Tag: hedge funds

What You Can Do To Force Your State Pension To Be Transparent About Its Investments

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://pensionwarriorsdwardsiedle.substack.com/p/what-you-can-do-to-force-your-state

Excerpt:

So what can you do to force your state or local government pension to be more transparent? That’s a question I asked Marc Dann, an attorney in private practice in Ohio and the former Attorney General of Ohio. (Dann is currently litigating a public records request on my behalf against the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio.)

Say attorney Dann: “Refer to your state’s public records laws in making a request. Be as detailed and specific in the request as you can possibly be. Remember public records are only those records that may actually exist. For example, instead of asking for a list of all hedge, private equity or venture capital fund investments, ask for a prospectus, offering documents or reports provided to the pension by each investment fund (and name the investment funds—which are generally named on the state or local pension’s website).  Most states allow legal fee-shifting in public records lawsuits. So if the pension or fund resists, you may wish to consider bringing in a lawyer who agrees to be paid his fee from any recovery from the pension. Don’t forget to reach out to allied members of your state legislature or city council who can put pressure on the pensions to properly respond to the requests.”

Author(s): Edward Siedle

Publication Date: 22 Mar 2023

Publication Site: Pension Warriors on substack

Pension Funds Plunge Into Riskier Bets—Just as Markets Are Struggling

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pension-funds-plunge-into-riskier-betsjust-as-markets-are-struggling-11656274270

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Excerpt:

More than 100 state, city, county and other governments borrowed for their pension funds last year, twice the highest number that did so in any prior year, according to a Municipal Market Analytics analysis of Bloomberg data. Nearly $13 billion of these pension obligation bonds were sold last year, which is more than in the prior five years combined.

The Teacher Retirement System of Texas, the U.S.’s fifth-largest public pension fund, began leveraging its investment portfolio in 2019. Next month, the largest U.S. public-worker fund, the roughly $440 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System, known as Calpers, will add leverage for the first time in its 90-year history.

While most pension funds still avoid investing borrowed money, the use of leverage is spreading faster than ever. Just four years ago, none of the five largest pension funds used leverage.

Investing with borrowed money can juice returns when markets are rising, but make losses more severe in a down market. This year’s steep slump in financial markets will test the funds’ strategy.

It’s too soon to tell how the magnified bets are playing out in the current market, as funds won’t report second-quarter returns until later in the summer. In the first quarter, public pension funds as a whole returned a median minus 4%, according to data from the Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service released last month. A portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds—not what funds use—returned minus 5.55% in the quarter, Wilshire said.

Author(s): Dion Rabouin, Heather Gillers

Publication Date: 26 Jun 2022

Publication Site: WSJ

New York City Wants to Amp Up Risk in Workers’ Pensions

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-wants-to-amp-up-risk-in-workers-pensions-11650976985

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Excerpt:

New York City’s comptroller is the latest public official trying to change laws aimed at limiting risk in pension investments, as U.S. state and local pension funds try to plug shortfalls in a low-return environment.

Comptroller Brad Lander, who oversees about $260 billion in retirement money for city police, firefighters, teachers and other public workers, is asking New York lawmakers for more flexibility to invest in private markets, high-yield debt and foreign stocks. The state comptroller’s office, which supervises another $280 billion in retirement assets, views the idea favorably, with a representative saying such flexibility “is key in times of market volatility.”

Pension funds, like household investors, are facing a relatively bleak environment for stocks and bonds, the bread and butter of a traditional retirement portfolio. In the face of historic inflation and Federal Reserve efforts to contain it, these funds are finding they can no longer rely on bonds to rise when equities fall and vice versa. In the first quarter, the S&P 500 returned minus 4.6% while the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate bond index returned minus 5.93%.

“Those two things taken together is what’s scary: the prospect of both going down at the same time,” said Steve Foresti, chief investment officer at Wilshire Associates, which advises large public pension funds. Retirement portfolio managers, he said, are asking “in that environment, do I have anything that actually goes up?”

Author(s): Heather Gillers

Publication Date: 26 April 2022

Publication Site: WSJ

Putin, Russian Pals “Mystery” Partners In Public Pension Deals?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsiedle/2022/03/10/putin-russian-pals-mystery-partners-in-public-pension-deals/?sh=3057aa8524af

Excerpt:

America’s state and local government pensions invest as much as 40 percent of their assets in secretive, offshore “alternative” hedge, private equity, real estate and venture funds which warn that certain unidentified “mystery investors” pay lower fees, are provided greater information about investment strategies and portfolio holdings, have been granted liquidity preferences and receive superior net performance—all at the expense of America’s public sector workers. How many wealthy Russians are “mystery investors” in these pension deals which, according to an internal FBI document leaked last year, criminals and foreign adversaries regularly use to launder money? Wall Street refuses to say and public pensions have promised not to ask. Ironically, the invasion of Ukraine and calls to dump Russian investments to punish the country are drawing attention to the ugly fact that America’s public pensions have long consented to being kept in the dark by Wall Street, abrogating their duty to monitor and safeguard workers’ retirement savings.

….

For example, my second investigation of the Rhode Island state pension revealed in 2015 that contrary to the pension’s financial reports, 40 percent of the pension’s investments—not the 25 percent disclosed—had been allocated to secretive alternative investments.

….

It’s no secret that the FBI suspects that many alternative investment vehicles are widely utilized for money laundering. In 2019, the FBI compiled a report titled “Financial Crime Threat Actors Very Likely Laundering Illicit Proceeds Through Fraudulent Hedge Funds and Private Equity Firms to Obfuscate Illicit Proceeds.” Then, a leaked May 1, 2020 internal FBI report similarly titled “Threat Actors Likely Use Private Investment Funds to Launder Money, Circumventing Regulatory Tripwires” purported to supplement the January 2019 report “by providing recent reporting of hedge funds and private equity firms used to launder illicit proceeds, and expands the threat context beyond financial threat actors to include foreign adversaries.”

Author(s): Edward Siedle

Publication Date: 10 Mar 2022

Publication Site: Forbes

A Group of Midwestern Retirees Are Trying to Stop Wall Street’s Abuse of Retirement Funds

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://jacobinmag.com/2021/11/ohio-teacher-pensions-hedge-funds-private-equity-strs

Excerpt:

Due to an active group of retirees and the assistance of a former Ohio attorney general, both the Ohio state auditor and the Ohio Department of Securities have launched inquiries into the Ohio State Teachers Retirement System (STRS Ohio), a $100 billion pension that has launched billions of dollars of investments into the riskier corners of the market, namely private equity and hedge funds.

“Ohio could be the first place where the secrecy surrounding public pensions and their investments in risky, speculative, and high-fee investment vehicles could be looked at in a serious way,” said Ted Siedle, a former SEC attorney and longtime pension whistleblower.

Pointing out that pension funds across the country have routinely invoked “trade secrets” exemptions to deny the public information about investment performance and fees, Siedle said the actions taken by the state auditor and securities commissioner “could be the beginning of the end” of such secrecy — not just in Ohio, but nationwide.

Author(s): MATTHEW CUNNINGHAM-COOK

Publication Date: 30 Nov 2021

Publication Site: Jacobin magazine

The Curious Case Against Hedge Funds in Kentucky

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.ai-cio.com/news/the-curious-case-against-hedge-funds-in-kentucky/

Excerpt:

The lawsuit notes the difficult position the retirement system was in, saying that “there was no prudent investment strategy that would allow KRS to invest its way to significantly improved funded status,” and that “the trustees were trapped in a demographic/financial vise.” However, while acknowledging there was no prudent investment strategy for KRS to get out of the hole it was in, the plaintiffs are simultaneously critical of Carlson and the other defendants for taking what they consider to be “longshot imprudent risks.”

The lawsuit also criticizes the hedge funds of funds for not providing high enough returns for the entire KRS portfolio to meet or exceed its 7.75% assumed rate of return. However, the same could be said for fixed income and many other assets in the KRS portfolio. Broad hedge fund portfolios are generally created to reduce risk, not beat equity markets.

“The Black Boxes did not provide the investment returns trustees needed for KRS to return to or exceed on the average its AARIR [assumed annual rate of investment return] of 7.75%,” says the lawsuit, which is targeting approximately 3% of KRS’ overall investments, while saying they should carry the entire portfolio to meet or outperform a rate of return the state acknowledged as “unrealistic and unachievable.”

The lawsuit also claims the investments “lost millions of dollars in 2015 to 2016,” which was more than two years after Carlson left, and which was a particularly bad time period for the entire hedge fund industry. The lawsuit criticized one of the investments, known as the Henry Clay Fund, for providing “exceptionally large fees for Blackstone”; however, the suit also states that “the amount of the fees could not be calculated and were not disclosed.”

Author(s): Michael Katz

Publication Date: 15 Oct 2021

Publication Site: AI-CIO

Decisions Finally Coming in Long-Running Battle with Hedge Fund Titans in Kentucky Pension Case, Mayberry v. KKR

Mary Pat Campbell
Decisions Finally Coming in Long-Running Battle with Hedge Fund Titans in Kentucky Pension Case, Mayberry v. KKR

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Excerpt:

You can find all the major filings at Kentucky Pension Case. The two below are over the most heated current issue: whether the Tier 3 Plaintiffs can move forward. Judge Shepherd said effectively that he needed to see what the attorney general planned to do before he decided that.

Given that the justification for the attorney general repeated extension requests was to wrap his mind around the case, and the Calcaterra report looked like Kentucky Retirement Systems hiring an outside firm to brief the attorney general, the new filing is entirely old hat. It has not only has no new arguments, it is even more openly cribbed from older plaintiff filings that the original attorney general intervention, where his office at least re-wrote a fair bit of the material into white shoe tall building lawyer style. Here, nearly all of the filing is a cut and paste, including the charts.

Author(s): Yves Smith

Publication Date: 4 June 2021

Publication Site: naked capitalism

Pending bill opens door to pension corruption at CalPERS

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://calmatters.org/commentary/2021/05/california-pension-calpers-corruption-legislation/

Excerpt:

Assembly Bill 386 sailed through the Assembly Judiciary Committee last week on a unanimous vote with virtually no discussion about its provisions.

….

Potentially it opens the door to insider dealing and corruption in an agency that’s already experienced too many scandals, including a huge one that sent CalPERS’ top administrator to prison for accepting bribes.

CalPERS, which is sponsoring the bill with support from some unions and local governments, claims that the exemption is no big deal since the money it lends through “alternative investment vehicles” such as venture capital funds and hedge funds is already partially exempted from disclosure.

However, there is a big difference. Using outside entities to invest means they have skin in the game. Direct lending by CalPERS means that its board members, administrators and other insiders would be making lending decisions on their own without outside scrutiny.

Author(s): Dan Walters

Publication Date: 3 May 2021

Publication Site: CalMatters

Your Pension Board Thinks It’s Smarter Than Warren Buffett—It’s Not

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsiedle/2021/05/01/your-pension-board-thinks-its-smarter-than-warren-buffett-its-not/?sh=b3fdc2611302

Excerpt:

Buffett has a consistent history of blasting Wall Street firms for charging high fees for actively managed investments and has recommended pensions invest in low-cost passively managed index funds.

You might think that underfunded pensions struggling to pay benefits would heed Buffett’s advice and seek to cut the fees they pay Wall Street.

Embrace austerity. Tighten their belts. Trim the fat. 

In fact, every forensic investigation I’ve ever undertaken has exposed that the nearer a pension is to insolvency, the higher the fees and the greater the risks the pension takes on.

Author(s): Ted Siedle

Publication Date: 1 May 2021

Publication Site: Forbes

Private Equity and Hedge Funds Survived the 2008 Crisis. Now They’re Making a Killing Off COVID-19.

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/04/private-equity-hedge-funds-covid-profits

Excerpt:

What is a shadow bank?

The term shadow bank refers to things like hedge funds, venture capital firms, and private equity, which all have relatively less oversight than traditional financial institutions. These are all lending intermediaries, or institutions that lend money that fall outside of the mainstream regulatory structure of finance. They’re either situated outside of investment banks, or they exist in less regulated arenas of investment banks, perhaps in offshore settings. One example you might be familiar with is the big private equity firm Blackstone. Another is the big hedge fund Bridgewater.

The “shadow” label implies a degree of opacity, because frequently they make investments that are harder to understand, often in private markets rather than public markets. But it also refers to the fact that they’re lending in the shadow of larger institutions. This partially because they’re deemed to have sophisticated investors by the Securities and Exchange Commission and are therefore designated as subject to less oversight.

Author(s): Megan Tobias Neely interviewed by Meagan Day

Publication Date: 8 April 2021

Publication Site: Jacobin Magazine

Still primed for public life, ex-Pa. Treasurer Torsella reflects on pensions and bipartisanship

Mary Pat Campbell
Still primed for public life, ex-Pa. Treasurer Torsella reflects on pensions and bipartisanship

Excerpt:

Torsella also was at the center of a burgeoning bloc of hedge fund and private equity skeptics on state pension boards. He has publicly criticized Wall Street firms for charging too many fees for too little gain.

Torsella also co-authored a bipartisan legislative report that estimated Wall Street firms had taken $5.5 billion from the state over the past 30 years.

Pension officials have countered that private equity investments pay off, and provide a way for the fund to grow its assets hurt by bad policy, underinvestment, and losses from the 2008 crash.

Author(s): Stephen Caruso

Publication Date: 3 February 2021

Publication Site: Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Hoist on His Own Petard? Kentucky Attorney General’s Apparent Plan to Settle Landmark Pension Case Mayberry v. KKR Likely to be Undermined by Discovery

Mary Pat Campbell
Hoist on His Own Petard? Kentucky Attorney General’s Apparent Plan to Settle Landmark Pension Case Mayberry v. KKR Likely to be Undermined by Discovery

Excerpt:

Cameron’s filing was almost entirely dependent on the original plantiffs’ documents. It’s become increasingly evident that Cameron never intended to litigate. The best guess is that Cameron needed a distraction from bad Brionna Taylor headlines, and also saw the Mayberry v. KKR case as an opportunity to engage in a little shakedown by making a potentially explosive case go away via a cost-of-doing-business settlement.

But Cameron appears to have badly underestimated his opponents, led by the formidable attorney Michelle Lerach and her husband, the disbarred but still very much feared Bill Lerach, who acts as a consultant. A quick and cheap settlement can occur only if the defendants can escape what they fear most, discovery. But the latest order from Judge Philip Shepherd shows he is moving forward with the reconfigured case, now involving “Tier 3” beneficiaries in a hybrid plan that does not have a state guarantee. That upsets Cameron’s plans to settle the case before the Tier 3 plaintiffs go going, which would allow his to go lowball based on public information and the limited discovery to date.

Author(s): Yves Smith

Publication Date: 19 February 2021

Publication Site: naked capitalism