title: “Money Talks” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-23” author: “Jessie Jackson”
title: “Money Talks” ShowToc: true date: “2023-02-01” author: “Richard Combs”
title: “Money Talks” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-27” author: “Latonya Dickerson”
What a fan spends: typically, $5 to $10 at the concession stand.
Average player’s salary in 1994: $1.2 million, which buys an awful lot of beer and hot dogs.
Revenues given to players: now 58%, but team owners want to cap it at 50%.
Average gate receipts per game: for the Twins, $257,447; for the Yankees, it’s $430,000.
The average crowd: the Rockies lead the field with 58,000, even though they’ve won less than half their games.
Payroll: the Padres’ is $15.5 million; the Braves, last year’s NL champs, shell out $52.1 million.
Local television and radio revenues: for the great young Indians team, it’s only $4.5 million.
title: “Money Talks” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-14” author: “Richard Cannon”
Democrat Bill Brewster of Oklahoma: 826,800
Republican William Zeliff of New Hampshire: $24.800
Republican Steven Schiff of New Mexico: $18,100
Democrat Gene Taylor of Mississippi: $17,300
Democrat Robert Wise of West Virginia: 812,900
Democrat Karen Thurman of Florida: $12,400
Republican John Mica of Florida: $11,900
SOURCE: SUNSHINE PRESS
title: “Money Talks” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-25” author: “Caroline White”
title: “Money Talks” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-22” author: “Rickie Shackelford”
Last week, New York, California, and North Carolina demanded that rigid rules, including the severing of any links between compensation for analysts and investment bankers, be adopted by any investment firms that hope to do business with them in the future. That’s likely to be most firms, since the states represent more than $220 billion in PENSION FUND (yes) investments between them (plus an additional $250 billion if California Treasurer Philip Angelides can convince the country’s first and third largest pension funds: the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, CalPERS, and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, on whose boards he serves, to follow suit).
New York Comptroller H. Carl McCall then turned his sights onto Corporate America, announcing that he would lead a shareholder lawsuit against WorldCom and its former accounting firm-you guessed it-Arthur Andersen. New York’s pension fund lost about $300 million from its investment in WorldCom stock, its largest loss ever. McCall, who is also running for governor, has been an outspoken proponent for reform. He has also led shareholder suits against Chubb, Raytheon, Global Crossing and Cendant, the latter resulting in the largest such settlement ever. NEWSWEEK’s Jennifer Barrett spoke with McCall about his efforts to reform Wall Street and Corporate America by using his leverage as sole trustee of the nation’s second-largest pension fund.
H. Carl McCall: What we are trying to do is create a sense of competition in the marketplace so that firms that want to do business with us-and most firms do want to do business with us-will become creative in showing us what they are doing to provide the kind of appropriate oversight and discipline so that they can attract investments. The message to the marketplace is: ‘Show us.’ We want them to show us that they are taking steps in whatever way they think appropriate to assure us that we won’t have the kind of corporate fraud that we’ve experienced. I think that is a very good thing.
We have a crisis of confidence that can have a very negative impact on the stock market and, therefore, on the economy. And we have got to do everything possible to restore that confidence. We think that other investment banks should also adopt those principles (agreed to by Merrill Lynch in the settlement) to eliminate the conflict between analysts and bankers. And we called upon all our money managers to give us assurances that as they look at companies in which they will invest, that they are looking at the corporate governance principles to determine if those companies are really providing oversight of their corporate behavior and financial management. We are trying to demonstrate to the investing public that steps are being taken to change the culture. I’ve been trying to do that on a number of fronts for awhile.
I don’t want to disclose that until they are ready. We are actually in the process of setting up meetings or conference calls among some of them so that we are sure everyone is on board and they understand exactly what we’d like to do. What I like about this is that we are creating a situation where some other pension funds may come up with things that we haven’t thought of yet. Someone else who supported this effort but couldn’t be there Monday is Denise Nappier, the treasurer and sole trustee of the Connecticut pension fund. A number of others have agreed to join us but they will be announced later.
It was clear after the [New York] Attorney General’s agreement that we should go forward. We had discussions with California and other pension funds and came to a point where we were ready to go. There was some consideration of waiting until we had another 10 pension funds or so in line but we thought, given our size, that we should get it started and we believed others would follow. And we have indeed received indications that a number of other pension funds are willing to join us.
I don’t know. I hope so. But even if you get half of them, it develops the kind of momentum and has the kind of leverage we’re looking for.
It’s a little early to tell. The letters were sent out on Monday. But we had discussions with some firms before we sent the letters out and they understood that if these are the new rules, then fine. The bottom line is: they want capital. If this is the way you acquire it, then all right, they’ll play by these rules.
I didn’t hear that. It’s kind of late for that. Right now, I just want to see whatever action needs to be taken against him and others because of the terrible damage they have done to the marketplace.
WorldCom represents the biggest single loss that we’ve ever experienced in our pension fund-a loss in excess of $300 million. The California treasurer indicated that his state’s pension fund lost $800 million. This is probably the largest corporate fraud we have ever seen. It certainly further undermines investor confidence. My suit is an attempt to recover whatever assets we can. This is not the first time I’ve done this. I was also the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against Cendant and there we were awarded the largest judgment ever in a class action suit.
About $4.3 billion.
I don’t know. Our effort is just to recover whatever we can to reduce the size of the loss. We want as much as is possible.
That’s absurd. The things that I’m doing are an extension of the things I’ve been doing for the nine years I’ve been controller. I filed the first class-action lawsuit against Cendant, a company that was defrauding us, about five years ago and I wasn’t running for anything then. That’s just a necessary step you have to take sometimes to try and recover your assets. I would be darelict if I wasn’t doing these things to protect the assets. I am the largest single investor in America, according to Fortune magazine, so I have a responsibility to do whatever I can to protect the assets of the pension fund.
I’ve taken a number of other actions over the last year. As a board member of the New York Stock Exchange, I co-chaired the special committee that came up with new rules [for companies who wish to be listed on the exchange] and I did that with the other members-that was hardly political.
The fact is that they were selected because of their performance and their records. They were the lawyers that represented us successfully in the Cendant suit-the most successful class-action suit ever. Why would you not go with the people who have such a successful record?
I’m not aware of that. The point is, I have a responsibility not only to protect the assets of the pension fund but I have also played a leadership role among institutional investors both as someone who has invested wisely and prudently and as someone who has provided leadership across the nation to make sure that the investments we make are sound and in well-governed companies. I’m very proud of my record.
Now I am responding to a very serious crisis. It’s a crisis of confidence but it’s also a crisis in terms of upholding very critical American values. The idea of honesty and integrity in the marketplace is not just an issue for the marketplace but for out country. These are bedrock principles that we believe in. Protecting and upholding these values is what I’ve been elected to do and I’m not going to let some petty criticism stop me.
