Federal investigation into Pa. school employees retirement fund progresses to grand jury
Updated 9:36 AM;
By Joseph N. DiStefano, The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS)
PSERS, the pension plan for Pennsylvania schoolteachers, has confirmed that federal authorities are using a grand jury as a tool in their investigation of the $64 billion fund.
“PSERS has been served with a grand jury subpoena for documents and is cooperating fully with the request by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania,” PSERS said in a new statement, issued before a closed board meeting Friday that was the latest in a string of secret sessions by the fund’s board.
Pa.’s largest pension fund admits for the first time that it’s under federal investigation
Updated 1:42 PM;
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By Joseph N. DiStefano, The Philadelphia Inquirer
The board of Pennsylvania’s largest pension fund on Tuesday confirmed for the first time that the plan is a subject of a federal investigation and voted to hire more lawyers to help deal with the probe.
Trustees of the fund, known as PSERS, voted unanimously to hire the New York law firm of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP “to provide guidance to the board in matters related to a federal investigation and any collateral issues,” according to a resolution. It was passed by the board shortly before 10 p.m. after a more than a five-hour meeting.
From Hong Kong to Sydney, San Francisco to Zurich, the staff at Pennsylvania’s largest pension fund have run up big travel bills Craig R. McCoy, The Philadelphia Inquirer
To oversee how a massive Pennsylvania pension fund invests its money, an elite band of Harrisburg-based finance experts traverses the globe.
They head to Wall Street, of course, but also to San Francisco and Boston, London and Hong Kong, Paris and Sydney, and Beijing and Bermuda.
Now The Inquirer has learned the cost of these trips by the staff of the $62 billion retirement plan for Pennsylvania teachers and school employees. The bills for some are startling.
FAIRFIELD-SUISUN, CALIFORNIA
Joseph N. DiStefano: Tracking more than Santa: The 3 Philly rocket science firms Paul Graziani didn’t sell are growing fast [The Philadelphia Inquirer]
Dec. 24 In June, 30 years after Paul Graziani and a few colleagues quit General Electric’s satellite and missile center in King of Prussia to start their own software firm, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross visited them in the multiscreen “digital mission” room of the Exton company they built, Analytical Graphics Inc. (AGI). How much bigger could their 221-worker, $88 million-a-year (sales) company get? Ross wanted to know.
“$1 billion,” suggested Graziani. He noted that Ansys, another satellite-software supplier based near Pittsburgh, had topped that figure, and he expected AGI could, too, as more governments and private satellite operators pay AGI to help avoid collisions with other spacecraft and “space junk.”