featured | Pension360

Alfred Villalobos, Central Figure in the CalPERS Bribery Scandal, Has Died

On Tuesday, the lawyer of Alfred Villalobos said his client was too sick to attend the trial stemming from his alleged bribery of a top CalPERS official.

On Wednesday, the lawyer said that Villalobos, 71, had passed away.

Villalobos, a former placement agent, was on trial for allegedly bribing a former CalPERS Chief Executive to direct money toward certain investment firms.

Quebec Pension Will Own and Finance New Public Transportation Projects

Canada’s second largest pension fund has agreed to take over Quebec’s new public transit projects.

Under an agreement reached between the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and the Quebec government, the pension fund will finance and own the province’s new public transit projects.

Towers Watson Sued Over Advice That Allegedly Led to “Substantial Losses” For Pension Fund

Consulting firm Towers Watson faces a lawsuit from the UK’s British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme.

The pension fund, one of the UK’s largest, alleges that Towers Watson gave them “negligent investment consulting advice” that eventually led to significant investment losses.

Towers Watson denies the allegation.

From Chief Investment Officer:

Global consulting firm Towers Watson is being sued by one of the UK’s largest pension funds for more than £47 million ($72 million).

The UK’s British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme has filed a lawsuit in the US against the consultant alleging “negligent investment consulting advice” relating to a currency hedge.

The trustees of the £8.7 billion pension issued Towers Watson a letter of claim in September, according to a 10Q filing made to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on November 5. The lawsuit relates to a currency hedge on a £250 million investment in a local currency emerging market debt fund, which was made in August 2008. The advice was provided by Watson Wyatt, which merged with Towers Perrin to create Towers Watson in 2010.

According to the regulatory filing, the claim alleges that the currency hedge caused a “substantial loss” to the pension fund between August 2008 and October 2012. The loss was valued at £47.5 million by the pension fund.

A spokesperson for Towers Watson told CIO that the firm “disputes the allegations brought by the British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme and intends to defend the matter vigorously.”

The SEC filing stated: “Based on all of the information to date, and given the stage of the matter, [Towers Watson] is currently unable to provide an estimate of the reasonably possible loss or range of loss.”

The consultant was set to have issued a letter on the matter to the pension fund on or before December 23, 2014, the filing said.

The British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme declined to comment.

The British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme manages over $13 billion in assets.

Photo by www.SeniorLiving.Org

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.

Photo by 401kcalculator.org

Kentucky Lawmakers to Push for Pension Reforms Before Funding Teachers’ System

The Kentucky General Assembly is considering issuing billions of dollars worth of bonds to help fund the state’s Teachers’ Retirement System (KTRS).

But the funding may come with a catch as many lawmakers want to attach strings to the funds, which range anywhere from forcing new transparency requirements on the system to making benefit changes.

From the Courier-Journal:

So far, legislators have pre-filed at least four bills that would alter some aspect of teacher pensions, and leaders from both the House and Senate say any bonding needs to be paired with reforms.

“There is not a lot of enthusiasm for borrowing more money to pay off the KTRS debt without structural changes accompanying that effort,” said Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown.

Thayer said lawmakers need to consider adjustments to employee contributions and cost-of-living increases, along with new policies that promote transparency in the system.

House Speaker Greg Stumbo, who argues that bond proposals have merit under today’s market conditions, likewise favors measures to improve oversight and transparency as part of the overall funding scheme.

“I think to sell it, it needs to be part of the package,” Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, said.

[…]

McDaniel, R-Latonia, is sponsoring a bill that would require public retirement systems — including KTRS — to disclose more information about use of investment middlemen known as placement agents.

In the House, Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville, has pre-filed legislation that would, among other things, ban the use of placement agents and require KTRS to publicly disclose information about investments and contracts.

Wayne said the bonding proposal makes some fiscal sense if the state can borrow money at a interest rate lower than its investment return.

But he warned that lawmakers can’t trust the system to act in the best interest of retirees without more transparency, and he says the funding problem is better addressed through tax reform.

KTRS manages $17.5 billion in assets.

Pension Funds Find Farmland To Be Fertile Investment

Institutional investors are donning their straw hats, opening their tool sheds and getting to work in the crop fields.

Investors are drawn to farmland by strong returns and its weak correlation with other assets.

From The Economist:

Institutional investors such as pension funds see farmland as fertile ground to plough, either doing their own deals or farming them out to specialist funds. Some act as landlords by buying land and leasing it out. Others buy plots of low-value land, such as pastures, and upgrade them to higher-yielding orchards. Investors who are keen on even bigger risks and rewards flock to places such as Brazil, Ukraine and Zambia, where farming techniques are often still underdeveloped and potential productivity gains immense.

Farmland has been a great investment over the past 20 years, certainly in America, where annual returns of 12% caused some to dub it “gold with a coupon”. In America and Britain, where tax incentives have distorted the market, it outperformed most major asset classes over the past decade, and with low volatility to boot. Those going against the grain warn of a land-price bubble. Believers argue that increasing demand and shrinking supply—as well as urbanisation, poor soil management and pressure on water systems that are threats to farmland—mean the investment case is on solid ground.

It is not just the asset appreciation and yields that attract outside capital, says Bruce Sherrick of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: as important is the diversification to portfolios that farmland offers. It is uncorrelated with paper assets such as stocks and bonds, has proven relatively resistant to inflation, and is less sensitive to economic shocks (people continue to eat even during downturns) and to interest-rate hikes. Moreover, in the aftermath of the financial crisis investors are reassured by assets they can touch and sniff.

Read the full report from the Economist here.

Illinois Gov. Signs Law Allowing Felons To Be Stripped of Pensions

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has signed into law a measure that allows the Illinois Attorney General to strip pension benefits from public officials who have been convicted of felonies related to their job.

The bill was passed unanimously by the state Senate earlier this month.

From the Associated Press:

A new state law will make it tougher for felons to receive a public pension.

Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation Monday giving Illinois’ attorney general more power to stop pension payments to convicted felons.

[…]

The Illinois Supreme Court in July upheld a lower court ruling that Attorney General Lisa Madigan couldn’t challenge a Chicago police pension board decision allowing Burge to keep his taxpayer-supported pension.

State Sen. Kwame Raoul is a Chicago Democrat. He says it’s “unconscionable” that Burge receives a pension and the law allows “taxpayers a way to fight back.”

The bill came about after former Chicago policeman Jon Burge was allowed to keep his pension even after being convicted of a serious felony. From the Sun-Times:

In July, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled a Cook County court was correct in not allowing Madigan to intervene in a police pension matter. The decision allowed disgraced former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge, who was convicted in 2010 for lying about the torture of police suspects, to keep his public pension of about $54,000 a year.

The police pension board deadlocked 4-4 on a motion to strip Burge of his pension. Some argued his conviction was not related to his police work, since he was convicted on perjury and obstruction of justice from a civil suit filed after he left the force.

Under the law, the state attorney general will be able to petition the court to strip pension benefits from public officials. Previously, the attorney general wasn’t allowed to intervene in the decision, which was left to pension boards.

Photo credit: “Gfp-illinois-springfield-capitol-and-sky” by Yinan Chen. Via Wikimedia Commons

Benchmarks, Transparency Could Bring More Pension Funds to Infrastructure, Says Group

The European Association of Paritarian Institutions (AEIP) last week called for greater transparency and more performance data in the infrastructure sector.

These changes, according to the AEIP, could help attract more pension funds to the sector.

From Investments and Pensions Europe:

Infrastructure markets need to be more transparent, with greater emphasis placed on the development of sector benchmarks, according to the European Association of Paritarian Institutions (AEIP).

Setting out its views on infrastructure, the association said that while pension funds were long-term investors – and therefore well-suited to invest in the asset class – they first and foremost needed to abide by their fiduciary duties to members.

“The reality is that infrastructure represents a valuable asset class and for sure a viable option for long-term investors, but these latter face several hurdles to access it,” the AEIP’s paper noted.

It said the lack of comparable, long-term data was one of the hurdles facing investors and that the absence of infrastructure benchmarks made it difficult to compare the performance of the asset class.

It also identified an organisation’s scale as problematic to taking full advantage of the asset class.

“Direct investments, those that yield the most interesting returns, are the most difficult to pursue, as their governance and monitoring require skilled individuals and a strict discipline regulating possible conflicts of interests,” it said.

“National regulation does not always simplify direct investments, and pension regulators in some cases limit the use of the asset class in a direct or indirect way.”

The association called on governments to play their part in making infrastructure accessible.

“Often the lack of infrastructure investments is not due to a lack of projects but not finding the right match with investors,” the AEIP added. “Some form of standardisation might be investigated.”

