>> This series is available on the Internet at http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~schwrtz
 
 

The regents' attack on the UC pension fund, which I predicted in Part 13, has come to pass more suddenly and drastically than I had imagined. Putting aside for now many questions about excessive secrecy and possible chicanery involved in this action, we take a close look at the numbers which UC has published in justification. Several layers of errors are uncovered, revealing that the regents' investment oversight and leadership is incompetent and/or dishonest beyond anything I have carped about before. Immediate corrective action is called for.
 
 

     At their November meeting the UC Board of Regents approved (in secret) a drastic change in their investment strategy, titled, "Implementation of Multiple Active Investment Management Programs." I quickly submitted a Public Records Act request for all relevant documents behind this action, but I am still waiting for any response. Here is how the University's officlal press release (posted on November 26) explains the new Multiple Manager Equity Investment Strategy:

• As is well known, the economy has weakened and the stock market has fallen sharply in recent years. This has made managing certain investments, especially equities, increasingly complex and challenging. While UC's overall retirement investment portfolio has outperformed its policy benchmark by 0.30 percent over the past ten years, UC's internally managed U.S. equity portfolio has under-performed its benchmark by 1.3 percent over the same time period.

[Footnote] For the ten years ending June 30, 2002, ... the internally managed U.S. Equity UCRP portfolio returned 10.3 percent while the historical benchmark, composed of the S&P 500 Index and the Russell 3000 Tobacco-free Index, returned 11.6 percent.
 
• UC Treasurer and Vice President for Investments David H. Russ has been carefully monitoring and analyzing UC's active equity strategy for the past 18 months and believes an adjustment to the strategy is warranted.

 
• After extensive consultation with outside investment professionals as well as the UC Regents' Investment Advisory Committee and the Committee on Investments, Treasurer Russ has recommended that the University transfer the internal management of its U.S. equity investments to multiple external managers. ...

 
• This recommendation was approved by the UC Regents at their November 13, 2002 meeting. ...

[Author's note. I have previously used the word "privatization" to describe this transfer of investment management from the University to the private sector. Some have suggested to me that "outsourcing" is a more appropriate term. In my public comment to the regents at their last meeting, I referred to it as "theft."]

     In this paper I shall examine the facts (i.e., the numbers) that UC has presented to justify this extraordinary move. This analysis will pass through several layers.

     In Part 13, I reported how the Regents' Investment Committee, at their September meeting, heard a presentation from the UC Treasurer and from UC's Investment Consultant (the man from Wilshire Associates) about how the internally managed equity investments lagged well behing the established benchmark in investment returns over the past decade. I complained that a proper evaluation of investment performance should look at "risk-adjusted returns" and not just the raw returns on investment. And I cited earlier data showing that this more educated approach completely changed the conclusions that one can draw from the numbers. That criticism remains unanswered. But I am going to put it aside for now and just look at the simple data on returns, without consideration of risk data.

     The focus is on the numbers given in the UC press release quoted above: over the past ten years, the return on UC's equity investments fell behind their benchmark by an annual average of 11.6% - 10.3% = 1.3%. If true, that is something to be concerned about.

     In Table 1 is a collection of official data, previously published by UC's Treasurer showing the yearly and 10-year annualized rate of return on U.S. equity (common stock) investments in the University's pension fund (UCRP). Also shown are the Policy Benchmark returns, as given in the same source documents.
 
 

Table 1.   Total Returns on U.S. Equity (Common Stock) Investments

FY	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002
UCRP:
1-Yr %	16.5	9.8	13.9	14.6	-0.1	29.2	25.8	30.9	23.3	21.1	11.4	-13.5	-21,4
10-Yr  % (Annualized)										17.9	17.4	14.7	10.3
Policy
Benchmark:
1-Yr %	16.5	7.4	13.4	13.6	1.4	26.1	26.0	34.7	30.2	22.8	7.3	-14.1	-17.4
10-Yr  % (Annualized)										18.8	17.8	15.2	11.6

Data Source: University of California Treasurer's Annual Reports
The University's Fiscal Year (FY) ends on June 30 of the calendar year indicated.
Policy Benchmark is the S&P 500 Index up to 6/30/00 and the Russell 3000 Index since then.

     On the right hand end of Table 1 one sees the ten-year annualized returns -- 10.3% for UC, lagging behind 11.6% for the benchmark -- which are the key numbers cited by UC in support of the new outsourcing strategy.

