createpositivechange

Tag: Angelo Mozilo

  • Sec Charges Mozilo and 2 Other Former Countrywide Execs

    This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.

  • IndyMac’s Michael Perry has the toughest job in America

    To say IndyMac CEO Michael Perry is in a tough spot is an understatement. He might be on a mission impossible.

    Hint: Click in map to explore connections    Story continues below interactive map 

    MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.
    See large version of map  |  See full screen version of map  |  Put this map on your blog

    Consider just a few of the recent headlines about his California-based company, caught in the mortgage meltdown:

    “IndyMac Faces Bank ‘Run’”

    “IndyMac Begins Dismantling Business”

    “Analysts have zero hopes for IndyMac”

    “IndyMac Bancorp shares dip; analyst sets $0 target”

    Tom Petruno, a blogger for the Los Angeles Times, does find one saving grace. IndyMac is offering a yield “bonanza” on CDs as it tries to hang onto deposits.

    This week, IndyMac said it was cutting its work force in half as it tries to salvage itself.

    IndyMac started doing business in 1985 as a unit of Countrywide Financial, which was recently purchased by Bank of America. Former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo recruited Perry to head IndyMac and said Perry was “like my son.”

    As the mortgage mess initially unfolded, IndyMac tried to build market share by expanding while others in the troubled industry shrank. But that strategy failed.

    Through the past difficult year, the company’s board of directors has remained stable. Most of the directors of IndyMac Bancorp, including former pro football quarterback Pat Haden, are also directors of its banking unit, IndyMac Bank.

    Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter

  • Princeton, donors’ family battle over $880 million

    In 1961, A&P supermarket heir Marie Robertson and her husband, Charles, gave $35 million in stock to Princeton University for its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

    Today, the gift is worth more than $880 million.

    But the university and the descendants of the couple have spent millions in legal costs in a years-long fight over how the money should be used.

    A New Jersey judge’s decision last week that the dispute should go to trial has drawn nervous attention from college administrations across the country. The New York Times has called it “one of the largest lawsuits ever filed exploring how closely colleges must adhere to the original intent of donors.”

    The Robertsons’ children – Anne R. Meier, Katherine Ernst and William Robertson – maintain that the donation was meant to help prepare graduate students for careers in federal government, particularly in foreign and international affairs. They filed suit against the university in 2002, claiming that Princeton had failed to adhere to their parents’ instructions and had spent the money for other uses.

    The suit also charges that Princeton took control of the foundation set up to administer the gift, and commingled its funds with the university endowment.

    Princeton officials respond that the Robertson offspring are trying to overturn the structure set up by the original grant, and use the money for their own purposes.

    Both the university and the Robertsons have launched web sites about the suit. And both sides say they expect to win at trial.

    Regardless of the outcome, colleges are likely to pay much closer attention to the restrictions that often come with major gifts.

  • America’s ruling families

    We’ve come to expect political dynasties. They’re a fact of life in the U.S., perhaps even more than royal succession is in the modern UK.

    The 2008 presidential campaign is the first since 1952 without a sitting president or vice president. An entire generation has grown up thinking the race for the White House requires the presence of a Bush or a Clinton.

    Even beyond the obvious – the Bushes, Kennedys, Rockefellers, Roosevelts and Adamses – many American clans have passed the political baton from one generation to the next.

    In recent decades, Hendrik Hertzberg writes in the New Yorker, the “dynastic dynamic” has accelerated.

    The presidential field includes not only Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of a former president, but Mitt Romney, son of a former governor of Michigan. Hertzberg notes that there are currently five U.S. senators whose fathers preceded them in the Senate. A prominent example in the House is Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose father was a member of Congress and the mayor of Baltimore.

    Such connections yield intriguing Muckety maps. One of our favorites was created by the marriage of Howard Baker and Nancy Kassebaum, which linked not only their separate Senate careers, but the legacy of Kassebaum’s father, former Kansas Gov. Alf Landon, and Baker’s former father-in-law, Sen. Everett Dirksen.

