A son’s lament for CalPERS’ big losses

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New York money management firm BlackRock Inc. made bad bets on the massive Manhattan housing complex called Stuyvesant Town and other real estate projects, and that cost a major client -- the California Public Employees’ Retirement System -- hundreds of millions of dollars. The losses took on a particularly personal tone for BlackRock’s chief executive, Laurence Fink.

‘My mother gets her pension from CalPERS,’ he said, getting emotional in an interview with Vanity Fair this month as he discussed the losses.

“I lose sleep over these problems,” Fink said.

Fink grew up in Van Nuys, went to UCLA and then to Wall Street, where he has become one of the most powerful financial figures in the country. His mother’s pension came from her years in the more humble position of English professor at a public college. A spokeswoman for BlackRock confirmed that Fink’s parents still live in California but declined to go into further detail about them.

The personal connection between Fink and CalPERS does not appear to have helped the business relationship. CalPERS has been contemplating getting rid of BlackRock as a real estate advisor. And last year, Fink gave the pension fund’s board a talking-to about its unreasonable expectations for returns in the coming years.

At the end of the day, though, it would seem that for all of Fink’s concern, even if CalPERS went bust and took his mother’s pension down with it, she would probably do OK with some help from her son.

-- Nathaniel Popper