< The 2015 Pension 40: The Long Climb

In November the board of the $294 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System voted to lower the fund’s target rate of return to 6.5 percent a year from 7.5 percent. The decision was part of a plan, proposed by CalPERS chief investment officer Ted Eliopoulos, 51, and the fund’s senior staff, to reduce CalPERS’s investment risk and liabilities over time. CalPERS was responding to the fact that as its beneficiaries grow older, it is paying out more in benefits than it takes in as contributions. The board recognized that reducing risk is going to require state and municipalities to pay more into the fund, but they wanted to reduce its market-based volatility. In fact, after several high-performing years, CalPERS returned only 2.5 percent for the 2015 fiscal year, ended June 30. (Fiscal 2016 so far has been worse: down 4.9 percent through September.) CalPERS’s decision to embrace risk mitigation, which included exiting hedge fund investing, was a major turnabout for a plan that was once in the market-risk vanguard of public pensions. Lowering the assumed rate, however, won’t happen overnight. CalPERS will drop the rate a few basis points and rebalance into less risky assets every year it performs above a set bogey. Currently, to reach 6.5 percent, CalPERS has to return 11.5 percent or more; when that doesn’t occur, the fund will not be able to ratchet down its discount rate. Immediately after the November decision, California Governor Jerry Brown criticized the plan as “irresponsible,” saying the push to lower the rate “will only keep the system dependent on unrealistic investment returns. This approach will expose the fund to an unacceptable level of risk in the coming years.” CalPERS board president Rob Feckner disagrees, but the political storm clearly puts the onus on Eliopoulos, a former real estate attorney who took over as head of the fund’s real estate assets in 2007 and became acting CIO in 2013 and CIO in 2014, to deliver big returns.

 
The 2015 Pension 40

1. Bruce Rauner Illinois 2. John & Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation Open Architecture and Next-Gen Technology Help Support Model Delivery Sponsored by BlackRock April 24, 2025 3. Chris Christie New Jersey 4. Randi Weingarten AmericanFederation of Teachers 5. Phyllis Borzi U.S. Department of Labor

6. Kevin de León California 7. Alejandro García Padilla Commonwealth ofPuerto Rico 8. Laurence Fink BlackRock 9. Rahm Emanuel Chicago 10. Sean McGarvey North AmericanBuilding Trades Unions

11. John Kline Minnesota 12. J. Mark Iwry U.S. TreasuryDepartment 13. Damon Silvers AFL-CIO 14. Jeffrey Immelt General Electric Co. 15. Joshua Gotbaum Brookings Institution

16. Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. 17. Mark Mullet Washington 18. Terry O'Sullivan Laborers' International Union of North America 19. Raymond Dalio Bridgewater Associates 20. Ted Wheeler Oregon

21. Thomas Nyhan Central States Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund 22. Karen Ferguson & Karen Friedman Pensions Rights Center 23. Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee forMultiemployer Plans 24. Robert O'Keef Motorola Solutions 25. Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley

26. Kenneth Feinberg The Law Offices of Kenneth R. Feinberg 27. Orrin Hatch Utah 28. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University 29. Ian Lanoff Groom Law Group 30. Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business

31. Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees' Retirement System 32. Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services 33. Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research 34. Denise Nappier Connecticut 35. W. Thomas Reeder Jr. Pension BenefitGuaranty Corp.

36. Hank Kim National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems 37. Paul Singer Elliott Management Corp. 38. Bailey Childers National PublicPension Coalition 39. Amy Kessler Prudential Financial 40. Judy Mares U.S. Labor Department