CalPERS Chief Hanson Leaving to Run His Own Investing Firm : Securities: One source says the shareholder rights leader has been unhappy for years with his compensation.
Dale M. Hanson, who has helped lead a nationwide shareholder rights movement as chief executive of the influential $80-billion California Public Employees Retirement System, said Wednesday that he will resign to run a new private investment firm based in San Diego.
Hanson, 51, said he will remain on the job until July 11 while a search is conducted for his successor. He announced his resignation at a CalPERS board meeting in Anaheim.
Hanson said that general counsel Richard Koppes will be interim chief executive, but he noted that Koppes has told the board he does not want the job permanently. There was no formal statement from the CalPERS board, which apparently was not expecting the announcement. It scheduled a news conference for today.
But Hanson, reached by phone, said the board “has known for some time that I was looking for opportunities.”
The announcement follows closely the resignation of DeWitt Bowman as the fund’s chief investment officer. But people familiar with CalPERS described that as probably coincidental, saying both men left voluntarily.
One source said Hanson has been “unhappy for a couple of years” and wanted to make more money. His salary at CalPERS--$110,000 plus a maximum bonus of $22,000--is typical among public pension fund managers, but it pales in comparison to the money that can be made in private investment circles.
“After 27 years in the public sector, I felt it was time to do something a little more entrepreneurial,” Hanson said.
Rodger F. Smith, a partner at Connecticut-based Greenwich Associates, a business strategy research and consulting firm, said Hanson’s departure “raises the question of how large funds keep the talent they need to do the best job for their members.”
Hanson, who landed the top job at CalPERS in 1987 from the No. 2 post in the Wisconsin Retirement System, probably won’t be missed in many corporate boardrooms around the country.
Under Hanson, the California system wielded its huge portfolio aggressively to pressure corporate boards to be more accountable to shareholders and independent of management, notably at General Motors, IBM, ITT, Occidental Petroleum and Lockheed.
Just last week, CalPERS wrote the 200 leading Standard & Poor’s companies, urging them to follow General Motors’ lead and enhance the power of their non-employee directors. It pointedly asked the companies to respond by Aug. 1.
CalPERS has also won praise for its administration of health care plans for its nearly 1 million members. The system has used its clout to cut health care fees charged by providers and has been cited by the Clinton Administration as a model.
Some board members, however, have faulted the system’s management for providing poor service to its members.
Hanson said he will become chief executive of newly formed American Partners Capital Group, which will seek to invest in single-family housing in California with money from smaller public pension funds around the state.
He identified his partners as two politically prominent San Diegans: financier Tom Stickel, a Republican who recently sold the mortgage firm TCS Financial to Mexican interests, and lawyer Byron Georgiou, a 1992 Democratic candidate for Congress who was in the Cabinet of former Gov. Jerry Brown.
Hanson said the firm hopes to initially build two funds totaling $200 million to provide “equity gap financing” for single-family homes. CalPERS has made similar investments, triggering the construction and sale of 7,500 homes.
