Latest news with #PetePeterson
Malaysian Reserve
02-06-2025
- Business
- Malaysian Reserve
Center for California Real Estate Hosts Expert Sandbox to Address Homeowners Insurance Crisis
SACRAMENTO, Calif., June 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — As California faces mounting challenges in its homeowners insurance market, the Center for California Real Estate (CCRE) brought together a distinguished group of expert leaders today for a groundbreaking event aimed at identifying actionable solutions to one of the state's most urgent issues. This exclusive sandbox event convened nearly two dozen experts from the insurance industry, academia, government, and consumer advocacy for a candid, cross-sector dialogue. With homeowners across the state grappling with shrinking coverage options and soaring premiums, the event offered a rare opportunity for collaborative problem-solving at a critical moment. 'We're proud to host this vital conversation and deeply grateful to the experts lending their time and insight,' said Pete Peterson, Dean of Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy, who served as moderator. 'This is about cutting through the rhetoric and building forward-thinking, practical and sustainable solutions that protect California families and communities.' Participants engaged in a facilitated discussion focused on developing both short- and long-term strategies to expand insurance availability, improve affordability, and ensure the sustainability of California's insurance market amid escalating climate and economic risks. Key themes discussed include regulatory and policy innovation; reform of the California FAIR Plan and wildfire mitigation strategies. Panelists also reviewed comparative models from other states and countries for actionable insights and best practices. The insights and ideas generated during the session will be synthesized into a formal report to inform policymakers, industry stakeholders, and the broader public. This report will serve as a roadmap for driving meaningful progress and shaping a more resilient future for California homeowners. The report is anticipated for release this summer. The sandbox event follows two prior expert panel discussions hosted by the Center for California Real Estate around the evolving insurance market crisis in the past year. To learn more about those events and other industry-leading CCRE programs visit About the Center for California Real Estate The Center for California Real Estate (CCRE), an institute of the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® (C.A.R.), advances knowledge and research by collaborating with varied partners, spurs innovative thinking about key issues facing California and the real estate industry, and extends C.A.R.'s influence via intellectual engagement with different audiences, diverse stakeholders and new external partners. CCRE serves as a nexus for multi-disciplinary thinking aimed at solving some of the state's most challenging issues. Bringing together key experts from a variety of fields — from academics and policymakers to industry leaders — CCRE produces new knowledge and serves as a key resource about housing issues for all C.A.R. members, external entities, the media and the public. About the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®Leading the way…® in California real estate for nearly 120 years, the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® ( is one of the largest state trade organizations in the United States with 200,000 members dedicated to the advancement of professionalism in real estate. C.A.R. is headquartered in Los Angeles.
Forbes
10-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
In Targeting Carried Interest, Republicans Sadly Only See The Success
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 18: (EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE)Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman as he ... More visits "Maria Bartiromo's Wall Street" at Fox Business Network Studios on September 18, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by) It's easy to forget that Blackstone Group co-founder Stephen Schwarzman didn't start out as a private equity investor. Private equity is what he and co-founder Pete Peterson (1926-2018) migrated to after successful investment banking careers. In private equity, they saw that 'you could really improve the companies you bought.' What brought Schwarzman and Peterson to private equity rates serious thought as President Trump encourages House Republicans to raise taxes on carried interest. The higher taxes would penalize performance, which means they would in effect raise the cost of going into the proverbial burning building to save it. That's what private equity investors not infrequently do when they put investor capital to work. See again why Schwarzman got into private equity in the first place. As opposed to raising a fund for him and Peterson to invest in blue chip corporations, they would find the businesses in trouble, the ones on fire in a figurative sense, and that the typical investor had given up on. They would improve businesses that were at times at death's door, and they would be compensated for reviving businesses not expected to make it. Which is a long way of saying that carried interest is the opposite of income exactly because carried interest is so hard to attain in the first place. Translated, 'carried interest' is much more than a performance-based fee, it's a performance-based fee that rewards private equity managers for doing the dirty work of investing, of fixing what appears unfixable to most. It's what is paid out to the manager of a private equity fund after the manager has compensated investors in their fund at a pre-set rate. In other words, if private equity investors succeed in achieving returns agreed to in advance for investors based on successful investments made in businesses that aren't blue chip, carried interest is their compensation for doing so. Yet as you're reading this, Trump and Republicans are contemplating raising the tax on carried interest. They see the earnings of private equity managers, and plainly view them as an easy source of abundant tax revenues. What they miss is that the attainment of the carried interest they're so eager to tax at higher rates is anything but easy. Evidence supporting this claim can be found in occasionally enormous returns paid out as 'carried interest.' Put another way, if it were easy to buy ailing companies before turning them around, then carried interest would reflect the previous truth via reduced payouts. Carried interest is high in the rare instance that it's achieved precisely because it's so difficult to achieve. Trump and the Republicans would be wise to contemplate this truth before taxing the bright, shiny object. The simple, crucial truth is that capital goes where it's treated well. Which means if Republicans raise the tax on extraordinarily difficult to achieve carried interest, the marginal cost of for private equity investors to enter the proverbial burning building will rise. Seriously, why risk not just capital but enormous amounts of time and energy for activity that members of Congress are contemplating taxing as typical – and yes – ordinary income? Schwarzman answers the above question. As he noted in his incomparable memoir, What It Takes, 'Once you succeed, people only see the success.' It's so true, but it's also so sad. Formerly the party that cheered economic achievement and its myriad societal benefits, the Republicans have become the party that sees success as just another thing to tax.
