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UN Pension Fund

WORLDVIEWS

Further Outsourcing of $86 Billion UN Pension Fund Is Paused, and Questions Arise About Russian Investments

Loraine Rickard-Martin
  •  April 28, 2022 
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has paused his plan to further outsource the management of the $86 billion UN pension fund’s assets to Wall Street. The plan to allow an additional 18 percent of the fund’s assets to investment companies would have doubled the amount already being privatized. Questions also have arisen about the …

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WORLDVIEWS

Does the UN Pension Fund Really Need to Invest in Financial Derivatives?

Lowell Flanders
  •  July 17, 2021 
When the market for mortgage-backed securities — derivatives — exploded in 2008, the investment guru Warren Buffet called them “financial weapons of mass destruction.” The crisis was the worst American economic disaster to occur since the Great Depression. In the United States, the stock market tanked, wiping out nearly $8 trillion in value between …

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The UN Pension Fund’s Latest Flareups and Hazards to Whistleblowers

Loraine Rickard-Martin
  •  December 23, 2020 
At the $79.4 billion United Nations pension fund, continuing tensions came to a head this month when the UN participant representatives to the pension board — elected representatives of 85,000 active UN staff members — wrote on Dec. 2 to the General Assembly body that oversees the fund about their concerns on a range of …

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The $75 Billion UN Pension Fund: Kicking Reforms Down the Road

Loraine Rickard-Martin
  •  November 12, 2020 
Flags of UN Member States outside of the UN in New York
A new governance study has confirmed what many United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund observers have long surmised: there are significant variances between the fund’s own operations and best practices and those of pension funds elsewhere. The areas reviewed by Mosaic Governance Advisors, who prepared the study, include standards of professional and ethical conduct, …

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COVID-19

Why the Head of the UN Pension Fund Resigned

George G. Irving and Sugiyama Iutaka
  •  April 28, 2020 
In the middle of the coronavirus epidemic, the United Nations spokesperson announced that Sudhir Rajkumar resigned from his job as representative of the secretary-general for investment of the assets of the UN Joint Staff Pension Fund, effective March 31, 2020. The abruptness and lack of explanation in the March 29th announcement came as a surprise …

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The $67 Billion UN Pension Fund: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Loraine Rickard-Martin
  •  October 10, 2019 
Since 2014, when staff members of the United Nations Pension Fund blew the whistle on serious mismanagement in its secretariat, a change in leadership has been made on both sides — assets and liabilities — of the $67.4 billion fund. Yet the turmoil persists. Stabilizing the fund’s management and investment decisions has been mandated …

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The UN Pension Board Rejects an Audit of Its Work

Loraine Rickard-Martin
  •  August 27, 2018 
The United Nations Pension Board’s recent meeting in Rome ended with a record number of disagreements and much acrimony. The chief cause of distress was the results of the internal governance audit requested last December by the General Assembly. At the meeting, held July 29 to Aug. 3, board members directed much of their …

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WORLDVIEWS

Long Overdue: A New Boss at the UN Pension Fund and a Reformed Board

Loraine Rickard-Martin
  •  November 15, 2017 
An important change was made to the United Nations pension fund last month, when Secretary-General António Guterres announced he was appointing Sudhir Rajkumar of India to succeed Carol Boykin as his representative for investments of the $61.5 billion fund. Guterres needs to make another major change, however, to address serious problems at the joint …

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WORLDVIEWS

The UN Pension Fund’s Leaders Must Go

Loraine Rickard-Martin
  •  March 30, 2017 
The General Assembly resolution passed in December could not have been clearer: the United Nations pension fund has failed to deliver on both the investment side, led by Carol Boykin, and the secretariat side, led by Sergio Arvizú. The resolution came on the heels of critical reports documenting massive foreign-exchange losses, low investment income …

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WORLDVIEWS

UN Secretary-General Guterres: Please Protect Our Pension Fund

Loraine Rickard-Martin
  •  March 2, 2017 
United Nations staff members and retirees, concerned for many years about low-investment performance by our $54 billion pension fund and unprecedented delays in benefit payments, welcomed the adoption last December of a General Assembly resolution that allayed worries about attempts to privatize the fund. The resolution reaffirmed that UN financial rules and regulations remain the …

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The UN General Assembly Urges the $54 Billion Pension Fund to Shape Up

Susan Manuel
  •  January 2, 2017 
The United Nations General Assembly sharply rebuked the United Nations Pension Fund, which it oversees, reaffirming control of the $54 billion account by the UN Secretariat and calling on the fund to improve its problematic performance and service to its 72,000 beneficiaries. The strongly worded resolution came amid other resolutions being finalized at the …

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Skeptics Still Question the Status of the UN’s $54 Billion Pension Fund

Susan Manuel
  •  September 6, 2016 
Twenty months after the staff union accused management of the United Nations’ $54.5 billion pension fund of “massive fraud,” controversy over its structure and performance remains on a low boil. While the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services dismissed fraud allegations, a near perfect storm of management restructuring, a software fiasco and a weak …

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