We Keep Asking, CalPERS Keeps Saying No
Early last month I requested that CalPERS release the most recent carrying values of its ownership positions in Apollo Global Management, The Carlyle Group and Silver Lake Partners. Not in the funds, but in the management companies. These were huge investments, and one of them is smeared with Al Villalobos’ fingerprints. The public should know how they’re doing. CalPERS initially replied by saying that the information is released each year in CalPERS annual investment report (under the “expansion capital” section, for some reason). But here’s the problem: That information is absurdly out of date. Not just today, but as of the time of release. The pension system puts out its annual investment report in late January or early February of each year, but only reports carrying values for Carlyle, et. all though June 30 of the previous year. This is reporting lag on steroids (or perhaps on dope), and means that the data is largely irrelevant by the time it’s released. Moreover, it means that the latest information currently available is more than 18 months old! We’ve gone back and forth with CalPERS’ lawyers – who basically are doing the bidding of an embarrassed investment staff – and were most recently given two more detailed reasons for the lack of transparency:
