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Cincinnati Councilman Proposes Changes to Pension Investment Strategy

Cincinnati City Councilman Christopher Smitherman has proposed a series of changes to how the city’s pension money is managed.

The proposals stem from concerns about transparency and high money management costs. Smitherman also wants to change the makeup of the investment board.

The fund returned 16 percent in 2013.

From the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Specifically he is proposing:

* Adding an elected official to the 11-member board that oversees the pension. Up until 2011, an elected official was part of the board, but the previous city council changed the make-up. Of the 11 members: six are chosen by the mayor with approval from City Council; four members are chosen by current employees and one member is chosen by retirees. Smitherman, whose day job is financial planning, is seeking guidance from his broker about whether he can serve on the pension board.

* Changing how the money is invested to take advantage of the market

“I do not share the general consensus that the assets are being managed properly,” Smitherman wrote in a Jan. 13 letter to current employees and retirees. “The mind set ‘everyone else experienced a downturn’ allows a pathology that mediocre investment returns are decisions that are acceptable.”

Smitherman is concerned about the overall market, but said there are natural head winds that a prudent investment adviser should be able to recognize.

“I am unconvinced that the current investment team is being preventative with their asset allocation for a short or long term down turn in the overall market,” he added in the letter. “The bottom line is I am concerned that City Council will turn over $238 million and get the same investment result.”

Smitherman has also proposed keeping more pension assets in cash form, as well as investing in securities directly instead of through hedge funds.

The proposal was shot down on Wednesday, but Smitherman said he will re-introduce the measure with some key changes.

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Canada Pensions Facing Weak 2015: Survey

A survey of investment managers conducted by Mercer reveals that Canadian pension funds could be looking at a weak 2015.

From the Globe and Mail:

Canadian pension plans are facing another weak year in 2015 with interest rates forecast to remain low and Canadian economic growth expected to trail global gross domestic product expansion.

A survey of investment managers by consulting firm Mercer shows most are expecting modest increases in interest rates this year and low investment returns, combining to create slow growth in pension plan funding in 2015.

[…]

Mercer said its Pension Health Index, which tracks the solvency position of a hypothetical pension plan with typical asset allocations, fell from a surplus position of 106 per cent at the end of 2013 to a shortfall position of 95 per cent by the end of 2014.

Mercer partner Mathieu Tanguay said most pension plans saw their funded status drop in 2014 because long-term interest rates fell, undermining investment returns for the year. Pension plans determine the size of their long-term funding liability using long-term interest rate levels, so falling interest rates mean a greater cost to fund pensions for plan members.

“Last year wasn’t too bad from an asset-return perspective only,” Mr. Tanguay said. “If you look at financial markets, a typical investor would have earned in the area of 10 to 12 per cent. So it’s not bad. But what hurt pension plans was the fact that interest rates dropped. Assets went up, but liabilities went up higher.”

The weakening was especially acute in the final quarter of 2014 as long-term interest rates fell toward 60-year lows. Long-term government of Canada bonds closed the year at 2.3 per cent, a drop from 3.2 per cent at the start of 2014.

Mercer’s Mathieu Tangua said the survey results paint a picture that pension funds are unlikely to see a funding improvement in 2015.

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Recruiting Private Equity Talent Getting More Expensive For Pension Funds

As more pension funds participate in direct investing or co-investing ventures, they find the need for private equity experts on their staff.

But the cost of getting that talent is growing: a recent survey found that almost 50 percent of pension funds are having to shovel out higher salaries to recruit and retain private equity employees.

From the Financial Times:

Private equity employees are commanding higher wages as increasing amounts of money are pushed into the asset class.

Almost half of North American limited partnerships (pension funds and funds of funds) are having to increase their pay scales to recruit staff, according to a survey of 114 investors and private equity funds by Coller Capital, which invests in the secondary private equity market. The European market lags behind somewhat, with 30 per cent of LPs increasing salaries.

“The industry has done very well over the past couple of years, with very strong distribution,” said Michael Schad, a partner at Coller Capital. “As there is more demand from employers, wages can go up.”

As well as the industry expanding, investors are entering more directly into the asset class, either co-investing with general partners or building their own private equity investment capabilities. “This requires different skill sets,” said Mr Schad.

The survey also asked where funds were looking to recruit PE employees:

While more than half expect to recruit employees from other LPs, almost as many (46 per cent) will look for talent at alternative asset managers that are not private equity firms. A third will take on former investment bankers, but just a quarter hope to attract workers from general partners (private equity firms).

Increasing remuneration may be good news for the LPs, according to remarks made by Klaus Ruhne, partner at ATP Private Equity Partners, during a round-table held by private equity consultant Triago in November.

“What is more important than the size of teams, or the value of assets under management, is the frequent lack of generous long-term incentive plans for limited partners,” he said. “Without a restructuring of LP compensation, we will continue to witness an inordinate amount of inconsistency and even foolishness when it comes to how capital is deployed and how limited partners are organised.”

The survey was conducted by Coller Capital.

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How Much Are Low Oil Prices Hurting Retirement Accounts?

Americans are thrilled to be saving money at the gas pump. But low oil prices aren’t good news for everyone – namely, oil and gas companies.

And that affects many Americans who are invested in oil and gas companies through their retirement accounts. But how much do low oil prices really hurt retirement funds?

Dan Boyce from Inside Energy explores the question:

Oil was at $55 to $60 a barrel just before Christmas, down from a high of more than $100 per barrel this summer.

Wanting to see just how much stake the average person has in oil and gas, we found that the most direct way to get access to sensitive personal financial information was if we analyzed one of our own retirement accounts. I humbly volunteered my own T. Rowe Price Roth IRA.

