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Moody’s: Stockton Ruling Good News For “Financial Profile” of CalPERS

Moody’s released a report Wednesday outlining the credit agency’s thoughts on CalPERS in the wake of the Stockton ruling.

The agency affirmed CalPERS’ rating of Aa2, which is the third-highest rating available. From the report:

Favorable outcomes for CalPERS in the Stockton, CA and San Bernardino, CA bankruptcy proceedings lend further support to CalPERS improving financial profile because it reduces the likelihood that other CalPERS contracting employers will race to declare bankruptcy to reduce growing pension liabilities. The combination of a reduction in the likelihood that other distressed California municipalities will pursue bankruptcy to reduce pension liabilities and contribution rate increases on contracting employers in each of the last three years should improve the CalPERS funded status and its ability to cover the expected longer lives of retirees.

Pension Reform in Illinois Likely to Look Different Under Rauner If Supreme Court Rejects Current Law

Under Gov. Pat Quinn, Illinois passed a sweeping pension overhaul that cut COLAs and raised retirement ages for some workers.

But the state Supreme Court could reject the law. If that happens, it will be Bruce Rauner who will be able to shape reform legislation, which will likely look different than Quinn’s. From the Wall Street Journal:

Confronting the nation’s worst state pension shortfall was the top concern of Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn. The same will likely be true for Bruce Rauner, his newly elected successor.

The Illinois Supreme Court in coming months could dump the $100 billion problem in the lap of Mr. Rauner, who defeated Mr. Quinn on Tuesday to become the state’s first Republican governor in more than a decade.

A year ago, Mr. Quinn, a Democrat, won passage of a bill that lowered future pension costs by shrinking cost-of-living increases for retirees and raising retirement ages for younger employees, among other steps. State workers and retirees challenged the law, and a recent ruling by Illinois’s top court signaled the justices may end up overturning the law.

Mr. Rauner, who was a longtime private-equity executive before deciding to run for governor, has said he favors moving to a 401(k)-style system over pensions, but the shape that would take at the state capitol remains to be seen. Mr. Rauner was quiet the day after his big victory and his campaign declined an interview request.

Part of the challenge for any plan for Mr. Rauner will be getting it through the Democratic-controlled legislature. Many there agree the state has a big problem, but Mr. Quinn had a bruising fight with his own party to broker a deal.

To be sure, Illinois will continue to be a focus of the national debate that’s raging over how to fix ailing public pension systems. But on Tuesday, the Land of Lincoln wasn’t alone in having the issue play a role in the elections.

Bruce Rauner gives some hints about what his plans for pension reform would look like on his website:

I believe we must choose to address this problem head-on. No tinkering around the edges.

We must boldly reform our pension system. To do that, we can:

– Ensure pay and benefits do not rise faster than the rate of inflation.

– Eliminate the ability of government employees to receive massive pay raises before they retire just to increase their pension.

– Cap the current system and move towards a defined contribution system.

Report: Canada Pension Board Maintains Two Dozen Shell Companies To Avoid Taxes

Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP), the entity that manages pension assets for the Public Service Pension Plan, the Canadian Forces Pension system and others, maintains a complex arrangement of offshore companies for the purpose of avoiding taxes on investments in Europe.

CBC reported the story Wednesday:

The federal agency that invests civil servants’ pensions set up a complex scheme of European shell companies and exploited loopholes that helped it avoid paying foreign taxes — a move that could undermine Canada’s standing internationally as its allies try to mount a crackdown on corporate tax avoidance.

The arrangement involved two dozen entities, half of them based in the financial secrecy haven of Luxembourg, and all of them set up in order to invest money in real estate in Berlin by a Crown corporation called the Public Sector Pension Investment Board.

The blueprint for the tax-avoidance plan was obtained by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and shared with CBC News as part of a larger leak of records exposing hundreds of corporate offshore schemes set up to capitalize on advantageous tax and secrecy rules in Luxembourg.

[…]

While the Canadian government corporation’s transactions were not illegal, a senior German tax official who reviewed them said the pension investment board had used “a very aggressive way to avoid taxes.”

“The only goal is to avoid taxes,” Juergen Kentenich, director of the regional tax office in Trier, Germany, said of the tangle of Luxembourg companies.

The scheme is legal, but was used to avoid paying taxes on German real estate owned by PSP. CBC reports that the fund successfully managed to avoid paying $20 million in German taxes:

The documents — which consist of a tax plan devised for the pension board by global accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers — show that the pension fund acquired 69 mixed residential and commercial buildings, totalling nearly 4,500 suites and units, in Berlin in 2008.

