If California Treasurer John Chiang is any indicator, elected officials are finally noticing that public pension fund staff seem more worried about ruffling the feathers of private equity kingpins than acting in the best interest of fund beneficiaries.
For those new to our coverage of this story: in early June, we broke the story that CalPERS Admits It Has No Idea What it is Paying in Private Equity Carry Fees. These fees are the biggest that CalPERS pays. The story got traction after it was taken up in June and early July by Pensions & Investments (the lead story in their June 15 print issue), the New York Times’ Dealbook, Dan Primack at Fortune (who depicted CalPERS as lying or suffering from a “massive breakdown in financial controls”) and then the Sacramento Bee.
Twice, after the second Dan Primack story and again after the SacBee article ran, we urged readers to call and write California State Treasurer John Chiang, who sits on the CalPERS board, and tell him to get to the bottom not just of the carry fee mess, but also the even more troubling issues it raises about governance.
Shortly after those posts ran, the Financial Times joined the fray, reporting that Chiang claimed he was on the case:
“This issue is of great concern to me,” said Mr Chiang, who is a known reformer and also sits on Calpers’ administration board. “This will have my close attention until it is solved.”
Um, it’s nice for Chiang to take interest well after Dan Primack of Fortune reported on July 1 that after he’d boxed the giant pension fund’s ears, CAlPERS had sent letters to all of its general partners and demanded that they provide carry fees for all funds since the inception of the funds by July 13. The Financial Times story ran on July 12. It’s virtually certain that the authors of the Financial Times story, Chris Flood and Chris Newlands, spoke to Chiang well after CalPERS was already gathering the data.
In Venezuela, they call what Chiang is doing “getting in front of a mob and calling it a parade.”
We pointed out that Chiang also sat on the board of the second biggest California public pension fund, CalSTRS, which also happens to be the second biggest public pension fund investor in the US in private equity. Yet curiously, after having expressed his grave concerns about CalPERS, he said nary a word about CalSTRS, even though we pointed out that if anything, CalSTRS’ posture on collecting carry fee data was even more lame than CalPERS’ had been (CalPERS agreed it would be good to have it but tried pretending no one got it, even though they’d had an outside consultant getting this exact information as recently as 2011; CalSTRS said they didn’t see it as worth getting at all). We urged readers who had not already contacted Chiang about CalPERS not only to call or write him about CalPERS but to be sure to ask why he was giving CalSTRS a free pass.
In a striking coincidence, after that post ran, the Financial Times decided to have a second chat with Chiang, this time about CalSTRS. Lo and behold, Chiang is suddenly on that case too:
The second-largest US public pension fund has admitted it has failed to record total payments made to its private equity managers over a period of 27 years.
The admission by Calstrs, the $191bn California-based pension fund, prompted John Chiang, the state treasurer of California, to declare he will investigate the failure, which poses serious questions as to how pension fund money is being spent.
It might be nice if the Financial Times authors gave credit where credit was due. It was the Sacramento Bee, in its July 2 article, that reported:
Ricardo Duran, a spokesman for the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, said CalSTRS can estimate the fees “within a couple of percentage points” but doesn’t report the figure.
“It’s not a number that we track,” Duran said. “It’s not that important to us as a measure of performance.”
And now that it is in the media hot lights, CalSTRS is trying to argue that it should not be required to disclose carry fees because….drumroll…the dumb chump public can’t be trusted with the information:
Margot Wirth, director of private equity at Calstrs, said it used “rigorous checks” to ensure private equity managers took the right amount of carried interest.
Before we get any further, this is laughable. How can you perform “rigorous checks” when you have admitted you don’t get the information? What is CalSTRS using? Sunspots?
Back to the article:
Ms Wirth argued it was “wrong to conflate the fees paid to private equity managers with carried interest”.
She said: “Carried interest is a profit split between the investor and the private equity manager. The higher that carried interest is, then the better both the investor and private equity manager have performed.”
In fact, there’s a very good reason to find out the fees. Professor Ludovic Phalippou of Oxford has estimated that private equity firms extract roughly 7% per annum on average from the funds they manage. This is such an insanely high number that there’s no justification for it, particularly now that private equity performance is lagging and it’s set to get only worse as private equity firms are paying top-of-cycle prices for deals done in the last couple of years. Private equity staffers like Wirth are afraid of being caught out at their failure to get to the bottom of how much private equity hoovers off at the fund and portfolio company level and their abject failure to negotiate both for better disclosure and for lower total costs.
We pointed out why both CalPERS and CalSTRS have been so remiss:
Why is this quote from CalSTRS, an almost-as-ginormous pension fund as CalPERS, less convincing that it appears? Because the current Senior Investment Officer responsible for private equity, Réal Desrochers, recently held the same job at CalSTRS! The laxness about gathering fees at two supposedly leading institutions are the doings of Desrochers, who has a reputation in the industry for being controlling.
And how serious does Chiang seem to be?
