As the respective comptrollers of New York State and New York City, McCall and Hevesi decided to pour hundreds of millions of public pension fund dollars into the faltering stock market in the week after terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center and forced the four-day closure of the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. The New York State Common Retirement Fund, of which McCall is the sole trustee, pumped $1 billion - less than 1 percent of its $112 billion in assets - into stocks. “It’s a good buying opportunity,” says McCall, 65. “I’m not nervous. I believe in the market. My first responsibility is to get our investors the best performance over time.” The state pension fund had roughly 45 percent of assets, or about $50 billion, in U.S. stocks before the additional investment. McCall, who is running for governor of New York, says the equity allocation won’t hit 50 percent but adds, “We will go up. Probably more like somewhere around 47 percent.” Hevesi, the adviser for the city’s five major pension funds, which have combined assets of about $75 billion, put $800 million in the market after the attack. Time will tell if the comptrollers’ bets were good ones: The Nasdaq composite index registered a 16 percent decline the week of September 17, and the Dow Jones industrial average tumbled more than 14 percent - its single worst week since the Great Depression.
