Ted Ballantine | Pension360

Arizona City On Hook For $16 Million of Additional Pension Payments in 2015, New Calculations Reveal

Tucson’s 2015 payment to its pension systems will likely be much higher than city officials initially thought—new calculations by Arizona pension officials indicate Tucson may be on the hook for an additional $16 million.

The city thought its 2015 payment to the public safety pension system would total around $46 million. But after recent calculations, the payment will likely be upwards of $62 million.

Reported by the Arizona Daily Star:

Tucson could pay up to $16 million more for its police and fire pensions next fiscal year, according to a newly released state pension board report.

The ballooning costs are mostly the result of a recent Arizona Supreme Court decision overturning a 2011 state law intended to keep pension costs down.

The decision means Tucson could pay about $62 million for its public-safety pensions next year.

Back in February, the court ordered the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System to reimburse retirees $40 million for past cost-of-living increases and to shift $335 million to a reserve fund to cover future cost-of-living increases.

After the ruling, the state pension board had to calculate how much of a dent the court order would put in each city’s retirement funds.

It released its calculations earlier this week.

For Tucson, it drops its police and fire pensions under 40 percent funded through the plan’s investments, according to PSPRS documents.

That means taxpayers are on the hook for $763 million in unfunded pension obligations owed to existing and future public safety retirees. The two pensions hovered around 50 percent funded last year.

As a result, Tucson will likely pay over 60 cents on every dollar of salary for police and fire personnel toward pensions.

Tucson’s payments to its pension systems in 2015 are expected to total around $100 million.

Chart: Is The Actuarially Required Contribution A “Joke”?

Yesterday, Pioneer Institute Senior Fellow Iliya Atanasov called the annual required contribution (ARC) the “biggest joke of the costing and funding process”. He said in a column at Public Sector Inc:

The biggest joke of the costing and funding process is the so-called annual required contribution (ARC) that the actuarial valuation is supposed to determine. In reality, there is nothing “required” about the ARC – most jurisdictions can contribute absolutely nothing and face no legal repercussions, at least in the short run. And when state and local governments don’t make the ARC, they rarely look at, let alone disclose, the long-term cost of postponing the payment and how much more expensive the benefits become as a result. Just look at Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, which owe some $300 billion in unfunded liabilities between them, or at the sad condition of once glorious cities like Philadelphia, Chicago and Detroit, teetering towards or already in bankruptcy.

As the above chart shows, the country’s public pension funds are indeed failing to pay 100 percent of their ARCs. Often, states and municipalities make full payments to smaller systems but fail to make consistent, meaningful contributions to larger systems. Another chart for more context:

Texas Firefighters Fund Sues Tesco Over “Artificially Inflated” Stock Price, Accounting Irregularities

The Irving Firemen’s Relief and Retirement Fund, of Irving, Texas filed a lawsuit on Thursday against retail giant Tesco.

The fund says it suffered heavy losses when Tesco stock fell after the firm admitted it had overstated its profits.

From Bloomberg:

Tesco Plc (TSCO) and its directors misled investors about its financial health, according to a Texas retirement fund that sued the U.K.’s biggest retailer just as it’s facing an onslaught from rival European companies.

[…]

The Irving Firemen’s Relief and Retirement Fund, of Irving, Texas, alleged that it bought Tesco stock at artificially inflated prices. It suffered “significant losses” when Tesco said in September that accounting irregularities caused it to overstate profits, according to the complaint filed yesterday in federal court in Manhattan.

Tesco shares plummeted Sept. 22 after the supermarket chain said some income was booked before being earned and costs were recognized later than incurred. The news prompted investors, including Warren Buffett, to cut their stake. Yesterday, the Cheshunt, England-based company said the accounting caused it to overstate profit by 263 million pounds ($422 million), with more than half of that amount pre-dating this year.

Matt Francis, a spokesman for Tesco, declined to immediately comment on the complaint by the fund, which has 463 members, according to its web site.

[…]

The Irving fund is seeking to represent all Tesco shareholders who purchased the company’s American depositary receipts, each representing one ordinary share, between Feb. 2 and Sept. 22, according to the complaint.

The Irving Firemen’s Relief and Retirement Fund manages $135 million in assets and was 67 percent funded as of February.

Oklahoma PERS Hires Executive Director

The Oklahoma Public Employees Retirement System has tabbed a new executive director: Joseph Fox, who was the fund’s general counsel since 2005 and who had been serving as interim executive director since September.

