New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board Pension

New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board Pension

The New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board Pension was founded in 1956 as a single-employer defined benefit plan covering the full-time workforce of the Sewerage and Water Board. Its governance sits with a board of trustees led by the sitting mayor of New Orleans — currently LaToya Cantrell — and includes a dedicated pension committee chaired by Joseph Peychaud. The plan is a component of the municipal fabric, providing retirement, death, and disability benefits exclusively to the employees who maintain one of America's oldest urban water systems. An Altss estimate places the plan's assets near $230M, a pool small enough to move via fund commitments and direct co-investments, yet shaped by a board with unusual operational proximity to hard assets. The pension's portfolio lists real estate and infrastructure composites alongside physical industrial properties, and the staff pays benefits from the Pension Trust Fund Portfolio — a generic label that belies the tie to a utility that owns a power substation and three water plants. Joseph Peychaud chairs the pension committee for a board that has cycled through executive leadership: Ghassan Korban served as Executive Director before Randy E. Hayman assumed the post in 2025. The plan participates in the Louisiana Public Employees' Retirement Systems Association, linking it to statewide peers, and its research counterparty list — including Al Rajhi Capital and CardinalStone, accessed through Avior Capital Markets US — hints at a buyout and fund-of-funds posture that stretches beyond Louisiana borders. No personnel count is publicly available. The fund's structural differentiator isn't scale or sourcing machinery — it's the governance overlap with a municipal utility that physically owns the power stations, water plants, and underground networks that generate the payroll deductions funding the plan. That alignment places the pension inside the same operational reality as its infrastructure investments, a posture few public plans share.