"An official with China's foreign-exchange regulator is the lead candidate to become next investment chief of the largest US public pension fund, according to people familiar with the matter. The California Public Employees' Retirement System [with $360 billion in assets, responsible for benefits to more than 1.9 million active or retired public employees] has offered the job to Ben Meng, deputy CIO of China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange [(SAFE)], one of these people said. The agency is in charge of China's more than $3 trillion in foreign reserves. Meng previously worked for the California pension fund earlier this decade [where he left in 2015 for SAFE]. Meng hadn't signed an offer letter as of Wednesday morning, this person said. Meng contacted The Journal late Wednesday to say he is a US citizen working at the Chinese agency as a foreign contractor. He said he had no comment on the hiring process.
"Calpers earned 8.6% in fiscal 2018 but has underperformed median returns for peers tracked by Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service in five, 10 and 20 years ended June 30. * * * It has just 71% assets on hand to pay for all future benefits owed to retirees and public employees. The funded ratio for the largest 100 US public pension plans was 71% as of June 30
"Mr Meng joined Calpers in late 2008 as a portfolio manager for its fixed-income quantitive research group and later was promoted to help oversee the pension fund's investmen mix.
Note:
(a) There is no need to read the rest.
(b) Meng's official title in China: 国家外汇管理局中央外汇业务中心副首席投资官孟宇.
(c) Yu (Ben) Meng, Adjunct Professor in Master of Financial Engineering (MFE) Program, University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business, undated lists him as "Head of Asset Allocation at CalPERS [yes, using present tense] PhD, civil engineering, UC Davis * * * " That Web page is no longer available, probably because Meng is longer there at Berkeley..
Meng received Master of Financial Engineering (MFE) from Berkeley in 2002. He had received his pHD from Davis before that, but I fail to find out what year.