Tag: open records request

KKR Refunds Investors for Wrongly-Charged Fees

one dollar bill

In response to an SEC examination, private equity firm KKR & Co. has refunded some fees it charged investors in a handful of its funds.

The SEC last year said that some firms were charging investors “hidden fees” without proper disclosure.

From the Wall Street Journal:

KKR’s refunds were disclosed in a pension-fund document obtained by The Wall Street Journal through an open-records request. The precise amount of the refunds couldn’t be determined, but a Journal analysis suggests one set of refunds likely amounted to less than $10 million, while the other may have been similar in size or smaller.

KKR declined to comment on its discussions with regulators.

[…]

According to the notes, KKR officials said the SEC determined that the private-equity firm from 2009 to 2011 had allocated certain expenses to its private-equity funds that “should not have been allocated to the funds.”

As a result, the notes said, KKR gave “fee credits” to the investors in those funds. The sums were blanked out, but the total of such credits was listed as “$X million,” and the credit to the Washington state pension fund was listed as “$X thousand.”

[…]

The SEC staff also found fault with the way KKR handled disclosure of fees it collects from steering portfolio companies into a group-purchasing program run by a company called CoreTrust Purchasing Group, the notes show.

Read the full WSJ story here.

 

Photo by c_ambler via Flickr CC License

Alabama Pension Approves Changes To Investment Policy, Governance Structure

windmill

The Retirement System of Alabama has updated its investment policy and made some governance changes.

But the specifics of the changes are currently unknown as they are still being finalized.

More details on the investment policy changes from the Times-Daily:

Copies of the two resolutions approved Monday by the Employees’ Retirement System Board were not available Tuesday. The TimesDaily has filed an open records request with the agency for the documents.

One board member said the investment policy add steps to the process.

Board vice chair Jackie Graham, who is also the state’s personnel director, did not return calls Tuesday.

Leura Canary, RSA’s general counsel, returned a request for comment from the system Tuesday, but said she couldn’t provide a copy of the investment policy resolution because it wasn’t yet in its final form.

“It is a good thing for the board to review investment policies, and we’re working to implement the revised policy,” she said.

[…]

Changes have been in the works for months. It was a year ago that the same board passed a resolution that said RSA’s three-member investment committee should “independently consider all investment recommendations made by (Bronner) and independently decide whether to approve or disapprove each investment recommendation.”

For decades, that approval was done by proxy, and committee members reviewed the investments later, but board members questioned the legality of that under state law.

Bronner said then that requiring pre-approval would slow the process and hurt RSA.

A bit of detail on the governance changes:

The other resolution approved Monday creates four committees to oversee various aspects of RSA’s operations.

“They are more for the purpose of setting policies for the operation of the Employees’ Retirement System and that’s very much consistent with standard board governing practices,” Canary said.