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Chart: Which Type of Private Equity Investors Are Most Resistant to Letting An Underperforming Fund Change It’s Terms?

Consider this scenario: A limited partner invests money in a private equity fund under a certain set of terms and conditions. But eventually, it becomes clear the fund isn’t achieving the preferred performance and the general partner (PE firm) approaches the LP to re-set the terms of the deal.

A recent survey asked institutional investors whether they would comply with the GP’s request.

Turns out, pension funds would be more resistant to the changing of terms that any other type of institutional investor – over 60 percent said they would refuse to re-set terms.

Chart credit: Coller Capital

Pennsylvania Law Allows Scranton to Pay Fraction of Required Pension Contribution

Two Pennsylvania laws have allowed the city of Scranton to short its pension systems by about $10.9 million since 2009 – or over 22 percent of the city’s actuarially-required contributions over that time period.

Scranton used this tactic because the city needed money to plug budget shortfalls elsewhere – but now bigger payments await the financially troubled city in the future.

The laws that allow the practice are called Act 44 and Act 205. More details from the Scranton Times-Tribune:

Act 205 allowed municipalities to reduce their MMOs by employing an accounting tactic known as actuarial smoothing, which spreads out debt and stock market losses over a long period, up to 15 to 30 years.

But the breaks did not stop there.

Scranton also benefited from Act 44, which allowed municipalities with financially distressed pension plans to reduce the MMO by 25 percent for up to six years. Scranton has taken the reduction each year since 2009.

In 2014, for instance, the actuary determined the city needed to contribute $15.7 million,but the Act 44 reduction allowed it to put in just $12.1 million.

The acts were designed to provide temporary relief for municipalities hit by the stock market crash, which caused their MMO’s to skyrocket, said James McAneny, executive director of the Public Employee Retirement Commission. Scranton’s plans were particularly hard hit, losing a combined total of $21.3 million in the crash, PERC records show.

The problem, he said, is putting off the payments only compounded the pension plans’ financial woes.

“It defers the payment but it doesn’t make it go away,” Mr. McAneny said. “The obligation to make the payment is still there . . . If you are putting it off, all you are doing is facing a bigger payment later. If you can’t pay it now, what makes you think you can pay it later?”

Former Mayor Chris Doherty said he knew the city was putting in less than the actuary determined was required, but he said he felt safe doing so because the reductions were state-approved.

“It’s not like a choice I made that I’m going to deliberately underfund it,” Mr. Doherty said. “We didn’t have the money. We funded it at the rate they told us to fund it.”

A state audit earlier this year revealed that Scranton’s pension system could become broke in as soon as 3 to 5 years.

Report: Institutional Investors Plan to Increase Private Equity, Decrease Hedge Fund Allocations in 2015

A Coller Capital report released Monday showed two strong trends in institutional investor sentiment.

Forty percent of investors are planning on increasing their allocations to private equity in 2015. Meanwhile, 33 percent of those same investors said the see themselves decreasing their hedge fund portfolios.

Quebec Pension Part of Investor Group Buying PetSmart

Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec, the entity that manages Quebec’s public pension plans, is part of the consortium of investors that agreed to buy PetSmart over the weekend.

Details from the New York Times:

PetSmart agreed on Sunday to sell itself to a group led by the investment firm BC Partners for about $8.7 billion, months after the retailer came under pressure from two hedge funds.

[…]

PetSmart has long been seen as a good target for private equity firms, given its relatively strong cash flow and low debt. In a leveraged buyout, private equity firms generally finance the majority of the purchase price with borrowed money.

PetSmart operates more than 1,300 pet stores in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.

“The question is, ‘Why haven’t there been more people interested in PetSmart?’” said Raymond Svider, a managing partner of BC Partners. “The category of pet products has been growing in the U.S. and abroad consistently for a number of years.”

The retailer disclosed in August that it was exploring a sale after Jana Partners, the big activist investor, emerged as a major shareholder. The pet supply company had already been weighing its strategic options as its sales had begun to slow.

By that time, Jana and another firm, Longview Asset Management, had begun agitating for a sale of the company. Jana now has a stake of 9.75 percent.

The monthslong auction of PetSmart eventually drew the interest of some of the biggest private equity firms, including Apollo Global Management, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Clayton Dubilier & Rice.

Ultimately, BC Partners, a European-American firm with about $15 billion under management, and some of its own investors emerged as the winner. (Longview, which owns a stake of roughly 9 percent in PetSmart, will roll over about a third of its holdings into the newly private retailer, cashing out the rest of its shares.)

Under the deal’s terms, the consortium will pay about $83 a share in cash, about 6.8 percent higher than PetSmart’s closing price on Friday and about 39 percent higher than the closing price on July 2, the day before Jana emerged as a shareholder.

Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec manages $214 billion in assets.

Photo by Mike Mozart via Flickr CC License

Video: South African Pension Head Talks Investing for the Future

In this video, John Oliphant – Head of Investments at the $106 billion Government Employees Pension Fund of South Africa – discusses “irresponsible” investing and how his fund is investing with sustainability issues in mind. How has the strategy worked out for the GEPF? And would it work with other funds?

Oliphant begins by giving some talking points about the GEPF, and the real discussion begins around the 5:00 mark.

Bruce Rauner Named Most Important Player in U.S. Pensions

Institutional Investor magazine has released its list of the 40 most influential people in U.S. pensions. Topping the list is the man who now governs a state with one of the worst pension problems in the country: Bruce Rauner.

From Institutional Investor:

Republican Bruce Rauner, the victor over Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn in the recent Illinois gubernatorial race, may regret he ever wished to win elective office. Rauner, onetime chairman of Chicago private equity firm GTCR, has had no real profile on retirement policy but finds himself staring at what may be the most serious pension mess among the states.

As of June 30, 2014, Illinois’s pension debt had reached $111 billion; Moody’s Investors Service reported in September that the state’s three-year average pension liability over revenue was 258 percent, five times the median percentage for all 50 states.

In 2013, Quinn persuaded the legislature to pass a bill raising the retirement age and cutting cost-of-living increases for beneficiaries. But the Illinois constitution holds that pensions cannot be “diminished,” and a coalition of public employee unions sued. And on November 21, Sangamon County Circuit Judge John Belz found the law unconstitutional, declaring, “Protection against the diminishment or impairment of pension benefits is absolute and without exception.”

Depending on various appeals, Rauner, 57, could try to implement his campaign agenda for pensions, which includes capping the current program and shifting members to a defined contribution plan — though he has begun to talk of just shifting new employees to avoid legal problems. Rauner has said he’d seek to keep benefits from rising faster than inflation and would eliminate employees’ ability to receive large pay hikes before retirement to beef up their pensions.

The odds of pushing these reforms through a Democratic-controlled state senate remain long, made worse by allegations that Rauner (and separately, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel [No. 4]) accepted contributions from executives affiliated with firms that manage Illinois pension plans. Rauner has not publicly responded to the allegations.

The ranking clearly reflects not what Rauner has already done, but the power he will have in the coming years. If the Illinois Supreme Court strikes down the state’s pension reform law, lawmakers will have to start from scratch – and Rauner will be at the helm.

Photo By Steven Vance [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Chicago Treasurer Considers Using Pension Money To Make Direct Investments in Local Black Communities

Newly appointed Chicago Treasurer Kurt Summers last month announced his plans to invest portions of the city’s pension money locally.

Last week, he met with some local business owners and residents and talked further about his ideas, which include making direct investments in Chicago’s predominately black neighborhoods.

Heard by Progress Illinois:

Summers told the crowd that his office manages a combined $50 billion in investments as well as employee pension funds and retirement plans. He said he would like to see some of that money invested in neighborhoods like Bronzeville.

“I don’t view a neighborhood investment strategy as a risky strategy,” said Summers, a product of Bronzeville. “I don’t view that as any more risky than investing in Korea’s debt, which we do, or investing in a cement company in Mexico. I don’t believe investing in Bronzeville is any riskier than that.”

In fact, investing in neighborhoods makes good business sense, he said. It would boost the local economy, create jobs and a stronger tax base from new businesses and the entrepreneurs those investments would generate, Summers pointed out.

To invest in neighborhoods, changes need to be made to the city’s investment policies. Currently, Summers said, there is no mandate to invest pension fund money back into the city, even though cities in other states like New York, California and Florida already do so.

“City Council gives me an investment policy and parameters that I can invest with,” he said. “I likely will be proposing a new one to allow me to do some of the other things I want to do like invest in this community, which it doesn’t have a mandate for today.”

The plan doesn’t come without controversy. As a pension trustee, Summers has a fiduciary duty to make the city’s pension funds as healthy as possible. That means maximizing investment returns – a concept that may or may not square with local economic development.

Private Equity Likely to Target 401(k)s As Next Big Capital Source

According to a survey released Monday, nearly 90 percent of institutional investors believe that defined-contribution (DC) plans are firmly in the cross-hairs of private equity firms.

Reported by Investments and Pensions Europe:

Coller Capital’s latest quarterly Global Private Equity Barometer suggests the world’s limited partner (LP) community is almost unanimous in its expectation that defined contribution (DC) pension schemes will become a source of private equity capital over the next five years.

The findings, based on the private equity secondaries specialist’s survey of 114 investors worldwide, also show growing enthusiasm for private equity in general, and buy-and-build and private credit in particular – despite some concern over what the exit environment for private assets might look like in 3-5 years’ time.

