Beyond question, Ensign Peak Advisors has the potential to earn big money on the churchs behalf. Just last year, Prophet Russell M. Nelson did a worldwide speaking tour where he told members in Africa that only paying tithing can get them out of the cycle of poverty. Ensign Peak is a huge investor in iconic technology stocks. Ensign Peak also has at least $1.3 billion in shares of oil and gas companies, even after dumping 44% of its stock in Exxon Mobil early in 2020. As we tend to do, we'll go through it in chunks to cover what the church is saying along with what they're not saying. And the funny part about the quote is that many church leaders thought they knew when Jesus was coming back, but they just happened to be wrong. Check us out on Twitter or Facebook as well for future posts and updates, and thank you again for reading! See all articles by Roger G Clarke Roger G Clarke. Ensign Peak Advisors. Ensign Peak Advisors Jan 1995 - May 2020 25 years 5 months . Now, EPA has finally admitted in a recently published Form 990-T filing in November 2020 (for 2019) that EPA does have foreign bank and investment accounts. Nielsens document argues that EPA should be liable for more than $2 billion in penalties. 212.744.6825, Research Coordinator The complaint alleged thatEPA, a nonprofit registered as a 501(c)3 and a 509(a)3 supporting organization, did not make charitable distributions but that it did send $2 billion to help two for-profit companies. Harindra de Silva. Isnt amassing wealth and then saving it the equivalent of burying talents, that Christ condemned in the biblical parable? Miner asked. Asia Pacific +65 6212 1000. There is no faith promoting answer here which is apparent from their terrible answer here. We take seriously the responsibility to care for the tithes and donations received from members, the church statement said. Locations . Whenever we lead people in any way to believe something that is not true, we are not being honest.". And while that might not be against the law (there are questions of whether it's lawful to be tax exempt when you are not actively using the fund for charitable purposes), it is absolutely against their own definition of honesty. I know some believing members will take offense at that characterization, but please tell me where I am wrong. Ensign Peak held $349,000 in shares in Beyond Meat, maker of plant-based meat substitutes, at the end of 2019, but that was down to $5,000 in June, making it the smallest holding in the portfolio. And when they get caught, they lie about why they withheld the information from these very members who are padding the account for them. ReligionUnplugged.com reporters sent emails and made phone calls to Nielsen and his lawyers as well as to members and staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance to ask about the status of the memorandum and a schedule for any possible hearings in Washington. We have not seen the actual document in question; however, it appears they are dated allegations. Unlike the Corporation, Mr. Huntsman is confident that these charities will actually use his donations for their intended purposes.. Get Contact Info for All Departments Ensign Peak Advisors Org Chart Paul Davis Chief Operating Officer 6 Overview. "We allege that the LDS Church's investment manager, with the Church's knowledge, went to great lengths to avoid disclosing the Church's investments, depriving the Commission and the investing public of accurate market information," Gurbir Grewal, Director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, said in a statement. Foreign accounts: EPA now admits having foreign accounts, after denying it under oath for 10+ years: Mr. Nielsens prior submissions demonstrated that EPA has falsely denied under oath each year since at least 2007 that EPA has long had foreign bank and investment accounts, estimated to exceed $9 billion and thus EPA is liable for FBAR (Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts) penalties of more than $2 billion. If you read the early patriarchal blessings, many early members were told they would see Jesus before they died, because they truly believed they were in the final years before his return. The church along with our investment manager, Ensign Peak Advisors, have only recently been made aware of allegations brought forward by a former Ensign Peak employee, said Doug Andersen, a church spokesman. Roger served as a professor for more than ten years on the faculty of the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. BYU Marriott School of Business. "Ensign Peak adjusted its approach and began filing a single aggregated report. . Ensign Peak Advisors. That would mean the church isn't doing any better or worse than the average, which is what you'd expect from an organization that is run by men. Nielsen notes that EPA was operated by people with similarly impressive backgrounds in finance, including advanced degrees from institutions such as Stanford University and experience at hedge fund and Wall Street firms such as Credit Suisse and UBS. The firm had nearly $1 billion worth of shares in Amazon and Googles parent company, Alphabet, as well. For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, tithing donating 10% of ones income to the faith is more of a sense of commitment than it is the church needing the money, Roger Clarke, head of Ensign Peak Advisors, which manages the denominations investing holdings, told The Wall Street Journal. Ensign Peak Advisors ( email) 60 East South Temple 4th Floor Salt Lake City, UT 84111 United States. It wouldnt completely shock me if the reporting kickstarted the disclosure, said Sam Brunson, a law professor specializing in tax law at Loyola University of Chicago and a practicing Latter-day Saint. The church contends this is not illegal and I am not a legal expert, but I can say it looks awful when a church uses a tithing investment fund to bail out its for profit ventures yet has never spent a dime to help those who truly need it. Roger Clarke, the head of Ensign Peak, told the Wall Street Journal that the fund was an emergency account to be used in difficult times. Financial Analysts