Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board, Boston, projects a 3.3% reduction in its fiscal year 2016 budget — a decrease of $12 million from fiscal 2015, said Nicole Giambusso, spokeswoman for the $62 billion pension fund.
The reduction is due in part to MassPRIM's Project SAVE, an initiative established in 2013 to identify value enhancements. Since its inception, Project SAVE has produced total annualized savings and return enhancements of more than $100 million.
Additionally, MassPRIM's board on Tuesday unanimously approved state Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg's proposed reforms to MassPRIM's custom proxy-voting guidelines.
The proposed reforms target issues at companies, including board diversity, wage equality, renewable energy, human rights standards and other issues aimed at strengthening corporate governance of the pension fund.
PRIM returned more than $5.5 billion over the past 12 months — $1 billion over its benchmark index. Over the past five fiscal years, PRIM's performance produced a total investment gain of $29.6 billion — $5.1 billion over the benchmark.
Over that same period, the state paid out more than $5.7 billion in benefits to retirees through redemptions from the Pension Reserves Investment Trust fund.