CBC News has learned the buildings were acquired for close to $390 million. But as a result of the way the transaction was structured, the pension investment board would have avoided paying $20 million in German taxes.

The purchase exploited a loophole in Germany’s land transfer tax, which is normally levied on any entity that acquires 95 per cent or more of the shares of a real-estate holding company.

Instead, the pension board bought a direct 94.4 per cent interest in a number of Luxembourg-based property holding companies, and then obtained an indirect interest by taking a large majority position in entities that held the remaining 5.6 per cent.

The board thus obtained a 96.4 per cent overall stake in the Berlin buildings, but the German loophole meant the indirect holdings weren’t counted toward the real-estate transfer tax — so it didn’t pay any.

The Public Sector Pension Investment Board manages $93.7 billion in assets.

South Africa’s Top Pension Executive Fired Over Misconduct

The top executive of South Africa’s $128 billion Government Employees Pension Fund was fired Wednesday after the fund determined he was guilt of misconduct.

From Bloomberg:

John Oliphant has been dismissed as the principal executive officer of South Africa’s $128 billion Government Employees Pension Fund for misconduct, the continent’s largest administrator of retirement assets said.

Oliphant, who was suspended in October 2013, “has been dismissed following the finalization of a disciplinary process that found him guilty of the charges of misconduct levelled against him,” the fund, known as the GEPF, said in a statement today.

Oliphant was suspended after breaching GEPF policy on payments to suppliers, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP report obtained by Bloomberg News. GEPF’s board of trustees was satisfied that due process was followed in the disciplinary hearing, the fund said.

“I am attempting to meet with the chairperson of the board to get clarity on the matter,” Oliphant said in an earlier e-mailed response to questions following a report of his dismissal.

The GEPF has 1.43 trillion rand ($128 billion) in funds and reserves. More than 1.5 million South Africans have retirement funds with the organization, which is also the single-biggest investor in Johannesburg’s stock exchange.

Oliphant said he is unclear on exactly why he was fired. Bloomberg reported that the firing stemmed from breaching a policy regarding payments to suppliers.

Oliphant earned a salary of about $224,000 last fiscal year.

Private Equity Firm Threatens To Shut Out Iowa Pension Over FOIA Request

Over at Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith has penned a long post expounding on the practice of private equity firms dissuading public pension funds from complying with FOIA requests related to investment data – often with the threat of shutting out pension funds from future investment opportunities.

The post stems from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal report covering the same topic.

Here’s the Naked Capitalism post in full:

_________________________________

By Yves Smith

A new story on private equity secrecy by Mark Maremont at the Wall Street Journal started out with a bombshell, that of private equity industry kingpin KKR muscling a public pension fund to deny information requests about KKR’s practices:

KKR & Co. warned Iowa’s public pension fund against complying with a public-records request for information about fees it paid the buyout firm, saying that doing so risked it being barred from future private-equity investments.

In an Oct. 28 letter to the Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System, KKR General Counsel David Sorkin said the data was confidential and exempt from disclosure under Iowa’s open-records law. Releasing it could cause “competitive harm” to KKR, the letter said, and could prompt private-equity fund managers to bar entree to future deals and “jeopardize [the pension fund’s] access to attractive investment opportunities.”

The article also demonstrated, as we’ve pointed out earlier, than many investors are so cowed that they don’t need to be on the receiving end of overt threats:

Once public pension funds start releasing detailed information in response to public-records requests, “that’s the moment we’re done,” said Linda Calnan, interim chief investment officer of the Houston Firefighters’ Relief and Retirement Fund. “These are sensitive documents that managers don’t want out there.”

This risk, that private equity funds might exclude public pension funds that the general partners deemed to be insufficiently zealous in defending their information lockdown, has long been the excuse served up public pension funds for going along with these secrecy demands. As we demonstrated in May, the notion that the information that the funds are keeping hidden rises to the level of being a trade secret or causing competitive harm is ludicrous. We based that conclusion on a review of a dozen limited partnership agreements, the documents that the industry is most desperate to keep under lock and key.