It’s a meager account, containing a little more than $4,200 at this point, and analyzing it for my oil and gas holdings revealed how complex the modern retirement portfolio really is.

My $4,200 splits among 19 smaller funds, which are invested in thousands of sources. The list ranges from companies like Tootsie Roll Industries and WD-40 to countries like Norway and even World Wrestling Entertainment.

It turns out a little less than 6 percent of my IRA is directly invested in oil and gas companies, or about $243.

Scott Middleton, who works with investment consulting company Innovest, said this mirrors the national average for retirement investments in energy at somewhere between 5 to 10 percent.

It’s true for IRA accounts like mine, as well as for others like 401(k)s, 403(b)s and pension funds.

The Colorado Public Employees Retirement Association, for example, has about 7 percent of its total portfolio in the energy sector, which in Wall Street-speak basically means just oil and gas. It makes up about 9 percent of the total stock market.

Middleton said as oil prices shrink, so, too, does my $243 in oil and gas investments. And so do most of the other funds invested in the same stocks.

But Boyce offers a few qualifiers that muddy the picture of just how much falling oil prices might hurt retirement savings:

A couple of things to remember, though. For one, I’m betting on my retirement account for the long term. The account is based upon the premise that I won’t start withdrawing from it until 2055.

Short-term fluctuations in price shouldn’t really concern us. Over the long term, the energy sector has been considered a very safe investment, yielding about a 10 percent annual rate of return.

Also, while declining oil prices might be bad for one part of my portfolio, they’re good for other parts. For example, Middleton said chemical producers and transportation companies tend to do well with lower oil prices.

Ultimately, oil and gas is not a critical part of our retirement funds. But, make no mistake, our retirement funds are absolutely critical for the oil and gas industry. The American Petroleum Institute says about 70 percent of U.S. oil company worth is owned by tens of millions of U.S. households through our IRAs, our pensions and our mutual funds.

Read the whole piece here.

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Canada Pension Invests $157 Million in Indian Engineering Firm

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) has made a $157 million in the infrastructure arm of an Indian engineering company.

The investment is the first direct investment in an Indian infrastructure firm by a Canadian pension fund. The $157 million is only the first installment in CPPIB’s commitment, which totals $314 million.

Details from VC Circle:

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) has invested Rs 1,000 crore (around $157 million) in L&T Infrastructure Development Projects Ltd (L&T IDPL), a unit of Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T), by way of subscription to compulsorily convertible preference shares, as per a stock market disclosure.

The investment, made through CPPIB’s Singapore-based wholly owned subsidiary, is the first tranche of proposed Rs 2,000 crore (around $314 million now) investment that was approved by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), the nodal government body monitoring foreign investment in the country, earlier this year.

The two companies signed a definitive investment agreement in June this year.

“A second tranche of Rs 1,000 crore or such higher amount as may be agreed between L&T IDPL and CPPIB’s subsidiary, will be invested after 12 months from the date of the initial investment, subject to any required regulatory approvals at such time,” L&T said in the statement.

CPPIB manages $234.4 in assets.

Pension Funds Criticize Excessive Private Equity Fees; More Look To Direct Investing

Pension fund officials from Canada and the Netherlands expressed their frustration with private equity fees during a conference this week.

The chief investment officer of the Netherlands’ $220 billion healthcare pension fund said it needs “to think about” the fees it is paying, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Ruulke Bagijn, chief investment officer for private markets at Dutch pension manager PGGM, said a Dutch pension fund for nurses and social workers that she invests for, paid more than 400 million euros ($501.6 million) to private-equity firms in 2013. The amount accounted for half the fees paid by the PFZW pension fund, even though private-equity firms managed just 6% of its assets last year, she said.

“That is something we have to think about,” Ms. Bagijn said.

Among the things pension officials are thinking about: bypassing private equity firms and fees by investing directly in companies. From the Wall Street Journal:

Jane Rowe, the head of private equity at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, is buying more companies directly rather than just through private-equity funds. Ms. Rowe told executives gathered in a hotel near Place Vendome in central Paris that she is motivated to make money to improve the retirement security of Canadian teachers rather than simply for herself and her partners.

“You’re not doing it to make the senior managing partner of a private-equity fund $200 million more this year,” she said, as she sat alongside Ms. Ruulke of the Netherlands and Derek Murphy of PSP Investments, which manages pensions for Canadian soldiers. “You’re making it for the teachers of Ontario. You know, Derek’s making it for the armed forces of Canada. Ruulke’s doing it for the social fabric of the Netherlands. These are very nice missions to have in life.”

But an investment firm executive pointed out that direct investing isn’t as cost-free as it sounds. From the WSJ:

[Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein] warned that investors who do more acquisitions themselves rather than through private-equity funds will have to pay big salaries to hire and retain talented deal makers.

“Some public pension funds will just not pay, in the United States particularly, very high salaries and will not be able to hold on to people very long and get the most talented people,” Mr. Rubenstein said at the conference. “I don’t think there are that many people who will pay their employees at these sovereign-wealth funds and other pension funds the kind of compensation necessary to hold on to these people and get them.”

[…]

Mr. Rubenstein had a further warning for investors seeking to compete for deals with private-equity firms. “If you live by the sword you die by the sword,” he said. “If you are going to do disintermediation you can’t blame somebody else if something goes wrong.”

Pension360 has previously covered how pension funds are bypassing PE firms and investing directly in companies. One such fund is the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System. The fund’s Euporean head of Private Equity said last month:

“The amount of fees that we were paying out for a fund, 2 and 20 [percentage points] and everything that goes with that, was a huge amount of value that we were losing to the fund,” Mr. Redman said. “If we could deliver top quartile returns and we weren’t hemorrhaging quite so much in terms of fees and carry that would mean that we would be able to meet the pension promise.”

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