In a January 16, 2014 blogpost Parish & Company produced an analysis that suggested Intel should make a few significant changes to one of its key benefits, the retirement plan. This was followed up with a specific recommendation to top management. Here is a link to the analysis:
The analysis included recommending that hedge fund investment be made “optional,” rather than mandatory, in Intel’s profit sharing plans managed by the company. As reported in a August 30,2014 opinion column in the Oregonian by Brent Hunsberger, “Intel’s fund oversight committee decided to allow employees the option of moving company contributions into low-cost index funds beginning in January.”
See article here: Intel Pension Plan Update
Parish & Company has theorized that many hedge and private equity funds are nothing more than tax deduction pyramid schemes, given that they receive most of their funding from tax exempt pensions, both public and private, and endowments and are using creative accounting to move unusable tax deductions belonging to these tax exempt investors to themselves.
Investors should be particularly concerned about interaction with hedge and private equity firms because such firms are structured as partnerships and although the partnership structure is very flexible and ideal in many cases, once tax exempt investors are introduced, especially if such investors often account for more than 90 percent of a funds assets, the possibility of particularly creative accounting increases.
It is notably how dramatically superior Intel’s corporate governance system is to most leading corporations. When an idea makes sense, whether generated internally or externally, they act.
