CalPERS Board to Study Impact of Income Inequality on Pension Funds

Calpers

CalPERS’ Board of Administration will discuss the impact of income inequality on institutional investors at their next meeting, according to slides made available on the pension fund’s website.

The Board of Administration’s investment committee will discuss the issue next week.

More from the National Law Review:

The slide presentation prepared for next week’s meeting identify the following three priorities:

* Proxy Access

* Climate Change

* Exploration of Income Inequality

According to the slides, “exploration” consists of the CalPERS staff reading up on income inequality (or as expressed in slides, a “comprehensive review of research and analysis related to income inequality and its impact, if any, on institutional investors”). Apparently, the staff has already started reading because the slides include this quotation from Thomas Picketty’s book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century:

“When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.”

View the slides here.

 

Photo by  rocor via Flickr CC License

CalPERS Board President Feckner Re-Elected to 11th Term

board room chair

The president of CalPERS’ board of administration, Rob Feckner, has been reelected to his 11th term. The term is one year long.

The board held the vote on Tuesday.

Feckner has sat on the board since 1999.

More from the LA Times:

During his long tenure, Feckner has steered CalPERS away from sometimes strident, anti-corporate activism; backed a campaign that successfully defeated a 2005 initiative that would have reduced some pension benefits; and helped the nearly $300-billion fund recover billions of dollars in losses from the recession of 2008-09 and its aftermath.

He also worked to clean house and overhaul policies in the wake of a 2009 bribery and corruption scandal that resulted in federal criminal charges being filed against two former CalPERS officials, a board member and chief executive.

“In the past few years, we have many accomplishments to be proud of,” Feckner said in a statement released by CalPERS, “but there’s still much more to do to ensure we provide secure retirement and health benefits to California’s hard-working public employees.”

Among those challenges is a potential 2016 proposed ballot measure that would allow cities and local governments to cut pension benefits for current employees. The board is expected to oppose such a measure.

Another development from Tuesday’s meeting: the board elected Henry Jones to the vice president position. He is replacing Priya Mathur, who was stripped of that position after repeated violations of financial reporting laws.