The passive index portion has done fine; the active side has not, mainly because of poor manager choices and high fees including large performance fees paid to hedge fund managers.
Here is an editorial, Florida pension funds still cloaked in secrecy, and the dirty details, Easy investments beat state's expert pension planners.
Although the fund performed 22 percent ending June 30, 2011, a simple Core-4 portfolio of Vanguard index funds with the same stock/bond allocations performed 25 percent. The Core-4 portfolio also beat the Florida plan by about 0.5% annually since 2001.
Florida claims the have a low cost plan, but this claim is based on an incomplete disclosure of fees and expenses. I estimate that Florida spent well over $5 billion dollars on management fees, hedge fund performance fees and trading costs over the past 10 years. That number could be conservative.
It's difficult to know the exact amount taxpayers shelled out because only management fees are disclosed to the public. The likely higher amount paid in performance fees to hedge funds, venture capital funds, and other private accounts are not being disclosed. Hedge fund performance fees can be 15 to 20 percent of profits and venture capital funds are often 30 percent.
