< The 2015 Pension 40: The Long Climb

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Edward (Ted) Siedle
President / Benchmark Financial Services
Last year’s rank: 33

Hidden fees don’t stay buried long when Edward (Ted) Siedle is around. In late October the 61-year-old founder of pension forensics firm Benchmark Financial Services concluded a probe into Jacksonville, Florida’s police and firefighter pension system at the request of the city council. According to Siedle, poor investment decisions and board monitoring of the $1.43 billion fund resulted in at least $370 million in losses from underperformance over two decades and $36 million in excess fees over six years. “They adopted the highest fiduciary standard known in law and then promptly proceeded to ignore it completely and not even comply with state minimum standards,” Siedle says. Last year he dug into the Employees’ Retirement System of Rhode Island, raising $20,464 from 349 contributors for the first-ever crowdfunded pension audit. According to Siedle — not everyone agrees — preventable losses at the $8 billion pension fund totaled nearly $2 billion. “Mismanagement and ‘politicization’ of pension investments — not excessive benefits promised to workers — are the chief culprits,” he wrote in a June report. A former Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer, Siedle founded Benchmark, based in Ocean Ridge, Florida, in 1999 and quickly became a controversial figure in the pension world. Siedle says he has investigated more than $1 trillion in retirement plan assets over his three-decade-long career. What’s the strangest thing he’s seen? “Beanie Babies!” he says. In 2005 the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation had $50 million earmarked for investment in the then-hot stuffed-animal line, as well as rare coins and other collectibles. Justice was served, says Siedle: “The Beanie Baby people went to jail.”

 

 
The 2015 Pension 40

1. Bruce Rauner Illinois 2. John & Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation Gold and Bitcoin Decouple. What's Driving the Divergence's? Sponsored by CME Group 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. Treasury Department 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