The Association for Investment Management and Research is publishing an “open letter to the investment community” in nine major business publications around the world, calling on the entire profession to turn 2002’s “year of scandals” into 2003’s “year of the investor.”

Thomas Bowman, AIMR’s president and CEO, writes in the letter, “We are deeply disturbed with the behavior of those who lost sight of one overriding principle of our profession: Investor interests must always come first. Before our own. Before our employers’. And before the interests of any public company or its management. This has been the guiding principle in the AIMR Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct, as taught in the Chartered Financial Analyst Program for 40 years.”

He then invites colleagues and employers throughout the world, whether AIMR members or not, to uphold the principles and practices of the AIMR Code and Standards. He calls on “executives, managers and supervisors in every investment discipline to create a culture of integrity that permeates your entire organizations” by building investment firms’ ethics programs on the foundation of the AIMR Code and Standards.

AIMR intends the “open letter” advertisement to help refocus investment professionals worldwide on the principle of placing investor interests first as a foundation for rebuilding market integrity. “The actions of any unethical practitioners can cause investors to question the trustworthiness of us all,” Bowman writes in the advertisement. “And loss of faith in market professionals is tantamount to loss of faith in the markets themselves.”

In a separate but simultaneous move, Bowman is sending a letter to nearly 6,000 AIMR members and holders of the CFA designation worldwide who are CEOs, chief investment officers and research directors. The letter reminds them they are responsible not only for their own ethical conduct but the conduct of their subordinates, as well, regardless of whether they are AIMR members. This is a long-established requirement under AIMR’s Code and Standards, Bowman noted.

AIMR members with supervisory responsibilities have an obligation “to ensure that those whom you supervise maintain independence and objectivity in their recommendations and actions, whether or not they are AIMR members,” Bowman wrote. “Therefore, we ask you to review again the Code and Standards with your subordinates, supervisors and management of your employer, and answer any questions they may have about how the Code and Standards affect the way they do their jobs … “