Almost nine out of 10 investors see DC providing private equity capital within five years, with 27% of European LPs believing DC schemes will provide “significant” capital to the asset class.

Stephen Ziff, a partner at Coller Capital, said: “The backdrop to the finding about DC assets going into private equity is one of more capital in general moving into alternatives, and private equity in particular.

“But in addition there has been a shift in the pensions landscape over the past several years, and GPs are certainly looking for new sources of capital. The industry is slowly starting to get to grips with the challenges, to varying degrees – particularly features of DC investments like liquidity and daily pricing.”

The survey interviewed a representative sample of institutional investors, including pension funds and endowments, based across the globe.

Photo by TaxCredits.net

Ontario Teachers’ Pension Partners With PE Firm to Buy Computer Networking Company

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is no stranger to direct investing – the pension fund has an entire arm devoted to it, called Teachers’ Private Capital (TCP).

It was revealed Monday morning that TCP, along with a private equity firm, have agreed on terms to buy computer-networking company Riverbed Technology Inc.

Reported by Bloomberg:

Riverbed Technology Inc. (RVBD), under pressure from activist investor Elliott Management Corp., agreed to be acquired for about $3.6 billion by private-equity firm Thoma Bravo and pension investment group Teacher’s Private Capital.

Riverbed stockholders will receive $21 a share in cash, Riverbed said in a statement today. The agreement represents a 12 percent premium over Riverbed’s Dec. 12 closing price. The computer-networking company said in October it hired advisers to review strategic alternatives.

Elliott acquired a 10 percent stake in Riverbed last year and pushed the company to examine the business, saying it was “significantly undervalued.” It made an unsolicited bid in January and raised the offer to $21 a share the following month. Since then Elliott has been in a tug of war with Chief Executive Officer Jerry Kennelly about selling his company.

“We’re delighted with this outcome that gives shareholders immediate, premium value,” Jesse Cohn, Elliott’s activist portfolio manager, said in a statement today.

Riverbed jumped 9.4 percent to $20.50 at 9:31 a.m. New York time. The shares had gained 5 percent since Jan. 7, the last trading day before Elliott made its first bid, through yesterday.

Kennelly will remain with Riverbed in the same position, the company said today.

Earlier this year, Thoma Bravo was one of several buyout firms including Silver Lake Management LLC and KKR & Co. that informally expressed interest in San Francisco-based Riverbed with offers approaching $25 a share, said people with knowledge of the process at the time.

Photo by 401kcalculator.org

Paul Singer Says CalPERS Was “Wrong to Desert” Hedge Funds

Paul Singer, a hedge fund manager, activist investor and billionaire, again questioned CalPERS’ decision to pull out of hedge funds at a conference Friday in New York. Heard by Businessweek:

Paul Singer, who runs hedge fund firm Elliott Management, said the decision by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System to stop investing with hedge funds was a mistake.

“Calpers is not too big to have a group of trading firms in their mix,” Singer said today at a conference in New York sponsored by the New York Times’ DealBook. “I think they are wrong to desert the asset class.”

The remarks were brief – but it’s not the first time he’s expressed the sentiment. Last month, he made similar statements in a letter to clients of his firm Elliott Management. Pension360 covered the remarks, which were originally reported by CNBC:

“We are certainly not in a position to be opining on the ‘asset class’ of hedge funds, or on any of the specific funds that were held or rejected by CalPERS, but we think the decision to abandon hedge funds altogether is off-base,” Singer wrote in a recent letter to clients of his $25.4 billion Elliott Management Corp.

[…]

On complexity, Singer wrote that it should be a positive.

“It is precisely complexity that provides the opportunity for certain managers to generate different patterns of returns than those available from securities, markets and styles that are accessible to anyone and everyone,” the letter said.

He went on:

“We also never understood the discussions framed around full transparency. While nobody wants to invest in a black box, Elliott (and other funds) trade positions that could be harmed by public knowledge of their size, short-term direction or even their identity.”

Singer also slammed CalPERs for its complaint about the relative high cost of hedge funds.

“We at Elliott do not understand manager selection criteria based on the level of fees rather than on the result that investors could reasonably expect after fees and expenses are taken into account,” he wrote.

The broader point Singer makes is on the enduring value of hedge funds to diversify a portfolio.

“Current bond prices seem to create a modest performance comparator for some well-managed hedge funds. Moreover, stocks are priced to be consistent with bond prices, and we have a hard time envisioning double-digit annual stock index gains in the next few years,” the letter said.

“Many hedge funds may have as much trouble in the next few years as institutional investors, but investors should be looking for the prospective survivors of the next rounds of real market turmoil.”

Photo by World Economic Forum via Wikimedia Commons

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