to other similar activities, effectively performing a form of behavioral analytics on actions that may or may not be fraudulent.

In another example, using advanced eDiscovery tools, companies now have the ability to mine volumes of unstructured data in fractions of the time it took in the past to get through this information.

Why rely only on traditional approaches like keyword searches and manual review of large volumes of documents when machine learning and other cognitive capabilities can generate insights humans may never have detected? It’s now possible to get eyes on the right documents more quickly and advance investigations with better insights.

Tech-enabled approaches are also being deployed for public record and social media data as well. Depending on the jurisdictions involved and privacy settings, investigators may be able to collect public source-based information—including corporate registries; litigation, tax and criminal records; news media, social media platforms and internet searches—to create visual links between seemingly unrelated information.

The ability to turn information into insights using visual data tools and data mining tools, again, enables investigators to advance at a pace unlike what they could accomplish manually.

Technology is making it easier for investigators to better assemble puzzle pieces that show the full fraud “picture.” Many times, we’ve seen the presentation of such investigative results to subjects lead to admissions of guilt and subsequent issue resolution.

Use Predictive Capabilities of Tech-Enabled Investigation Programs

Once a tech-enabled investigation structure is in place, legal teams can reverse-engineer them by developing algorithms to predict, detect and help prevent “bad behavior.”

For example, in the previously mentioned corporate corruption investigation, we helped the organization build a predictive model to classify expenses into categories (e.g. airline tickets were travel expenses, restaurant charges were meal expenses). Going forward, the categorizations of expenses helped the company identify employees who were misclassifying expenses to distort aggregated totals.

The tech-enabled investigation capabilities that legal teams develop can also be used to create value for other parts of the organization, such as supply chain or finance.

For example, we’ve assisted in corruption investigations where purchasing and shipping information was ultimately used to identify the perpetrators of fraud schemes. The same data and investigation insights may also be useful to the company’s supply chain or finance teams to identify inefficiencies, opportunities to improve margins, and eliminate duplication of vendors preventing the company from taking advantage of pricing discounts through consolidation.

Adopting a Tech-Enabled Approach

The future of internal investigations will include a tech-enabled approach, but adoption of the approach will vary. Where you start will likely be dependent on internal capabilities, investments in technology, and a willingness to recognize the importance technology and analytics can play in investigations.

Regulators are already using advanced technologies to conduct their own investigations. Investors, the public and other stakeholders expect ever-better risk management for allegations of bad acts. As such, without embracing the future, organizations may be ignorant of new industry fraud schemes as they go undetected longer, giving bad actors time to target a broader swath of organizations. Now is the time to consider jump starting a tech-enabled investigation program.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. or its owners.

Author Information

Samantha Parish is a Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory principal in the San Francisco office of Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP and Deloitte’s Global Financial Advisory Technology, Media, and Telecommunications industry leader. She specializes in complex domestic and cross-border forensic investigations, corruption investigations and related proactive compliance programs.

Bill Pollard is a Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory partner in the Chicago office of Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP. He specializes in complex forensic investigations including government investigations, accounting restatements and is a leader in delivering technology enabled data driven solutions for investigations.