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California and other states limit disclosure of fund
details02/05/2006. Source: Nixon Peabody. Andrea R. Cohen
 This article from Nixon Peabody provides an update on changes in US state laws shielding public pension and university endowment funds from disclosure requests pursuant to the freedom of information laws.
As we have described in previous Alerts, in the absence of a legislative exemption, upon a request for information pursuant to FOIA, pension funds and public institutions are required to disclose information about the content and performance of their holdings in private equity funds. Information disclosed pursuant to such requests may provide the public with access to confidential or commercially sensitive information about a fund’s underlying asset data.
Such information might include, among other things, disclosing sensitive competitive information about portfolio companies and their trade secrets. The trend by some states to limit FOIA disclosure with respect to private equity investments is largely due to policies of certain high profile private equity funds to either bar public institutions and public pension funds from investing or materially limit underlying asset and performance information provided to them in order to avoid any disclosure required pursuant to a FOIA request.
Click here to download the full article (pdf 228 kb) You need Adobe Acrobat to read this document. If you do not have it, you can download it free from www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html Nixon Peabody LLP is one of the largest multipractice law firms in the United States, with offices in fourteen cities and more than six hundred attorneys collaborating across fifteen major practice areas. The firm's size, diversity, and state-of-the-art information systems enable it to offer a comprehensive, integrated range of legal services to individuals and organizations of all sizes in local, state, national, and international matters.
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