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The resignation of the CEO of California’s public employee retirement system, announced Monday, was its second high-level departure in less than a week, prompting speculation about turmoil at the $240 billion pension fund.

Still, the retirement of Chief Executive Officer Fred Buenrostro Jr. is a personal matter that’s not part of a broader management shakeup at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, board members and outside experts said Tuesday.

Buenrostro said Monday that he is retiring at a date still to be determined after 5 1/2 years as CalPERS’ top executive. The announcement followed by a few days disclosure of the departure of Russell Read, the fund’s chief investment officer, who said he is leaving in June to focus on environmentally friendly investing.

“It’s a normal thing to try to connect these events, but the two resignations had nothing to do with each other,” George Diehr, vice president of CalPERS’ Board of Administration, said Tuesday.

“Fred’s was not surprising,” Diehr said. “Read’s was the surprise.”

In his statement, Buenrostro, 58, said he is leaving to “pursue private sector opportunities.” In an interview Tuesday, he emphasized that his departure comes after he has completed the management tasks he was originally hired to carry out.

“When I came to CalPERS in 2002 … my commitment was to stabilize management and put in place a succession program,” he said. “I have personally been involved in all this and, if I continued to stay on, some of those very talented individuals would not see an opportunity to move up.”

CalPERS watchers said Buenrostro’s departure is taking place after some board members privately called on him to change his management style and be more deferential.

“There’s been lots of contention about Fred’s style,” said James McRitchie, publisher of CorpGov.net, a Sacramento shareholder information service. “His management style was not as participatory as it could be, not as inclusive.”

Still, McRitchie said, the CEO’s departure is in keeping with CalPERS’ perennial problem of retaining senior managers in the public sector when they could be earning much higher salaries elsewhere.

“What’s likely to have led Fred to leave is that he can go out to the private sector … have more fun and make a lot of money,” McRitchie said.

Buenrostro, who collected a little over $300,000 in salary and incentive pay last year, met with board President Rob Feckner about two weeks ago and told him of his desire to retire, according to the two officials. Both strenuously denied that conflicts with the board precipitated the resignation.

Buenrostro acknowledged that he’s had “vigorous discussions” with board members, but said stories about conflict were “all very exaggerated.” He stressed that it’s “the board’s prerogative to manage as it chooses.”

CalPERS has thrived under Buenrostro’s leadership. In the five years that ended in June, the fund was up at an annual rate of 12.81 percent, growing from $134 billion at the end of 2002.

Observers credit Buenrostro with preserving CalPERS’ status as a defined-benefit plan with guaranteed pensions for members. They also praise him for smoothing out what had been highly volatile employer contributions.

CalPERS rushed out the Monday announcement of Buenrostro’s retirement after the Bloomberg news service published a story saying the CEO might leave before the end of the year, citing internal conflicts over a plan to invest $5 billion in roads and other infrastructure projects.

The CalPERS statement referred to “erroneous speculation” about the reasons for Buenrostro’s departure.

Buenrostro’s resignation “wasn’t connected to the infrastructure issue,” Diehr said Tuesday.

E-mail Sam Zuckerman at szuckerman@sfchronicle.com.

They have collapsed 58% in six months on worries about the deteriorating mortgage and UK housing outlook.

After correctly forecasting that (3p easier at 350p) would hit the market with a mammoth 12bn fundraising and (9p off at 486p) would follow yesterday with a 4bn cash call, dealers are adamant that Barratts will wheel out a rights issue before its interim management statement on May 14.

Broker Kaupthing gives it no more than a 50% chance of trading through without new equity which will surely involve - like HBOS - a sizeable cut to the . Barratt bought Wilson Bowden for 2.2bn in February 2007 and has high debt levels of 1.7bn of which 0.8bn needs refinancing by next April.

The roofs caved in on other housebuilders. , which last week said it had mothballed its planned new developments after a sudden worsening of conditions in the market over the past three weeks or so, dropped 21p more to a year’s low of 581p and stands 60% below its peak. fell 4p to 128p and 8p to 256p.

Selling on further consideration of the deteriorating US housing market and vague rights issue talk left plumbing giant 19p off at 523p.

