Category Archives: Regulations and regulators

Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Big Finance, and Little Marijuana

Yves here. This post is an interesting “be careful what you wish for” warning as far as the legalization of marijuana is concerned.

Bill Black: OCC as Case Study of How Regulators Decide to Fail

Yves here. I’m highlighting this post for a basic reason: there’s a lot of cynicism about regulation. Many Americans have bought the right-wing line that regulations can’t work. But here, whether by accident or design, a reform program at a key bank regulator, the OCC, is going off the rails due to bad strategic choices.

The Surprising Information that Private Equity Limited Partners Don’t Get

Private equity firms invest in companies, yet the limited partners in the overwhelming majority of funds can’t see their financial statements. And there’s good reason to be concerned.

Why Have Private Equity Limited Partners Done a Lousy Job of Protecting Their Interests?

How did supposedly sophisticated limited partners let themselves enter into contracts with private equity firms that are actually pretty one-sided?

Don Quijones: The Bank That Nobody Wants To Buy

The sorry tale of the supposedly restored Spanish zombie bank Catalunya Caixa.

The Private Equity Limited Partnership Agreement Release: The Industry’s Snowden Moment

We’ve published 12 private equity limited partnership agreements, including the KKR limited partnership agreement that was key to an important Wall Street Journal story. The source documents have been removed from the Pennsylvania Treasury’s website, so our document trove has now become the best source for these records.

New York Times’ New Editor Buries Important Story on Private Equity Fee Shenanigans on Holiday Weekend

In an important, well-reaserched article, Gretchen Morgenson flags several types of private equity fee abuses. Did the incoming New York Times editor, Dean Baquet, bury her story by running it Memorial Day weekend?

New Zealand: the Shell Company Incorporation Franchises (IV) (and Latvia)

New Zealand: more dubious companies in the New Zealand register, and another elusive company incorporator

Wall Street Journal Exposes Possible Grifting by Private Equity Kingpin KKR and KKR Capstone

So when does a related entity rise to the level of being an affiliate? That issue, sports fans, will likely determine whether the SEC will hit the private equity kingpin KKR with fines relative to its relationship with the consulting firm KKR Capstone, which works exclusively for KKR’s portfolio companies.

America: Europe and Canada’s Willing Chump

How America facilitates a labor and environmental race to the bottom, helping companies based in Europe, Canada, and Mexico.

How Obamacare Policy Holders and Big Pharma Lose Out from Insurers Gaming Plan Designs

At one level, it’s vastly amusing to watch Big Pharma, through its powerful lobbying group PhRMA, complaining that its ox is being gored by insurers through how they’ve designed Obamacare plans. On another, though, the analysis prepared for PhRMA confirms what this site has long argued, that the Obamacare plans represent a deliberate effort to extract more rents from the public at large on behalf of the medical-industrial complex.

New Zealand: the Shell Company Incorporation Franchises (II) (and Ukraine)

The nuts-and bolts view of these looting mechanisms shows how corruption actually works.

Abigail Field: Privatization Is Driven By Private Greed and Public Cowardice (and Public Greed, Too)

“Privatization” and “public-private-partnerships” for infrastructure and other public assets are scams driven by private greed and public cowardice.

SEC Official Describes Widespread Lawbreaking and Material Weakness in Controls in Private Equity Industry

At a private equity conference this week, Drew Bowden, a senior SEC official, told private equity fund managers and their investors in considerable detail about how the agency had found widespread stealing and other serious infractions in its audits of private equity firms.