Category Archives: Private equity

CalPERS Launches Illegal, Corrupt, Unjustified and Beneficiary-Damaging Private Equity “Strategic Partner” Search Obviously Designed to Favor BlackRock

CalPERS looks to be handing the private equity keys to BlackRock in a breathtakingly crooked process.

Incoming Board Member Margaret Brown Criticizes CalPERS’ Plan to Hurt Beneficiaries by Hiring Unnecessary, High-Priced Private Equity Middlemen; CalPERS Violates Open Meeting Rules by Advancing Plan in Secret

Incoming CalPERS board member Margaret Brown dishes out some straight talk on where the giant pension fund needs to shape up.

Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Eleven: Annual Uber Losses Now Approaching $5 Billion

Uber’s ever-widening losses confirms Hubert Horan’s thesis that Uber has no credible path to profit absent a radical downsizing.

House Members Tee Up Bipartisan Bill to Kill CFPB Payday Lending Rule

Bipartisan support emerges for overturn of CFPB’s payday lending rule; will this prove to be another Cordray fail?

New Paper Debunks Desperate Rationalization for Private Equity: Lower Volatility Based on Bogus Valuations

A new paper by Jeff Hooke and Ken Yook of John Hopkins argues that “smoothed,” as in phony, private equity valuations are misleading.

New Study Undermines Rationale for Investing in Private Equity and CalPERS Strategy in Particular, as Oregon CIO Demonstrates that Public Pension Funds Are Dumb Money

A top private equity scholar finds her earlier work on persistence no longer holds, consigning a key industry defense to the dustbin.

Is the Sacramento Bee in the Business of Protecting CalPERS?

So why did the Sacramento Bee do CalPERS a big favor, particularly when CalPERS is clearly in the wrong?

Uber and SoftBank Might Finally Have a Deal….But What Does It Mean?

It’s taken Uber four months to perhaps cinch a deal with SoftBank, while the spectacularly loss-making company is no closer to making money.

How to Fight the Global Wall Street Landlords

Local activists are having some success in fighting Big Finance landlords who have become big, ruthless players in rental housing.

CalPERS’ Three Card Monte: Makes Unheard of Benchmark Change to Hide Expected Poor Private Equity Performance to Help Staff at Expense of Beneficiaries, California Taxpayers

Yet again, CalPERS is trying to use optics and dodgy reporting to cover up for real problems.

CFPB Issues Payday Lending Rule: Will it Hold, as the Empire Will Strike Back

How big a victory is the CFPB’s new payday lending rule for consumers of financial services? And will it hold– as the industry fights back.

Uber Board Members Kiss and Make Up (for Now), but Long-Term Problems Remain

Uber may have bought itself more time with a conditional pact among its big shareholders, but it hasn’t solved its fundamental problems.

Silicon Valley Rejects Shareholder Value Theory: Disrupting the IPO

Silicon Valley has an alternative to the IPO…with a 20% haircut compared to Wall Street’s 7%. Should you hang on to your wallet?

Toys R Us: Another Private Equity Casualty

What killed Toys R US? Amazon,Walmart? The numbers say the company’s yet the latest in a string of retail casualties to private equity greed.

CalPERS Illegally Trying to Hide Its Scheming to Hand Over Private Equity to BlackRock

oard candidate Margaret Brown objects to CalPERS’ illegal secret discussions, most importantly, of outsourcing private equity to BlackRock.