Spectacular first-quarter profit performances from oil giants (34p better at 613p) and Royal Dutch A (102p higher at 2043p) helped the Footsie climb 43 points at the outset. But with little support forthcoming from elsewhere the index drifted to close one point lower at 6.089.4.

Wall Street fell 45 points ahead of today’s Fed’s decision on US interest rates. Dealers expect a further 25 basis point reduction but reckon Bernanke & Co could say that’s it for the time being.

advanced 14p to 792p on news of a 250m five-year Engineering Modification Services contract for BP in Azerbaijan. AMEC will provide engineering and construction management services to enhance and extend the life of BP’s offshore installations in the Azeri sector of the Caspian Sea which represents around 20pc of BP’s global production.

Mines succumbed to profit-taking and lower metal prices. lost 77p to 1648p, 216p to 6010p and 59p to 1818p.

More than 26m shares changed hands and the close was 11p up at 100p following slightly better-than-expected first-quarter results. steamed 37p ahead to 2171p after reporting a strong start to the year. Trading in the first three months of the year is well ahead of last year.

Mark Tincknell, executive chairman of social housing firm trousered more than 8m after selling 2.25m shares at 375p to apparently satisfy pent-up institutional demand. The shares dipped to 386p before closing 4p to 396p.

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Healthcare firm shed 5p to 66p after rejecting a buy-out proposal from 8% shareholder Aquisitek, a company associated with founder Barry Muncaster. Meldex is still talking to a number of other interested parties.

Bateman Litwin, a mid-sized oil, gas, power and renewable energy company, rose 5p to 133p. But eagle eyed dealers were interested to see that the trustee of the Bateman Litwin Employee Benefit Trust, SGS Trustee Ltd, embarrassingly had to cancel its March 26 sale of 1.4m shares at 217p on behalf of company employees after inconsistencies were found between the dealing instructions and actual execution of the sale. It appears that the stock was sold to an Israeli broker a day before a trading statement. Oops!

Bulls semen company lost 48p to 795p on profit-taking. In a third-quarter trading statement the company said it is on track to meet full-year expectations. The global dairy market has been buoyant due to strong milk prices and this is driving increased investment in dairy herds and greater demand for semen of a specific gender.

Caretech, a provider of learning disability care services, soared 40p to 408p as analysts gave the thumbs up to its 16.6m acquisition of Beacon, a provider of residential and supported living services for adults with learning disabilities in the South East of England.

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Wall Street v the City? No contest
Yesterdays trading: Wellstream sale a boost
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Methane percolating out of the Altamont Landfill near Livermore could soon fuel the garbage trucks that dump trash at the site.

Waste Management, North America’s largest garbage hauling company, today will announce plans to turn gas from the landfill’s rotting contents into a transportation fuel.

A system designed and installed by German engineering company Linde will purify the gas and chill it to 260 degrees below zero, cold enough for the gas to turn into a liquid. Waste Management will use the liquefied natural gas in its own, specially outfitted trucks. The company also may try to sell it.

“We’re creating a valuable resource at our landfills,” said Kent Stoddard, Waste Management vice president of public affairs.

If it wins approval from Bay Area air quality managers, the system could start operations as early as next year. It would be the largest project of its kind in the world, according to Linde.

For Waste Management, the $15 million project could have several big benefits.

The company already has 358 trucks in California running on liquefied natural gas, most of it imported from Arizona. If the Altamont project works as planned, Waste Management will have its own source of fuel. The company can duplicate the system at other landfills and buy more LNG-burning trucks, replacing older diesel trucks at a time when diesel prices are soaring.

At the same time, the project could help California’s fight against global warming. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. Burning it in a truck engine will keep it out of the atmosphere while decreasing the amount of fossil fuel Waste Management uses.

“The real value of the fuel is that it’s a truly renewable, truly green fuel with a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions,” said Steve Eckhardt, head of LNG and biogas business development at Linde, which is based in Munich.

Many landfills, including Altamont, already collect and burn their methane to generate electricity. Altamont’s generator can produce about 8 megawatts of electricity, roughly enough for 6,000 homes. Waste Management sells the power to Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

But the landfill spits out more gas than the generator can handle. Currently, Altamont’s excess gas - mostly a mixture of methane, carbon dioxide and nitrogen - is burned off, or flared.

The new system will take that excess gas and strip out almost everything but the methane. It will produce 13,000 gallons of LNG each day, enough for 300 trucks.

“It’s a good source of fuel,” Eckhardt said.

Landfill gas by itself won’t replace oil, he said. “It’s going to be more on the niche side,” Eckhardt said. “It’s not going to be the fuel for 50 percent of our vehicles. But we think the world will turn into a multifuel world.”

Not all environmentalists agree that landfill LNG qualifies as green. The rotting food and other organic matter producing the methane deep within the landfill should be composted, they say, rather than dumped.

“Certainly, capturing landfill methane is preferable to flaring it,” said Craig Noble, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council. But “it’s preferable to avoid the production of that methane in the first place, by avoiding putting all that organic matter in the landfill.”

E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.

The bad news for the bank’s army of 2.1m small shareholders is that their are going to be cut, and this year’s first-half payout will be in shares not cash. They will also have to stump up several hundred pounds in most cases in order to maintain their shareholding.

Britain’s biggest mortgage lender now forecasts house prices will fall not just this year but next year too, in both cases by a single-digit percentage.

HBOS has taken a similar route to Royal Bank of Scotland last week with its 12bn rights issue, selling the shares at a huge discount and paying the City a large fee to guarantee the fund-raising.

Investors are to be offered two new shares for every five they hold, at a price of 275p. That is a 45% discount to the closing share price of 495p last night. The shares today fell 3p to 492p.

Chief executive Andy Hornby denied the bank had been forced to raise new funds. He said: ‘This is a strategic move, I cannot stress that enough. It is about our capital position for the next three to four years. The economy is going to be more challenging, and we want to be less leveraged. Clearly we discussed it with the and the Bank of England but there was no pressure whatsoever from the regulators.’

But the bank today announced much larger writedowns than it had so far taken. First-quarter writedowns total 2.84bn, compared with 736m for the whole of last year. said the bank still forecasts the UK economy will prove ‘fairly resilient’ despite the gloom expressed in some quarters.

He expects asset growth to slow but margins to stabilise as the banks and building societies continue to tighten rates.

The rights issue will push HBOS’s balance-sheet strength as measured by its core tier one ratio from 5.5% at the end of last year to a new target of between 6% and 7%. Hornby said that strength would allow HBOS to consolidate its position as the country’s largest mortgage provider.

Banks in crisis

The rights issue has been underwritten by investment banks Morgan Stanley and Dresdner Kleinwort, which will pick up more than 60m in underwriting and advisory fees.

Other stories:
RBS rights issue: difficult call for investors
HBOS tests City’s taste for a 4bn share issue
HBOS ‘considering 5bn shares issue’
Bank bail-outs to be kept secret
HBOS ‘to reveal a 6bn hit’
Midas: should you buy in RBS cash call?
Mervyn King warns against more rights issues
Share dilution
City focus: the end of empire for Goodwin
RBS launches record 12bn rights issue
Time for banks to own up

Who shot Warren Gatland? - that is a mystery that has been replayed over and over in Ireland this week. Seven years ago, after helping revive the national side, he lobbied for a new contract as head coach to take him through to the 2003 World Cup finals. Instead he got the bullet, with allegations that the hands of players were on the trigger; he could have been forgiven for changing his name to Gatling.

The New Zealander Gatland returns to Dublin today in charge of a Wales team chasing an unlikely grand slam. He was appointed after Gareth Jenkins was sacked in the hours following the World Cup defeat by Fiji in Nantes in September, which meant the Welsh had failed to qualify for the quarter-finals for the third tournament out of five. Rumours of player discontent had been running in the media for months, a repeat of the Mike Ruddock affair the previous year when a coach who had presided over the 2005 grand slam was looking for work before the first anniversary of that success.

If there was a surprise that Wales had in Gatland appointed someone who had been a perceived victim of player power, after three months his squad are in no doubt who is in charge.

Jenkins and Ruddock are the only Welsh coaches to take charge of the national side in the last decade. The main complaint about Ruddock was that the off-field discipline imposed by the New Zealander Graham Henry from 1998 and that of his compatriot successor, Steve Hansen, had been replaced by a lax regime. Wales may have played with freedom on the field in 2005, but they wanted direction off it.

