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All directorships are not alike. Just ask Henry Cisneros.

The former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development makes a lot more money on the board of Countrywide Financial, the giant mortgage lender, but he must be having more fun at Live Nation, the concert promoter and entertainment company. Especially now during the mortgage meltdown.

Countrywide is cutting jobs, writing off bad loans, and dealing with an SEC inquiry into stock sales by CEO Angelo Mozilo. Some are even calling for a much wider probe of the company and its practices.

At Live Nation, meanwhile, the big news is Madonna’s $120 million concert and promotion deal.

Sure, at Countrywide board meetings, Cisneros gets to kick back with former NBA great Oscar Robertson, the Big O, who is a fellow director. But at Live Nation, Cisneros’s fiduciary responsibility extends to Madonna, who was given $25 million in stock.

Cisneros earned compensation worth $358,966 at Countrywide last year and $110,721 at Live Nation, according to company filings.

In September, the San Antonio Express-News noted that Cisneros had sold 5,000 shares of Countrywide for $200,462 (about $40 a share) in May and quoted him saying he was holding onto the rest of his stock to show his “support for the company.” Countrywide shares closed at about $16.50 Thursday.

In 2000, Cisneros helped form a company, now called CityView, which focuses on urban housing. The former president of Univision Communications and a former mayor of San Antonio, Cisneros currently sits on the board of the Broad Foundation.

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While CEO Erik Prince has been the public face of Blackwater USA during recent weeks of intense government and media scrutiny, the often outspoken Cofer Black, company vice chairman, has kept out of the limelight.

Black, one of the nation’s eminent authorities on combatting terrorism, is deeply involved in the network of Blackwater-related companies. He also serves as chairman of Total Intelligence Solutions and is CEO of Black Group, LLC.

With more than 30 years of service in the Central Intelligence Agency, Black is known as a superspy. He helped catch the international terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as \”Carlos the Jackal\” and in 1999, was named head of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center.

That role put him in the hot seat on Sept. 11, 2001. Black would later tell the 9/11 Commission that he had lacked the resources to effectively combat the wordwide terrorist threat.

An August 2007 report by the CIA’s inspector general said bureaucratic breakdowns at the agency enabled the 9-11 hijackers to evade authorities and complete the attacks. The report criticized Black by title, but not by name.

Black left the State Department in November 2004. Three months later, he joined Blackwater.

He also serves as senior adviser for counterterrorism and national security issues with the Mitt Romney presidential campaign. Romney declined to comment about Blackwater after company guards shot and killed at least 11 Iraq civilians in September.

Although Black brings a wealth of experience and connections to Blackwater, his persona evidently does not match the image that the company is now trying to project.

Prince is young and clean-cut, while Black is middle-aged, jowly and gray. Prince, a former Navy SEAL, has a ramrod military bearing. Black is a rather frumpy bureaucrat.

After seeking advice from public relations experts at Burson-Marsteller, Prince provided cool, professional testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He did a media blitz that included interviews with 60 Minutes, Wolf Blitzer, Charlie Rose and Newsweek.

Black’s most publicized appearance in recent weeks was a speech at the Texas Tech International Cultural Center in Lubbock, Texas.

\”As you know, my company as been in the news a little bit,\” he said then, according to a report in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

Black, on the other hand, seems to be doing his best to stay out of the news.

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The script has changed.

Pointing to Al Gore, parents throughout the country may be telling their children that if they study hard, lead good lives and not become president they could be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Gore is the co-winner of this year’s Peace Prize for sounding the alarm on global warming. He shares the prize with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

While Gore may have fashioned a grand comeback, a look at the post-defeat careers of other recent unsuccessful presidential wannabes shows that there can be life, a good life at that, after losing. All have found things to do, sometimes lucrative things, and many have held elective office, most often in the U.S. Senate.

And if Gore should ever want to try again for the presidency, he can take hope from Richard Nixon, a true comeback artist.

Like Gore, Nixon served as vice president for eight years.

Like Gore, he lost a close race for the presidency.

And then, eight years later, Nixon was elected president.

But a look at the list of presidential losers from the major parties since 1960 shows that Gore has many models to follow.

2004: John Kerry, Democrat. After losing to George H.W. Bush, he has remained in the U.S. Senate. First elected to that body in 1984, he won a fourth term in 2002.

2000: Al Gore, Democrat. He won the popular vote, but lost the electoral vote to George W. Bush. Since losing, he has taught journalism in college, served on corporate boards (Apple) and starred in the award-winning documentary on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth.

1996: Bob Dole, Republican. He gave up his seat in the Senate to concentrate on the presidential race, which he lost to Bill Clinton, a Democrat. After his defeat, Dole has practiced law and given speeches. He has been a spokesperson for various products and causes and a TV commentator.

1992: George H.W. Bush, Republican. Vice president under Ronald Reagan, he served one term as president and lost a re-election bid to Clinton. Since leaving the presidency, he has raised money for various causes and, like Clinton, given many speeches.

1988: Michael Dukakis, Democrat. Governor of Massachusetts when he lost to Bush, he served the final two years of his third term. Since then he has been a professor of political science at Northeastern University and a visiting professor at UCLA. He also served on the board of directors of Amtrak.

1984: Walter Mondale, Democrat. A former senator from Minnesota and a former vice president, he lost to President Ronald Reagan. Since losing, he has practiced law and taught. He was ambassador to Japan from 1993 to 1996. He has remained active in party politics and in 2002 stood in for Paul Wellstone on the ballot in Minnesota after Wellstone died in a plane crash just 11 days before the election.

1980: Jimmy Carter, Democrat. After losing his bid for re-election, he has devoted himself to humanitarian and diplomatic causes. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1976: Gerald Ford, Republican. He served a little more than two years as president after Nixon’s resignation. After losing to Carter, Ford retired, moved to California, served on corporate boards and gave speeches. He died in 2006.

1972: George McGovern, Democrat. After losing to Nixon, he remained in the Senate until January 1981. From 1998 to 2001, he was the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. agencies for food and agriculture in Rome. In 2001, he was named a U.N. global ambassador on world hunger.

1968: Hubert H. Humphrey, Democrat. After losing to Nixon. He was elected to the Senate from Minnesota in 1970, returning to a body in which he had served for 16 years. He died in 1978 while in office.

1964: Barry Goldwater, Republican. He was finishing his second six-year term in the Senate in 1964 and did not seek re-election. After losing to Lyndon Johnson, he ran for the Senate from Arizona again in 1968 and won the first of three more terms. He died in 1998.

1960: Richard Nixon, Republican. He lost to John F. Kennedy after serving eight years as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower. He was elected president in 1968, re-elected in 1972 and resigned in 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal. He died in 1994.

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America’s newest quarter-billionaire, who just completed one of the largest corporate buyout deals in history, plans to relax a bit for the next few months.

Among John Wilder’s main ambitions in that timespan are driving coast-to-coast, reading the Bible cover to cover, riding a camel, camping with his sons, and learning how to ballroom dance.

The former chairman and CEO of TXU is now technically unemployed. But he personally walked away with more than $270 million from the $32 billion private equity buyout, completed last week.

TXU, now called Energy Future Holdings Corp., is owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and TPG, formerly Texas Pacific Group.

“I’ve never regretted for a moment my decision to join TXU,” Wilder wrote in a farewell letter to employees at the completion of the deal. He joined the company in 2004 and is credited with resurrecting the financial fortunes of the Texas power giant.

His three-page letter, posted on DallasNews.com, is a curious mix. At times it reads like an Oscar acceptance speech, self-motivational tome, position-wanted advertisement and corporate morale booster.

“I am convinced that you are set to lead the power industry into a momentous new era,” he writes to those he left behind.

He thanks those who helped him and advises his former employees to prepare their own “life lists” of things to do before they die. Thus, his desire to ride a camel and dance.

He says he is going to spend some time with his charity, the John and Susan Wilder Foundation. He may join a corporate board or two. And, when he’s ready, he might go back to work in the energy industry.

“I’ll consider CEO jobs at company turnarounds as well as chairman jobs, advisory boards, private investing, energy technology startups, global liquefied natural gas jobs,” he writes. “All I’m really looking for is a professional opportunity where I can use my knowledge and contribute.”

His Muckety Map (above) indicates he shouldn’t have any trouble finding something suitable.

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Portfolio has an excellent story this month detailing Chiquita Brands‘ illicit payments to Colombian paramilitary groups responsible for killing thousands of people.

No wonder there was some outrage when a U.S. court recently approved a deal that punished Chiquita with only a fine.

“For $25 million those who financed a mass massacre of Colombians were able to purchase impunity,” Colombia Interior Minister Carlos Holguin told the Associated Press.

Between 1997 and 2004, Chiquita gave $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or A.U.C. Chiquita called it extortion, saying it felt compelled to make the payments. Otherwise, its workers could have been killed.

Portfolio’s Kevin Gray writes that Chiquita’s full board of directors wasn’t informed of the payments until April 2003. Former CEO Cyrus Freidheim decided to continue them, but by February 2004 new CEO Fernando Aguirre had stopped them.

Aguirre joined Chiquita in January 2004 from Procter & Gamble. Both companies are based in Cincinnati.

This is not the Chiquita of billionaire financier Carl Lindner. His control ended when the company emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002. Each of Chiquita’s eight directors is new since then, according to company filings.

Overseas Shipholding Group CEO Morten Arntzen, private investor Robert Fisher, former P&G CEO Durk Jager and S.C. Johnson & Son executive Steven Stanbrook joined the board in 2002.

Jaime Serra, former Mexico secretary of finance, joined in 2003, and Aguirre the following year. Clare Hasler, executive director of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Service, joined in 2005. Howard Barker Jr., former partner at KMPG, joined last month.

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“Don’t tase me, bro!” immediately entered the national lexicon when university police in Florida zapped a student at a John Kerry speech last month. The phrase already has its own entry in Wikipedia and is well on its way to becoming part of the “permanent cultural lexicon,” Wired says.

But the incident also substantially raised the profile of Taser International, makers of the police zappers. Company stock is skyrocketing on new orders and it has fended off dozens of lawsuits. On Monday, Taser reported a doubling of its third-quarter sales. Its shares surged nearly 11 percent Tuesday. The stock is trading at its highest level in two years.

In 2006, only 20% of U.S. domestic law enforcement agents carried Taser stun guns; in 2007, that figure is expected to hit 30%, according to an analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital.

This is a far better picture for Taser International than two years ago, when it was hit with embarrassing revelations about insider stock sales and investigations by the SEC and the Arizona attorney general. (The investigations ultimately resulted in no charges against the company.)

Forbes reported that several members of the founding Smith family and board members of Taser sold large amounts of stock just before the price collapsed in early 2005. Phillips W. Smith retired as chairman and sold $40.8 million worth of holdings. His sons Patrick and Thomas Smith sold $23 million and $17.7 million of Taser stock respectively, totaling 22% of their combined common stock holdings.

The company also was stung in 2004 after President Bush appointed Bernard Kerik, a company director, to run the Homeland Security Department. Kerik made $6.2 million exercising stock options from Taser, which had contracts with Homeland Security and New York City. Taser was one of many companies that received contracts through Kerik’s relationship with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, after he left his job as New York City police commissioner in 2001. Kerik subsequently withdrew his name from consideration as Homeland Security secretary.

There have been an estimated 84 deaths associated with Tasers but the Scottsdale, Ariz., company has been aggressive in defending itself in court. Taser announced on its web site this month the 59th time a wrongful death or injury lawsuit had been dismissed or judged in favor of Taser.

On Tuesday, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana dismissed a lawsuit against Taser. In that case, the family of a 55-year-old man, who was intoxicated, didn’t show why he went into cardiac arrest when he was shocked by a Taser.

On the web
Taser’s Stunning Comeback – Forbes

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