Joseph A. Dear dies at 62; CalPERS investment chief

[mahatmakanejeeves]

The obituaries are my favorite section in the newspaper. This one is for those DUers, probably none from the Economy Group, who equate investing with being a fatcat. This guy handled the retirement funds for workers in the public sector. I'd say he did a pretty good job.

Joseph A. Dear dies at 62; CalPERS investment chief

Joseph A. Dear, who joined CalPERS in 2009, led the country's largest public pension fund out of the Great Recession. The fund's investments more than recouped their recessionary losses during his tenure.

By Marc Lifsher
February 27, 2014, 2:15 p.m.

SACRAMENTO — Joseph A. Dear, the chief investment officer who helped guide California's and the country's largest public pension fund out of the Great Recession, has died. He was 62.

Dear came to California from Washington state, where he headed the State Investment Board, among other jobs. ... In March 2009, he joined CalPERS as it reeled from nearly $100 billion in losses in the economic downturn of 2008-09. Dear immediately began a methodical process of restructuring and rebalancing the portfolio, which had plunged to $165 billion just before he arrived in Sacramento. One major task was shifting real estate investments away from high-risk, money-losing residential properties to more conservative commercial and income-producing stakes.

Dear didn't let the steep losses distract him from rebuilding a fund that is responsible for paying benefits to 1.7 million state and local government workers, retirees and their families. ... "The system has more than enough cash through contributions and income from investments to meet our present liabilities, so we are in a good position to ride out the current downturn and come out stronger," Dear said in July 2009.

CalPERS' investments were worth $283.5 billion on the day Dear died, having more than recouped all their recessionary losses.