The captain in 2005, Gareth Thomas, lamented that bad habits resurfaced after Hansen’s departure: half-empty water bottles would litter the team and dressing rooms. Hansen would make players finish one bottle before starting another and clean up their mess. Jenkins met a delegation of senior players last year to tell them to make sure that everyone left their rooms tidy. They nodded their willingness to assist, and as they left the room they left behind them on the floor discarded water bottles. A common complaint about Ruddock and Jenkins was that they used the senior group of players to get a point across rather than address the squad directly.

“Welsh players react better when they hear the crack of the whip,” said the team manager Alan Phillips, who served under Henry, Hansen, Ruddock and Jenkins. “Warren, like Graham Henry in 1998, arrived not knowing anyone. Players had to prove themselves all over again.” Phillips would not comment on the suggestion that the players had ignored Jenkins’s orders to keep it tight against Fiji and committed suicide by indulging in a game of sevens, merely observing: “They won’t play their own way under Warren and Shaun Edwards [the defence coach]. They know who is in charge. Warren has done away with things like fines committees. Anyone who steps out of line is answerable to him alone.”

Nigel Davies was Jenkins’s attack coach. He took charge of the side for the friendly against South Africa last November but was not retained by Gatland and is now the Welsh Rugby Union’s head of rugby development. “When Gareth and I came in, we had a mature attitude to the players,” he said. “We felt they were internationals who could manage themselves. On reflection, we should have given them more direction. While Welsh players want latitude on the field, they need instruction and leadership off it. It was a point I made to the WRU in the World Cup debrief.”

Ruddock tried to empower the players on the training field, but his delegating was misinterpreted as laziness. They preferred Hansen’s dictatorial style: in squad life, for example, he insisted every player remain in camp at night at the team’s base in the Vale of Glamorgan, which the former Wales captain Gwyn Jones dubbed the Jail of Glamorgan, even on days off.

When Jenkins took over in the summer of 2006, he was unable to purge the squad because the World Cup was only 16 months away and he became reliant on his senior group of players. The flanker Martyn Williams played in the Hansen, Henry and Ruddock eras and is the side’s most experienced player. “Every team in any sport will have a senior group and how they are managed is very important,” he said. “Give players an inch and we will take a mile and the danger is that the senior group has too much of a say. There is no chance of that happening with the guys in charge now and when Hansen was around you were always looking over your back.

“Warren is firm but also relaxed. He is laid-back and does not shout and bawl. The big difference has been in training where he has pushed us to another level. Some coaches won’t pick up senior players in training when they make mistakes, but Warren and Shaun make no exceptions and that is good for the younger guys. Everything is black and white with Warren. There are no grey areas and he has given us a hard edge.”

A WRU delegation flew to Auckland to meet Gatland little more than a week after Jenkins’s sacking. “I had only been in his company a few minutes when I realised he was a unique individual,” said the union’s chief executive, Roger Lewis. “The perception is that he is hard and driven, which he is with his winning mentality, but he is also sensitive. He has incredibly high emotional intelligence, an awareness of people and situations. Sacking Gareth Jenkins so quickly was a brutal necessity: it was tough on a man I like, but we had to send out an unambiguous message that we had to change.”

Gatland, who shrugged off his dismissal by Ireland by enjoying success with Wasps and Waikato, could not have made a better start, engineering Wales’s first victory at Twickenham for 20 years before Scotland and Italy were swatted away in Cardiff. He has always changed a winning side, ensuring none of his players occupy a comfort zone. “Like Graham and Steve, Warren is big on discipline, and the key word about his style is intensity, whether on the training field or in team meetings,” said the wing Shane Williams. “He does not have difficulty in getting his point across.”

Mindful of what happened to him in Ireland, Gatland appointed coaches he knew would be loyal to him: Edwards was with him at Wasps as was the attack coach Robert Howley, and Edwards is the sergeant-major figure. “Warren is the same as he was at Wasps, flexing his power when he needs to,” said Howley. “I would say he has been incredibly chilled since his arrival, but no one is in any doubt about who is calling the shots.”