LACERS’ $4.96 Billion Shortfall Demands Better Board Governance, Not Budget Cuts
A $25.2 billion portfolio with a $4.96 billion shortfall cannot be closed with five-figure budget line-items — the real lever is board-level governance, not the petty-cash drawer.
Many U.S. public pension plans are underfunded. LACERS is among them. As of June 30, 2025, the end of LACERS’ most recent fiscal year-end, LACERS’ investment portfolio had a market…
Book Recommendation: ‘Organizational Alpha’ — A Concise Playbook for Institutional Fiduciaries
Ben Carlson's 80-page primer on institutional fiduciary oversight is the clearest short guide to trustee responsibility I've read — particularly Chapter 2 on defining the board's role.
I recently finished reading Organizational Alpha: How to Add Value in Institutional Asset Management by Ben Carlson, CFA. I highly recommend it, and at just around 80 pages, it’s a…
Retail channel is undermining key advantage of private credit
By funding long-dated loans with daily-liquid retail vehicles, the industry is rebuilding the very duration mismatch it was designed to eliminate.
Private credit’s rapid expansion into the retail investor market is undermining one of the asset class’s foundational advantages. Traditionally, private credit was viewed as an improvement over the banking model…
99.7% of Par Doesn’t Tell the Full Story of Blue Owl’s Private Credit Sale
The 99.7% headline number misses the interest already stripped out of the loans — back out the accrued coupon on floating-rate SOFR paper and the real implied discount looks much closer to market.
It’s important to note that Blue Owl’s recent sale of private credit assets to institutional investors — including CalPERS, OMERS, and BCI — at 99.7% of par value, as reported…
Could Cliffwater’s Interval Fund Business Exist Without Its Institutional Clients?
No-fee "bites" of institutional deals get repackaged into retail interval funds at full fee — a quiet cross-subsidy that raises whether the product could exist without its institutional client base.
I don’t mean to pile on here given the headlines of liquidity challenges facing retail private credit vehicles, but could Cliffwater have built its lucrative interval fund business without a…
Know Thyself: Why Institutional Investors Should Stop Imitating Their Peers
Ashby Monk and Dane Rook argue that institutional self-awareness beats peer imitation: pensions, endowments, and SWFs each have structural strengths worth leaning into, not papering over.
This 2023 paper by Ashby Monk and Dane Rook should be required reading for institutional investors and trustees. Its central insight is both simple and powerful: institutional investors possess inherent…