Tag Archives: California State Teachers’ Retirement System

Apple and Tools for Parental Control

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 JANA Partners – one of Apple Inc.’s biggest investors – earlier this year wrote to the multinational technology company about technology and children safety.  Apple Inc. only found out about JANA’s (and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) that co-wrote the letter request) sentiments, before the letter was publicized.

Apple Inc. claimed the letter was not a result of prior talks that had taken place with either JANA or CalSTRS but nonetheless immediately responded with a promise to upgrade its current child safety features – something it has been offering since 2008.

The letter publicly reported on the Think Differently About Kids website, included the following statement:

“In partnership with experts including Dr. Michael Rich, founding director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School Teaching Hospital and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and Professor Jean M. Twenge, psychologist at San Diego State University and author of the book iGen, we have reviewed the evidence and we believe there is a clear need for Apple to offer parents more choices and tools to help them ensure that young consumers are using your products in an optimal manner.”

The letter also offered initial steps for Apple to follow.

Cerberus Looking for Buyer for Gunmaker Bushmaster

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Investors in Cerberus Capital Management LP are pressuring the investment firm to unload their shares of Freedom Group, maker of the Bushmaster rifle, the weapon used to massacre 20 children and 6 adults in a Newtown elementary school last December.

The University of California stated that they do not want to be owners of companies that make weapons. The institution has an indirect investment of $1 million in Bushmaster via their much larger investment in a Cerberus private equity fund.

“We do not want to have investments in companies that sell, manufacturer or distribute firearms,” spokeswoman Dianne Klein said on Tuesday.

Other huge investors have stakes in Cerberus funds, including some of the country’s largest pension funds. The California State Teachers’ Retirement System announced after the Sandy Hook murders that it was going to review its holdings with Cerberus.

Not long after the shootings Cerberus said they were looking for a buyer for the Freedom Group. They hired an investment bank, Lazard Ltd. to help sell the company. Banking sources have said that major Wall Street companies are refusing to finance a bid for the Freedom Group.

Stephen Feinberg, founder and senior partner at Cerberus may bid for Bushmaster himself, together with a consortium of other senior partners from Cerberus. The move is considered a “stalking horse” offer which is a way to induce competition for the purchase of the Freedom Group, which is a collection of merged gun companies, including Bushmaster, which Cerberus bought in 2006. Freedom Group’s sales rose by 20 percent to $931.9 million in 2012.