Strong gains in equities and higher employer contributions have pushed the nation's largest employer-sponsored pension plans toward higher funding levels in 2010, Towers Watson reveals.
Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin is looking into the third-largest custody bank over its handling of foreign-exchange transactions.
Eastman Kodak's Timothy Barrett, the former executive director and chief investment officer at the San Bernardino County Employees' Retirement Association, speaks with aiCIO about the conflicts that public pension funds face when they decide to outsource investment expertise.
The $236 billion California public pension said it has allocated $400 million toward three emerging managers in the pension fund's Manager Development Program II for public investment.
Pacific Alternative Asset Management Co. will not face a Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement action over its relationship with Paloma Partners' Donald Sussman.
Regulators have placed more scrutiny on exchange-traded funds as institutional investors have embraced the product, Deborah Fuhr, ETF guru and global head of ETF research at BlackRock, told aiCIO.
Bruce Tomlison, Sunsuper's portfolio manager, has expressed his support of smaller hedge fund managers in favor of larger ones; consultants have an all-embracing approach, saying "it would be foolish to completely shun the large guys."
The largest US public pension has said Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s payment plan for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. treats pensions and retirees who own Lehman bonds "unfairly."
Superior active manager performance and gains in equities have propelled returns of US pension plans as well as endowments and foundations in the Northern Trust universe.
Jeremy Grantham, chief investment strategist of fund manager GMO Capital Management, says that since growth of natural resources is severely limited as population and demand soar, the age of cheap commodities prices is over.
A study by JPMorgan Chase & Co. has shown that Japanese
pensions are flocking to alternatives such as hedge funds, while keeping
their investment plans intact despite crisis in the region.
News that investment managers at the Texas Teacher Retirement
System received more than double what every other state agency's top
employees have received combined since 2007 has raised concerns that
top-performing executives may flee smaller funds with less robust
compensation structures.
