The Ledger
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Baran: Japan's governance reform is driven by domestic pensions, not foreign activists
“This is not a CalPERS, CalSTRS, Hermes problem. This is a Japanese pension fund problem that the Japanese have to decide for themselves To start paying their beneficiaries properly.”
Mizuno: Pension CIO decisions make marginal difference compared to board asset mix
“Well, the point is, most of the big asset owners, let's take public pension fund as an example, GPF, Culpers, Coasters, and all the big public pension funds, their most critical decision In terms of the financial performance of their portfolio performance is n…”
CalSTRS Hires Money Managers Using State Cement Procurement Rules
“But frankly, it takes me almost nine months to hire a money manager. Because of the procurement rules, I have to use the same rules that Caltrans uses to buy cement, or somebody else buys equipment. I have to use that to hire money managers. They don't recogni…”
A 2008-Scale Market Crash Is a 60-to-70-Year Event
“We spent a lot of time really studying 2008. We thought it was a one, 1.5% likely occurrence, and realized that, you know what, in this day and age, it's probably closer to a four percent occurrence. And for the listeners, that's in essence, instead of a hundr…”
CalSTRS Mobilized a $5 Trillion Coalition for Firearm Principles
“We teamed up with a total of five trillion dollars of institutional asset To develop firearm principles and really go out there and engage with the entire distribution manufacturing chain”
CalSTRS Runs Internal Strategies at One-Tenth the Cost of Wall Street
“Frankly, we can run money at one-tenth the cost of hiring somebody here on Wall Street to do the same thing”
Allocators Do Not Need to Like Their Asset Managers
“You don't actually have to like the people that manage our money. They just have to make us money. In fact, if we don't like them, it's a little bit easier because we're a little bit more objective”
Full Portfolio Put Protection in 2007 Would Have Cost 300 Bps
“We even, I remember in oh seven being called into the Department of Finance to ask myself and the counterpart at CalPERS to price out buying puts for the entire portfolio. And we came back and said, you know, it'll cost you 300 basis points on the return. Woul…”
CalSTRS Runs 70% of Its US Equity Portfolio In-House
“70% of our U.S. Equity is indexed. We run in-house, but it's indexed. And even then, about another 15% of that is in what now is called smart beta.”
Large Pension Plans Have Broken the Traditional 2-and-20 Fee Model
“I have said for probably over five years that two and 20 is gone, and that's been broken. Unfortunately, small plans still have to pay that, but larger plans have gone through that.”
CalSTRS Research Found Gold Fails as an Inflation Hedge
“We took a deep dive, look at gold. Is it a commodity? Is it an inflation hedge? Is it a currency hedge? What the heck is it? And came back with a lot. And unfortunately the answer is for us, it wasn't any of those, but some of our peers have bought it.”
CalSTRS Uses 100% Active Management for Emerging Market Equities
“Nine U.S. Equity in the developed markets were 50% indexed, and emerging markets were a hundred percent active.”
CalSTRS Fully Exited TIPS Portfolio When Yields Turned Negative
“So we sold out the entire portfolio when they were at negative yields, and went to the board and said, it just doesn't make sense to be there yet.”
Average State Pension CIO Tenure Is Only Four Years
“I have seen the average tenure of a state pension CIO is only four years, and that has been true since the 19 eighties, and I think the reason for the constant turnover is, often time, the governance is unclear, and They run into problems about what decisions …”
US Is Unique in Keeping Public Pensions Embedded Inside Government
“The USA is about the only place Where particularly the pension plan asset management side is still very much part of the governmental entity. We're definitely in the org chart under the executive branch of California state government, right there with CalPERS …”
Monk: Fee transparency drove portfolio changes at CalPERS, CalSTRS, and UC Regents
“We've seen tons of examples like CalPERS and CalSTRS and even UC Regents where fees and costs have driven changes in their portfolio, just the transparency.”
CalSTRS seeded Impactive Capital with six-year locked-up capital
“So just to take us a step back, Impacted was put in business by Blue Harbor's largest LPA, CalSTRS, and we were very lucky. They backed us with six-year capital, which is unusual in the public markets, and that really allowed us to pursue what I think is one o…”
CalSTRS Manages Half of Its Total Fund Internally
“We run half the fund in house, a hundred and ten billion dollars, which would be a huge money manager anywhere else.”
CalSTRS Spends $3 Million Annually on Corporate Governance Unit
“It's now 15 people. A budget of about three million dollars a year that we spend on corporate governance.”
CalSTRS Portfolio Asset Allocation Breakdown Across Major Asset Classes
“Right now, we're about 54% global equity, and we are truly global, so about fifty-fifty U.S. And non-U.S. We've got probably 12% right now in fixed income, and that's mostly domestic, but we've got a little bit of universal global fixed income. 12% in real est…”