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TODAY'S CalPERS STORY "SET-UP" (From Zuma Report/May 19, 2009): Earlier this year Mark Siffin was apparently forced out of office by his backers, the Apollo group out of New York but not before, however, pulling off quite a real estate coup in Los Angeles, billboard rights up the kazoo grandfathered into never never land. Who thinks about the children these days and what their minds are subjected to?
(Reporters can contact me for more on THAT inside story, or readers can call me if you want to hear about it. Not gonna type it all up now. Will maybe do a radio show on all of this. Remember "Wetherly Captial" era of my blogging this past Spring/May?)
Here's more on this in TODAY'S LA Times:
CalPERS reviewing tie with Apollo Management after steep losses
The California Public Employees' Retirement System is reviewing its relationship with private equity firm Apollo Management in the wake of steep losses on investments placed with the New York asset manager.
The review began in May and is focused on reducing administrative and management fees, said Pat Macht, a spokeswoman for the Sacramento agency known as CalPERS, which manages $200 billion in retirement assets -- the country's largest pension fund -- on behalf of current and former state and municipal employees.
Macht said the review, being conducted by Los Angeles consulting firm Houlihan Lokey, "has nothing to do" with a controversy that emerged last week when CalPERS disclosed that Apollo had paid about $46 million in fees to Alfred Villalobos, a former CalPERS board member who now works as an intermediary helping Apollo and other funds market their investment products to institutional investors such as CalPERS. [They SHOULD be saying, "Hell yeah, it has EVERYTHING to do with that.]
In all, Villalobos received almost $53 million in fees in seven years from Apollo and two other private equity firms that did business with CalPERS, the fund said. [THIS IS THE MOST SACRED OF ALL MONEY...PENSION MONEY...AND SOME CLOWN, VILLABOZO, GETS $53 MILLION OF IT??? I HOPE HIS WHOLE FAMILY SUFFERS AS MUCH AS THE PEOPLE WHOSE MONEY HE HAS.]
CalPERS has hired a Washington securities lawyer to conduct an internal probe of Villalobos' work as a so-called placement agent. [BRING SEVERAL PAIR OF HANDCUFFS.]
The reevaluation of Apollo being carried out by Houlihan Lokey is one of a number of reviews the pension agency is conducting of managers of its so-called alternative investments, which include real estate and hedge funds as well as private equity, Macht said.
"We're reevaluating relationships with everybody," she said.
CalPERS invests most of the assets it manages in publicly traded stocks and bonds. But it holds a significant amount of alternative investments, including $21 billion in private equity.
The pension agency has invested or committed to invest $4 billion with Apollo, which was founded by financier Leon Black. In 2007, CalPERS bought a 9% ownership stake in Apollo itself.
CalPERS continues to have "full confidence in Apollo," Macht said. "They are a good partner."
Reuters version of story.
SEMI-RELATED?:
And how fitting that this story is also in today's LA Times about Vivendi back when it was a water filtration company. Blogged about THAT over the Wetherly Capital era of ZD blogging. VERY BAD THINGS UNDER THE NOSE AND BLIND EYE OF GRAY DAVIS. We are dealing with some of the negative side effects today. DWP/WATER!
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