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Last week, the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling empowering 401(k) holders to sue finance executives that invest their savings in inappropriately risky or predatory private equity investments. Blackstone Group CEO Steve Schwarzman previously stated that accessing the $7 trillion in Americans’ 401(k) was one of his company’s top goals
Still The Biden’s administration just approved this policy, authorizing retirement plan administrators to shift workers’ savings into high-risk, high-fee private equity investments, despite regulators’ long-standing interpretation that federal laws prohibited such moves , even as federal law enforcement officials are warning of rampant malfeasance in the private equity industry.
The Biden administration’s ruling to help private equity titans access retirees 401(k) accounts coincides with the SEC sounding an alarm about the industry’s practices. Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a risk alert saying that the agency’s examiners are finding pervasive malfeasance and fraud throughout the private equity industry. The report found some firms haven’t been calculating management fees according to the terms in their fund disclosures, which “resulted in investors paying more in management fees than they were required to pay.” a gift to the Democrat’s own finance
In the meantime, Blackstone announced stronger than ever. fourth-quarter results last week driven by real estate returns.
“Today Blackstone reported the most remarkable results in our history on virtually every metric,” said CEO and co-founder Stephen Schwarzman The firm nearly doubled its net income to $2.9 billion from $1.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020. Earnings hit $1.92 per share, up from $1.07 in the year-ago period. Blackstone nearly doubled its real estate assets under management to $279.5 billion in the quarter, from $187.2 billion in the previous year while private equity, the firm’s next biggest segment, grew by just under one-third.