Read the paper here.

Massachusetts Pension Waited a Year to Disclose Hedge Fund Troubles

For more than a year, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Retirement Fund didn’t publicly disclose the problems plaguing a hedge fund that held MBTA money.

Those problems included civil fraud charges filed against the firm, Weston Capital Asset Management, which is now shutting down.

From the Boston Globe:

In its annual report, released Dec. 10, the $1.6 billion pension fund for transit workers said that it removed its money from Weston Capital Asset Management in September 2013. Nine months later, Weston Capital unraveled as federal securities regulators filed civil fraud charges against the firm and its top executives for allegedly draining $17 million from one of its hedge funds to other accounts and to themselves.

[…]

With Weston Capital, the T fund appears to have escaped unharmed. But investment specialists said changes in leadership and ownership at the firm at the time the agency was investing should have raised suspicions.

For instance, the firm’s chief investment officer left just months before the MBTA pension committed money to it. And five months after the T invested, Weston Capital’s founder and chief executive, Albert Hallac, agreed to sell the firm to a financially troubled company — a deal that would ultimately fall apart.

“Turnover is never good in that kind of a situation. You’re [investing] based on their record and their proven results,’’ said Timothy Vaill, the former chief executive of Boston Private Financial Holdings Inc., a banking and investment firm. “If you’re going to be hiring third-party managers, you’ve got to deeply dive into their world.”

A spokesman for the pension fund, Steve Crawford, said in an e-mailed statement that officials did not learn of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation of Weston Capital until this year. But sometime in 2013, he said, the pension fund “initiated discussions with other” investors in the same hedge fund to withdraw their money.

It’s not the first time the MBTA fund has invested money with a troubled hedge fund. From the Boston Globe:

The T’s pension fund said it did not lose money on its 2009 Weston Capital investment. But this is the second time in a year the secretive MBTA retirement fund has belatedly acknowledged problems with its investments.

Last December, the Globe reported that the pension fund had lost $25 million on a hedge fund run by Fletcher Asset Management in New York — an investment recommended by the T fund’s former executive director, Karl White.

In that case, too, the pension fund did not keep close tabs on a risky investment. White had persuaded the trustees in 2007 to commit $25 million to Fletcher, his new employer. White left Fletcher the next year without telling the T. By 2011, the pension fund could not get its money out of Fletcher, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. It was another year before the pension fund disclosed the loss to the public.

The MBTA Retirement Fund manages $1.6 billion in assets.

Photo by Paul Becker via Flickr CC License

CalPERS, CalSTRS Responds To Push For Coal Divestment

California Senate President Kevin de León said on Monday he would introduce a bill in 2015 that would require CalPERS and CalSTRS to divest from coal-related investments.

CalPERS was the first of the funds to publicly respond to the bill. Summarized by Chief Investment Officer magazine:

CalPERS responded strongly to the proposal, stating that “we firmly believe engagement is the first call of action, and results show that it is the most effective form of communicating concerns with the companies we own”.

The statement also detailed CalPERS’ “proven track record” of engaging and dealing with climate change risks within its portfolio. This included CalPERS’ work as a founder member of the Investor Network on Climate Change, and its efforts to persuade governments and policy makers to support a low-carbon future.

“We are also working aggressively with a coalition of 75 international investors worth over $3 trillion in assets to engage with the 45 largest fossil fuel companies to ensure they are taking appropriate action to manage the physical and capital risks associated with climate change,” CalPERS said.

CalSTRS released its own response as well, according to ai-cio.com:

CalSTRS highlighted its review of “sustainable investing and risk management” as well as its plan to triple the value of its investments in clean energy and technology in the next five years. CIO Chris Ailman said at the time the pension could raise its allocation as high as $9.5 billion—5% of the current value of its portfolio.

CalSTRS said climate change was “a material risk assessed across the entire portfolio that could impact current and future investment value”.

“CalSTRS believes our investment decisions must carefully weigh our duty to perform profitably with consideration of environmental, social and governance impact of those investments,” it added. “CalSTRS is a patient, long-term investor, and the ultimate impact of our investment in coal is something that we will be assessing in the coming year.”

CalPERS’ full statement, released on Facebook, can be seen here.

Photo by Paul Falardeau via Flickr CC License

Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /home/mhuddelson/public_html/pension360.org/wp-includes/formatting.php on line 3712