Journal, Vol. (The Salt Lake Tribune) President Gordon B. Hinckley assured Latter-day Saints during General Conference in 2003 that no tithing money went toward the City Creek Center mall. Contact Us Despite being among the worlds largest investment funds, the Salt Lake City firm functioned largely unseen until late 2019, when a former top manager-turned-whistleblower claimed it had amassed up to $100 billion, allegedly without its senior leaders telling much of anyone. That should not surprise anyone considering the way they do accounting of these donations. "That same poverty continues from one generation to another, until people pay their tithing." Carolyn Homer, a Latter-day Saint who lives in Virginia, told The Journal that after she heard about the money held by Ensign Peak, she resolved to tithe less and give more to other charities. This was approximately $2 billion to fund classic private interests., Senate Finance Committee - by Paul Glader. He also served as president and chief investment officer of TSA Capital Management in Los Angeles, CA for ten years and as chairman of the board of Analytic Investors for twenty years. Nobody knows when, Clarke told the newspaper. The LDS welfare fact sheet from 2009 shows in the years 1985 through 2009 (24 years), the church donated just $327.6 in cash donations but they also count $884.6 million in donations of "material assistance." There is simply no statistical evidence that paying tithing brings people out of poverty (anecdotally I have been much better off in my career since I left as have thousands of others who leave the church), and tithing was not enforced to enter the temple until 1899, which is why Prophet Joseph F Smith assured members there would be the day that the church would have "sufficient" money to not require tithing money from members. That strategy, Clarke said, was designed to prevent members from parroting what Ensign was doing and to, as the paper stated, protect them from mismanaging their own funds with insufficient information., Church officials described the fund as a rainy-day account and to help fund operations in poorer parts of the world such as Africa, where the faith is booming where member donations cant keep up.". State audit alleges former Cache County prosecutors misused public resources, had side contracts without countys knowledge, Utah flooding resource guide: What to do before, during and after a flood, former top manager-turned-whistleblower claimed it had amassed up to $100 billion, how it helped fund the City Creek Center mall, the reserves are intended to help pay for operations in poorer parts. Back to the article: "The funds handlers are instructed not to invest in industries that Latter-day Saints consider objectionable including alcohol, caffeinated beverages, tobacco and gambling, he said, alluding in part to the churchs health code known as the Word of Wisdom, which bars those substances (although caffeinated sodas are not part of that prohibition). Ensign Peak has since made what amounts to a stunning series of quarterly reports to federal authorities on the portion of the Utah-based faiths overall holdings it manages, not least for the portfolios sheer size. Ensign Peak Advisors ( email) 60 East South Temple 4th Floor Salt Lake City, UT 84111 United States. Ensign Peak Advisors ( email) 60 East South Temple 4th Floor Salt Lake City, UT 84111 United States. 72, No. Last revised: 12 Oct 2016. This story makes me angry because we have all seen and heard of countless examples where families skip buying food or paying their bills to make sure they pay their tithing, because without it the church cuts off their membership to the temple. Back to the article: "The church cant predict when the next 2008 is going to take place, Christopher Waddell, second counselor in the faiths Presiding Bishopric, told The Journal. 6 (November/December 2016), Available at SSRN: If you need immediate assistance, call 877-SSRNHelp (877 777 6435) in the United States, or +1 212 448 2500 outside of the United States, 8:30AM to 6:00PM U.S. Eastern, Monday - Friday. The document says Nielsen left a financially lucrative career to work for EPA because he believed it was a worthy cause and organization. We include specific empirical results that can be replicated as an exercise in data collection, programming, reporting, and analysis. . Though not named as parties, Ensign Peak Advisors and the words and actions of its senior managers were at the center of a high-profile lawsuit filed last March in U.S. District Court in California. Harindra De Silva. Get Contact Info for All Departments Ensign Peak Advisors Org Chart Ensign Peak and the Church have cooperated with the government over a period of time as we sought resolution." Roger has 1 job listed on their profile. 72, No. This is so contradictory to what the leaders say today, yet they say it with a straight face because they need members to believe that they need to follow the prophet, no matter how dishonest and wrong the prophets have been throughout the church's history. After The Post piece, Patrick Mason, head of Mormon studies at Utah State University, told The Salt Lake Tribune that stories like this will undoubtedly trouble many church members and lead them to wonder whether their charitable giving is best directed toward an institution that reportedly has a stockpile twice as large as Harvards endowment.. Ensign Peak, which manages $124 billion in investments cultivated from tithing funds, is admitting that the church doesn't tell its members about the fund because they know members aren't going to keep paying tithing if they knew the church is sitting on so much money that they could cover every administrative cost for the church with the yearly The 90-page memorandum obtained by ReligionUnplugged.com and embedded in this story summarizes evidence of false statements, systematic accounting fraud, private inurement violations of the Internal Revenue Code and other federal statutes and a Klein conspiracy by Ensign Peak Advisors, Inc. (EPA) and others.. Roger Clarke, the head of Ensign Peak, said: 'Paying tithing is more of a sense of commitment than it is