Ted Ballantine | Pension360

Questions Raised About “Dual Structure” of Governance At San Diego Pension Fund

Most of the news surrounding the San Diego County Employees Retirement Association (SDCERA) has been about the board’s decision to move on from its outsourced CIO, Salient Partners.

But also noteworthy are parts of SDCERA’s governance structure. At least one expert has raised concerns about the effectiveness of the fund’s “dual” reporting structure.

Dan McSwain of the San Diego Union-Tribune writes:

Structural woes were the main take-away from a parade of experts at a two-day workshop held last month by the system’s nine-member board of trustees.

[…]

One expert at the workshop, hired by the board to evaluate its governance, said the chief executive wasn’t clearly accountable for the fund’s investments. Indeed, the Houston-based chief investment officer appeared to report directly to the board.

This “dual structure” is found almost nowhere else. Instead, the CIO reports to the CEO, in a straight line of authority, at nearly every public or corporate pension fund in the world, not to mention insurance companies and private endowments.

Another expert said conflicts of interest were “inherent” in the county’s outsourced investment management structure. Yet another questioned the oversight of the retirement system’s outside lawyers, one of whom also reports directly to the board.

Still, the most obvious problem was the one nobody talked about, at least explicitly: Responsibility for this chronic buck-spreading lands squarely on White, the chief executive officer since 1996. If the county’s pension system has structural flaws, it’s hard to imagine how that’s not also a CEO problem.

Fund CEO Brian White defended the structure:

The outsourced CIO, Lee Partridge of Salient Partners, does in fact report to the CEO, White said, so the system already had the “linear” structure recommended by several governance experts.

“We’ve had a linear structure here, and I think what the board did Friday was confirm or reaffirm the linear structure,” he said, referring to the board’s vote on Nov. 21 to hire an internal CIO and have the position report directly to the chief executive.

White also said that, acting as investment strategist, Partridge was indeed supervising his own firm’s direct management of leveraged investments. But this wasn’t the “inherent” conflict of interest one expert asserted, because no money changed hands as additional fees, White said. Besides, the board of trustees endorsed the idea.

“I’m here to serve the board and support their decision,” he said. “That’s what they wanted.”

SDCERA manages $10.5 billion in assets.

Photo by Roland O’Daniel via Flickr CC License

Texas Employees Retirement System Hires Executive Director

Porter Wilson has been tapped as the new executive director of the Texas Employees Retirement System. His hire was approved on Thursday.

Reported by Pensions & Investments:

Trustees of the Austin-based pension fund approved Mr. Wilson’s hire at a board meeting on Thursday to eventually replace Ann S. Bishop, the current executive director, as a “step in succession planning,” said ERS spokeswoman Mary Jane Wardlow, in an e-mail.

Ms. Bishop announced her intention to retire to the board “some time ago,” Ms. Wardlow said, but the date of her departure has not been set.

Mr. Wilson’s arrival date has not been set yet either, although the plan is that Mr. Wilson will join ERS soon in order to work side by side with Ms. Bishop during the forthcoming Texas legislative session, which begins in January, Ms. Wardlow said.

Mr. Wilson now is associate vice chancellor for governmental relations for the Texas Tech University System, Lubbock.

The Texas Employees Retirement System manages $26 billion in assets.

Japan Pension Considers Change In Stock Classifications

Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) last month decided to double the amount of assets allocated to domestic and foreign stocks.

Now, the President of the GPIF is considering further changes that would remove the distinction between domestic and foreign stock holdings.

From Bloomberg:

Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund is considering whether to overhaul its $389 billion of stock investments by loosening rules that restrict managers to domestic or international equities.

A month after the $1.1 trillion pool unveiled plans to more than double local and foreign share targets so that each makes up 25 percent of assets, Takahiro Mitani, its president, said separating the world into Japan and everywhere else may not be the best approach. GPIF should consider letting some of its managers invest both at home and abroad, he said.

“More funds are investing without discriminating between domestic and foreign, and I think that’s worth considering,” Mitani, 65, said in an interview in Tokyo on Dec. 3. “If choosing between Toyota and Volkswagen, instead of being limited to just Toyota and Nissan, raises investment performance and efficiency, it’s an option we mustn’t rule out.”

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the biggest U.S. public pension, makes no distinction between local and foreign holdings. Calpers, which oversees about $295 billion, has a 51 percent target for public equities, according to its website. GPIF’s stock investments were parceled out to managers in 45 different pieces as of March 31, according to the fund’s annual report.

