Calpers said its rewritten investment criteria make it the first public pension fund to look beyond traditional economic factors.
It is against this historical backdrop that indications of a sea-change in public pension fund attitudes must be viewed.
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An executive at a major US public pension fund told Bain that he expects to see much more of this going forward.
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On April 17th, the Northern Mariana Islands public employee retirement system became the first U.S. public pension fund to seek bankruptcy protection.
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What was the Florida Public Pension Trustees Association, a non-profit supposedly committed to educating Florida public pension fund trustees doing to raise awareness of these serious issues?
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Last month, the Louisiana sheriffs public pension fund became the first in the nation to adopt such an approach in the form of a terror-free investment policy.
However, surprisingly, when a company had a relatively large number of public pension fund investors amongst its shareholders, they were less likely to dismiss a compromised board member.
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Specifically, Reinsch's trade association is mobilizing its considerable resources to help public pension fund managers, their Wall Street advisors and state treasurers fight off initiatives like one adopted last year by Illinois.
Indeed, the Casey Institute has yet to find a single U.S. investment bank, public pension fund, mutual fund or insurance company which includes a national security-related review in its "due diligence" assessments of emerging market entities.
Back in 2002, some savvy members of the Association for Fiduciary Studies had read about an investigation of pension adviser abuses I had recently successfully concluded on behalf of the billion-plus City of Nashville public pension fund.
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In my decades of professional experience, I have never seen a public pension fund with investment guidelines that would permit it to invest more than a limited amount of its assets, say 10%, with a single money manager.
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This public pension fund is exceptional both in having zero turnover of investment advisors, using a single money manager to oversee 100% of its assets for the past 40 years, and in changing auditors every couple of years.
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Three years ago Diann Shipione asked a question she figured was pretty innocuous coming from a public pension fund director: What financial incentives were behind the advice her San Diego City Employees' Retirement System was getting from its investment consultant, Callan Associates?
The 44-page work is a no-nonsense member of the well-known Dummies series that purports to educate the nation's public pension officials on the ABCs of sound financial management--a task that the author himself concedes is a chilling reflection of the state of public pension fund management.
Thanks to her courageous and visionary leadership, a model has been created that should be followed by every public pension fund in the country - starting with the many-billion dollar Federal Thrift Savings Plan for which all executive branch, congressional and other federal government employees are eligible.
The big public-pension fund frequently targets underperforming companies with overly generous management rewards.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that CalPERS, America's largest public-pension fund, has been selling shares to meet commitments to put more money into private-equity firms.
CalPERS, California's enormous public-sector pension fund, is also keen.
That is, taxpayers are paying more to fund public pension obligations than necessary.
Then last week, nine of the coalition's leaders wrote over 240 executive directors and CEO's of many of this country's largest public pension funds and private mutual fund families, as well as all fifty state treasurers.
Public pension funds might do well to follow the lead of California's pension fund Calpers, the nation's largest public fund and often in the investing vanguard.
In testimony delivered last week ( excerpts attached) alongside high-ranking officials of California's Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) pension fund, a delegation invited by State Sen.
The first public pension plan, the Northern Mariana Islands Retirement Fund, Saipan, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012 and will fail in 2014, according to court documents.
And individual investors, investment banks, fund-managers and particularly public pension funds should expand their "due diligence" assessments to include national security, human rights and other appropriate non-financial considerations so that the American people -- six out of ten of whom are now reportedly in the capital markets -- have the data required to make informed investment decisions.
Moore's claim that North Carolina pays 29% less in fund management fees than the average public pension plan.
The California Public Employees' Retirement System, the country's largest pension fund, had said it would vote for Apple's proposal, because it would have strengthened shareholder rights.
Their regulations require all pension funds to buy solvency insurance from a central public-sector fund.
That is, in the former case elected officials serving on public fund boards may accept bribes and in the latter, public pension investment decision-making may be tainted by political influence peddling.
The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the nation's largest pension fund and a leader in promoting corporate governance, said Friday it welcomed any move by the SEC that would help U.S. investors make educated decisions about their foreign exposure.
Pols, like then-governor Rod Blagojevich, used a form of smoke-and-mirrors known as pension-obligation bonds to avoid actually having to fund ever more generous benefits for his public-employee union cronies.
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