But the only known instance of that sort of redlining actually taking place, as the Journal notes, took place in 2003 after CalPERS said it would start publishing limited data on financial returns as a result of a settlement of a Public Records Act (California-speak for FOIA) lawsuit. As we wrote in April:

Two venture capital firms, Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, had a hissy fit and refused to let funds that would disclose their return data invest in them. Now this is of course terribly dramatic and has given some grist to the public pension funds’ paranoia that they’d be shut out of investments if they get too uppity. But the fact is that public pension funds overall aren’t big venture capital investors. And people in the industry argue that there was a obvious self-serving motive for Sequoia to hide its returns. Sequoia has launched a number of foreign funds, and many are believed not to have performed well. Why would you invest in Sequoia’s, say, third India fund if you could see that funds one and two were dogs?

So why has industry leader KKR stooped to issue an explicit, thuggish threat? Why are they so threatened as to cudgel an Iowa pension fund into cooperating with KKR and heavily redacting the response? Just as with the Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins case, it’s naked, and not at all defensible self interest.

Law firm Ropes & Gray, which counts Bain Capital among its clients, issued what amounted to an alarm to its private equity and “alternative investment” clients over an increase in inquiries to public pension funds about the very subject that the SEC had warned about in May, about fee and expense abuses, as well as other serious compliance failures. It’s a not-well-kept-secret that many investors were correctly upset about the SEC’s warnings, and some lodged written inquires with general partners as to what specifically was going on. We’ve embedded an unredacted example of one such letter at end of this post. It was the same one that CalPERS board member JJ Jelincic used to question investment consultants last month because the letter ‘fessed up to an abusive practice called evergreen fees.

Journalists like Maremont and interested members of the public have written public pension funds to obtain the general partners’ responses to these questionnaires. And this is a matter of public interest, since shortfalls in private equity funds, even minor grifting, is ultimately stealing from beneficiaries, and if the pension fund is underfunded, from taxpayers. Yet notice how Ropes & Gray depicts questions about what are ultimately taxpayer exposures as pesky and unwarranted intrusions:

We have recently observed a surge in freedom-of-information (“FOIA”) requests made by media outlets to state pension funds and other state-government-affiliated investment entities. Although the requests have so far concentrated on information related to private equity sponsors, they have also sought information about investments with other alternative investment fund sponsors. The requests tend to focus on information about advisers’ treatment of fees and expenses, issues raised as areas of SEC interest in a speech by an SEC official earlier this year. The requests may also ask for information concerning recent SEC examinations of fund managers. Many state-level FOIA laws exempt confidential business information, including private equity or other alternative investment fund information in particular, from disclosure. Nonetheless, record-keepers at state investment entities may reflexively assume that all information requested should be disclosed. But a prompt response, supported by the applicable state law, can help ensure that confidential information that is exempt from FOIA disclosure is in fact not released.

The sleight of hand here, which we’ve discussed longer-form, that merely asserting that something is confidential does not exempt it from disclosure. In fact, if you look at the examples from selected states that Ropes & Gray cites in its missive, states have tended to shield certain specific types of private equity information from disclosure, including limited partnership agreements and detailed fund performance information, but generally restrict other disclosures not on the basis of mere confidentiality but on trade secrecy or similar competitive harm, meaning the private equity firm’s competitors might learn something about the fund’s secret sauce if they obtained that information.

Please look at the first letter at the end of this post and tell me what if anything in it is so valuable that competitors might seek to copy it. Contrast that with a second letter from a Florida pension fund, from KKR that the Journal obtained and see how much is blacked out.

The fact is that the various FOIAs focused on getting at SEC abuses aren’t about protecting valuable industry intelligence, to the extent there really is any in any of their documents; it’s simply to hide their dirty laundry. The Wall Street Journal story reports how in Washington, Florida, and North Carolina, public pension fund officials have been acceding to private equity fund “concerns” and using strategies ranging from foot-dragging to woefully incomplete disclosure to outright denial to stymie inquiries.

The interesting thing about KKR’s exposure is that its defensiveness is likely due to how much scrutiny it is getting from the SEC. Maremont earlier exposed how KKR’s captive consulting firm KKR Capstone appeared to be charging undisclosed, hence impermissible fees to KKR funds. KKR has attempted to defend the practice by arguing that KKR Capstone isn’t an affiliate. We debunked that argument here.

Even though we have criticized the SEC for its apparent inaction on the private equity front, in terms of following through with Wells notices after describing widespread private equity industry malfeasance, we have been told that the agency is in the process of building some major cases against private equity firms. Given how many times KKR’s name has come up in Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Financial Times stories on dubious private equity industry practices, one has to imagine that KKR would be a likely target for any action that the SEC would consider to be “major”.

