Illinois cites a ranking, not a venture-only return

The record

The Illinois State Board of Investment (ISBI) states in its own 2025 Annual Report, for the fiscal year ended 30 June 2025, that its private equity investments 'returned 16.70% based on 10-year annualized returns ending June 30, 2024,' a result it says ranked fifth in the American Investment Council's Public Pension Study. The report states ISBI's private equity exposure sits in 136 funds whose strategies 'include, but are not limited to, leveraged buyouts, venture capital, and growth capital,' fair-valued from each fund's audited financial statements adjusted to year-end. ISBI's own investments page names Hamilton Lane Advisors and Franklin Park Associates as the discretionary partners selecting its private equity and venture capital managers.

What the sources establish

ISBI's own Defined Benefit asset allocation and performance report, dated 31 March 2026, benchmarks the private equity sleeve against the Cambridge Associates Private Equity Index, distributed under license by S&P Dow Jones Indices, and reprints that index provider's own disclaimer that the data is supplied 'as is' with no warranty and no fiduciary duty to users. ISBI's structure routes fund selection through outside discretionary partners rather than naming each commitment directly in board minutes, a different disclosure model from the funds elsewhere in this pack that publish a fund-by-fund schedule themselves.

Scope and revision

The headline 16.70% return describes a ten-year period ending 30 June 2024, a full year before the fiscal year the 2025 annual report otherwise covers, which ISBI's own report does not reconcile with a more current figure. Because ISBI reports private equity as one category spanning buyouts, venture and growth capital, its 16.70% figure cannot be split into a venture-only return from the documents examined here, and the ranking it cites is the American Investment Council's own methodology, not one ISBI describes in detail. ISBI's disclosure is Illinois's own choice; it is not evidence about how other states structure or report their private equity programs.

The decision in front of you

A reader citing ISBI's private equity performance should date it to the period the underlying figure actually covers, name it as a blended private equity return rather than a venture return, and note that the ranking behind it comes from a third party's study cited inside ISBI's own report rather than from ISBI's own calculation. This is editorial: a strong headline number is still bounded by the period, category and outside methodology that produced it.

• Does the 16.70% figure's ten-year window match the fiscal year the report is otherwise describing, or does it lag by a year?
• Is the return being quoted specific to venture capital, or is it the blended private equity figure ISBI actually discloses?
• Does the American Investment Council ranking ISBI cites use the same measurement basis as ISBI's own reported return?

ISBI's own report is candid about ranking well on a named external study; the specifics of that study, and the venture share inside its private equity number, are not part of what ISBI itself discloses in these documents.