As far as CalPERS is concerned, per Chiang’s statement in his first interview in the Financial Times, he’s defining the problem narrowly. All he cares about is that the issue is “solved. ” One would think that means getting the carry fee data, when according to CalPERS’ remarks to Dan Primack, it was on its well on its way to being solved.
Or is it? As the Financial Times reported on its first interview with Chiang:
Calpers has asked all its private equity managers to provide data on carried interest payments since their contracts with the pension fund started. So far, six of the managers employed by Calpers have declined to provide data for the current year.
There’s no excuse for these managers refusing to provide the data, or if there is, it would amount to another proof of dereliction of duty by CalPERS. It’s a standard provision in private equity limited partnership agreements that the limited partners have the right to see the fund’s books and records. It would be remarkably high-handed for general partners to insist that an investor have to inspect the records themselves to get the carry fee information.
Alternatively, CalPERS signed limited partnership agreements that did not give the giant fund the right to review the fund’s books and records. That would be an even worse lapse than its failure to collect carry fee data.
By contrast, we’d suggested that CalPERS’ board needed to take much bigger steps, including considering whether Chief Operating Investment Officer Wylie Tollette and Senior Investment Officer responsible for private equity, Réal Desrochers, were too captured by the private equity industry and needed to be held accountable for this failure to take their fiduciary duties seriously. As we pointed out:
When board member JJ Jelincic made his inquiries about carry fees, he was both lied to and blown off by Chief Operating Investment Officer Wylie Tollette. As we described in detail, Tollette claimed that CalPERS not having the fee information was “an industry problem” when CalPERS had an outside consultant compiling this data as recently as 2011! And Tollette tried telling Jelincic that CalPERS was in the process of getting the information when its own written documents to the CalPERS board on its software development plans showed it wouldn’t have the new systems in place for some time (until the press furor, CalPERS’ position was that it needed to have the systems in place first, as if it was oh so difficult to keep the information in a spreadsheet in the meantime).
It’s good to see the Financial Times bird-dogging this issue so intensely. We hope Naked Capitalism readers will too. Please send this article to any current or future beneficiaries of CalSTRS (as in California public school teachers) and encourage them to call or write John Chiang. And please weigh in if you are a California voter!
Mr. John Chiang
California State Treasurer
Post Office Box 942809
Sacramento, CA 94209-0001
(916) 653-2995
Please thank him for taking interest in the CalPERS/CAlSTRS carry fee issue but tell him that you are concerned that he is not planning to go far enough. The fact that neither CalPERS nor CalSTRS were tracking fees shows that they are far too trusting of private equity. They are not willing to get on top of information they clearly have a right to obtain, much the less other costs and fees they are ultimately bearing at the portfolio company level that they’ve allowed the industry to keep secret. In the case of CalPERS, there is also troubling evidence of staff refusing to provide honest answers to board members, a serious governance failing. And have him ask staff at both funds for the names of any private equity firms that fail to comply with the carry fee information request and the reasons that they gave.
And while you are at it, be sure to weigh in with the California State Controller, Betty Yee, who like Chiang is an elected official and also sits on both the CalPERS and CalSTRS boards. In California, the Controller is as influential a position as Treasurer. Tell Yee you are disappointed at her silence and hope she will join Chiang in getting to the bottom of this matter (and stress that the carry fees non-reporting is a symptom of bigger problems).
Ms. Betty Yee
California State Controller
P.O. Box 942850
Sacramento, California 94250-5872
(916) 445-2636
Please also let us know what response you get from Chiang’s and Yee’s offices. Thanks for your help!
13 comments
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There’s a typo in the first line: “ay” should be “any.”
Fixed, thanks.
As a California voter and recipient of a CalSTRS pension, I will be following up. STRS has always been opaque and condescending to us.
Chiang and Lee are elected to positions that are often thought of as stepping stones to running for governor. However, they usually keep their heads down (think Obama, the do-nothing senator).
Ultimate power and responsibility lies with the Democrat governor, who is focused on a legacy of a high speed passenger railroad from nowhere to nowhere and enormous pipes to convey water from the Sacramento River through the Delta to be pumped to S California.
That ultimate power also lies with the legislature, where the Democrats hold a large majority. Voting for Republicans is unthinkable for me, but I have changed my registration to independent so that the Democrats will stop thinking of me as nothing more than a potential source of campaign funds.
Thanks for the heads up. We are a wealthy version of Greece.
Wow. The part I liked best was the description of Jerry Brown. I also have changed my registration to independent and it’s nice to know that I’m in such good company. Let’s all call but – even better – let’s also all write to our local newspapers in order to whip up more interest. I also suggest that we post today’s blog on the bulletin boards of teachers’ lounges all over the state.
Fantastic work as always Yves. And it makes me think that I need to look into the Massachusetts system for teacher pensions. I have many friends who are currently teachers and my mother is collecting her pension now. I know you raised issues (as did David Sirota at the IBT) on Charlie Baker and his connections to private equity problems in connection with Chris Christie, but I must admit I’m ill informed on teachers pensions in Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been doing some coverage of pensions in the state, highlighting that logevity predictions for funding levels of several public pension systems are well off the mark.