[…]

GPIF would have to revise its systems to allow one manager to invest across Japanese and non-domestic shares, Mitani said. Alternatively, it could create a new global stock class on top of the existing ones, he said. The fund is due to review foreign equity managers in about 18 months, according to Mitani, who said he plans to retire when his five-year term finishes at the end of March.

Regardless of how it deploys managers, the Japanese fund is looking to put more money in foreign assets at a time when its home currency is slumping. The yen weakened past 120 per dollar for the first time in seven years yesterday.

Here’s what the fund’s asset allocation targets look like after last month’s overhaul:

GPIF’s new portfolio is split into four asset classes: the 25 percent targets for Japanese and foreign stocks, up from 12 percent each; the 35 percent allocation to domestic bonds and 15 percent for foreign debt, an increase from 11 percent. The fund had 18 percent of its holdings invested in Japanese stocks at the end of September.

Government Pension Investment Fund is the largest pension fund in the world. It manages $1.1 trillion in assets.
Photo by Ville Miettinen via Flickr CC License

San Diego Pension Begins Transition To In-House CIO

The Board of the San Diego County Employees Retirement Association (SDCERA) moved closer on Thursday to firing Salient Partners, the firm that acts as the pension fund’s chief investment officer.

Board members indicated that the firing was all but official, but that the transition to a new CIO still needs to be worked out.

From Bloomberg:

If the San Diego County Employees Retirement Association goes ahead with the proposal, it would mean the end of the fund’s five-year relationship with Houston-based Salient Partners LP, said board member Dianne Jacob, a San Diego County supervisor.

Just two months ago, the board voted 5-4 against firing Salient after some officials criticized the chief investment officer, Lee Partridge, as needlessly risking retiree income through use of futures contracts tied to securities and commodities.

“It sounds like we are going to terminate the contract,” Jacob said yesterday in a board meeting in San Diego. “It’s just a matter of timing and the transition.”

The company remains committed to its work in San Diego, said Chris Moon Ashraf, a spokeswoman for Salient at Jennifer Connelly Public Relations.

“Should the board determine that a change in provider is in the best interest of its members, Salient will work to ensure a smooth and expeditious transition,” she said in a statement.

The pension board directed its staff to set the timing for terminating the contract with Salient. The board didn’t schedule a vote on ending the contract, or take action on hiring an internal investment chief.

SDCERA pays Salient Partners around $8 million a year. Board members have previously indicated that the salary for a new CIO would likely be around $260,000.

Yves Smith on AOI’s Hedge Fund Principles

This week, the Alignment of Interests Association (AOI) released a set of proposed changes in the way hedge funds do business with their investors, such as pension funds.

AOI, a group to which many pension funds belong, said that hedge funds should only charge performance fees when returns beat benchmarks, and that fee structures should better link fees to long-term performance.

The proposals can be read here.

Yves Smith wrote a post at Naked Capitalism on Thursday weighing in on some of the proposals. The post can be read below.

_______________________

By Yves Smith, originally published at Naked Capitalism

Admittedly, some of [AOI’s] ideas sound promising, such as requiring funds to disclose if they have in-house pools not open to outside investors, or if they are subject to non-routine regulatory inquiries. But their key proposals are around fees. As readers probably know from private equity, the devil for this sort of thing lies in the details.

One of this group’s Big Ideas is requiring funds to meet benchmarks before profit shares are paid out, meaning the famed prototypical 20% upside fees. And they do sensibly want those fees to be based on annual rather than monthly or quarterly performance (with more frequent fees, an investor could have a lot of performance fees paid out in the good periods more than offset by underperformance or losses in the bad ones, and not see a settling up until he exited the fund or it was wound up. Longer performance periods reduce the odds of overpayment for blips of impressive results). But private equity funds have long had clawbacks. Yet as we’ve discussed at length, those clawbacks are virtually never paid out in practice. One big reason is the way the clawbacks intersect with tax provisions that serve to vitiate the clawback. It would be perfectly reasonable for hedge funds to ask for provisions similar to those used by private equity funds, with those clever tax attorneys modifying them to the degree possible to make them work just as well, from the perspective of the hedgies, as they do for private equity funds.

Hedge fund investors also want management fees to scale more with the size of fund. Again, that exists now to some degree in private equity funds, with megafunds charging much lower management fees. But it isn’t clear how much the hedge funds investors will gain. Bloomberg reports that the average management fee in the second quarter of this year was 1.5% of assets. That’s lower than typical private equity fees, which according to Eileen Appelbaum’s and Rosemary Batt’s Private Equity at Work still averaged 2%, and for funds over $1 billion, 1.71%. And of course, the fact that hedge fund agreements are treated as confidential, just as private equity agreements are, impedes fee comparisons and tougher bargaining. If this group really wanted to drive a tougher bargain, they’d insist on having the contracts be transparent. That proposal is notably absent.