    Political dynasties tend to overlap with the business and media spheres. (Think Maria Shriver.) After Louisiana Congressman Hale Boggs died in an airplane crash, he was succeeded by his wife, Lindy. One daughter, Barbara Boggs Sigmund, was mayor of Princeton, N.J., before dying of cancer. Another, Cokie Roberts, is a correspondent for ABC and NPR, and the wife of journalist Steven Roberts. A son, Thomas Hale Boggs Jr., is a powerful Washington lobbyist.

    Offspring of the powerful can learn from their parents’ example and their parents’ mistakes. Or can they choose not to learn at all. Hertzberg’s column closes with an observation on George W. Bush:

    “Bush’s failure to learn much of anything for the past six years suggests a deficit of character, not of experience; his unwillingness to employ his father’s skills and advice on behalf of the nation shows a disrespectful disregard for a dynast’s biggest advantage. He has given both freshness and family a bad name.”

  • Kay Bailey Hutchison Protects Oil Interests

    This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.

  • Colbert Vote Skyrockets

    This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.

  • Focus is on Nyc Charter Schools

    This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.

  • The Real Dirty Sexy Money

    This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.

  • Cablevision’s James Dolan has string of losses

    As the chairman of Madison Square Garden, the company that owns the hapless New York Knicks, James L. Dolan should have already known a lot about losing.

    But Dolan, 51, who is also a blues/rock singer, has learned even more about embarrassing defeats during the last few weeks.

    Already vilified in the New York press as a rich kid whose dad gave him the Knicks as a plaything, Dolan is now depicted as a boss who tolerates bad behavior and bad language in the office.

    In addition, a Dolan family plan to make Cablevision Systems Corp. a private company has been rejected by shareholders.

    Cablevision, a dominant player in the New York City area, owns Madison Square Garden, which, in turn, owns the Knicks, the MSG Network, hockey’s New York Rangers, the New York Liberty of the Womens National Basketball Association and Radio City Music Hall.

    All in all, Dolan may be finding new wisdom in the first lines of one of his bands’ songs: “Who told you life would be easy? Who said you would smile every day?”

    On Oct. 2, a federal jury in Manhattan found that Madison Square Garden and Knicks coach Isiah Thomas had sexually discriminated against one of its executives.

    The verdict came after a trial that made the Knicks front office seem like a locker room where boys were, alas, boys.

    The Garden was ordered to pay $8.6 million to the executive, Anucha Browne Sanders. The jury found that the company had created a hostile work environment and that it fired Browne Sanders in retaliation for her complaints about inappropriate language and advances.

    The jury ordered Dolan, president and chief executive officer of Cablevision Systems, to pay Browne Sanders $3 million for the retaliatory firing.

    His father, Charles F. Dolan, the founder of HBO, is Cablevision’s chairman and founder.

    Several Dolan family members also serve on the company’s board. Among them is Lawrence Dolan, Charles’ brother and the owner of the Cleveland Indians.

    On Wednesday, shareholders rejected a $10.6 billion bid by the Dolan family to take Cablevision private. The Dolans had offered $36.26 a share. Some major shareholders said the price was too low.

    Charles and James Dolan, who have sometimes feuded, put the best face they could on the rejection, saying in a joint press release:

    “We see today’s outcome as a vote of confidence in the prospects of Cablevision, its management team, its 20,000 employees and the industry’s future.”

    James Dolan’s total compensation for 2006 was $8.71 million, Forbes magazine reported.

    Some of his earnings, over $300,000, have gone to political candidates, mostly Democrats. This year he has given to the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

    Dolan is also the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of JD & the Straight Shot.

    According the band’s website, mixing business and music gives Dolan “a sense of balance in his life.”

    The Rocky Mountain News in Denver described the band’s first album, as getting “grudgingly good reviews.”

    The grudging praise sometimes comes from Knicks fans. The team has not had a winning season since 2000-2001, despite a high payroll.

    After 2005-2006 losing season, the club found itself in a soap opera feud with its coach of one year, Larry Brown. The melodrama ended with the Knicks buying out Brown’s contract for $18.5 million.

    Last season, the team won 33 games and lost 49, certainly enough to make Dolan sing the blues.

  • The Inherent Muckety of Times Wedding Announcements

    This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.