Weekend Giant Reading: January 23 – 25, 2015

Welcome to the weekend. Here’s the latest news for your reading enjoyment.

Government Shutdown Begins as Congress Divides on Spending

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) headquarters building stands in Washington, D.C., U.S. on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2013. The U.S. government began its first partial shutdown in 17 years, idling as many as 800,000 federal employees, closing national parks and halting some services after Congress failed to break a partisan deadlock by a midnight deadline. Photographer: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg

Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg

Welcome to the weekend. Here’s the latest news for your reading enjoyment:

- Collaboration: Two UK pensions are going to pool their capital in an attempt to be more competitive in domestic infrastructure auctions.

- Private Equity: CalPERS will dramatically cut its PE relationships; plans are to go from “effing ridiculous” (~390 GPs) to “still having way too many” (~120 GPs).

- The Fee Machine I: The SEC has found a lot of errors in the way PE firms charge fees. Next up on the SEC’s agenda ... hedge funds.

- The Fee Machine II: The White House is looking at broker practices, such as boosting commissions with excessive trading, that cost individual investors $8 billion to $17 billion a year.

- Lake Wobegon: This survey, which shows pensions are, on average, better than average, hurts my brain. All pensions are better than average because of... long-termism? Poor benchmarks?

- Alternative Inflows: South Korea’s $85 billion SWF will double its allocation to alternatives this year; by the end of 2015 the KIC will have $16 billion in alts.

- Indian Finance: With two big investments, Singapore’s SWFs are clearly bullish on Indian financial services: Temasek and GIC.

Have a great weekend!

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