Free Republic

Calpers names firms not responding on placement agents Thu Feb 18, 1:15 am ET OAKLAND, California (Reuters) – Calpers, the biggest U.S. public pension fund, released late on Wednesday a list of 11 firms with which it has invested that did not reply to its request for information on their use of placement agents, who are at the center of a probe of New York's pension fund. Calpers, the $200 billion California Public Employees' Retirement System, has been under fire since disclosing last year that a placement agent firm, led by one of its former board members, had made more...

Shedding new light on the involvement of former board members in lucrative deals, CalPERS revealed Thursday that marketing middlemen known as placement agents earned more than $125 million in fees from investments by the pension fund. The agents include four ex-CalPERS board members, among them former state Treasurer Matt Fong and former CalPERS President William Crist. Their activities as placement agents were disclosed for the first time in thousands of pages of documents released by the California Public Employees' Retirement System. Crist defended his work when reached by phone at his home in Turlock on Thursday, and Fong couldn't be...