Welcome to the weekend — and to summer! — everybody. Here’s some reading for that floaty chair in the pool:
- Invest-Tech: To all human finance professionals in the year 2050: Nothing. I don’t talk to people that don’t exist . . . much. You can watch this important video to understand what happens.
- Crazy Carry: Some new research shows that the allocation of carry within a GP is about as rationale as the prevailing GP-LP fee structures. It’s nice to see some GPs among the folks being screwed by GPs . . .
- Awakenings I: The CIO of New Mexico’s pension recently said, “Accepting excessive fees from PE firms is an ‘abdication’ of fiduciary duty.” True!
- Awakenings II: California is so fed up with GPs’ lack of transparency that it may, legally, force its pensions to disclose hedge fund and private equity fees.
- Asleepenings: LACERA apparently has no idea what it’s paying anybody anywhere, according to a report out last week. Accordingly, I sent them an invoice for helping them with their updog. Fingers crossed!
- Development: Angola’s sovereign wealth fund is investing 60 percent of assets under management in domestic private equity, which is a lot. I’d like to have seen that meeting with the investment consultant.
- Check Is In The Mail: Italy reportedly has plans to sell $3 billion worth of stock in its post office to investors that one has to assume have never heard of the internet.
- In-Sourcing: According to the CIO of the Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System, the most compelling and indeed important opportunity in the coming years is . . . getting rid of asset managers.
- Real Estate: Sovereign funds have been buying a lot of real estate lately: The Qatar Investment Authority is buying Singapore’s Asia Square Tower. Bahrain’s Mumtalakat has plans to deploy $250 million into US real estate. And the China Investment Corporation has made its first big real estate deal in the U.S. as well.
- Public Service Announcement: Please stop saying the “World’s Oldest Wealth Fund” is in Kuwait. It’s not. The oldest SWF is the Texas Permanent School Fund from the 1850s.
Have a great weekend!
