If the Board asks how much the company paid for something, “I don’t know” isn’t a good answer. Neither is “We can’t track that today.”
“Algorithms Help Calpers Tally Fees,” The Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2017 B1. The question was how much the pension plan had paid private-equity managers in performance fees. It turns out the answer was $3.4 billion, over 25 years, with $490 million last year. Answer was derived using algorithms.
“It took five years to develop a new data collection system that requires private-equity managers to fill out various templates describing their various fees.”
How comforting – a self-graded exam for $3.4 billion in fees.
What’s information worth? How can you manage without it? How did they?
infogovnuggets 