>Stuck on Stupid : The Real Question Remains Why was Anyone dumb enough to invest in Xanadu?
Public pensions at risk: Xanadu losses show danger of volatile funds
Sunday, December 19, 2010
LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY DECEMBER 19, 2010, 9:56 AM
BY ANDREW TANGEL
THE RECORD
STAFF WRITER
Some $2 billion has been spent on Xanadu and much of it has gone to contractors, tradesmen and teams of politically connected professionals.
Public pensions in nine states lost a total of $600 million in high-risk private-equity funds that included the troubled Xanadu project, above.
But where did all that money come from?
The answer, to a large degree, is pension funds for police, firefighters and other public employees around the country.
Nine public pension systems from Alaska to Texas to New York poured nearly $1 billion into two private-equity funds that include Xanadu among their investments, according to pension records reviewed by The Record. Those pensions have seen their collective investments in these funds shrink to about $360 million, a decline of about 60 percent, according to the pensions’ records spanning the last year.