From an OPERS release:

The board of trustees of the Oklahoma Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) has selected Joseph A. Fox as its new executive director effective November 1, 2014. The board had previously named Fox as its interim executive director. Mr. Fox fills the vacancy created by the resignation of Tom Spencer who is becoming the executive director of the Oklahoma Teachers’ Retirement System.

“The OPERS Board is very happy with its selection of Joe as executive director,” said OPERS Board Chair DeWayne McAnally. “The search committee met and discussed the possibilities at length, and after many consultations with outside sources and OPERS staff, Joe became the clear choice.”

[…]

McAnally added, “This is a critical time for OPERS as it is focusing on implementing a new defined contribution retirement plan in 2015. The agency needs strong and enduring leadership, and the board feels Joe provides that continuity.”

OPERS oversees $8.5 billion in assets for 81,000 members.

Deutsche Bank: CalPERS’ Hedge Fund Exit “Has No Bearing” On Allocations Of Institutional Investors

The CalPERS Building in West Sacramento, California.

Deutsche Bank says that after a series of meetings this month with institutional investors, they’ve concluded that CalPERS’ hedge fund exit “has no bearing on most investors commitment to the industry.”

From ValueWalk:

Deutsche Bank prime brokerage notes that hedge funds have been engaged in “extreme protection buying in equities” and said that the recent exit from hedge funds by CalPERS “has no bearing on most investors commitment to the industry.”

After speaking with the institutional investor community regarding their commitment to maintain their hedge fund allocations, Deutsche Bank’s Capital Introductions group reports this positive message that it says was bolstered by recent meetings with Canadian pensions and global insurance companies throughout the month, while a trip to Munich indicated an increase in hedge fund exposure from institutions.

[…]

Separate hedge fund observers, meanwhile will be watching numeric asset flow patterns in December and the first quarter of 2015 to determine on an objective basis if there has been a statistical move away from hedge funds.

Even if institutional investors on the whole aren’t moving away from hedge funds, the exit by CalPERS – and the public debate swirling around the investment expenses associated with hedge funds – has forced some hedge funds to reconsider their fee structures. From the Wall Street Journal:

Two titans of the hedge-fund and private-equity world say they are growing more open to reducing fees in the face of rising scrutiny of the compensation paid to managers of so-called alternative investments.

[…]

Mr. [John] Paulson [founder of hedge fund firm Paulson & Co.] said he feels “pressure” to act in the wake of “enormous numbers in compensation” for hedge fund managers. Mr. Paulson, 58, earned a reported $2.3 billion last year, counting both fees and the appreciation of his own personal investment in his funds.

“Institutions are becoming a little more demanding…they are putting pressure on the management fee and the incentive fee,” he said Monday during a panel discussion at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Joseph Landy, co-CEO of $39 billion buyout shop Warburg Pincus, echoed Mr. Paulson’s experience.

“There are a lot of private-equity managers out there who can make a lot of money before they return a dime to investors,” Mr. Landy said. “Most of the pressure [to reduce fees] has been on the actual annual management fee.”

Neither he nor Mr. Paulson, however, were too concerned about any widespread threats to their businesses.

“We came out relatively unscathed from the crisis. We’re doing pretty much the same things we did as before [with] very little restrictions on how we invest the money,” Mr. Paulson said.

Paulson said he think more hedge funds will start using “hurdles”, a fee structure which prevents managers from collecting performance fees until they’ve met a certain benchmark return.

Photo by Stephen Curtin

Fiduciary Capitalism, Long-Term Thinking and the Future of Finance

John Rogers, CFA, penned a thoughtful article in a recent issue of the Financial Analysts Journal regarding the future of finance – and how pension funds and other institutional investors could usher in a new era of capitalism.

From the article, titled “A New Era of Fiduciary Capitalism? Let’s Hope So”:

From my perspective, a new era of capitalism is emerging out of the fog. What I define as fiduciary capitalism is gathering strength and needs to become the future of finance. An era of fiduciary capitalism would be one in which long-term-oriented institutional investors shape behavior in the financial markets and the broader economy. In fiduciary capitalism, the dominant players in capital formation are institutional asset owners; these investors are legally bound to a duty of care and loyalty and must place the needs of their beneficiaries above all other considerations. The main players in this group are pension funds, endowments, foundations, and sovereign wealth funds.

Fiduciary capitalism has several attractive traits. It encourages long-term thinking. As “universal owners,” fiduciaries foster a deeper engagement with companies’ management teams and public policymakers on governance and strategy. In textbook terms, they seek to minimize negative externalities and reward positive ones. Because reducing costs is easier than generating alpha, we can expect continued pressure on financial intermediaries to reduce costs. To be sure, there are considerable gaps to bridge between today’s landscape and fiduciary capitalism. Transparency and disclosure, governance of fiduciaries, agency issues, and accountability are all areas that need more work.

