William Atwood, head of the $11.2 billion Illinois investment board, has taken a crash course in discovering his portfolio’s currency-trading costs — and he doesn’t like what he sees.

A consultant said his fund paid $2 million more than the average of other institutional investors on currency transactions during most of last year. When Atwood tried to figure out the costs on his own, he received a two-foot-high stack of trading documents he didn’t know how to interpret. Get the full story »