The question which isn’t answered in the article is: how would the fund have done if passively invested in the market? If the market lost money over the same time period, then although extremely high, the fees are a relatively "good deal" (since the fund was up $40M, and the alternative would be losing money). If they’re talking about the last 10 years however, it looks like the market should have returned about 70%, which makes the fund manager's performance look even worse.
*although if all large pensions/trusts/endowments were passively invested in the market, some of these financial companies on the s&p list would not have been able to steal so much from pensions so i'm wondering what type of effect that would have had on total market returns
Not that it impacts the heart of your comment, but that is not risk adjusted returns. To get that exact return you'd have to have 100% allocation in the s&p 500, which would also be cause for articles...
I somehow got downvoted for pointing this out yesterday, but with target return rates of 7-8%, pensions can't invest in what most of us would consider a prudent portfolio. At least not in a low inflation environment (since targets seem to all be nominal rather than real).
While I would agree that a pension fund shouldn't be in all equities (or investment with similar risk profiles) if the fund managers are mandated to target 7.5% returns its hard to see how they can include a sizable cash or treasury component and expect to hit that.