the church needing the money' Clarke and other officials say the money is saved. The Mormon Church's investments weren't publicly disclosed until a former Ensign portfolio manager filed a whistleblower complaint in 2019, alleging that the massive fund doesn't engage in any charitable activities and shouldn't have tax-exempt status. The SEC's order said that. Sign up for our newsletter to get the inside scoop on what traders are talking about delivered daily to your inbox. The regulator says the Church's investment manager "went to great lengths" to avoid disclosures. If $124 billion in an investment portfolio is not enough, why not share with members what they've accomplished and let them know what the goal is if the church is truly as 'transparent as they know how to be.' Steven Thorley is an Emeritus Professor of Finance at the Marriott School of Business. The ups and downs of lesser-known stocks in its portfolio show just how closely managed Ensign Peaks holdings are. Ensign Peak Advisors employs 11 employees. I will never claim to speak for Jesus, but it's beyond clear that the leaders of this church never have either whether it's claiming God called the Native Americans Lamanites from Israel, that dark skin is a curse from God, or that God changed his mind in just 3.5 years on treating LGBT members as apostates. Software Updates. As Deuteronomy 14:28-29 makes clear, the church is supposed to use the tithes collected to actually help those in need: 28 At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that years produce and store it in your towns, 29 so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.". And those companies might consider it an honor when a morally and financially scrutinizing investor such as EPA buys shares. Its holdings dwarf those ofendowments at any university,such as Stanford, Harvard or Yale. (Subscription required) Next Up In Faith See all articles by Roger G Clarke Roger G Clarke. If we truly believe that the world is going to fall into chaos before the second coming of Christ, does the church really believe that stocks and bonds are going to hold value then? Even apologist Patrick Mason isn't trying to sugarcoat the juggernaut that is the church's excess liquid asset holdings, and the fact is that Harvard's endowment is actually being used to help people while the church's Ensign Peak fund has only been used to help the church's own businesses. From the Deseret News: "We preach tithing to the poor people of the world because the poor people of the world have had cycles of poverty, generation after generation," he said. Some companies like to show when large and established institutional investors are taking positions in their company, considering that a vote of confidence in the company. This page was processed by aws-apollo-l2 in. Counselor says: March 19, 2022 at 9:10 pm. After the stories broke in 2019, the churchpublished a statement to its members and constituents worldwide and posted three short videos to YouTube. The Ensign Peak Advisors office is located above a food court in Salt Lake City and doesn't appear in the list of companies at that building lobby. Alongside that stream of new financial information, a few other cracks in the walls of secrecy around Ensign Peak are being widened in federal court. So they never wanted to be in a position where people felt like, you know, they shouldnt make a contribution, Clarke said.". . The church contended no actual tithing was ever used and instead came from Ensign Peaks earnings. Clarke, Roger G and de Silva, Harindra and Thorley, Steven, Fundamentals of Efficient Factor Investing (October 11, 2016). For at least 22 years, EPA and certain senior executives have perpetrated an unlawful scheme that relies on willfully and materially false statements to the IRS and the SEC, so this for-profit, securities investment business that unfairly competes with large hedge funds can masquerade as a tax-exempt, charitable organization, the memorandum says. That result also would encourage fraudulent claims of exempt status and weaken tax administration within the tax-exempt sector generally, and within non-exempt religious organizations in particular.. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' has a $100 billion investment portfolio,according to a 13F form. Latter-day Saints, like many Christians, believe there will be a period of war, hardship and natural disasters before Jesus comes back. This is absolutely ridiculous. Wait, what? The church here is saying they need the $124 billion for when the "next 2008" takes place so they "won't have to stop missionary work," yet when the 'Great Recession' actually did hit, the church never tapped into the fund nor did it halt missionary work. A closer analysis of Ensign Peaks latest disclosures show that beyond big name stocks, technology in a variety of forms accounts for up to 27% of all its shares worth nearly $13.3 billion. As of June, the funds shares in five Big Tech companies Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook were worth nearly $9 billion, or 18% of its total value. It said Huntsman would donate the money to groups he viewed as marginalized by the churchs teaching. And do not forget that Prophet Joseph F Smith said this about tithing at the 1907 General Conference: "Furthermore, I want to say to you, we may not be able to reach it right away, but we expect to see the day when we will not have to ask you for one dollar of donation for any purpose, except that which you volunteer to give of your own accord, because we will have tithes sufficient in the storehouse of the Lord to pay everything that is needful for the advancement of the kingdom of God." If the church truly believed what they were doing was true and good, they would be open and honest and tell every member to research their claims and hold them accountable. The SEC requires any institutional investor with more than $100 million in assets to file a 13F. BYU Marriott School of Business. It has shifted since mid-2020 into stocks in basic industries and capital goods that might expect to take off in an economic recovery. 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