NC could have been a Canes owner. The state deemed it ‘cool’ but too risky
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Briner said the state considered buying a portion of the Carolina Hurricanes.
- Briner said the treasurer’s office concluded the Canes did not meet risk and return.
- Briner reported $25 billion in investment gains and $148 billion in pension assets.
North Carolina had a chance to buy a stake in the Carolina Hurricanes but considered the team — now in the Stanley Cup Finals — too much of a risk.
Really.
State Treasurer Brad Briner, a Republican, said Tuesday as he gave a report in a Council of State meeting that he wanted “to tell you about an investment we didn’t make last year, and that was in buying a portion of the Carolina Hurricanes.”
“It’s obviously embarrassing as we sit here today,” Briner told his fellow Council of State members, who are the state’s 10 statewide elected officials in the executive branch, including the governor.
“It would obviously be cool to own it as a state, as a pension system, but we don’t get to consider that as part of our investment,” Briner said. The state treasurer’s office is in charge of the state’s pension system for hundreds of thousands of retired public employees.
“We just need to look at the balance, and we’ve concluded that while the Canes is an amazing franchise, as a business it didn’t meet our risk and return objectives,” he said.
“It reminds me of Yogi Berra’s famous quote — that it ‘is tough to make predictions, particularly about the future,’” Briner said.
Berra was an icon of Major League Baseball as a player, coach and manager — and a font of quotable sayings.
While the state passed on investing in the Canes that way, Briner reported the pension fund has made $25 billion in investment gains since he took office in January 2025.
“Our pension deficit is cut in half. We are now to a record $148 billion of assets in the pension system,” he said.
The Canes, who play Game 1 and Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals in Raleigh this week, last won the Stanley Cup in 2006.