In keeping, the AOI also calls for better governance. We’ve seen how well that works from private equity land. “Governance” in private equity consists of an advisory board which is chosen by the general partner from among its limited partners. You can bet that the general partners choose the most loyal and clueless investors. The only way one might take oversight arrangements seriously is if these funds had far more independent boards, as is the case with mutual funds.

So while I would be delighted to be proven wrong, history says that there isn’t much reason to expect this effort to get tougher with hedge funds to live up to its billing. And with new investment dollars continuing to pour in despite mediocre performance (assets under management rose 13% in the last year, with roughly half the increase coming from new contributions/a>. As long as investors are putting more money into hedge funds despite dubious performance, there isn’t sufficient negotiating leverage to push for more than token reforms.

Photo by c_ambler via Flickr CC License

Kentucky Retirement System Lowers Return Assumption; More State Money On Way

CREDIT: The Center For Retirement Research

The Kentucky Retirement System has lowered its assumed rate of return on investments from 7.75 percent to 7.5 percent.

The reduced assumption means the system will experience an uptick in unfunded liabilities, but it also ensures a higher annual payment from the state.

The action took place at a Board of Trustees meeting on Thursday. More details from CN 2:

The changes, presented to trustees earlier this year by actuaries with Cavanaugh Macdonald Consulting based on a five-year experience study, lower assumed returns on investments, price inflation, wage growth and wage inflation.

The new assumptions, KRS Executive Director Bill Thielen said, will cost the state roughly $95 million more per year in contributions for the Kentucky Employees Retirement System for state employees in non-hazardous positions during the next biennial budget, based on current plan valuations and payroll figures. They will not take effect until next year’s year-end plan valuations, he said.

[…]

The updated assumptions would push KRS’s unfunded liabilities to $19.5 billion, up from $17.8 billion currently, according to figures presented by Cavanaugh Macdonald Consulting.

At least one of the KRS trustees voiced concerns about approving the new guidelines at Thursday’s meeting. Personnel Cabinet Secretary Tim Longmeyer suggested delaying a vote until January so the board could meet with the governor’s office, legislators and others affected by the change.

“My concern is we don’t live in a bubble, so $95 million a year is a significant uptick,” said Longmeyer, who abstained from voting on the updated assumptions.

KRS Trustee Randy Overstreet, though, urged the board to move forward with the proposal. Nothing would change between now and January, he said.

“I’m thinking that we almost have the responsibility to follow the experts’ recommendations, and you’re right, it’s not a science, but it’s the best information we have to act on and move forward on since we have for the 20 years I’ve been on this board,” Overstreet said.

More context on KRS’ new assumed rate of return, from the Courier-Journal:

KRS has forecast a 7.75 investment return since 2007. But earnings in KERS non-hazardous averaged only 6.52 percent over the past decade, leading some critics — including lawmakers — to argue for a more cautious outlook.

The National Association of State Retirement Administrators reported that of 126 public retirement plans surveyed in October, 48 assumed a return of 7.5 percent or lower, while 78 assumed a higher rate.

The median rate was 7.75 percent, but more than half have cut their assumption since 2008, the group said.

KRS administers nearly a dozen defined-benefit plans for state workers, including the 21 percent funded KERS non-hazardous plan.

Illinois Asks Supreme Court to Fast-Track Pension Reform Hearing

Illinois’ Attorney General on Thursday requested that the state supreme court hold hearings on the state’s pension reform law as soon as January and no later than March.

From Reuters:

Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a motion to accelerate the state’s appeal of a Nov. 21 Sangamon County Circuit Court judge’s ruling that the law aimed at easing Illinois’ huge pension burden violated protections in the state constitution for public worker retirement benefits.

“A prompt resolution of those issues is critical because the state must either implement the act, or in the alternative, significantly reduce spending and/or raise taxes,” the motion stated.

At stake is an approximately $1 billion cut in Illinois’ contribution to four of its pension systems in fiscal 2016 under the law. Republican Governor-elect Bruce Rauner, who takes office next month, has a Feb. 18 deadline to present a budget to the Democrat-controlled legislature, which has until May 31 to pass the spending plan with simple majority votes. A three-fifths majority vote on bills would be needed after that date to have a budget in place by July 1, the start of fiscal 2016.

[…]

The reform law was enacted in December 2013 to help save Illinois’ sinking finances. It reduces and suspends cost-of-living increases for pensions, raises retirement ages and limits salaries on which pensions are based. Employees contribute 1 percent less of their salaries toward pensions, while contributions from the state, which has skipped or skimped on its pension payments over the years, are enforceable through the Illinois Supreme Court.

