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The world's largest pension fund managing over $1.5 trillion in assets has announced it will explore diversifying a portion of its portfolio into Bitcoin.Japan's Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), the world's largest pension fund managing over $1.5 trillion in assets, has announced it will explore diversifying a portion of its portfolio into Bitcoin. According to the announcement, the GPIF will solicit information on illiquid alternative assets like Bitcoin, gold, forests, and farmland as part of its diversification efforts. While not currently invested in these assets, the move signals that the mega-fund is actively researching options beyond stocks and bonds. The...

Canadian pension funds have been among the world’s most prolific buyers of real estate, starting a revolution that inspired retirement plans around the globe to emulate them. Now the largest of them is taking steps to limit its exposure to the most-beleaguered property type — office buildings. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has done three deals at discounted prices, selling its interests in a pair of Vancouver towers, a business park in Southern California and a redevelopment project in Manhattan, with the New York stake offloaded for the eyebrow-raising price of just $1. The worry is those deals may set...

The vendor helps CalPERS identify member deaths and make sure that correct payments go to retirees and their beneficiaries.. The personal information of about 769,000 retired CalPERS members was exposed in a third-party data breach that was reported earlier this month. CalSTRS also said it was impacted by the breach and KCRA 3 is trying to learn how many of its members were impacted. CalPERS, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, is the nation's largest public pension fund. It serves more than 2 million members in its retirement system and more than 1.5 million in its health program. CalSTRS, the...

President Joe Biden on Thursday is announcing the infusion of nearly $36 billion to shore up a financially troubled union pension plan, preventing severe cuts to the retirement incomes of more than 350,000 Teamster workers and retirees across the United States. The money for the Central States Pension Fund is the largest amount of federal aid provided for a pension plan, the Biden administration said, and comes from the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that he signed into law in 2021. Many union retirement plans have been under financial pressure because of underfunding and other issues....

King Gavin is bragging about a $100 billion surplus. Yet he is silent about the $1.5 TRILLION unfunded liability of CalPERS—and no telling how big the STRS—teachers pension fund—liability is.

China moves to reassure global investors who have been drawn to country’s strong growth, booming tech industry American investors are asking whether China Inc. is still worth the risk following a widening series of regulatory crackdowns that have wiped some $400 billion off the value of U.S.-listed Chinese companies. Investors ranging from pension fund Orange County Employees Retirement System in California to money manager William Blair & Co. are rethinking their portfolios following Beijing’s decision last week to curtail the operations of China’s for-profit tutoring industry along with its ongoing campaign to rein in tech companies....

Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) on Thursday said that he has written a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to voice concerns over the state's public pension fund chief and his connections with China. The Indiana congressman is calling out the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest state pension fund in the U.S., for allegedly investing in numerous select blacklisted Chinese companies that manufacture military products. The California-based fund invested $3.1 billion into 172 different Chinese companies, Banks said in an appearance on Fox Business Network. He said that some of the companies invested in have been blacklisted...

Rahm Emanuel raised taxes to get city worker pension funds on a ‘path to solvency.’ The shortfall still ballooned by $7 billion. ... A record-high property tax increase. A new tax on water and sewer service. A higher 911 emergency fee on telephone lines... Emanuel’s series of tax hikes was painful, but he promised the extra money was part of a plan to get the woefully underfunded city worker pension funds on a “path to solvency.”.. in the four years since .. The pension funds are actually worse off. When Emanuel pushed through the tax hikes, the city worker retirement...

One of the architects of Mayor Bill de Blasio's housing plan is living well at the taxpayer's expense... Anita Laremont, the executive director of the Department of City Planning, as one of four civil servants raking in more than $300,000 this fiscal year thanks to special permission to receive both a public paycheck and public-pension payments. Waivers granted under Section 211 of New York's Retirement and Social Security Law are supposed to allow the state and local governments to attract and retain employees younger than 65 ... the real number of high-earning double-dippers may be considerably greater because waivers are...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday called for a new tax on city water and sewer bills to stabilize the city's largest pension fund, a move he portrayed as his latest tough decision to secure Chicago's financial future. Emanuel's plan, which would increase the average water and sewer bill by 30 percent over the next four years, was quickly met with resistance from some aldermen who argued the city would be better off adding business taxes or even raising property taxes again to come up with the hundreds of millions of dollars a year needed to keep the city's municipal workers'...

