Dan Loeb Simultaneously Solicits, Betrays Pension Funds

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#1
by MATT TAIBBI
APRIL 11, 2013
There's confidence. There's chutzpah. And then there's Dan Loeb, hedge fund king extraordinaire and head of Third Point Capital, who's getting set to claim the World Heavyweight Championship of Balls.

On April 18, Loeb will speak before the Council of Institutional Investors, a nonprofit association of pension funds, endowments, employee benefit funds, and foundations with collective assets of over $3 trillion. The CII is an umbrella group that represents the institutions who manage the retirement and benefit funds of public and corporate employees all over America – from bricklayers to Teamsters to teachers to employees of Colgate, the Gap and Johnson and Johnson.

Loeb is going to be, in essence, pitching his services to these institutional investors. He already manages the money for several public funds, including the Ohio Public Employees' Retirement System, the New Jersey State Investment Council, the Sacramento County Employees' Retirement System, and the City of Danbury Retirement System. To give you an idea of the scale, New Jersey alone has $100 million invested with one of Loeb's funds.

When he comes to speak at CII, Lobe will almost certainly be seeking new clients. There will be some serious whales in these waters: For instance, CalSTRS, the California State Teachers' Retirement System, will definitely be represented (Anne Sheehan, the director of corporate governance for CalSTRS, will be moderating Loeb's panel).

But here's the catch. Dan Loeb, who isn't known as the biggest hedge-fund asshole still working on Wall Street (only because Stevie Cohen hasn't been arrested yet), is on the board and co-founder of a group called Students First New York. And Students First has been one of the leading advocates pushing for states to abandon defined benefit plans – packages which guarantee certain retirement benefits for public workers like teachers – in favor of defined contribution plans, where the benefits are not guaranteed.

In other words, Loeb has been soliciting the retirement money of public workers, then turning right around and lobbying for those same workers to lose their benefits. He's essentially asking workers to pay for their own disenfranchisement (with Loeb getting his two-and-twenty cut, or whatever obscene percentage of their retirement monies he will charge as a fee). If that isn't the very definition of balls, I don't know what is.

It's one thing for a group like Students First to have an opinion about defined benefit plans in general, to say, as they have, that "today's district pensions and other benefits are not sustainable and contribute to a looming fiscal crisis." But it's another thing for a Vice President of Students First like Rebecca Sibilia to tweet the following just a few weeks before one of its board members asks for money from a fund like CalSTRS:

Outdated & underfunded #pension systems like CALSTERS break promises to #teachers#edreform #thinkED http://huff.to/15vdALJ via @HuffPostEdu

That's a hell of a sales pitch for Loeb to be making: "I belong to an organization that thinks you're all dinosaurs. Now give me a hundred million dollars."

Not long ago, the American Federation of Teachers got wind of Loeb's association with Students First and their lobbying efforts, and confronted him about it, leading to a somewhat incredible correspondence, the details of which I'll get to in a moment. But first, a little background on Loeb.

Dan Loeb became famous in the early 2000s not just for being a jerk, but for being a very particular kind of jerk. His favorite activity was to invest heavily in a company and then write blisteringly insulting public letters to management, berating them for not making him enough money. When he spotted the CEO of one company courtside at the U.S. Open, he publicly attacked him for "hobnobbing and snacking on shrimp cocktail" when, presumably, he should have been out making Loeb money. Loeb loves the word "hobnob."

Loeb's schtick is a kind of living tribute to the legendary scene in Wall Street when Gordon Gekko undresses the executives from "Teldar Paper" at a shareholder meeting, urging investors to defy the fat-cat "bureaucrats with their steak lunches, their hunting and fishing trips" who paid themselves big salaries but lacked the stones to buy stock in their own firms. Like Gekko, Loeb pitches himself as the guy who does have the stones, who puts his money where his mouth is. Known as the "Angry Investor," he has made a career as a kind of investor's ombudsman – a man who wouldn't tolerate anyone taking his money and doing anything with it that he didn't absolutely approve of.

So if a CEO using Loeb's money to buy himself tickets to the U.S. Open is bad, just imagine how much Loeb would disapprove of someone taking, say, $100 million of his money, and then using that cash to lobby to end the carried-interest tax break that allows billionaires like himself to pay a maximum tax rate of 15 percent. One can only imagine the letters Dan Loeb would write in that circumstance. "Angry Investor" would be hugely understating the characterization, I would guess.

In any case, when the American Federation of Teachers got wind of Loeb's political activities, its president, Randi Weingarten, wrote him what was, in retrospect, quite a polite letter. She began by noting the apparent oddity of Loeb simultaneously campaigning against defined benefit plans while pitching his services to public funds:

Given your strong support for StudentsFirst, an organization which is leading the attack on defined benefit (DB) pension funds around the country, I was surprised to learn of your interest in working with public pension plan investors.

After reminding Loeb that AFT's members participate in benefit plans worth a combined $800 billion, and that those members are "examining" their decision to invest in hedge funds, Wenigarten then politely asked Loeb if he would be willing to meet with her and some of AFT's trustees during the CII conference.

Since these two interests of yours seem to us perhaps inconsistent, a meeting with you, me and some of our AFT trustees during the CII spring conference could be clarifying. We hope this discussion will allow us to find common ways we can work together to strengthen the retirement security of educators.

Loeb replied that he was "not aware" of Students First having taken a strong stance on the defined benefit/defined contribution issue, and that he was "not an expert" on the issue and was "uninformed." He said he was happy to meet, and that he would "do some research on my end" before the gathering. "I tend to be evidence based and don't bring any ideological baggage with me," he added, "as I simply like to understand how systems work (as a hedge fund manager)."

Then, having said that, he wrote this:

Third Point has compounded at an annual rate of 21pct per annum for 18 years. Although the funds are closed for now to outside investors, I'd be honored if down the road we could help AFT members realize their financial goals and reduce the tax burdens for states and our citizens. Needless to say, I completely respect the political considerations you may have and understand if other factors dictate how funds are allocated.

Translation: I'll make you a lot of money, but if my politics are going to get in the way of that, that's your problem.

Weingarten quickly wrote back to shore up the meeting, letting Loeb know that there would be some other voices at the table. "A small group of pension fund trustees are interested in joining us," she wrote, "including two funds that are current clients of yours."

It seemed that representatives from New Jersey and Ohio, along with several groups from states like New York, Pennsylvania and California who had not yet invested with Loeb, wanted to meet with him personally to clarify his views on public pensions before making a decision about whether to invest (or, perhaps, disinvest).

After receiving this letter, Loeb suddenly changed his mind about wanting to meet. "Unfortunately, I am not free following my presentation as I have made a prior commitment and am then leaving for New York." He added:

I have learned that SFNY advocated a choice between the two types of plans, a recommendation favored by a majority of younger teachers. Beyond that, I'd be pretty useless in a discussion on such an esoteric copy, so I suggest that Ms. Weingarten discuss her concerns with either Michelle Rhee, the national director of Students First and a member of our board, Joel Klein, our Chairman, or Micah Lasher, our executive director.

This one doesn't need much of a translation. Yeah, I know you represent $800 billion, and that some of your members have already given me tons of cash, but I'm busy, so blow me.

Loeb, incidentally, isn't the only hedge fund manager with a God complex who works with Students First while simultaneously taking money from public plans. Paul Tudor Jones of Tudor Funds is another – he's on the SFNY board with Loeb and manages $15.7 million from the School Employees' Retirement System of Ohio.

Anyway, one hopes that pension funds and unions don't end up inadvertently funding their own political demise by investing with the Loebs and Tudors of the world. For AFT president Weingarten, the whole episode has been unsettling.

"It is the height of hypocrisy to solicit the hard-earned retirement savings of teachers and turn around and use that money to advocate for the dismantlement of those very same plans," she says. "Teachers continue to face a barrage of attacks, and the last thing they expect is that their pensions will be used to fund attacks on their profession, their unions, and their retirement savings."

One thing that people need to realize about Wall Street and the financial system in general: many of the self-congratulating millionaires and billionaires you read about in the news aren't "self-made" in any real sense, but actually live either directly or indirectly off of your money. The quickest way to extreme wealth in this world is to attach oneself to giant piles of institutional money like public pension funds. The subprime mortgage crisis was fueled in large part by sociopathic hotshots from banks and hedge funds who convinced institutional investors – your corporate retirement fund, your public pension, your union – to buy crappy mortgage-backed securities.

