Apollo Offers Redemption for CalPERS: UPDATED
Redemption, of a sort, is likely to come to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System following Apollo’s initial public offering, which is set for Wednesday. In June 2007, CalPERS and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority each bought 30 million non-voting shares in Apollo Global Management, for which each giant investor paid $600 million, or $20 per share. Those shares together represented an 18 percent stake in the company. The following year, the financial crisis pummeled these stakes. In 2009, according to Pensions & Investments, these shares fell on private exchanges to just $6 a share, a drop of nearly 70 percent from their purchase price. Adding to the anxiety over the drop in value was the fact that CalPERS was sold on the deal by Alfred Villalobos, a placement agent who is now under investigation for bribing CalPERS officials with lavish travel and gifts in order to secure investments for firms that he represented, including Apollo.
