Calpers | Phil's Stock World

Calpers, lost nearly $60 billion in the financial markets last year. Though it has more than enough money to make its payments to retirees for many years, it has a serious long-term shortfall.

Those problems now rest largely on the slim shoulders of Joseph A. Dear, the fund’s new head of investments. He is not an investment seer by training, but he thinks he has the cure for what ails Calpers, or the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest in the nation with $180 billion in assets.

Mr. Dear wants to embrace some potentially high-risk investments in hopes of higher returns. He aims to pour billions more into beaten-down private equity and hedge funds. Junk bonds and California real estate also ride high on his list. And then there are timber, commodities and infrastructure.

That’s right, he wants to load up on many of the very assets that have been responsible for the fund’s recent plunge. Calpers’s real estate portfolio has tumbled 35 percent, and its private equity holdings are down 31 percent. What is more, under Mr. Dear’s predecessor, Calpers had to sell stocks in a falling market last year to fulfill calls for cash from its private equity and real estate partnerships. That led to bigger losses in its stock portfolio.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is on the Calpers board, has called the fund “unsustainable.” He has specifically criticized a decision by Calpers last month to give California municipalities a break on their required contributions. Rather than stepping up contribution rates to 5 percent to cover investment losses, Calpers set a maximum increase of 1.1 percent — saving municipalities hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mr. Schwarzenegger called it a “pass the buck to our kids idea.” Calpers says municipalities, which pay 15 percent of their payroll — or about $11 billion a year — into the fund, needed the help.

In the end, Mr. Dear, who will get $408,000 to $612,000 in salary and can qualify for a

As if California didn’t have enough to deal with its budget crisis, now the FT reports that the two largest pension funds in the US have recorded steep losses following the turmoil in stock markets, with the value of their combined portfolios shrinking by almost $100bn:

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers) and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (Calstrs) were hit by the real estate slowdown and the slump in global equities. Calpers said the fall in the value of its assets was the most severe in its history.

“This result is not a surprise; it is about what we expected, given the collapse of markets across the globe,” said Joe Dear, investment chief at Calpers.

The value of Calpers assets fell 23.4 per cent for the year to June 30, raising concerns that state employees and local governments might have to increase their ontributions to cover the shortfall.

But Calpers presented a bullish view. “The system has more than enough cash through contributions and income from investments to meet our present liabilities, so we are in a good position to ride out the current downturn and come out stronger,” said Mr Dear.

The market value of Calpers assets was $180.9bn (£110bn) on June 30, down from $237.1bn on the same date the previous year. The value of the portfolio had fallen to $160bn in March of this year but rebounded by $20bn by the end of June thanks to a partial recovery in equity markets.

Both organisations shifted a portion of their portfolios out of equities and into fixed income and real estate during the year to take advantage of lower prices.

Calpers also said it was “realigning relationships with hedge funds and private equity partners”. This would lead to “reduced fees, better alignment of interests, and more mutually beneficial long-term relationships”.

The value of Calpers real estate and private equity investments fell by 35.8 per cent and 31.4 per cent respectively in the year to June 30.

Calstrs was hit by the same macro-economic factors, with the value of its assets falling from $162.2bn to $118.8bn in the 12 months to June 30.

The organisation wrote down the value of its property holdings rather than spread the

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