This is an area where readers can make a difference. The one thing public pension funds, even one like CalPERS, are afraid of is their state legislature. Call or e-mail your state representatives. If you have the time and energy, also write to the editor of your local paper and the producers of your local television station. Tell them you’ve read in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal (and if you are in California, the Sacramento Bee) about public pension funds refusing to provide information to members of the public about fees as well as widespread abuses that the SEC discussed at length in a speech this year. Tell them that the SEC has made it clear that private equity can’t be treated on a “trust me” basis any more. The time has come for more pressure on public pension funds to weight the public interest more strongly in dealing with these inquiries, and if needed, new legislation to force more accountability from private equity funds and their government investors.

San Bernardino Sets Aside $10.6 Million To Repay CalPERS

When San Bernardino went bankrupt, it stopped paying its creditors, including its biggest one: CalPERS.

It suspended pension payments to the country’s biggest retirement system for a full year – those payments totaled $13.6 million.

Now, the debts have come due: San Bernardino will set aside $10.6 million from its budget this fiscal year to pay back CalPERS.

From Reuters:

Bankrupt San Bernardino has begun repaying millions in arrears to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers) in a deal that has ended an acrimonious relationship between the California city and its biggest creditor.

San Bernardino has set aside $10.6 million in its current budget, which has yet to be published, to pay an unnamed creditor. A senior city source, speaking on the condition of anonymity because details of the Calpers deal are subject to a judicial gag order, confirmed that creditor is Calpers.

San Bernardino suspended the payment of debts to all creditors when it declared bankruptcy. Its decision to strike a deal with Calpers first, and begin paying arrears before a bankruptcy exit plan could be formulated, shows the reluctance of California cities to take on the pension giant, which insists that it must always be paid in full, even in a bankruptcy.

The city declared bankruptcy in August 2012 and suspended its employer payments to Calpers for an entire year after entering Chapter 9 protection, running up principal arrears of $13.5 million, according to Calpers.

San Bernardino began monthly payments of between $600,000 and $700,000 to Calpers in July, according to the source. A second official, budget officer for the city Dixon Mutadzakupa, confirmed that arrears payments to Calpers had begun.

It wasn’t clear whether the city was only on the hook for $10.6 million. If that were the case, San Bernardino would only be paying CalPERS 80 percent of what it owes.

It’s also possible the city could pay the remaining $3 million during the next fiscal year.

Implications for Pension Investments As Elections Put Ex-Financial Firm Executives in Office

The results of several state-level elections could have implications for pension fund investments as three ex-financial firm executives became their states’ respective governors.

David Sirota writes:

Wall Street firms and executives have poured campaign contributions into states that have embraced the strategy, eager for expanded opportunities. Tuesday’s results affirmed that this money was well spent: More public pension money will now likely be entrusted to the financial services industry.

In Illinois, Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn was defeated by Republican challenger Bruce Rauner, who made his fortune as one of the namesakes of Golder, Thoma, Cressey & Rauner (GTCR) – a financial firm that manages more than $40 million of the state’s $50 billion pension system. Rauner — who retains an ownership stake in at least 15 separate GTCR entities, according to his financial disclosure forms— will now be fully in charge of the pension system.

In Rhode Island, venture capitalist Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, defeated Republican Allan Fung. Raimondo retains an ownership stake in a firm that manages funds from Rhode Island’s $7 billion pension system. Raimondo’s campaign received hundreds of thousands of dollars from financial industry donors. She was also aided by six-figure PAC donations from former Enron trader John Arnold, who has waged a national campaign to slash workers’ pensions. Fung slammed Raimondo as a tool of Wall Street, but she eked out a victory after a libertarian-leaning third party candidate, Robert Healy, unexpectedly siphoned votes away from Fung.

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, handily defeated his Republican opponent, Rob Astorino, after raising millions of dollars from the finance industry. The New York legislature is set to send Cuomo a bill that would permit the New York state and city pension funds to move an additional $7 billion into hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, real estate and other high-fee “alternative” investments. Assuming the standard 1 to 2 percent management fees applies, that could generate between $70 million and $150 million a year in fresh fees for Wall Street firms.

Cuomo has not taken a public position on the bill, but his party in the legislature passed it by a wide margin, and he is widely expected to sign it into law.

In Massachusetts, Republican Charlie Baker appeared early Wednesday to have secured a narrow victory over Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. Baker was a board member of mutual funds managed by a financial firm that also manages funds from Massachusetts’ $53 billion pension system. Baker is also the subject of a New Jersey investigation over his $10,000 contribution to the New Jersey State Republican Party just months before New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s officials awarded his firm a state pension deal. Christie, whose Republican Governors Association spent heavily to support Baker’s campaign, blocked the release of documents related to that investigation until after the election.

