• Article
• Discussion
• Edit
• History

Question marks over the private equity portfolio

There is also a significant short position in these shares, with 31.8 million shares short as of June 2008, or nearly 16% of the outstanding float of the company. On ACAS normal daily volume, this equates to a short ratio of 14.9 days. There have been arguments posted in news articles and on blog sites on ACAS' valuation strategies for some of the investments they manage. One of these arguments comes from Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn, who is short these shares. The short-side argument is that most of the assets under management by ACAS are classified as "level 3" assets, meaning they are marked to model as far as quarterly or annual valuations. With over 170 portfolio investments, questions arose out of the mid-June investor's meeting about the valuations and the methodology behind them. In early May, ACAS reported an $813 million loss, primarily driven by over $997 million in accounting writedowns on the value of investments in the portfolio. This act raised a number of questions about the value of the private equity portfolio.