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Questions about Pension Investments

When Our Pension Dollars Fund Buy-Outs

Good Morning.

My name is Chris King. I am one of the 45,000 participants in the Public Employee and School Employee Retirement System who are members of SEIU.

More than a month ago we sent a letter to KKR asking questions about the impact of KKR’s investments on workers, communities, and public services here in Washington and around the country.

Their response did not answer our questions or alleviate our concern.

We asked KKR for the amounts of taxes KKR’s portfolio companies paid before KKR purchased the company, and the amounts the companies have paid since the buyout. But they did not answer us.
 
We asked KKR about the compensation and benefits for nonmanagerial employees at KKR’s portfolio companies before and since the KKR buyout. But they did not answer us.

Because of the volatility of the credit market, we asked KKR to provide us with information about all the debt incurred by each of KKR’s portfolio companies. But they did not answer us.

These are questions vital to our states and to our members. The participants in our pension fund and the taxpayers of the state deserve answers—before the Washington State Investment Board commits more of our retirement savings to a KKR fund.

KKR has mostly delivered higher internal rates of return to the Washington State Investment Board than other investments, but we believe those returns may have come with social costs that are not measured by traditional investment metrics even though they are likely to affect the long-term viability of those investments. We believe the trustees of the Washington State Investment Board should not make further commitments to KKR funds until they can perform a thorough evaluation of the overall impact of its investments with KKR and until KKR answers the basic questions about how the impacts of their investments on workers, communities, and public services affect the long-term viability of these investments here in Washington and around the country as posed by SEIU in our letters.