This content is from: Corner Office
The 2015 Pension 40: Edward (Ted) Siedle
No. 32 Edward (Ted) Siedle, President / Benchmark Financial Services


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.”
![]() 2. John & Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation ![]() 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 |