Category Archives: Private equity

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.

CalPERS Sends Data With Errors in Response to Our Lawsuit, Pointing to Problems in Record-Keeping

CalPERS continues to make a science of not walking its talk.

Has CalPERS’ General Counsel Lied to Its Board About Our Suit?

Is CalPERS’ General Counsel trying to pull a fast one on its board?

Reuters Writes About Our Suit Against CalPERS to Obtain Private Equity Data

We were surprised and pleased when a reporter from the Reuters publication peHUB, Chris Witkowsky, contacted us a couple of days ago about the suit we had filed against CalPERS, the California Public Employees Retirement Systems, over their refusal to provide us with information they had given to three Oxford academics who had used that data as the basis for a recently-published paper.

Private Equity Industry Floats Trial Balloon For “Get Out of Decades of Flagrant SEC Abuses for Free” Card

In late February, Bloomberg stated that the SEC is “considering” forgiving decades of private equity firms acting as unregistered broker-dealers and possibly legalizing the practice going forward. In case you think this is not a big deal, as we explain later in the post, the SEC is in fact vigilant about enforcing these regulations, so this would be an unprecedented waiver of liability. But richer-than-Croesus private equity firms are special, right?

We Sue CalPERS Over Denial of Our Private Equity Public Records Act Request

[Yves asked me to sticky this — lambert]

Although it’s probably sensible to expect a public agency to resist providing information in response to a Freedom of Information Act filing, the lengths to which CalPERS has gone to mislead and obfuscate in trying to thwart my efforts is quite remarkable, particularly since some of the moves CalPERS staff took are in violation of CalPERS’ own procedures.

Rental Income Falls 7.6% in Three Months in Blackstone’s First Home Lease Securitization

A Blackstone deal in the runup to the financial crisis, its acquisition of Equity Office Properties Trust from Sam Zell in early 2007 was recognized at the time as a sign of a market peak. Is history about to repeat itself with Blackstone’s rental securitization?