International Business Times: “As part of its ongoing investigation of the intersection between financial fees, campaign contributions and public pension systems, International Business Times requested a list of the financial firms receiving Illinois state pension money through fund-of-funds. The objective was to find out if fund-of-funds managers are making political donations to state officials — a practice that a 2011 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule aims to prohibit. IBTimes requested the information from the Illinois State Board of Investment and the Illinois Teachers Retirement System, which collectively oversee more than $50 billion in assets.
“In response, Illinois officials released the names of the firms managing the overall fund of funds. In all, state documents show those firms manage more than $3 billion of Illinois pension money. But state officials would not disclose the identities of the financial companies within the fund-of-funds that ultimately handle that money. That means the public — including the retirees relying on the pension system — cannot know who is managing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and how much those firms are earning in fees from those accounts. The public also cannot tell if firms managing the pension money made prohibited political donations to state officials and candidates for state office.”
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