The information on employee benefit funds contained in this special report was compiled in several steps.
Questionnaires were sent to more than 1,500 fund sponsors in Pensions & Investments' data base. The largest 1,000 were identified from the completed questionnaires, follow-up telephone calls and a cross-check with information supplied by Money Market Directories Inc., Charlottesville, Va., publisher of the 1994 Money Market Directory of Pension Funds and Their Investment Managers.
Where no information was available from the fund, figures were taken from the Money Market Directory or from the 1994 Nelson's Directory of Plan Sponsors.
Unless otherwise noted, the data presented in the tables and stories reflect fund operations as of Sept. 30, 1993.
In cases where the fund supplied data considered too old, P&I estimated the asset growth based on one of the following methods: the most recent asset mix supplied by the fund sponsor; the asset mix reported in the 1994 Money Market Directory or Nelson's Directory; or P&I's reported average asset mix for that particular type of fund, i.e. union, public or corporate. In some cases, the estimates were based on asset totals reported in the sponsor's most recent annual report.
In the tables, dollar amounts are rounded to the nearest million.
The asset mixes for the Top 200 and the next 800 funds represent the average of all reported allocations for the respective funds. The separate asset mixes for the components of the Top 200 and the next 800 universes were compiled in the same way.
The entire contents of this special report on the nation's largest pension funds are r1994 Crain Communications Inc. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.