     I decided to check the calculation of the 10-year annualized numbers, using the numbers shown in the "1-Yr" rows of Table 1. This is a simple calculation, often referred to as a "geometric" averaging. I am sure many of my readers can do this calculation and check how closely the results compare with what is shown in the "10-Yr (Annualized)" rows of Table 1. I found that the Benchmark numbers checked out perfectly but the UCRP numbers showed some discrepancies. In almost all cases the discrepancies, which amounted to 1 or 2 tenths of a percent, could be plausibly attributed to round-off error. In one case, however, the discrepancy seemed rather large: for the latest year, FY2002, I calculated the 10-year annualized return for UCRP to be 10.7%, not 10.3% as claimed by UC.

     That is not an earth shattering discovery, but it was enough to prompt me to write to Treasurer Russ, reporting on this discrepancy and asking him to provide me with the data which he had used in his calculations so that I might ferret out the source of disagreement. I have gotten no response at all. I actually sent a second request to the Treasurer's office, where the staff had been very helpful in providing similar data that I had requested some time ago; but they also have been silent now.

     If I can't resolve questions right now about UC's own data, let's move on to look at the Policy Benchmark numbers.

     Using the Russell 3000 Index as a benchmark to measure performance of UCRP equity investments was a policy established by The Regents when they formally adopted the recommendations of Wilshire Associates in March 2000. What was the "policy benchmark" before that time? I do not know the official answer to that question; so I did some research.

     Reading through the many Annual Reports of the UC Treasurer up through fiscal year 2000, I have found no language to indicate that there ever was any "policy benchmark" at all. In the tables and the text of those earlier official reports one can find a variety of numbers which are presented for comparison with peers and with common market indices. Following are the relevant excerpts from the FY 2000 annual report:

     But Mr. Russ and Mr. Nesbitt (the Wilshire investment consultant) and Regent Parsky (chair of the Committee on Investments) and all his fellow regents have taken the position that the "historical benchmark" is the S&P 500. Maybe there is some dusty document that I have never seen that could justify their position. Or I suppose that The Regents have the power to simply declare it so, ex post facto. It may be "unfair" of them to rewrite history in that way; but what can I do?

     I can check their S&P 500 numbers, that's what I can do.

     With some very helpful advice and guidance from a colleague who is an expert in these matters, I was able to go to the internet and download big tables of historical values for the S&P 500 Index, as well as the Russell 3000 Index. (http://finance.yahoo.com) To my amazement, it turned out that the "S&P 500" numbers used by UC's Treasurer are wrong. Table 2, below, shows the numbers I got, substantially lower than those shown for the Policy Benchmark in Table 1.
 
 

Table 2.  Correct Total Returns for the S&P 500 and Russell 3000 Indices

FY	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002
Corrected Policy Benchmark
1-Yr %	12.6	3.7	10.0	10.4	-1.4	22.6	23.1	32.0	28.1	21.1	6.0	-13.9	-17.2
10-Yr % (Annualized)										15.8	15.1	12.9	9.8

     Comparing the 10-year annualized returns shown in Table 2 with those calculated for UCRP (Table 1 data, corrected) we see that UC's internal equity investment performance actually beat the "Policy Benchmark" returns by a substantial margin: averaging 10.7% - 9.8% = +0.9% over the most recent 10-year period. This result not only turns Russ, Nesbitt, Parsky & Co. on their collective head; it turns them inside-out.
 
 

     It appears that some terrible mistakes have been made. Whether those errors arose from mere incompetence or by deceit is not yet clear. But what is clear is that The Regents have an affirmative duty to take certain corrective steps without delay.

1. Check my numbers and verify that my criticisms are sound.

2. Release publicly all relevant records pertaining to this fiasco.

3. Suspend those officials whom they had hired to be in charge of the University's investment management. (That would include Treasurer Russ, Senior Vice President Mullinix, and Consultant Nesbitt.)

4. Bring in some independent outside experts to conduct a full investigation of this whole mess, including all of my previous charges. This investigation must also look into the likelihood of misconduct by some regents.

5. Freeze the University's investment assets in their present management configuration, i.e., cancel or at least postpone any further implementation of the new Multiple Manager Strategy.
 

     As for the safety and wise investment of the equity funds, their present disposition in a well managed Index Fund may be as good as any other option.

    Above all, the regents must stop all the cover-up and stonewalling I have complained of throughout this series of papers.  Fiat Lux.

     I am most grateful to Professor Dwight Jaffee of the Haas School of Business at Berkeley for his generous servings of expert advice and teaching.