Photograph by Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg

A statue of Duke Kahanamoku stands along Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii.

What better place to host a conference than Hawaii, right?

Sun, golf, swimming.

The National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems thinks so, too.

It’s hosting its annual confab at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Honolulu in May and expects about 800 fund trustees from across the U.S and Canada to attend.

The organizers know that penny-pinching fund boards may not take kindly to the idea of sending their colleagues off on a junket to the Hawaiian Islands at a time when the cost of public pensions have become a hot button issue. That’s why their invitation to the event includes a “2013 Attendance Justification Tool Kit,” complete with a sample letter that wanna-be attendees can download, customize and give to their boards, as well as a sheet with seven tips for building the case for attending.

The group, which bills itself as the largest trade association for public pension funds, suggests in the kit that attending will allow officials to learn, among other things,  what other funds are considering and what is working for them.

“Without education, it is not possible for me to know these things,” the sample letter reads. “Without this knowledge, I cannot act in your best interests.”

There’s even a session on the conference called “Avoiding a Front Page Scandal at Your Pension Fund: Learning by Example.”
The hotel, which promises “more pools, more beach, more paradise” on its Web-site, has five pools on oceanfront property and 18 restaurants and lounges, as well as a spa for the weary.

Original post is Ticket to Hawaii: Talking Points for Convincing Your Board to Send You by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images

Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker.

Henry Kravis and Steve Schwarzman should be scribbling thank you notes to Cory Booker today.

The Newark mayor ignited a campaign firestorm over the weekend, calling for a stop to attacks on private equity, going so far as to call them “nauseating” and defending both Bain Capital and the industry in general. Why would a key Obama supporter break ranks like that?

The answer: New Jersey has a lot riding on private equity.

The state’s pension system in December agreed to a sweeping $1.8 billion deal with private equity giant Blackstone Group that will comprise investments in real estate, energy and debt funds. That brought New Jersey’s total commitments over 12 months to $2.5 billion to Blackstone alone, the most Schwarzman’s New York firm has attracted from a single investor in a single year since its creation.

There’s another reason Booker may have spoken up. While he doesn’t control New Jersey’s state pension, as the mayor of a big city Booker has a deep interest in economic development. The Private Equity Growth Capital Council was quick to seize on that angle. In an email this morning, the industry’s main lobbyist, amid a campaign to defend its practices, noted that New Jersey drew $3 billion in private equity investment last year into the state economy.

New Jersey is far from alone in its ties to private equity, a business that counts on scores of public pensions as key funders. Kravis’s KKR won a $3 billion commitment from Teachers Retirement System of Texas last year.

Even presumed liberal bastions are playing. No less than California — a deep blue state in presidential terms — has been a major source for buyout funds for more than two decades. Just last week, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System cut a deal with Blackstone similar to the New Jersey pact, committing $500 million to the New York firm in a so-called separate account. Some of the industry’s longest-standing backers are pensions in the decidedly crunchy states of Washington and Oregon.

All of these pensions are betting that Blackstone and its brethren can deliver returns that far outstrip what investors could reap from the public markets.

That money ultimately goes to fund retirement accounts — with a generous cut to Schwarzman, Kravis and Romney’s former colleagues at Bain, to be sure. That wealth, along with accusations that private equity firms generate their profits by slashing jobs and shuttering factories, have become a dominant theme during the 2012 campaign. Romney’s Republican rivals and now Obama have bludgeoned the Bain Capital founder with buyout fueled criticism that’s spilled into the industry at large.

Booker’s nausea moment may ultimately mean even more to Romney’s erstwhile private equity colleagues than to the candidate himself. In assembling their defense against the inevitable political attacks, executives inside the biggest buyout funds have been desperate for their ultimate investors to step forward.

Few have opted to take that plunge. Could Cory Booker help change that calculus?

Original post is Why Cory Booker is Private Equity’s Unlikely BFF by Political Capital.