Sunday, November 05, 2006


Will Private Equity Stay Private? U.S. Dept. of Justice Makes Inquiries



In "U.S. Department of Justice Comes Knocking, Raising Specter of Private Equity Antitrust Concerns," law firm Goodwin Procter, LLP writes that "the DOJ has sent out requests to some of the industry's largest and most well-known firms, asking that these firms provide information and documents relating to company auctions since 2003."

Reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal ("Private-Equity Firms Face Anticompetitive Probe" by Dennis K. Berman and Henny Sender - October 10, 2006) and Red Herring.com, the DOJ is interested in knowing how firms transact and the extent to which competition in bidding occurs.

At the same time, Investment Dealers' Digest reports on the imminent launch of a new trade association, the Private Equity Council ("PE Trade Group Nearing Launch Amid Intensifying Scrutiny" by Ken MacFadyen - October 30, 2006). Slated as its new head, Mr. Harry Clark "insists that the group's genesis was in no way a response to the Justice Department's inquiry and he notes its role will not be in reacting to such events."

At a time when pension funds are increasingly looking at alternative investments such as hedge funds and private equity opportunities, an issue that resurfaces time and time again is transparency. In August 2005, the State of Illinois enacted legislation to protect "the commercially sensitive information of companies that receive private equity funding from public pension funds." One of five other states at the time, the then-cited goal was to "provide transparency in public investments in private equity without damaging portfolio companies' ability to compete."

You may recall an earlier post about hedge fund competitiveness and transparency. (Click here to read "Pensions, Hedge Funds and Disclosure" about Mr. Phillip Goldstein's letter to the U.S. SEC in which he requests exemption from the filing of Form 13F. In that post, I talked about the relationship between information and fiduciary responsibility.

No doubt the issues of transparency and market structure will continue to grab headlines. It's far from trivial.

Editor's Note:
Mr. Goldstein sent a copy of the letter to share with readers. Click below.
(GoldsteinLetter.pdf)
posted by Susan Mangiero at 11/05/2006 12:02:00 AM