Japan’s $1.3 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund lost 3.8 percent in the year ended March 31, or 5.3 trillion yen ($51 billion), the retirement manager said Friday in Tokyo. That’s the biggest drop since the fiscal year ended March 31, 2009. GPIF lost 10.8 percent on domestic equities and 9.6 percent on shares in other markets, while Japanese bonds handed the fund a 4.1 percent gain.

California’s largest public pension fund made a return of less than 1% in its most recent fiscal year, the fund’s worst performance since 2009. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System said Monday that its rate of return for the year ended June 30 was just 0.61%. What’s more, Ted Eliopoulos, the pension fund’s chief investment officer, said the poor year has pushed CalPERS’ long-term returns below expected levels. “We have some challenges to confront,” Eliopoulos said during a conference call. “We’re moving into a much more challenging, low-return environment.” CalPERS assumes that, in the long-term, it will earn investment returns...

SAN FRANCISCO (KTVU) -- The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a measure that would ban the city employee retirement system from investing in companies that participate in firearm and ammunition manufacturing. The resolution by the supervisors could have a ripple effect throughout the country as the debate about gun control grows in the wake of a mass shooting in Orlando two weeks ago at a gay nightclub that left 50 people dead and several others injured. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee is trying to gather support nationwide by asking the mayors of both Boston and New York...

State Treasurer Walker Stapleton and PERA Executive Director Greg Smith disagree about how serious the disappointing 1.5 percent return on retirement investments the Public Employees’ Retirement Association fund for 2015 will be in meeting future pension obligations. ... State Treasurer Walker Stapleton said Tuesday’s announcement from the Public Employees’ Retirement Association is evidence of a mishandling by the board, in line with concerns he has raised for several years. ... Stapleton is outraged. For several years, the Republican has shouted for more conservative assumptions. He worries about long-term stability under a high projected rate of return. “PERA has assumed the...

Chcago Public Schools officials told principals on Wednesday that the district is "short of the necessary cash for the remainder of the school year" partly because of a pension payment of nearly $700 million due this summer. ... Last month, principals had to absorb $26 million in midyear budget cuts to district-operated schools. Principals tapped internal accounts, cut planned technology and textbook purchases and didn't fill vacant positions to avert layoffs. On Wednesday, principals were told to hold off on $45 million budgeted for "non-personnel" expenses. The district said it wants to save another $10 million through a limit on...

It further notes: "There are specific times, however, when we must recognize that a company is very unlikely -- or unable to -- discontinue activities in certain parts of the world that we have classified as 'high-risk.' When activities in high-risk countries and areas represent a significant part of a company's business, we will avoid investing until the company has changed its business practices. Avoiding such investments supports our commitment to sustainable investing, which we believe ultimately improves the performance of our investment funds." Israel-Palestine, North Korea and several African and Middle Eastern countries round out a list of 14...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is set to propose that New York City's pension funds divest from coal.</p> <p>De Blasio administration officials told The Associated Press that the mayor will begin making his case to the city's five pension funds on Tuesday.</p>

While many continue to debate if what with every passing day increasingly looks like a global recession, one from which the US will not decouple no matter how many "virtual portfolio" asset managers claim the contrary, there are those who without much fanfare are already taking proactive steps to avoid the kind of fallout that the markets have hinted in the past month of trading, is inevitable. Some such as Calstrs: the nation's second largest pension fund with $191 billion in assets (smaller only than Calpers), which as the WSJ reports is "considering a significant shift away from some stocks...

One of the largest pension asset management companies in the Netherlands has said that it divesting from five Israeli banks because they finance Jewish settlements in occupied territories. … A PGGM spokesperson told newspapers: "The reason for this was their involvement in financing Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories. The settlements in the Palestinian territories are considered illegal under humanitarian law.” …

State pension fund managers you can relax now: Al Gore is here. Gore wants to put your retirement savings in green energy. He does not want to tell us what companies or how much. Just last month it was revealed that Al Gore’s investment company has been managing assets for New York state and city pension funds for three years. Pension fund officials say Al is doing a great job. But they refuse to tell us where Gore is putting the money. The news of Gore’s involvement in state pension funds comes the same week several research reports surfaced that...