Pennsylvania's beleaguered pension fund for educators has hired yet another outside law firm — this time to consider suing the consulting firm that admitted botching a key profits calculation in an error that has triggered an ongoing FBI investigation.
The board of the $75 billion pension plan has hired the big Philadelphia firm of Blank Rome to pursue "potential litigation" following the admission from consultant Aon that its "inadvertent clerical mistakes" led the fund to adopt a false and exaggerated figure for profits.
The plan — the Public School Employees' Retirement System — later had to correct that number, forcing 100,000 school employees to pay more into the pension plan. Under the state "risk share" law, how much teachers pay into the fund depends partly on its investment profits.
