“If Boss Tweed were alive today, he would be a placement agent.” So
said New York's attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, announcing a settlement
with the Carlyle Group, by which the Carlyle Group, an outside
investment
manager for many government pension funds, will no longer hire
placement agents to get public pension business and will greatly
limit its officers' and employees' campaign contributions to anyone
involved with public
pensions (according to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/nyregion/15carlyle.html" target="”_blank”">an
article</a> in today's New York <span>Times</span>).<br>
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The attorney general "hopes to use the settlement as a model for an
industrywide overhaul of
how hedge funds and private equity firms interact with public pension
funds."<br>
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The SEC is also talking about bars on campaign contributions and other
remedies for the problems that have come out regarding public pension
business in New York, Tennessee, and elsewhere.<br>
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For more on this topic, see these recent blog posts<br>
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/678" target="”_blank”">Hank Morris, New York's
big-time placement agent</a><br>
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/696" target="”_blank”">Problems in Tennessee</a><br>
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