CalPERS to hire Trucost, F&C for corporate governance research

UK-based firms join CalPERS’ “spring-fed pool”

by Daniel Brooksbank | May 18th, 2010

The $205.1bn (€165bn) California Public Employees’ Retirement System plans to award corporate governance research contracts to the UK-based firms Trucost and F&C.
CalPERS’ Operations Support Services Division said in a contract notice that Trucost and F&C, along with nine US-based firms, would join what the fund calls a ‘Spring-Fed Pool’ of governance advisors. The other firms named are: Board Advisor, Creative Investment Research, Wilcox Miller & Nelson, Business Integrity Alliance, Brock Capital Group, Arup North America, The Corporate Library, InvestorCom and KPMG. The contract terms were not disclosed.
Meanwhile, the fund has said it will not issue a focus list this year for the first time since 1988. It had been considering 15 companies in the screening process for
the list before they improved shareholder performance and governance. CalPERS declined to name the companies and stresses that it has no plans to abandon the focus list process.
And it’s also emerged that CalPERS has voted for a shareholder proposal to separate the roles of chairman and chief executive at JPMorgan Chase, posts currently held by Jamie Dimon.
It has voted 12.7m shares for the proposal, the fund said on its website ahead of the bank’s annual shareholder meeting this week. It said: “CalPERS believes if the chairman is not the CEO the board may be able to exercise stronger oversight of management.” The fund earlier voted for splitting the chairman and CEO roles at Goldman Sachs held by Lloyd Blankfein.