Is private equity wrong for retirement funds?

Private equity assets under management are higher than they’ve ever been – estimated at $3.5 trillion – but their role in retirement funds is quickly coming into serious question.

These questions center on the funds’ opacity, risk and the often enormous fees guaranteed to fund managers no matter how they perform.

Regulators, politicians, unions, trustees and plaintiffs’ attorneys across the country all seem to have turned their attention to potential shenanigans in private equity.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Andrew Bowden sent a shockwave through the industry last week at the Private Equity International Forum in New York. There, he told attendees that the SEC found “violations of law or material weaknesses in controls” in over 50 percent of the private equity funds the agency has inspected.

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The SEC, according to various reports, is especially interested in “backdoor” fees that investors are expected to pay for the services of “operating partners,” people with supposed expertise who, in reality, are just employees of the private equity firm and should be paid out of its own income.

The growth in private-equity funds over the past two decades has much less to do with a propagation of high-income individual investors (those worth more than $5 million), than it does with the private equity firms successfully raising cash from public and private pension funds.

The website of the Private Equity Growth Capital Council, the industry’s lobbying arm, says that institutional investments from pension funds, endowments and foundations accounted for 64 percent of all private equity investment in 2012.

“Mom and pop are much more invested in these funds than people realize,” Bowden, the SEC’s director of the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examination, told his audience.

Bowden called the extent of violations a “remarkable statistic.”

His comments left no doubt that the SEC is on the offensive on the issue.

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In fact, the agency already has filed a case against a private equity firm, Clean Energy Capital, and its president, Scott Brittenham.

The agency alleges Brittenham and Clean Energy misappropriated more than $3 million from 20 private equity funds by failing to disclose to investors that it had allocated Clean Energy’s expenses for compensation, office space, gifts and business cards to the funds.

Brittenham and his firm deny the SEC’s allegations.

Foul play

Transparency in private equity, advocates will say, is much improved over the past 10 years. Critics, however, argue much more is needed, especially in terms of fees and valuations.  

One of the biggest critics is Ted Siedle, who began his career at the SEC 30 years ago, moved to the private sector and ultimately became general council of Putnam Investments. He’s now an independent consultant, and has conducted over 2,000 “forensic investigations” of the money management industry.

“I’m like CSI for Wall Street,” Siedle said. “I go in, look at the body, and try to figure out if there’s been foul play.”

Siedle believes the “blanket secrecy” in private equity funds and their relationship with trustees of public pensions is alarming.