The following institutional investors bought into Cerberus Institutional Partners IV (CIP4). That’s the $1b – $1.5b Cerberus-controlled fund established to provide part of the initial $7.2b payment to Daimler for Chrysler. Obviously, this list is far from complete. We call on our elected representatives to require Cerberus to provide a full and complete accounting of all participants in this fund before U.S. taxpayers extend Chrysler any more federal loans.
LA Police & Fire Pension
Public teachers of PA (PSERB) – $200m
PA state retirement workers [SERS] – $75m
NY Common Retirement Fund – $50m
Charles Schwab Institutional
Univ of CA – $40m
Univ of Tex – $25m
Idaho state employees – $40m
Allstate
Glenmede Trust Co. (PA)
Franklin Templeton Investments
[thanks to Full Deck Analytics for the help]
Regardless of the potential ROI, how in the hell could anyone be suckered into funding the purchase of a moribund car company.
What were these guys smoking?
Conspicuous by their absence are Ivy endowments. I would be surprised if Yale SOM, Wharton, and Harvard biz alums hadn’t managed to shovel some of this junk onto their Alma maters.
eh_political :
Conspicuous by their absence are Ivy endowments. I would be surprised if Yale SOM, Wharton, and Harvard biz alums hadn’t managed to shovel some of this junk onto their Alma maters.
I can’t speak for individual alums’ investments, but as to endowments — I know Harvard is heavily invested in hedge funds, private equity, real estate, and even “exotic securities” which I assume means the rent-a-cops at strip clubs.
So what? The same kinds of investors also own GM, Ford, Toyota, GE, Google, Microsoft, etc…
And why does TTAC & others wonder why the Govt keeps bailing when you see a list like this? It’s because it’s a helluva lot cheaper than having dozens if not hundreds of pension funds transfer to the govt when they go broke. Lots of voters too!
And why does TTAC & others wonder why the Govt keeps bailing when you see a list like this? It’s because it’s a helluva lot cheaper than having dozens if not hundreds of pension funds transfer to the govt when they go broke. Lots of voters too!
This is too rational. A much better explanation seems to that the bailouts are a liberal conspiracy to convert the country to communism.
It will be interesting to see how quickly these investors cash out once the restrictions on selling are up.
golf4me:
If their small ownership investment in this fund is the difference between any of these pension funds surviving or failing then they’ve already failed.
By the way, a very interesting part of the stimulus package that is being signed into law today is a restriction on executive bonuses in any companies that have received TARP funds (i.e. Chrysler, Chrysler Financial, GM, GMAC):
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/business/economy/14pay.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aAylhwmdYuKw&refer=home
Qwerty :
A much better explanation seems to that the bailouts are a liberal conspiracy to convert the country to communism
Quiet. The conspiracy won’t work if people know.
It’s interesting that so many of the major investors in Cerberus’ Chrysler venture are public employee pension funds.
More evidence that there are two classes of Americans now, those who pay taxes and those who get paid by those taxes. The public employees want to suckle from the public teat with salaries and benefits significantly higher than in the private sector and then double and triple dip by investing their pension funds (funds extracted from the taxpayers) and then having the taxpayers underwrite those investments.
There are now more people who work for the government than work in the manufacturing sector. Think about that for a second. We have more bureaucrats than people who actually make things.
The “industry” with the lowest unemployment rate in the US are government workers, 3%, less than half the national rate for the private sector.
Most of the “stimulus” package just signed into law by Pres. Obama increases the federal wage roll. Considering the enormous political contributions given by public employee unions to the party now in power we can expect the political power of public employee unions to grow yet even more.
I don’t think anything that the UAW or Big 3 mgmt has done that damages the country nearly as much as public employees.
This list is no big deal. The amounts invested are a small part of the portfolio of these investors. Optimal return depends on having a mixture of risks in the portfolio, so an investor should have appropriate exposure to higher risk ventures. Of course, that also means these funds have already accepted the risk of poor/no returns.
Inquiring mind gotta know:
Since US taxpayer money is the bucket doing the bailing, the interesting questions are:
1) any sovereign wealth funds (SWF) in there?
2) if any SWFs are in there then what is their piece of the action?
Honestly, though, it doesn’t really matter unless we find out something like, say, the Saudis own 50% of this doomed ship.
The only real question is whether it makes any sense to feed a zombie.
I look at this list and see a lot of Democratic political pull. We shall see.
Damn…I need to dump my Idaho PERSI plan (from my former employer-City of Boise).
Go Horns! I’ll remember this next time they hit me up for an alumni donation…
Idaho needs to drop this hot potato.
I made a funny. Anyway, I thought they were smarter out there.
Most of the “stimulus” package just signed into law by Pres. Obama increases the federal wage roll. Considering the enormous political contributions given by public employee unions to the party now in power we can expect the political power of public employee unions to grow yet even more.
Would you have any factual references to support these two contentions? Like how many fed. employees will be added due to the stimulus? And what was the public employee contribution to the Democratic party?
It’d be much better to lay off millions of federal employees in a time of record unemployment so they want have any money left to spend into the economy. Wait, what? No, that’d be monumentally stupid.
Qwerty :
February 17th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
…….the bailouts are a liberal conspiracy to convert the country to communism fascism.
Fixed it for you.
Fascism: Government control of private enterprise.
Which is exactly what is happening.