Robert Reich: Why Is One of Sanders’ Most Important Proposals Being Ignored?
Sanders’ financial transactions tax plan hasn’t gotten the hearing it deserves.
Read more...Category Archives: Investment management
How CalPERS Was Taken By Private Equity Firm Silver Lake and Tried to Hide That (A Tale of Two Spreadsheets)
CalPERS told two very different stories about how well its investment in Silver Lake, the general partner, fared. Which should we believe?
Read more...#panamapapers Offshore Funds: On the Run With (Almost) Nowhere to Go?
The owners of offshore funds really might be seeing their comeuppance.
Read more...North Carolina Knowingly Allows Fox to Run State Pension Henhouse
North Carolina takes a big step backwards by allowing its sole state pension trustee take jobs that create glaring conflicts of interest.
Read more...Public Pension Funds Starting to Abandon Hedge Funds….More Than a Decade Late
Big money investors are finally starting to embrace hedge fund clones. But why did it take so long?
Read more...Senators Try to Scuttle Syngenta/ChemChina Merger, in a Harbinger for U.S. Posture Toward Chinese Investment
This is a big week for the future of American industry. Chinese Premier Xi Jinping will meet one-on-one with President Obama on the sidelines of a summit in Washington. The Chinese will apparently use the meeting to make a new offer on a bilateral investment treaty that would pave the way for more foreign direct […]
Read more...Private Equity Kingpins Whine as Stock Market Values Languish
What word best describes how distasteful it is to see obscenely rich men complain that they aren’t as rich as they think they ought to be? The subhead on a new Financial Times story on private equity tell us: “PE believes investors do not grasp their long-term cash flow generation capabilities.” In other words, this […]
Read more...Is California Treasurer John Chiang Serious About His Private Equity Fee Transparency Bill?
Looking beneath the surface of the lackluster arguments e by Treasurer John Chiang and Assemblyman Ken Cooley for their private equity transparency bill.
Read more...Moodys: Public Pension Underfunding to Worsen as Returns Lag
Moodys give an update on the sorry state of public pension funds’ coffers.
Read more...More Proof of CalSTRS’ Misrepresentations and Foot-Dragging in the Private Equity Carry Fee Scandal
The second biggest public pension fund in California, CalSTRS, again demonstrates it valued maintaining friction-free relationships with private equity firms over protecting its beneficiaries.
Read more...Media Attention and Investment Decisions
Correlations between media attention and capital flows to investment vehicles are well established. However, the question arises of whether this is due to new information conveyed or if it is just an artefact of the attention itself. This column employs fund rankings from the Wall Street Journal to investigate the issue. It shows that media attention does drive these investment decisions, even if no new information is conveyed. It further argues that financial intermediaries are aware of this effect and exploit it.
Read more...Social Security Privatizer Larry Fink of Giant Asset Manager BlackRock is a Clinton Treasury Secretary in Waiting
Social Security enemy Larry Fink appears to have troublingly high odds of becoming the Clinton Treasury Secretary nominee.
Read more...The New Shadow Banks: Private Equity Becomes Private Credit
Private equity funds have launched a host of private credit fund to let them borrow more than banks are allowed to provide. What could go wrong?
Read more...The Financial Times’ Revisionist History on Hedge Funds’ Failure to Deliver Manager Outperformance, or Alpha
Repeat after me: hedge funds produce little to no alpha, and contrary to what the Financial Times would have you believe, investors have known that for quite a while.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Financial Chaos, Junk Bond Edition
Junk bonds are at 2008 bottom levels by some measures. But are they a bargain, or a falling safe?
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