Tishman Speyer's Investors

The Tishman Speyer-Blackrock partnership that bought Manhattan's Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town apartment complexes is nearing default, the Wall Street Journal reports. What's interesting is how much government backing there was for the deal. The Journal mentions $575 million of debt and between $100 million and $200 million in equity owned by the government of Singapore, which is not a free country, $500 million owned by Calpers, the California state employee pension plan, $250 million in equity owned by the state of Florida, and $100 million in equity owned by the California state teachers retirement plan. It's another glimpse into the workings of what one might call state-pension-fund capitalism or the government-financial complex that we wrote about earlier here and here.