Tag: Donaldson

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Subject: Hamilton E. James

People, Subject of Interest

Hamilton Evans “Tony” James  (born February 3, 1951) is an American billionaire businessman, and the executive vice chairman of The Blackstone Group, a New York-based global asset management firm, having previously been president and chief operating officer. James has been chairman of Costco since August 2017.

In 1975, James joined investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and became head of its global M&A group in 1982. He founded DLJ Merchant Banking, Inc in 1985. In 1995, James was appointed chairman of the firm’s banking group, a position he held when DLJ was acquired in 2000 by Credit Suisse First Boston, and was a member of its board of directors. At CSFB, James served on the executive board and as chairman of global investment banking and private equity. A 2007 Wall Street Journal article credited James with leading the acquisition process, on behalf of DLJ. Continue reading “Subject: Hamilton E. James”

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Subject: William H. Donaldson

People, Subject of Interest

William Henry Donaldson (born June 2, 1931) was the 27th Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), serving from February 2003 to June 2005. He served as Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs in the Nixon Administration, as a special adviser to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, Chairman and CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, and Chairman, President and CEO of Aetna.[1] Donaldson founded Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette..

He began his career at G. H. Walker & Co., a banking and brokerage firm.

Donaldson returned to Yale and founded the Yale School of Management, where he served as dean and professor of management studies. Donaldson had a vision of Yale’s management program forming students who could easily and seamlessly flow between public and private management roles. This was a binary vision, emphasizing private for profit corporations and government leadership positions, while ignoring leadership in various not-for-profit, non-governmental organizations. His grand visions of balanced approaches were shattered when the first graduating class almost all took positions in business, almost none taking jobs with government. The main building of the school continues to display a life-size portrait of him and the premier leadership award at Yale School of Management is called “Donaldson Fellows”. He also served in the United States Marine Corps Continue reading “Subject: William H. Donaldson”

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Letter: To SEC from Dave Patch on Tick Test

Letter

January 12, 2007

Ms. Nancy M. Moms Securities and Exchange Commission 100F Street, NE Washington D. C., 20549-1090

As a follow-up to my previous memo regarding this proposal to eliminate the tick test/ price test, I would like to further emphasize the concerns the public has with regards to the regulations of market making activities as they pertain to this proposed and all other short sale regulations.

Continue reading “Letter: To SEC from Dave Patch on Tick Test”

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Paper: The Deep Capture Story by Mark Mitchell

Paper

The Story of Deep Capture

By Mark Mitchell, with reporting by the Deep Capture Team

The Columbia School of Journalism is our nation’s finest. They grant the Pulitzer Prize, and their journal, The Columbia Journalism Review, is the profession’s gold standard. CJR reporters are high priests of a decaying temple, tending a flame in a land going dark. In 2006 a CJR editor (a seasoned journalist formerly with Time magazine in Asia, The Wall Street Journal Europe, and The Far Eastern Economic Review) called me to discuss suspicions he was forming about the US financial media. I gave him leads but warned, “Chasing this will take you down a rabbit hole with no bottom.” For months he pursued his story against pressure and threats he once described as, “something out of a Hollywood B movie, but unlike the movies, the evil corporations fighting the journalist are not thugs burying toxic waste, they are Wall Street and the financial media itself.” His exposé reveals a circle of corruption enclosing venerable Wall Street banks, shady offshore financiers, and suspiciously compliant reporters at The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, CNBC, and The New York Times. If you ever wonder how reporters react when a journalist investigates them (answer: like white-collar crooks they dodge interviews, lie, and hide behind lawyers), or if financial corruption interests you, then this is for you. It makes Grisham read like a book of bedtime stories, and exposes a scandal that may make Enron look like an afternoon tea.

Introduction By Patrick M. Byrne, Deep Capture Reporter

PDF (69 Pages): Deep Capture Story

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Article: Naked Short Selling – How Exposed Are Investors?

Article - Academic

Naked Short Selling: How Exposed are Investors?

James W. Christian, Robert Shapiro, John-Paul Whalen

The Houston Law Review, 10 November 2006

Regulation SHO is a start, but in order to guarantee a fair market place, the SEC must close the loopholes in Regulation SHO and institute comprehensive reforms to the clearing and settlement system. Until the SEC makes these necessary reforms and addresses the DTCC’s mismanagement of the Stock Borrow Program, investors will continue to be exposed to the manipulative potential of naked short selling.

PDF (58 Pages):  HLR Naked Short Selling 2006-11-10

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Article: Naked [Short Selling] Horror

Uncategorized

Naked Horror

Liz Moyer

Forbes, 25 August 2006

Suspicious trading last year in shares of Global Links, a small Nevada real estate holding company, was far more intense than previously thought.

Data released to Patch earlier this month had shown trade fails of 10 million shares starting in mid-April, a time when 4 million shares of Global Links were issued and outstanding.

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Article: Dismantle the SEC

Article - Media

Dismantle the SEC

Christopher Byron

New York Post cited by RGM Communications via Wayback, 3 July 2006

It looks like the Securities and Exchange Commission has finally come up with a plan for dealing with the devastating Court of Appeals decision two weeks ago that nullified the SEC’s efforts to regulate the hedge fund industry.

The strategy: Do nothing – except perhaps pout a bit and blame everything on the media.

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Article: SEC: Gone Fishin’

Article - Media

SEC: Gone Fishin’

Chris Byron

New York  Times cited by RGM Communications via Wayback, 6 March 2006

It’s good to see that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has come to its senses and that – at least for the time being – it won’t be enforcing the media subpoenas that have gotten the press so riled up.

But before anyone breaks out the pom-poms for SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, let’s remember that these wrong-headed subpoenas were 100 percent the responsibility of Cox’s own agency in the first place – and until the SEC develops better, more focused leadership, problems like those caused by these subpoenas are going to keep occurring.

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Article: Corporate reform dead; SEC chief should resign

Article - Media

Corporate reform dead; SEC chief should resign

Loren Steffy

Houston Chronicle, 1 March 2006

Corporate governance reform is dead. Its last gasp was stifled by the subpoenas issued last month by the Securities and Exchange Commission against several news organizations and writers.

Last week, Marketwatch .com columnist Herb Greenberg and Dow Jones Newswires columnist Carol Remond acknowledged receiving the subpoenas, which involved stories about Internet retailer Overstock .com.

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Article: Overgrown Hedges

Article - Media

Overgrown Hedges

Christopher Byron

New York Post cited by RGM Communications via Wayback, 26 September 2005

One of the first things any new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission does after getting the job is to clear his throat, put on his best “I mean business” scowl, and announce to the world just how tough he intends to be on the miscreants of Wall Street.

Normally, this harmless ritual lets the man taking on Washington’s most thankless job preen a bit in public before getting smacked to the canvas by a system that basically doesn’t want him to be tough at all.

But these are not normal times — and the one thing this country needs more than anything is a government that knows what it is doing and that deserves to be taken seriously by its citizens.

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Article: Faulty Regulator

Article - Media

Faulty Regulator

Christopher Byron

New York Post cited by RGM Communications via Wayback, 27 June 2005

On Thursday the Securities and Exchange Commission’s departing chairman, William Donaldson, will step down from his two-and-a-half year stint as Wall Street’s top regulator, vacating the most thankless and difficult job in the administration to make way for President Bush’s third nominee.

Though Donaldson is widely credited with having been an effective and activist-oriented SEC chairman who — among other things — pursued more high-profile corporate-fraud cases than any chairman before him, he actually initiated only one major SEC fraud probe that has led to litigation against a defendant.

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Article: The Naked Truth on Illegal Shorting

Article - Media

The Naked Truth on Illegal Shorting

Karl Thiel

The Motley Fool cited  by RGM Communications via Wayback, 24 March 2005

It’s amazing how the word “naked” can liven up a discussion. Take naked short selling, for instance. The addition of this saucy little word turns the mundane act of borrowing and selling shares of stock in hopes of buying them back later at a lower price into a raging controversy fraught with conspiracy, secret identities, public recriminations, foreign intrigue, sports team owners, and now some of the top regulators in the land.

How can one word cause so much trouble? While legal short sellers must borrow the shares they sell, naked short sellers sell shares of stock they haven’t borrowed, have no intention of borrowing, and that may not even exist. Not surprisingly, this activity is illegal and has been since the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934. But for a number of reasons, regulators have overlooked it in the past.

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