Guys like Dan Loeb, they don't actually do anything, other than shave cuts off of other peoples' money. The psychological justification for taking such high fees is that they earn for their clients, but even that's debatable in some cases (AFT points out that some of Loeb's funds haven't even outperformed the S&P).

The point is, many of these guys owe their outrageous lifestyles to people who actually work for a living, who've been putting nickels and dimes away week after week for years, just so guys like Loeb can swoop in, make a pitch after a fancy lunch or two, and then take big chunks of that cash to buy private jets and Picassos. For them to suddenly become self-righteous and political, to tell the world that it can't afford real pensions and retirement funds for regular people anymore, is a rich irony.

Hey, Dan, you know what might make pensions more affordable? Excising the fees that hedge-fund managers get to tend to that money. Let's try that first – what do you think?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blo...s-20130411
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#2
Matt taibi hates bankers/hedge fundies/goldman etc but i honestly dont get the point of this article.
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#3
(20-04-2013, 01:05 PM)rogerwilco Wrote: Third Point has compounded at an annual rate of 21pct per annum for 18 years.

One could invest his money with Third Point and ignore all that Dan does in his spare time OR one could be more principled and put money in an also-ran fund manager with 8% return or lower.

Nobody said sticking to one's principles is cheap or profitable. Big Grin
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#4
(20-04-2013, 02:00 PM)godjira1 Wrote: Matt taibi hates bankers/hedge fundies/goldman etc but i honestly dont get the point of this article.

yes, Matt Taibbi often takes extreme view toward Wall Street. You should read his scathing article about Mitt Romney and his Bain Capital days during the recent US presidential election... Tongue

However, aside from Matt Taibbi, I still find Dan Loeb's action as amusing. There is some truth in the following statement:

just imagine how much Loeb would disapprove of someone taking, say, $100 million of his money, and then using that cash to lobby to end the carried-interest tax break that allows billionaires like himself to pay a maximum tax rate of 15 percent. One can only imagine the letters Dan Loeb would write in that circumstance. "Angry Investor" would be hugely understating the characterization, I would guess

The fallout..... don't bite the hands that feeds you Tongue

http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/hedge-...-it-123188

Hedge Fund-Blacklist Urging Pension Funds to Stay Away: Icahn, Cohen, Tepper and Loeb All On It

This past week, the American Federation of Teachers, one of the U.S.'s largest teacher unions, issued a list detailing specific hedge funds it was urging pension funds to stay away from. The 33-fund compilation, which acts as a blacklist, has some of the hedge fund industry's biggest names on it, including Carl Icahn, Steve Cohen, David Tepper, and Daniel Loeb.

In the investing world, there's plenty of drama between hedge fund managers. Take the Bill Ackman-Carl Icahn battle over the legitimacy of Herbalife's business model, for example. Not as often, though, do we come across a group of organized investors lining up against hedge funds.

Interestingly, that's just what has happened with the American Federation of Teachers and a proverbial blacklist published this week, urging pension funds to stay away from 33 specific funds.

What's the AFT's motivation?

Earlier this week, the AFT president, Randi Weingarten, singled out one hedge fund manager in particular: Dan Loeb, founder of the New York-based hedge fund Third Point.

According to a story by the NYPost a few days ago, Weingarten's main beef with Loeb is his ties with StudentsFirst, an organization that describes itself as "a grassroots movement to reform America's public education and keep our best teachers in the classroom."

More specifically, part of StudentsFirst's reform package would be to eliminate defined benefit plans for pensioned teachers, among other publicly employed workers.

After Weingarten and the American Federation of Teachers threatened Loeb to show up at a conference in Washington on Thursday, where he had planned to speak with Barry Rosenstein of JANA Partners, as Business Insider reported.

Interestingly, Loeb withdrew from the event yesterday, and according to the Post, his panel's moderator was Anne Sheehan, the California State Teachers Retirement System's Director of Corporate Governance. On Loeb's decision, Sheehan told reporters that she "deeply regret[s] but understand[s]."

What's the philosophical basis?

On StudentsFirst's official site, the organization mentions that fiscal problems have forced states to adjust their budget practices, and one way would be to "move from defined benefits to retirement plans that are more sustainable and can be immediately accessed by all teachers.”

