LASERS has no funds involved in the Stanford Group

Two key Louisiana retirement systems managing billions of dollars checked their portfolios following news of the Stanford probe and found no exposure.

The Louisiana State Employees’ Retirement System, or LASERS, contacted its 20 public equity and debt managers and 40 private equity investment managers shortly after the SEC revealed its case against Stanford on Tuesday, said Troy Searles, deputy chief investment officer for the system. “We scoured through the holdings, and we don’t have any exposure to these guys,” Searles said. “No known investment and no known ties at this time.”

Half of LASERS’ $7 billion portfolio is invested in equities — publicly traded U.S. and international stocks — and about 10 percent is invested in private equity funds that control privately held firms, Searles said. Bonds and other investments make up the remainder.

At the Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana, 86,000 active school employees pay contributions into a $15 billion fund that covers more than 61,000 retirees, said Lisa Honore, a public information officer for the system.

“We don’t have any Stanford Group investment,” she said.

In Louisiana, the Office of Financial Institutions — which includes a securities division that investigates fraud and licenses stock brokers — hadn’t responded by the end of the day Wednesday after two calls for information about how Louisiana investors in Stanford are affected and what steps investors should take?

The office’s Web site — http://www.ofi.state.la.us — includes links to SEC documents outlining the federal government’s case against Stanford.