'Surprise! Higher Dividends = Higher Earnings Growth' Named Best Financial Analysts Journal Article of 2003; Co-Author Clifford Asness Receives Graham and Dodd Award.

Business Editors

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 15, 2004

--"Surprise! Higher Dividends = Higher Earnings Growth" has been named the best Financial Analysts Journal article of 2003.

The advisory council and the editorial board of the Financial Analysts Journal awarded its highest honor, the Graham and Dodd Award for excellence in research and financial writing, to that article's co-author, Clifford Asness, managing principal with AQR Capital Management in New York. (The article's other co-author is Robert D. Arnott, who as current editor of the Financial Analysts Journal recused himself from eligibility to receive the 2003 Graham and Dodd Award).

The article, published in the January-February 2003 issue, investigates and challenges whether dividend policies truly forecast aggregate earnings growth. The authors' work contradicts the views of many who believe that substantial reinvestment of retained earnings engages faster future earnings growth.

The Financial Analysts Journal is published by the Association for Investment Management and Research, the worldwide association of 70,000 securities analysts and investment managers and the global administrator of the Chartered Financial Analyst(R) curriculum and examination program.

Last year, the Financial Analysts Journal received 280 submissions and selected the best 37 research articles for publication. The Graham and Dodd Award, created in 1960 to honor Benjamin Graham's and David L. Dodd's enduring contributions to the field of investment analysis, is presented each year to the author or authors of the most outstanding article published in the Financial Analysts Journal that year. Past recipients have included such industry leaders as Peter L. Bernstein, William F. Sharpe, Fischer Black and Charles D. Ellis.

The Financial Analysts Journal advisory council and editorial board have also awarded five "Graham and Dodd Scroll Awards" to recognize five additional outstanding articles published in 2003. Additionally, the editorial board introduced a new "Best Perspective Award" to recognize the most timely and thought provoking opinion article of the year.

The five articles distinguished with a Scroll Award are:

-- "The Equity Premium: Why Is It a Puzzle?" (January/February

2003) by Rajnish Mehra, professor of finance at the University

of California, Santa Barbara.

-- "Long-Run Stock Returns: Participating in the Real Economy"

(January/February 2003) by Roger G. Ibbotson, professor of

finance at Yale School of Management, and Peng Chen, vice

president and director of research at Ibbotson Associates.

-- "Portfolio Optimization with Tracking-Error Constraints"

(September/October 2003) by Philippe Jorion, professor of

finance at the University of California, Irvine.

-- "Quantifying Credit Risk I: Default Prediction"

(January/February 2003) and "Quantifying Credit Risk II: Debt

Valuation" (May/June 2003) by Stephen Kealhofer, managing

director at KMV Corporation.

AIMR has made all six award-winning articles accessible online at no charge at www.aimrpubs.org.

Robert C. Merton's article "Thoughts on the Future: Theory and Practice in Investment Management," (January/February 2003) received the inaugural Best Perspectives Award. Merton is the John and Natty McArthur professor at Harvard Business School.

The 59-year-old Financial Analyst Journal is published six times a year. Its purpose is to advance the knowledge and understanding of the practice of investment management through the publication of high-quality, practitioner-relevant research.

AIMR is the global, non-profit professional association that administers the Chartered Financial Analyst(R) curriculum and examination program worldwide and sets voluntary, ethics-based professional and performance-reporting standards for the investment industry. AIMR has 70,000 members in 116 countries. Its membership includes the world's more than 57,000 CFA charterholders, as well as 129 affiliated professional societies and chapters in 48 countries. AIMR is headquartered in Charlottesville, Va., with additional offices in London and Hong Kong. More information may be found at www.aimr.org or by calling 1-800-247-8132 or 1-434-951-5499.