And in related news, Doug Henwood hosted an excellent podcast on what Emmanual and Rauner are up to in Illinois with the private equity model of bankrupting Chicago in order to gut workers pensions:
http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2015/15_06_25.mp3
The interview was with Saqib Bhatti:
http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/people/saqib-bhatti
And is covered in an article as well:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/18096/a_scam_in_two_cities
Does anyone have any information about the private equity doings in the Arizona State Pension fund system?
Thanks
Thanks for these PE reports. My state just borrowed, er issued bonds, for a huge amount (3 commas) to then invest in the stock market, including PE, for the benefit of its public employee retirement fund. So my state is investing in PE with borrowed money. What could go wrong?
Please keep these reports coming.
What’s the attraction of “Game of Thrones”? Sex and death? What’s that say about us ordinary mopes, again?
The little sociological hints that appear in reporting about relations between filthy-rich people and the rest of us sometimes highlight the awe and groveling that us ordinary people and filthy-rich-wannabes, and the “regulators” who are supposed to keep these excesses of corruption in check, evince when the “successful’ are in the room or on the horn. Seems to me that the “power” lies, if anywhere, with people who inspire that fearful hopeful idiot grin or obsequious bowing and scraping that the functionaries put on, when in the presence of PE plague-vectors.
“information they have a right to obtain”? Would that not be a DUTY, if only one were to think about all this complexity as a system that ought to be for the benefit of the mopes that earned the money (whatever that is) for their labors?
Pity the unhappy, fearful billionaire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIkpPERUhJ8 No one to trust or love… Interesting that our rulers of enormous wealth kill so many of us ordinary people, outright or slowly, yet ordinary people don’t return the favor until something else happens, or they go into the brigand business at their smaller scale…
Standing applause for the NC spot-lighters! Nice catch, rats in the trap, but did the bail snap over hard enough, this time, to break their little necks? Will the incentives and disincentives change in a positive direction (“reformed” negative feedback structures, positive result for the community)? Or as the news cycle spins on, is it just back into the dark? MOREism is massively seductive and empowering…
In the meantime, the plague-vectors are very busy, scurrying about in the conduits of “the system” looking for stuff to eat, and spoil, and infect…
A more interesting exercise would be for the CalPERS Board to require PE to disclose political spending, as found to be constitutional by 8 of 9 SCOTUS justices in Part IV of Juscice Kennedy’s Citizens United opinion. The electeds, like John Chaing, Betty Yee, and Governors Schwartzenegger and Brown, receive substantial funding from their “friends” in PE. It is no coincidence that Mitt Romney and Meg Whitman cut their teeth on the PE side of Bain.
CalPERS and STRS staff are hiding unconscionable PE fees for the benefit of the political class, who they serve. In California, these fees are the way in which pension savings get skimmed and then kicked back to the electeds. Mr. Chaing has been in the room with JJ Jelincic all along. I fear that his response to the FT reporting is a “Nothing to see here, just move along,” attempt to kill the story.
Sadly, it appears that the only reason to have such large quantities of cash; pensions or pre-collected Social Security (1983 Greenspan Commission) is for it to be available for easy looting by the Banksters.
No doubt the banksters and PE would love to continue their careers as illegal withdrawal specialists. Good regulation can stop that. Sunshine and good reporting are the first steps to good regulation.
As I understand it, the ultimate agenda of the Greenspan Commission was to provide a vehicle which would show a surplus to help reduce the top-line, all-government deficit. Reagan couldn’t afford to keep showing the true “operating” deficit, i.e., not including accounting diversions like the Social Security Trust Funds or other earmarked revenue.
I do agree that the banksters want more than almost anything else to get their hands on some or all of the Trust Funds. George II tried to give some to Wall Street, but couldn’t. Pete Peterson is still trying.
The reporting and discussion at Naked Capitalism just moved from academic curiosity to day to day reality. My sole financial asset is a CALSTRs pension, so please keep the pressure on.
We are indeed related to the Greek People in that an elite governing board is making decisions for us.
We need to be ready for Def Con 4. NC has done best at identifying and defining the issues at hand. NC has also done a good job of identifying the difficulty of radical change, in Greece, the return to the Drachma. In CALSTRs it would be the replacement of those now in control.
For the Greek People and retired teachers we need to have a strategy available to take the drastic moves that may be necessary. The Troika kept Greece on the hook because the alternative to the Euro was just so horrid that it was almost not worth contemplating, but there must be a detailed and publicly discussed other option. I’m not sure this is what Naked Capitalism wants to delve into, but it is the logical place for such a discussion to take place.
The unthinkable must be thought about. It the Drachma is problematic the problems need to be looked at and solved. If the directors of CALSTRs have been captured by private equity we need a way to become uncaptured.
Thanks for the report and I will be sending the appropriate messages to CALSTRs to let them know that their members are reading and listening to Naked Capitalism. Thanks.