Taxpayers foot $850M bill for Wall St.'s pension fees

Josh Kosman
NY Post

New York City taxpayers are helping to pay $850 million in Wall Street investment fees -- even as these financial gurus have produced only meager results for strapped city and state pension funds.

City Comptroller John Liu this week released a comprehensive analysis of NYC pension costs over the past decade, revealing why they have risen from $1.2 billion to $7.7 billion.

Liu said one of the major factors in the shortfall was higher than expected investment and administrative fees, which were $71 million in 2005, and have risen more than four-fold to $313 million.

Nearly all of the increase was due to the pension funds shifting asset allocation in favor of private equity and real estate -- chasing bigger returns -- but which also have higher investment fees, he wrote.

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Hidden fees cut pension payouts by 75pc

Savers are losing up to three quarters of their pensions in little-known fees charged by the investment funds that manage their money, a report by senior pension experts warns.

Holly Watt
Telegraph

Private pensions in Britain pay out on average half as much retirement income as equivalent schemes in Europe, the report says, with hidden costs blighting the retirement plans of millions.

The report, by David Pitt-Watson, one of the country's leading pension fund managers, and a team from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, warns the Government that the system is in need of urgent reform to bring these costs down.

Earlier this year, The Daily Telegraph disclosed that a range of little-known fees and levies typically wiped more than £100,000 off the value of a middle-class worker's private pension.


Mr Pitt-Watson, the boss of Hermes, which manages the BT pension scheme, has written to Steve Webb, the Pensions Minister, to set out his concerns.

His three-year study highlights how British savers suffer in comparison with their European counterparts because of the fees charged by pension funds.

While the annual levy can appear small, its effect after decades of saving is substantial, the report warns.
This is because the fee is calculated annually as a percentage of the total amount in the pension fund. Each year, therefore, the amount levied increases.

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Following Hungary And Ireland, France Is Next To Seize Pension Funds

Bank Looting in Progress

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge

If the recent Hungarian “appropriation” of pension funds, and today’s laughable Irish bailout courtesy of domestic pension funds sourcing 20% of the “new” money was not enough to convince the world just how bankrupt the entire European experiment has become, enter France.Financial News explains how France has “seized” €36 billion worth of pension assets: “Asset managers will have the chance to get billions of euros in mandates in the next few months for the €36bn Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites (FRR), the French reserve pension fund, after the French parliament last week passed a law to use its assets to pay off the debts of France’s welfare system. The assets have been transferred into the state’s social debt sinking fund Cades. The FRR will continue to control the assets, but as a third-party manager on behalf of Cades.” FN condemns the action as follows: “The move reflects a willingness by governments to use long-term assets to fill short-term deficits, including Ireland’s announcement last week that it would use the country’s €24bn National Pensions  Reserve Fund “to support the exchequer’s funding programme” and Hungary’s bid to claw $15bn of private pension funds back to the state system.” In other words, with the ECB still unwilling to go into full fiat printing overdrive mode, insolvent governments, France most certainly included, are resorting to whatever piggybanks they can find. Hopefully this is not a harbinger of what Tim Geithner plans to do with the trillions in various 401(k) funds on this side of the Atlantic.

More from FN on how first France, and soon every other socalized pension regime, will continue to plunder a nation’s life saving to fund short-term deficits:

The decision has prompted a radical restructuring of the FRR’s investments. The new strategic investment plan, which will be released in the new year, will see a rapid reduction in its 40% allocation to equities and a shift to cash and short-term government bonds, according to a source close to the situation.

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Irish Pension Reserve Funds Openly Targeted by Banksters

Ann Cahill
Irish Examiner

UP to €15 billion from the National Pensions Reserve Fund, set aside when the Celtic Tiger was still roaring, is likely to be used to recapitalise three of the country’s banks.

Amid speculation last night that the rate of interest to be charged on the EU/IMF bailout could be as much as 6.7%, Fine Gael’s finance spokesman Michael Noonan said that kind of rate was "far too high" and unaffordable on any reasonable projection of growth.

The Department of Finance said the interest rate had still not been finalised, but given that much of the loan would be repayable over nine years the rate could be higher than the 5.2% charged to Greece but would not be as high as the 6.7% being quoted by some brokers.


Meanwhile, Anglo Irish Bank, which was downgraded to junk status yesterday evening, is expected to be closed swiftly, together with the Irish Nationwide Building Society, under the EU/IMF loan plan.

Officials hope to finalise the details of the €85bn package later today and have EU finance ministers approve it tomorrow.

The emphasis in the plan is to avoid drawing down money from the bailout and rely in the first place on money from the Pension Reserve Fund for the banks, and on the €20bn the state borrowed earlier this year to part-fund next year’s national budget.

Economist at the Economic and Social Research Institute, John FitzGerald, said he believed it would be a good idea to use the money in the pensions fund to recapitalise the banks, and keep the EU/IMF funds in reserve in case they needed further money later.

"Using the €20bn in cash we have first would be good for the country in the short run. It would leave the opening debt for 2012 €20bn lower and interest payments would be €1bn less. It would also leave the national debt lower than forecast at the end of next year," he said.

About €35bn of the total EU/IMF loan was being earmarked last night for the banks.

The Government would prefer not to tap this sum but keep it in reserve for contingencies during the three-year programme.

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