Obviously, many AFT union members and one heated Rolling Stone reporter believe that Loeb and any other hedge fund who support a switch away from a defined benefit plan to a self-directed retirement package, in which teachers would not receive a guaranteed payout post-employment, are hypocritical.

As Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi so clearly puts it, "Loeb has been soliciting the retirement money of public workers, then turning right around and lobbying for those same workers to lose their benefits."

Thus is the basis for the blacklist.

Are state pension funds pulling out already?

According to the Post, the Illinois State Board of Investment, with more than $12 billion in assets, uses the services of EnTrust Capital, which has invested over $30 million of the ISBI's money in Loeb's hedge fund. In a letter to EnTrust (acquired via the Post), the ISBI's Executive Director, William Atwood, wrote the following:

"It would be troubling and embarrassing to now find that one of the firms retained by Entrust on [our] behalf is using the fees paid by [our] participants to work against their interests."

It is also rumored that the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System has a similar beef, the Post's sources say.

What's the reality?

This thought process is sensible, and with an estimated $800 billion in AFT funds nationwide, pension funds will always be one of the largest clients invested in the hedge fund industry. In other words, their thoughts matter.

In some critics' eyes, it may be troubling to see the ISBI, Weingarten, and other players in the pension fund industry to have what seems like a short-sighted argument. After all, if Loeb, StudentsFirst, and the rest of the opposition says that a defined contribution will save state governments money in the long run, it has to be true, right?

Not exactly.

According to a study by the Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois, the largest of the state's five pension systems, this line of thinking is incorrect.

In the Illinois TRS's breakdown, it is mentioned that "changeover costs to a new defined contribution plan would be significant," an additional barrier that many supporters of StudentsFirst likely have not considered.

Even more importantly, the Illinois TRS reports, "In fiscal year 2006, the expense ratio of TRS was about 0.30 percent of assets; the average expense ratio of a private sector “target-date” defined contribution retirement fund was 1.29 percent, or 4.3 times higher."

Another comparison from FY2004 indicates a similar multiplicative of about 4.7 times.

Asset diversification is also an issue in a move away from defined benefit plans, to their contribution-based counterparts, which "typically do not include real estate and private markets, assets that each earned over 20 percent last year," according to TRS sources.

Who else is on the blacklist besides Loeb and Third Point?

Here's the full list:

Anthos Capital

Appaloosa Management

AQR Capital Management

Browfields Capital

Centaurus Advisors LLC

Clayton Capital Partners

Cohen, Klingenstein LLC

Court Square Capital Partners

Dimensional Fund Advisors

Donald Smith & Co.

Eagle Capital Management

Elliott Management

Gilder, Gagnon, Howe & Co.

HPB Associates

Icahn Enterprises

Invemed Associates

J. Fitzgibbons LLC

K2 Advisors

Khronos

Kiernan Ventures

Kingdon Capital Management

KKR & Co.

Mason Capital Management

Pennant Capital

Pergamon Advisors

Prescott Investors

SAC Capital

SLX Capital Management

Stone-Kaplan Investments

Third Point Capital

Tiger Global Management

Tudor Investment Corp.

VenRock

---------------

Above the list, the following prompt is given by the AFT:

"Directors, managers, advisers and executives of funds below have contributed to, or sit on the governing board of, an organization that advocates for the replacement of defined benefit plans with defined contribution or cash-balance plans."

What are the implications?

At Insider Monkey, we track 450-plus of the world's most elite money managers, which manage an estimated 75-80% of the hedge fund industry's entire asset base. The AFT's list not only has the ability to affect visible players such as Dan Loeb and Third Point, but it may also harm the likes of David Tepper's Appaloosa, Carl Icahn, Steven Cohen, and all 33 funds mentioned here.

If an organization who appears to be potentially on the edge, like the Illinois State Board of Investment, decides to pull out of the funds mentioned on the AFT's list, it's quite possible that we'll see a domino effect, with pension funds like the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System following suit.

The largest hedge fund investor, the Teacher Retirement System of the State of Texas, holds an approximated $10 billion, or about 9% of its assets, in the industry according to data from Pensions & Investments.

We'll be watching Texas, Ohio and Illinois very closely, and it's likely that the hedgies mentioned on this list will be too.
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