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Hedge-fund honchos who normally like to pick fights were quick to back down from a confrontation with one of the nation’s biggest teachers unions.
Yesterday, the American Federation of Teachers called out 33 top money managers who it claims back efforts to eliminate public pensions while soliciting their investment dollars.
The teachers union, whose members have a combined $800 billion in retirement funds, distributed the report yesterday at a conference of institutional investment managers in Washington.
The AFT’s first target, Third Point’s Dan Loeb, was supposed to appear on a panel discussion but canceled at the last minute. Loeb came under fire for his ties to two groups — StudentsFirst and the Manhattan Institute — that the union says support abolishing defined benefit plans for public workers.
StudentsFirstNY, a chapter of the first group, came to the defense of Loeb, Paul Tudor Jones and other money managers who sit on its board. It countered that Loeb doesn’t back StudentsFirst, which has pushed to end defined-benefit plans.
“This attempt at guilt by association is factually incorrect,” the group said in a statement. “In the same way that we support educational choices for students and their families, we advocate for choices for teachers as well.
“As professionals, teachers should be empowered to choose between a properly funded portable defined-contribution plan and a properly funded defined-benefit plan for their retirement.”
None of the firms whose execs were named in the AFT report would go on the record as opposing defined-benefit pension plans or supporting groups that do, such as StudentsFirst and the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank chaired by hedge funder Paul Singer of Elliott Management.
Both are popular causes among Republican-leaning hedge-fund managers.
“It is critical that defined-benefit plans survive,” AQR Management, one of the funds on the AFT list, said in a statement. AQR founder Cliff Assness is a trustee of the Manhattan Institute.
Aside from Elliott and AQR, others on the list include: Appaloosa Management, K2 Advisors, Kingdon Capital, KKR, Pennant Capital, SAC Capital, Tiger Management and Tudor Investment.
Appaloosa founder David Tepper, who was the top-paid hedgie last year, raking in an estimated $2.2 billion, made the list because of his funding of StudentsFirst.
Tepper told The Post he worked with teachers unions in New Jersey on a reform group called B4K of New Jersey, which did not weigh in on the pension issue. StudentsFirst supported B4K.
“I’m not against teachers unions, and I don’t have a position on defined benefits,” Tepper said.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the AFT, said Loeb should have come to defend his views. “If you’re going to be aggressive as a corporate activist, you are going to have to deal with tough questions,” she said.