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Favors refused, fired official says
Ex-pension-fund investment officer defends record
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Published: October 24, 2009
RALEIGH
The former chief investment officer of the state's $60 billion pension fund was offered favors by investment firms and agents, a newspaper reported yesterday.
The Raleigh News & Observer reported that e-mails obtained through a public-records request indicated that Pat Gerrick was offered perks such as airline tickets and help with her daughter's job search. Gerrick told the newspaper that favors were offered but not accepted.
State treasurer Janet Cowell fired Gerrick in August. Since then Cowell has instated reforms that require disclosure of relationships with investment firms.
Cowell said last week that the state's pension is 99.3 percent funded, well above the average of 80 percent for public pension funds.
Gerrick said she disclosed all of her friendships with investment agents and managers to then-state treasurer Richard Moore. She also has said that those relationships are important in the investment industry.
Gerrick says that her daughter got job advice but not a job and that she declined a 2007 unpaid internship in Madrid from Credit Suisse, which got $2 million in fees from the treasurer's office that year.
Gerrick says the airline ticket was given to her daughter to attend the Bermuda International Love Festival in February by the CEO of a placement agent called Lloyd Bridge Advisory Corp.
The CEO, Wanda Henton Brown, is the first lady of Bermuda and a friend of Gerrick's. Gerrick says that Brown didn't buy the ticket, she just passed it along after the original owner fell ill. The placement agent was used by the treasurer's office to arrange investment firms to manage state pension money.
According to the e-mails, a managing director at Credit Suisse helped Gerrick's daughter edit her resume in 2007 and provided information about a real-estate agency in New York where Gerrick's daughter was apartment hunting. Gerrick says her daughter found her own apartment.
In 2008, Gerrick corresponded with Daniel Weiss, a managing partner at Angeleno Group which received $1.4 million last year from the treasurer's office. Weiss later wrote an e-mail to a colleague about Gerrick's daughter's interest in a real-estate job.
"I thought you would be a great conversation partner for her in thinking about job opportunities and the real-estate landscape more generally. I gave Pat your number," the e-mail read.
Gerrick told the newspaper that "just because you see people being helpful doesn't mean she used that help... Yes, people offered to talk to her, counseling, what you need to go into real estate. All people were doing was giving her background information."
Cowell has since banned the use of placement agents.
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