Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[Smart_Money]

Risky, Ill-Timed Land Deals Hit Calpers

At the height of the property bubble, California's giant pension fund, Calpers, made a fateful decision: It aggressively poured money into real estate. As a result, today it's one of the biggest owners of undeveloped residential land in America.

California Public Employees' Retirement System is struggling to avoid one of its worst annual declines since its 1932 inception. Calpers has lost almost a quarter of its assets since July 1, the start of the current fiscal year.

The problems come at a time of uncertainty for the nation's largest public pension fund,

Calpers is now warning California's cities, towns and schools that they may have to cough up more money to cover the retirement and other benefits the fund provides for 1.6 million state workers. Some towns are already cutting municipal services, and at least one is partly blaming the Calpers fees.

Calpers in recent weeks said it expects to report paper losses of 103% on its housing investments in the fiscal year ended June 30. That's because Calpers invested not only its own money, but billions of dollars of borrowed money that must be repaid even if the investment fails. In some deals, as much as 80% of the money invested by Calpers was borrowed.

Calpers could potentially lose nearly $1 billion on LandSource, a $2.5 billion deal completed early last year, and one of the priciest U.S. residential-land transactions ever. LandSource is now under bankruptcy-court protection.

With $239 billion in assets as of June, Calpers's portfolio was bigger than the government-run funds of Russia, South Korea, Dubai and Chile combined. In recent years, Calpers became much more aggressive than other pension funds in making nontraditional investments -- real estate, foreign stocks, even forestland.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122947172015212225.html?mod=testMod