Home > News > Asset Allocation > New York State Pension Boosts Real Estate Investments by $300M in January
Asset Allocation

New York State Pension Boosts Real Estate Investments by $300M in January

The New York State Common Retirement Fund also invested $25.5 million in a fund managed by one of its Emerging Manager Program partners.

By Michael Katz



In a relatively quiet month for the New York State Common Retirement Fund, the pension giant earmarked nearly $300 million across several real estate investments in January and committed a $25.5 million investment to a firm in its Emerging Manager Program.

The pension fund committed the lion’s share of its monthly real estate investments—$250 million—to the KKR Real Estate Partners Americas IV fund, managed by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. The fund is a closed-end, diversified, opportunistic fund that targets primarily transitional assets, real estate companies and platforms, and distressed or complex situations.

Also within its real estate portfolio, a little more than $22.6 million went to fund a renovation project in Johnson City, New York, that will feature 156 residential units and 107 indoor parking spaces.

Approximately $7.4 million will go toward a gut rehab in Poughkeepsie, New York, that includes 28 residential units and 30,600 square feet of ground floor commercial space.

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The pension fund also committed more than $1.8 million toward the construction of a four-story building in Ithaca, New York, containing 42 residential rental units for individuals and families.

More than $1.5 million is going toward the gut rehab of a three-story building in Penn Yann, New York, that includes eight residential units and approximately 10,000 square feet of commercial space.

Under its Emerging Manager Program, which aims to invest in newer, smaller and diverse investment management firms, the pension fund committed $25.5 million to the Lone View Capital Fund I, which is advised by HarbourVest Partners, a partner within the program’s private equity asset class. The fund will primarily make control buyouts investments in growth-oriented companies within the enterprise software, information service and tech sectors in North America. Lone View Capital marks a new relationship for pension fund.

Related Stories:

NY State Pension Returns 6.2% in Fiscal Q3, Cashes Out Another Public Equity Fund

New York Common Retirement Fund Cuts Public Equities in Favor of Alts

New York State Common Earmarks $1.9B in September Investments

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Home > News > Regulation > Central States Legally Required to Repay $127M to PBGC
Regulation

Central States Legally Required to Repay $127M to PBGC

The multiemployer plan received an overpayment due to an incomplete death audit conducted by the PBGC.
By Paul Mulholland



The Department of Labor Thursday confirmed that multiemployer plans that received excessive payments under the Special Financial Assistance Program must repay that money. The DOL added that it will not take enforcement action against plans that return overpayments.

The Special Financial Assistance Program provision of the American Rescue Plan Act provides the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation funding for severely underfunded multiemployer pension plans. The Central States, Southeast & Southwest Areas Pension Plan received $35.8 billion in special financial assistance in December 2022. Of that amount, $127 million was inappropriately provided because of incorrect information that 3,479 deceased participants were actually alive.

The DOL noted that this mistake was not made by the pension plan. The error was caused by the PBGC not using the Social Security Administration’s death master file, a database that pension plans cannot access, when auditing SFA applications. The PBGC began using the DMF in November 2023 when reviewing applications.

“While these excess payment amounts may represent only a small fraction of total SFA payments, they would not otherwise have been paid and, as such, must be refunded to the United States government,” the PBGC said in a statement.

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Thomas Nyhan, the executive director of the Central States pension plan, wrote to the DOL on February 26 and asked for clarification that repaying PBGC is lawful under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which requires that plan funds must be used in the sole interest of plan participants.

In a statement, the DOL answered that ERISA does “not prevent plans from refunding any excess payments received through the SFA Program or excuse any failures to return SFA funds to which the plans are not entitled.”

The DOL concluded that it “does not intend to take any enforcement action against a plan that repays excess SFA amounts based on inaccurate census information that is subsequently corrected through the PBGC’s use of the Death Master File.”

Central States did not respond to a request for comment, and the DOL did not provide a timeline for repayment.

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