New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer announced Thursday that trustees of the New York City Retirement Systems approved a restructuring that will streamline operations and reduce duplication among the five pension funds that make up the $162.9 billion pension system.
The retirement systems will now hold six investment meetings per year involving trustees for all of the pension funds, as opposed to the current setup in which each pension fund’s board of trustees holds separate meetings — a total of 54 among the five boards. Trustees for each pension fund approved the restructuring.
The six investment meetings “will enable the New York City pension funds to be more effective and efficient guardians of the retirement security of over 715,000 members, retirees and their beneficiaries,” Mr. Stringer said in a news release. He is the fiduciary for the five pension funds.
“This new structure will allow all parties — from our investment team and investment consultants to our trustees — to focus on manager oversight and diligence while being more strategic, accountable and transparent in our operations,” Mr. Stringer said. Additional investment meetings could be scheduled if necessary. The first one will take place Dec. 16.
The open session parts of the meetings will contain a review of “overall performance and the direction of common investments” that are recommended by the comptroller’s bureau of asset management, the news release said. The bureau is headed by Chief Investment Officer Scott Evans.
Then, trustees will meet in closed session, hearing presentations from investment managers. Immediately following the presentations, they will meet in closed session as individual boards “to vote on the hiring and retention of managers and conduct other business,” the news release said.
“We expect that the streamlining of our meeting structure will allow the funds to better focus on improving the long-term risk-adjusted performance of the pension system,” Mr. Stringer said in an e-mail.
Neither the pension fund boards nor the bureau of asset management was altered by this action, so the new policy didn’t require approval by the state Legislature, said Eric Sumberg, spokesman for Mr. Stringer.
