Posts Tagged: investment

News

CalPERS grapples with low earnings

The CalPERS' governing board during a meeting several years ago at the pension fund's headquarters. (Photo: CalPERS board)

Calpensions: Twice in recent decades CalPERS fell below 100 percent of the funding needed for promised pensions, and twice CalPERS climbed back. But since a $100 billion investment loss in 2008, the CalPERS funding level has not recovered.

Opinion

Urgent need to keep Coordinated Care Initiative

An elderly man in his wheel chair, taking a a breath of fresh air. (Phboto: Kazoka, via Shutterstock_)

Many seniors and people with disabilities who need services through Medi-Cal and Medicare struggle every day to navigate complex health and long-term care decisions. Dealing with a serious illness is difficult enough without having your doctors, specialists, long term care providers, and other health care providers disconnected with no overall attention to the holistic needs of the individual.

News

Target: CalPERS’ private equity profits

The CalPERS' governing board during a meeting several years ago at the pension fund's headquarters. (Photo: CalPERS board)

Calpensions: After the board was told last April that CalPERS could not track the incentive payments, known as “carried interest,” a wave of media criticism grew with stories in the New York Times late last month and Fortune magazine last week. A pension fraud investigator, Edward Siedle of Benchmark Financial Services, launched an Internet fund-raising campaign on Kickstarter to raise $750,000 for a “forensic investigation” of the California Public Employees Retirement System.

News

Pensions have role in UC’s competitive edge

The campus of the University of California, Berkeley. Photo: LAgirl5252

Calpensions: In the competition for top talent, the University of California has been able to offer something increasingly rare among leading private universities: a generous lifetime pension. Now a much lower cap on pensions for new UC employees is part of an agreement to freeze UC resident tuition for two years announced last week by Gov. Brown and UC President Janet Napolitano.

News

CalPERS: Retirees soon will outnumber active members

Calpensions: In a few years CalPERS retirees are expected to outnumber active workers, a national trend among public pension funds that makes them more vulnerable to big employer rate increases. The growing number of retirees, partly due to aging baby boomers, is one reason a staff report last week argues that CalPERS has too much “risk.”

News

Experts: CalSTRS earnings may fall short

The CalSTRS board was told this month that financial experts are forecasting investment earnings of 7 percent a year or less during the next decade, below the 7.5 percent assumed by the pension fund. If that’s correct, long-sought legislation in June that phases in a $5 billion CalSTRS rate increase over the next seven years could fall short of the goal of projecting full funding in three decades.

News

CalPERS’ investment earnings climbing steadily

CalPERS headquarters, Sacramento. (Photo: Wikipedia)

Calpensions: Three years ago CalPERS investment earnings hit bottom in a Wilshire consultants report that ranks the performance of big pension funds — dead last among its peers over the previous five years. Last week a new Wilshire report showed CalPERS investment earnings steadily climbing up the ranks, finishing in the top quarter of big pension funds during the last three years.

News

Brown grapples with drought impacts

Gov. Brown said today that California, facing an unprecedented drought, needs to “make investments in safe drinking water” and that “recycling, expanded storage and serious groundwater management must all be part of the mix.” The governor did not endorse the $11.14 billion water infrastructure bond on the November ballot, but he did call for investment in water projects similar to those included in the bond. That bond currently is under review in the Legislature with rival proposals to reduce it to $6.5 billion or less.

News

Battle over ‘redevelopment lite’ goes down to wire

Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, is carrying SB 33, which focuses on infrastructure finance districts, while Assemblymember Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, has authored AB 1080, which is similar to SB 1, but focuses on poverty and deterioration rather than transit areas as a standard for determining redevelopment areas.

Opinion

California targeting Chinese consumers

Californians can take pride today in the launch of the first California brand marketing campaign to directly target Chinese consumers.

 

The Visit California announcement in China was part of the governor’s continuing Trade and Investment Mission.  We also named the Golden State’s first tourism ambassador from Mainland China, model-actress Gao Yuanyuan.

 

California has

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