CalPERS and Conflicts: What Was It Thinking?
In 2007, I reported extensively on the relationship between CalPERS and Pacific Corporate Group, a private equity advisory and investment firm based in La Jolla, California. PCG had just suffered a massive personnel shakeup, but still got two new mandates from CalPERS after agreeing to alter its organizational structure. It was a classic quid pro quo, and showed that CalPERS would go out of its way to give PCG the benefit of its doubts. Not illegal. Just old-boys cozy. All of this came rushing back yesterday, when reading an LA Times piece about possible conflicts of interest between CalPERS, PCG and placement agent Alfred Villalobos. I tried creating a graphical representation of the relationship, but it was simply too messy (triangle-shaped, with arrows going every which way). So let's try this:
