Wall Street Puts Retirement at Risk

Until April 2011, Patrick “Pete” Dodd, a former money manager at Liberty Life Insurance in Greenville, S.C., invested customer premiums in what he calls a “squeaky clean” portfolio: bonds backed by state governments and blue chip corporations. Then Athene Holding, a company funded by private equity firm Apollo Global Management, acquired Liberty and changed its investment strategy. Now the unit’s holdings include securities backed by subprime mortgages, time-share vacation homes, and a railroad in Kazakhstan. “When you look at the business model these guys use, where they’re substantially increasing the risk in the bond portfolio, sooner or later, in my opinion, that has to come home to roost,” says Dodd, who helped manage $4 billion before the sale to Athene.

Wall Street firms such as Apollo, Goldman Sachs Group, Harbinger Group, and Guggenheim Partners are acquiring life insurance companies that specialize in retirement savings products known as fixed annuities. They’re shaking up a staid industry with investments in everything from the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team to the kind of mortgage-backed securities that cratered during the financial crisis.