PROVIDENCE – General Treasurer Frank T. Caprio said last week that the state’s pension plan is “outperforming some of the nation’s largest and well-followed funds.”
Rhode Island’s fund ranks in the top 150 largest public funds, a position the general treasurer attributes to the fund’s inclusion of teacher and state employee pension assets, as well as those of most of the Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns.
“Rhode Island’s pension fund has outperformed both the largest pension fund in the nation, the California public employees’ retirement system fund (CalPERS) and largest university endowment in the country – Harvard – while reducing the fund’s expenses by more than $12 million,” Caprio said in the statement.
The state was also a leader in early 2007, when Caprio directed the sale of $1 billion of subprime mortgage-backed securities, allowing Rhode Island to be the first state to confirm its fund had no exposure to subprime assets long before the collapse of the market in the fall of 2007.
While down 19.18 percent from the beginning of fiscal 2009, Rhode Island’s $6.1 billion pension fund is outperforming Harvard’s endowment, which is down an estimated 24 to 30 percent over the same time period. •