On barrier in the way of fiduciary capitalism: lack of transparency. From the article:

Too many institutional investors are secretive and do not disclose enough about their activities. Their beneficial owners (including voters, in the case of sovereign funds) need more information to make reasonable judgments about their operations. Similarly, far more transparency is needed in the true costs of running these pools of assets. Investment management fees and other expenses often go unreported. Too much time and energy is spent comparing returns with market benchmarks, and not enough is spent defining and comparing the organizations’ performances against their liabilities—or against adequacy ratios.

Pension governance itself needs to be improved. As Ranji Nagaswami, former chief investment adviser to New York City’s $140 billion employee pension funds, has observed, public pension trustees are often ill equipped to govern platforms that are effectively complex asset management organizations. Compensation remains a complicated issue. In the public sector, paying for great pension staffers ought to be at least as important as a winning record on the playing field, yet in 27 of the 50 US states, the highest-paid public employee is the head coach of a college football team.

Rogers concludes:

The future of finance needs to be less about leverage, financial engineering, and stratospheric bonuses and more about efficiently and cleanly connecting capital with ideas, long-term investing for the good of society, and delivering on promises to future generations. In the public policy arena, governments that promote long-term savings, reduce taxes on long-term ownership, and require transparency and good fiduciary governance can help hasten this welcome change in our financial markets.

The era of finance capitalism wasn’t all bad, and an era of fiduciary capitalism wouldn’t be all good. In a time when leadership in finance is desperately lacking, fiduciaries have the potential to reconnect financial services with the society they serve. Let’s hope it’s not too late.

Read the entire article, which is free to view, here.

Chart: The Rise of Hedge Funds In Pension Portfolios

In recent years, hedge funds have solidified themselves as a big part of pension portfolios by two measures:

1) More pension funds than ever are investing in hedge funds

2) Those pensions are allocating more money towards hedge funds than ever before

That bears itself out in the above graphic, and this next one:

A recent Preqin report had this to say about the numbers:

“There are more US public pension funds than ever before allocating capital to hedge funds, and these investors are investing the most they ever have in the asset class. Public pension funds have increasingly recognized the value of hedge funds as part of a diversified portfolio, and although CalPERS’ withdrawal from the asset class will spark some investors to look more closely at their current allocation model, the importance of hedge funds as a source of risk-adjusted returns for these investors is likely to continue to prove attractive for US retirement schemes.

Preqin’s recent research highlights that investors are not using hedge funds to produce outsized returns, but instead to produce uncorrelated, risk-adjusted returns. Over short and longer time frames, hedge funds have in general met investor needs for risk-adjusted returns. However 2014 has been a period of relatively turbulent returns when looking at Preqin’s monthly benchmarks; in times like this, investor calls for changes in fee structures and better alignment of interests become more vocal, and this clearly has had an impact on CalPERS’ decision.”

Chart Credit: Preqin

Kolivakis: Time To Tear Down Private Equity’s “Iron Curtain”

Leo Kolivakis runs the blog Pension Pulse, which tightly covers the world of pensions and investments.

Kolivakis recently commented on Gretchen Morgenson’s New York Times story, “Behind Private Equity’s Curtain”. Here’s what he had to say:

There is still way too much secrecy in the private equity industry, and much of this is deliberate so that PE kingpins can profit off…public pension funds that hand over billions without demanding more transparency and lower fees. This is why I played on the title and called it an “iron curtain.”

Go back to read my comment on the dark side of private equity where I discussed some of these issues. I’m not against private equity but think it’s high time that these guys realize who their big clients are — public pension funds! That means they should provide full transparency on fees, clawbacks and other terms. They can do so with a sufficient lag as to not hurt their “trade secrets” but there has to be laws passed that require them to do so.

And what about the Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA)? This organization is made up of the leading private equity investors and it has stayed mum on all these transparency issues. If they got together and demanded more transparency, I guarantee you all the big PE funds would bend over backwards to provide them with the information they require.

Interestingly, all the major private equity funds have publicly listed stocks, many of which have sold off recently during the market rout (and some offer very juicy dividends!). Go check out the charts and dividends of Apollo Global Management (APO), Blackstone (BX), Carlyle Group (CG), and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR).

On its Q3 conference call, Blackstone’s management pointed out that during the past four years, its growth had been limited only by how much capital it can manage efficiently, not by how much capital investors have been willing to provide.

