Court Decision: UC Must Disclose Detailed Venture Capital Fund Returns

Inside Higher Ed reports today that UC has been ordered to make public information on rates of return received from venture capital funds in which it invests.  UC has had this battle before – and lost it back in 2003.  My guess in reading the Inside Higher Ed report and the Reuters report on which it is based is that the University asked the funds not to give it more than summary information on a collective return on various funds so it could say it didn’t have the detailed info.  Or it may be that the funds told UC that it couldn’t invest with them absent an agreement not to receive the detailed info.  The court, however, seems to be saying that if UC could have the info as an investor in the funds, it must ask for it and disclose it.  So there may yet be an argument over what info UC can receive.

Assuming that UC is forced to disclose – the order is stayed until mid-January - it probably won’t be able to invest in such funds in the future.  I suspect financial types would say that result would be a Bad Thing.

Reuters gives the case ID as Superior Court in the State of California, County of Alameda, is Reuters v The Regents of the University of California, case no. RG12613664.

The Inside Higher Ed article with the link to the underlying Reuters report is at:

http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/10/24/u-california-ordered-disclose-venture-fund-returns 

I tried to track down the actual case decision but found only

http://apps.alameda.courts.ca.gov/domainweb/service?ServiceName=DomainWebService&TemplateName=jsp/complitcase.html&currBatchNbr=1&caseID=4964193&CaseNbr=RG12613664 which reveals that it was Reuters itself that filed the case against UC.  So what we have is a news agency interested in info on the venture capital funds rather than someone who wants info on UC per se.  Perhaps some legal types among our readers will be able to obtain the actual decision from some other source.