Pension Pulse

William Melhado of the Sacramento Bee reports  CalPERS reports one of the strongest years of investment returns over the last decade: California's largest public pension system reported on Monday a net investment return of 14.8% over the last 12 months, one of the strongest years in the last decade. Bolstered by a particularly successful year in the stock market, the California Public Employees' Retirement System now has 85% of the money to cover its future pension benefits, CEO Marcie Frost announced Monday morning at the board of administration's offsite meeting in Monterrey. The reported returns are still preliminary and will be finalized in the coming months. The massive pension fund's assets totaled more than $637 billion as of June 30, the end of the fiscal year. The strong returns, which were led by public and private equity, were higher than last year's returns of 11.6% and the assumed rate of return of 6.8%. The retirement system...

Barbara Shecter of the National Post reports  Carney investment summit attracts global asset manager backed by Australian super pensions: A multibillion-dollar global investment manager backed by some of Australia’s largest pension funds will be leading a delegation to the Canada Investment Summit this fall, aiming to pour as much as $10 billion into Canadian infrastructure over the next decade if conditions are right. IFM Investors Pty Ltd. (IFM), which specializes in infrastructure and manages more than $242 billion on behalf of institutional investors, including AustralianSuper and the Australian Retirement Trust, confirmed a delegation will attend the summit to be hosted by the federal government in Toronto on Sept. 14 and 15. “IFM is coordinating the participation of the Australian Super Funds to the summit,” Gian-Carlo Peressutti, executive director of public affairs at the global asset manager, said in a statement.   Prime Minister Mark Carney met directly wit...

Freschia Gonzales of Benefits and Pensions Monitor reports a winning portfolio can still look like a loser, CPP Investments warns: CPP Investments argues that beating a benchmark no longer measures whether a portfolio is working.   Its modelling shows a diversified pension fund can trail its market benchmark almost 30 percent of the time over a decade, even when its underlying strategy genuinely adds value.  That figure comes from a July 2026 paper from the CPP Investments Insights Institute, the second in a series on the total portfolio approach (TPA).   ...