Category Archives: Private equity

McKinsey Gives “Dare to Be Great” Speech to Private Equity Investors as Returns Fall

McKinsey has issued a new report on the private equity industry that ought to give any investor cause for pause.

Latest Froth Indicator: Micro Private Equity Funds, aka “Search Funds”

Who in their right mind would want to invest in a search fund?

Predatory Equity: How Private Equity Came to New York’s Rental Market

Private equity firms have been hoovering up houses all over the US to convert into rentals. But they were active in the New York City rental market before their big buying spree, and that experience gives a window on how they are likely to behave as landlords.

SEC: More Than Half the Private Equity Firms Gouge on Fees

Today, two stories broke on the SEC’s activities in private equity, one in Bloomberg, another in Reuters, and they look to be based on authorized leaks. Together, they suggest that the SEC, which obtained new oversight authority for private equity firms under Dodd Frank, has been turning over rocks and found so many creepy-crawlies that even the normally complacent agency felt compelled to take notice.

Private Equity’s Lake Woebegon Fallacy: All Investors Are Above Average

How absurd are the goals of the pension funds that invest in private equity? Plenty absurd, it turns out.

Correcting the Record on Another Misleading CalPERS Press Release

An alert reader sent me a link to a CalPERS press release, dated March 14, before the one we rebutted in the post CalPERS Tries Ineffective Mudslinging in Response to Our Ongoing Private Equity Investigation This earlier press release was not as consequential, so we decided to wait till the weekend to address it.

New York Times Column Strikes Back, Obliquely, at Our CalPERS Private Equity Data Suit

When I went to my inbox at the start of my day, one of the noteworthy e-mails in my inbox had the subject line: “NYT Column about You.”

How to Get Beyond Private Equity’s Parasite Economy

While we continue digging into the details that the private equity industry has worked hard to shroud in secrecy, it’s important not to lose sight of the real economy consequences of this well-orchestrated wealth transfer scheme. This post by Eric Garland focuses on a case study, Guitar Center.

CalPERS Tries Ineffective Mudslinging in Response to Our Ongoing Private Equity Investigation

Yesterday I learned that a press release that the California Public Employees’ Retirement Systems issued last Friday about our suit against the giant public pension fund. It’s quite a remarkable document, and not in a good way.

Slumlord Wannabe Blackstone Violates Local Housing Laws by Making Tenants Maintain Rentals

The yawning gap between private equity landlord sales talk and what they are delivering is finally being exposed.

Reuters Reports that CalPERS “Lawyered Up” in Response to Our Public Records Suit

Reuters is keeping tabs on some of the developments in our ongoing dispute with the nation’s largest public pension fund, CalPERS.

Los Angeles Public Pension Fund Tells Us It Is a Happy, Trusting Victim of Investment Managers

Our efforts to learn more about the private equity industry are revealing how determined public pension funds are to hiding as much as they can, even when they don’t have a legal leg to stand on.

CalPERS’ Private Equity Scandals and the Steptoe & Johnson Report Whitewash

A review of the history of CalPERS’ pay to play scandal and the report prepared by Steptoe & Johnson raises quite a few troubling issues. It’s no wonder they are stymieing my requests for information.

The SEC Finally Takes an Interest in Collateralized Loan Obligations

The old saying is “better late than never,” but as we hope to demonstrate, the SEC is awfully late to take an interest in collateralized loan obligations. The problems it has gotten curious about now were discernible years ago. And the failure to take interest until now means that misbehavior that was discussed in the press during the crisis is almost certain to go unpunished, since the statute of limitations for securities law violations has passed.

Prominent Retiree Chides CalPERS for Repeating Conduct that Led to Past Private Equity Scandals

CalPERS retiree Tony Butka wrote a letter to CalPERS’ board describing why he is disturbed over how CalPERS is stonewalling my data request.