Buddy, Can You Spare a Billion?

[flashl]

First hard-pressed Wall Street banks turned to rich foreign governments for help. Now, they are seeking aid from the likes of New Jersey and big mutual funds to bolster their weakened finances.

Citigroup and Merrill Lynch said on Tuesday that they were raising a combined $19.1 billion from parties that range from government-backed funds in Korea and Kuwait to New Jersey’s public pension fund and T. Rowe Price, the big mutual fund company. Other investors include a large bank in Japan, a hedge fund in New York and private investors in the Middle East.

While so-called sovereign wealth funds are investing the most, the emergence of new investors like New Jersey underscores the rising aversion on the part of United States banks to being seen as beholden to foreign governments. In recent months Citigroup, Merrill and several other banks have sold multibillion-dollar stakes to foreign government funds.

...

In the case of New Jersey, William G. Clark, the chief investment officer of the state’s $81 billion pension fund, approached both Citigroup and Merrill and agreed to invest $400 million in Citigroup and $300 million in Merrill. Even after these investments, the New Jersey fund has an underweight position in financial stocks.

“This fits the strategy of our portfolio,” said Susan Burrows Farber, the chief administrative officer of the fund, adding that New Jersey was open to making more of these types of investments.


NY Times

Sooo, the chief investment officer in NJ didn't get the memo from Florida? If NJ or Merrill were an individual, what would you say?

[DCKit]

1. I'd say they found a way to pillage government pension funds too. n/t