When It Comes to Pensions, Private Equity Funds Are Using Some Fuzzy Math

X post in Labor & GD

http://inthesetimes.com/article/17693/pensions_private_equity

If we don’t strengthen oversight over investments like private equity now, we could have a disaster on our hands in the not-so-distant future.

BY DAVID SIROTA

To the casual observer, the investment returns recently announced by the California pension system might seem like cause for celebration. The state’s investments in firms that buy private companies generated a 20 percent return in 2014.

California's $30 billion worth of private equity investments did not come cheap, incurring almost $440 million worth of annual management fees paid to financial firms. But the double-digit gains helped the system generate some of the best overall pension returns in the nation—positive news for taxpayers and for state workers who rely on the system in retirement.

Across the United States, similarly robust returns have proven key elements in the Wall Street sales pitch that has persuaded state and city pension overseers to entrust vast sums of money to private equity managers. The private equity industry has successfully portrayed itself as no less than a savior for underfunded pension systems. By one estimate, $260 billion of public money is now under the management of these firms.

But as Congress now considers reducing regulatory scrutiny of private equity firms, one problem complicates the narrative: A lot of the gains the private equity industry purports to have achieved are of the on-paper-only variety. Far from cash in the bank, they are instead estimates of the value of assets that have yet to be sold. Not only that, the estimates are largely self-reported by the private equity firms themselves—and new research suggests that the firms may be embellishing those estimates.

FULL story at link.

DAVID SIROTA
David Sirota, an In These Times senior editor and syndicated columnist, is a staff writer at PandoDaily and a bestselling author whose book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now—Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything was released in 2011. Sirota, whose previous books include The Uprising and Hostile Takeover, co-hosts "The Rundown" on AM630 KHOW in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.