Read the full analysis here.

Photo by Keith Ivey via Flickr CC License

Voters Reject Phoenix Pension Overhaul

http://youtu.be/8GC0bEBzJ-g

The controversial Phoenix ballot measure Proposition 487, which would have transferred all the city’s non-public safety new hires into a 401(k)-style system, has been struck down by voters.

From Reuters:

In a big victory for city labor unions, voters rejected Prop. 487 by a margin of 56.5 percent to 43.5 percent, according to results posted online by the Maricopa County Recorder/Elections Office.

The measure proposed to end the city’s traditional defined-benefit pension plan for new workers, shifting them to a plan dominant in the private sector, with employees pay a far greater share of the cost. Existing workers could have kept their current pensions.

The initiative was one of this year’s biggest test cases pushed by pension-reform advocates, including Texas billionaire and former Enron executive John Arnold, who have argued that traditional pension plans are an increasingly unaffordable burden for cash-strapped state and local governments.

The measure, by the city council’s own admission, would have cut retirement benefits significantly for new hires.

The city’s non-public safety pension fund is 64.2 percent funded.

Knoxville Voters Approve All 5 Pension Measures on Ballot

There were five separate pension measures on the Knoxville ballot yesterday – and voters approved all five by a large margin.

The measures weren’t as far-reaching as more controversial reform initiatives such as Phoenix’s Proposition 487.

But they still introduce changes to Knoxville’s retirement system. Among the changes: more investment options for workers covered by the city’s defined-contribution plans and the appointment of finance and accounting experts to the city’s pension board.

The five measured, explained by WBIR:

No. 1: Better clarifies some terms and is essentially nothing more than housekeeping and cleaning up language.

No. 2: Gives city leaders the authority to consider granting retirees the option to take a single lump payment when they retire rather than receiving monthly payments. Note that it doesn’t automatically grant officials the option, but rather the chance to study whether they want to do it.

No. 3: Could lead to those employees covered under a contribution plan (think: 401K) to have a say in how their dollars are invested. Or at least there could be more options than what the city currently sets aside for them.

No. 4: This amendment…says that only the retiree’s spouse would be eligible for his/her retirement benefits. Right now, children and grandchildren can get them.

No. 5: This amendment…would add two new spots to the pension board. The new members would have to have expertise in finance and accounting, they would have to be city residents and they could not be city employees or folks who receive pensions from city employees.

The specific language of the measures can be found here.

Photo by Elektra Grey Photography

Ontario Teachers’ Pension Finalizes Deal to Buy DTZ

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is part of a group of investors that bought Chicago-based property services firm DTZ this week, according to a DTZ release.

The deal was announced in June but was only completed this week.

From the DTZ release:

DTZ, a global leader in property services, today confirmed the close of its sale to the private investment consortium of TPG Capital (TPG), PAG Asia Capital (PAG) and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (the TPG & PAG Consortium), and its beginning as an independent, privately owned global property services company.

“Today’s dynamic business environment holds both opportunities and challenges for our clients. DTZ is a progressive partner who understands their needs and can deliver tailored solutions wherever they do business, while offering the client experience of a smaller, more nimble and more tenacious organization.”

DTZ will continue to operate under the DTZ brand and its seasoned executive leadership team. Brett White, former Chief Executive Officer of CBRE Group, will begin serving as full-time Executive Chairman of the new company in March 2015. Tod Lickerman will continue in his current role as Global Chief Executive Officer of DTZ and report to Brett White.

“DTZ now has the independent governance, strong capital base and speed-to-market of a private company, which will allow us to grow and serve our clients’ ever-changing needs,” said Tod Lickerman. “Today’s dynamic business environment holds both opportunities and challenges for our clients. DTZ is a progressive partner who understands their needs and can deliver tailored solutions wherever they do business, while offering the client experience of a smaller, more nimble and more tenacious organization.”

DTZ’s new capital structure and strong financial backers better positions DTZ to make continued investments to expand its capabilities and offer clients a complete suite of services in every major market around the world. In September, an affiliate of DTZ Investment Holdings (backed by the TPG &PAG Consortium) announced it had entered into an agreement to acquire Cassidy Turley, with plans to combine it with the DTZ business during 2015. The acquisition of Cassidy Turley is expected to be completed by December 31, 2014.

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan manages $140.8 billion in assets.

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