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Chic Oasis. To compound the problem, the fund's old trustees placed a lot of trust—and money—in a few individuals. At one point, Allen Click, a boyish businessman who controls the Stardust and Fremont casino-hotels in Nevada through Argent Corp., owed $146 million. He has since turned back some California and Texas properties and reduced his obligations to about $90 million. His casinos are being investigated by the Clark County (Las Vegas) district attorney and the Nevada Gaming Control Board following charges that substantial sums were skimmed from the slot machines. La Costa Land Co., which owns the La Costa, the chic California oasis where Fitzsimmons has golfed with former President Richard Nixon, owes the fund $66.6 million. According to the latest annual report almost half of these loans were classified as "uncollectible."
Equitable and the new managers must also face the unpleasant fact that the fund, which pays out about $21 million every month to 74,000 retirees, may be actuarially unsound. According to Daniel Shannon, who supervised asset management for a short period, long-term commitments to the union's 384,000 fund participant members may exceed assets by as much as $5 billion. To close the gap, says Shannon, employers must increase their contributions by 20%, to $37 a month, while the rank and filers will have to work 30 years instead of 20 to gain their maximum pensions.