But as valuations keep inflating, it will be even more difficult for these alternative investment managers to find deals that are priced reasonably. And if deflation settles in, I foresee very difficult days ahead for all asset managers, including alternative investment managers.

Read the entire post here.

Arizona Pension Scolded After Racking Up $1.76 million Legal Bill In 2013-14

The Public Safety Personnel Retirement System (PSPRS) racked up $1.76 million in legal bills in fiscal year 2013-14.

To put that legal tab in context, consider the legal bills accrued by the state’s largest pension fund, the Arizona State Retirement System: ASRS is four times as big as PSPRS, but only paid $1.24 million in legal bills.

The state’s Attorney General’s Office is now saying that enough is enough. From now on, the Office says it must approve any legal work outside investment advice.

From the Arizona Republic:

The Arizona Attorney General’s Office has cracked down on the use of outside legal counsel by the financially troubled Arizona public-safety pension fund after the fund paid out $1.76 million to the Kutak Rock law firm last fiscal year.

The Public Safety Personnel Retirement System also is represented by the Attorney General’s Office and recently hired a full-time investment attorney who makes $215,000 annually. The pension fund has relied on Kutak Rock for administrative, litigation and investment advice, records show.

Under the Attorney General’s directive, Kutak Rock now may only provide investment advice. Any additional work must be approved by the Attorney General’s Office.

Eric Bistrow, chief deputy attorney general, recently wrote PSPRS that engaging outside counsel “when there is no need to do so constitutes a breach of fiduciary responsibilities.” Bistrow noted that he has instructed staff members to “be vigilant in requiring” PSPRS to adhere to proper standards.

Of the $1.76 million billed by Kutak Rock last year, just more than one-third related to investment advice, records show. The balance related to administrative and litigation matters.

[…]

“We took this action because they (Kutak Rock) were doing too much and were well beyond the scope,” said Stephanie Grisham, spokeswoman for Attorney General Tom Horne. “Basically, they (PSPRS) were using them instead of us, and that was not okay.”

Bistrow bluntly told PSPRS that large outside legal tabs would no longer be tolerated. He said in his directive that the same services “can be obtained with as much, if not more, expertise and at a much lower cost, at this office.”

Jared Smout, PSPRS interim administrator, said the pension fund is “working to make everything right. We are trying to figure out the balance. The AG’s Office will now provide review of public records requests, open meetings laws and personnel matters.”

What caused the high legal bills? The pension fund offers an explanation:

PSPRS has been particularly busy in [several] legal areas over the past 18 months. The system has been locked in litigation with former employees who allege it engaged in questionable financial practices, and its director retired this summer after The Arizona Republic disclosed that illegal raises had been paid to some staffers.

Those problems have invited close scrutiny by journalists and the FBI, which is investigating some of the whistle-blowers’ allegations.

Smout said PSPRS has until now relied on outside counsel because the trust’s investments expanded during the past decade and the agency needed legal expertise.

“We’ve only had competent in-house counsel since August,” Smout said.

Read more coverage of Arizona’s PSPRS, and the controversies surrounding the fund, here.

Philadelphia Pension Board Now Asking Investment Firms To Disclose Political Spending

For the first time, investment firms will be asked to submit campaign disclosure documents before managing money for the Philadelphia Board of Pensions.

Reported by PhillyDeals:

Over the opposition of Mayor Michael Nutter’s appointees, a majority of the trustees of Philadelphia’s $4.8 billion city pension plan have agreed to “request” dozens of private firms that are paid to manage city money — from giants like KKR and Barclays to local investors like Ted Aronson’s AJO Partners — to “disclose their political spending,” and will send current and future managers campaign finance disclosure requests, starting Jan. 1.

The move was cheered by city controller Alan Butkovitz, who had recommended this disclosure, noting the city has previously urged similar disclosures by the publicly-traded companies it invests in. “We will be asking for all donations from everybody,” including federal and state as well as city contributions, Butkovitz told me in a statement.

The four trustees representing city police, fire, white-collar and blue-collar workers joined Butkovitz in supporting the disclosure request, outvoting Nutter’s vote-no faction.The move follows the Securities and Exchange Commission’s first-time-ever order that a private money manager, Wayne-based TL Ventures, return $300,000 in state and city pension fees after founder Robert Keith gave cash gifts to Pa. Gov. Tom Corbett and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter while getting paid to manage state and city pension funds, in violation of a 2010 federal law limiting contributions to officials with influence over pension boards.

Investment firms won’t be forced to disclose their spending – but they will be “urged” to by trustees.

The resolution can be read here.

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