Illinois had $104 billion of unfunded pension liabilities at the end of fiscal year 2014.

Proposed New Jersey Bill Would Halt State Aid to Municipalities Not Complying With 2011 Pension Reforms

A New Jersey assemblyman proposed on Thursday a piece of legislation that would block state money to cities that aren’t complying with the state’s 2011 pension reform law.

From NJ.com:

[Assemblyman Declan] O’Scalon said he is proposing the legislation after reports surfaced that Newark had not been collecting payments that employees are legally required to pay toward their health care premiums.

Under the revised pension reforms Gov. Chris Christie signed in 2011, all public workers were required to contribute more toward its healthcare premiums, but state officials said earlier this year that Newark has not been compliant.

The city said in October that it took several months to update its payroll system in the wake of the law and that they did not know why the payments weren’t collected last year.

“It was long overdue, but it has come to light that the City of Newark has been ignoring the law since it was put into place,” O’Scalon said in a statement.

“The result is that the Mayor, Council members, and all employees in Newark pay less than the law requires – and worse, what common sense and fairness demand.”

The legislation would also dock the pay of elected officials and top finance department heads in municipalities that are not compliant, according to O’Scalon.

The proposed legislation would also establish noncompliance as grounds for impeachment or removal of the mayor of city officials, O’Scalon said.

O’scalon’s remarks arrive months after the state agreed to give Newark $10 million in transitional aid to address its budget crisis.

“Newark is a city that is facing tough issues and is legitimately going to need continued help from the state, but the local elected officials must lead by example,” O’scalon said.

The legislation will be officially introduced by the end of the year.

Photo credit: “New Jersey State House” by Marion Touvel. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

How Can Troubled California Cities Address Rising Pension Costs?

Matthew Covington penned a column for the Sacramento Bee on Thursday that dives into California’s recent spree of municipal bankruptcies — and postulates that, with pension costs rising, bankrupt cities of the future may not opt to preserve pensions the way Vallejo, Stockton and San Bernardino did.

Covington is a managing director at Conway MacKenzie, a financial firm that advises distressed governments. He proposes two possible solutions that could help troubled municipalities deal with pension costs. His ideas:

– Establish a protocol for restructuring municipal pensions out of court.

For troubled municipalities, pensions are typically the single largest expense, the most intractable and the most uncontrollable (because CalPERS determines what the municipality will pay each year). If CalPERS decides to change its investment return or mortality assumptions, or its investment performance suffers, the municipality will have to pay more, regardless of its own activities. If a municipality is in dire straits and cannot meet its obligations, an orderly restructuring would likely be superior to a bankruptcy filing.

This could save tens of millions of dollars for the city in fees on lawyers and other advisers. Additionally, plans could be tailored to minimize the impact on vulnerable groups such as the elderly and long-retired pensioners whose pensions were set in the premillennial sane era, something which might not be possible in a bankruptcy case.

– Provide uniform budgeting rules and guidance.

Too many municipalities have made promises that jeopardize their long-term fiscal health. While no one wants another bureaucracy meddling in local affairs, the task force could establish certain basic rules such as requiring municipalities to have long-term budget forecasts that clearly show pension expenses and require additional disclosure when a threshold is crossed.

For example, municipalities whose pension expenses exceed 20 percent of total expenditures (the levels at which voters in the non-CalPERS cities of San Jose and San Diego ratified pension amendments) could be forced to explain why the expenditure levels do not threaten the city’s financial stability.

The costs of municipal bankruptcies are borne not just by the creditors who invested in these cities, but also by residents hit with plummeting property values and deteriorating services. California can do more to protect its citizens from these failures. Let’s put systems in place to ensure this dangerous game isn’t played again.

Read the full column here.

Photo by Pete Zarria via Flickr CC License

South Carolina Workers Lose Appeal of Provision of Pension Reform Law

Public workers in South Carolina have lost their appeal of a provision of the state’s 2005 pension reform law, a federal appeals court said Friday.

The employees were challenging a provision of the law that dealt with the pension contributions of workers who retire but later return to work for the state.

An explanation of the provision that was being challenged and what it means for workers, from Reuters:

A provision of the revised law requires retirees who later return to work to pay into the retirement system, making the same contributions as other employees but without accruing extra service credit for pension benefits, according to court documents.

Before the [pension] overhaul went into effect, retired public employees could return to work and earn up to $50,000 without giving up the right to receive retirement benefits and without having to make more contributions to the pension funds.