Citigroup

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no merri

see bak capt 6/18

SEE FIRE WALL ST FUND FF

promoted primary 4/17 dakota and xl pipeline, nat am ppl protest shareholder mtg

credit cards?

html arrogance

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3 24 mckibben 3rd act target

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heated gmail 9 26

some blame where it’s due.

Fossil fuel companies, obviously. (Truly, no clue how those executives sleep at night.) And I gave you my two cents on big ag.

Also:

Big banks: Since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, 60 banks have provided $7.9 trillion in financing to fossil fuel companies, with the top four banks alone—JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America—providing more than $1.64 trillion.

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cello arrested?

ymail 8 2 donziger

For several weeks in my hometown of New York City, increasingly large protests have descended on Citibank at its towering headquarters in lower Manhattan. Called “Summer of Heat,” these actions have forced Citi to order the arrests of almost 500 peaceful protestors.

As Citi becomes more frustrated by the direct action, many of the movement’s leaders have been detained on what appear to be bogus charges that are a central part of a corporate playbook to “criminalize” the climate movement.

For those who don’t know, without financing from banks the expansion of fossil fuels would largely grind to a halt. And of the many offending banks, Citi is probably the worst. They have put up $360 billion for fossil projects since the Paris Accords were signed in 2015. They are now the largest funder of fossil fuel expansion in the world.

greenwash?

https://www.theclimatepledge.com/content/amazonclimatepledge/us/en/Signatories/uber.html}:

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/**2022/09/**06/esg-companies-bankroll-gop-ags-the-very-officials-retaliating-against-their-climate-goals/

alex k

the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) investigation has identified more than two dozen major U.S. companies that are publicly committed to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles yet have recently donated large amounts of campaign cash to a group of Republican state attorneys general that is hyper-focused on eroding air and water regulations, promoting fossil fuel companies, and using state governments to punish companies that try to limit their climate-related risks by divesting from oil, gas, and coal.

Republican attorneys general, along with fellow GOP governors and state financial officers, are weaponizing their public offices to prevent action on climate change. Their latest efforts seek to bar companies that divest from fossil fuels or employ other ESG principles from receiving government contracts.

And yet large U.S. companies such as AT&T, Cigna, Citigroup, Lowe’s, Pfizer, T-Mobile, and UPS—all of which publicly promote their commitment to ESG—have recently funded the political prosperity of these Republican AGs.

Contradictory Takes on Climate Change

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ref report

https://www.commondreams.org/news**/2022/03**/30/despite-splashy-net-zero-vows-big-banks-dumping-trillions-fossil-fuels

despite 'Splashy' Net-Zero Vows, Big Banks Dumping Trillions Into Fossil Fuels

"With Wall Street banks leading the charge, these financial institutions are directly complicit in undermining a climate-stable future for us all."

JAKE JOHNSON

March 30, 2022

Flouting their public vows to put themselves and their clients on a path to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, the world's 60 largest private banks have provided a total of $4.6 trillion in financing for the fossil fuel industry since the Paris Agreement entered into force in 2016.

That's according to the latest edition of Banking on Climate Chaos, an annual report that tracks the banking industry's funding of oil and gas initiatives that are threatening global hopes of reining in carbon pollution and averting climate disaster.

In 2021 alone, the report finds, the world's biggest private-sector banks financed oil and gas to the tune of $742 billion. That year, the 60 banks featured in the new analysis poured $185.5 billion into the 100 companies doing the most to expand the fossil-fuel sector worldwide through offshore drilling, fracking, coal mining, liquefied natural gas infrastructure, and more.  Authored by Oil Change International, the Rainforest Action Network, the Indigenous Environmental Network, and other groups and endorsed by hundreds of organizations from around the world, the report published Wednesday spotlights the marked contrast between banks' public commitments to net-zero emissions targets and their actions, which reflect a continued stake in fossil fuel development.

The worst offenders in the banking industry, according to the report, are the U.S. financial behemoths JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America,which together accounted for 25% of all fossil fuel financing identified over the past six years.

The report highlights a number of specific projects, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline (funded by JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America), drilling in offshore Guyana (funded by JPMorgan Chase, Citi, and Bank of America), and the Line 3 Pipeline (funded by TD, Scotiabank, and the Bank of Montreal), efforts that have drawn fierce resistance from Indigenous communities.

"Indigenous peoples have long been leading the fight for the sacredness of the land, water, and Earth," Mea Johnson, divestment campaign coordinator with the Indigenous Environmental Network, said in a statement Wednesday. "Mother Earth has always given us what we need to thrive. We will not back down until our natural balance is restored and anyone helping fund the extractive destruction of our communities will be held accountable."

Alison Kirsch, research and policy manager at the Rainforest Action Network, added that "any further expansion of fossil fuels risks locking humanity into generations of climate catastrophe, yet the top fossil clients of the world's largest banks are still being showered with tens of billions of dollars even as they actively expand drilling, mining, fracking, and other fossil fuel development unabated."

"With Wall Street banks leading the charge," Kirsch added, "these financial institutions are directly complicit in undermining a climate-stable future for us all and must immediately end their support of any further fossil fuel infrastructure expansion."

The banks' financing decisions fly in the face of their own pledges to bring their policies into line with critical climate goals, such as achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a benchmark that 44 of the 60 banks profiled in the new report have backed.

"But global banks have massively supported the companies doing the most to open new oil and gas fields," notes the new report. "Banks with net-zero commitments last year... financed the top 20 upstream oil and gas expansion companies, potentially helping to lock the planet into decades of climate-warming emissions."  According to the International Energy Agency, reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 would mean ensuring "no new oil and gas fields."

Adele Shraiman, a representative for theSierra Club's Fossil-Free Finance campaign, said Wednesday that the analysis "makes it clear that banks must clean up their act and stop funding the expansion of dirty fossil fuel projects like fracked gas exports, tar sands pipelines, and offshore drilling in order to align with what the science demands and what their own commitments require."

"Despite their splashy climate pledges, big banks have largely continued with business-as-usual and actually increased their overall fossil fuel financing since the Paris Agreement," said Shraiman. "As we look ahead to shareholder season, we'll be keeping up the pressure on the banks and their investors to take these critical reforms seriously and stop bankrolling the fossil fuel industry's reckless expansion plans."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/debt-collectors-have-made-a-fortune-this-year-now-theyre-coming-for-more/

Earlier this year, the pandemic swept across the country, killing 100,000 Americans by the spring, shuttering businesses and schools, and forcing people into their homes. It was a great time to be a debt collector.

In August, Encore Capital, the largest debt buyer in the country, announced that it had doubled its previous record for earnings in a quarter. It primarily had the CARES Act to thank: The bill delivered hundreds of billions of dollars worth of stimulus checks and bulked-up unemployment benefits to Americans, while easing pressures on them by halting foreclosures, evictions and student loan payments. There was no ban on collections of old credit card bills, Encore's specialty.

At the same time, the pandemic compelled households to cut spending. Finding themselves with enough money to settle old debts, people responded to collectors' calls and letters. Debt-buying executives couldn't help marveling at their good fortune. All this created “a perfect storm from a cash perspective," the CEO of Portfolio Recovery Associates, Encore's main competitor, told Wall Street analysts.

After its record second quarter, analysts expect Encore to blow past $200 million in profit this year and reward stockholders with 40% earnings growth compared with last year. Portfolio Recovery is set for similar growth. The share prices of both have soared off their early April lows.

:{Investors didn't even show much concern when, in early September, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Encore,**saying that it had broken the terms of a consent agreement struck in 2015.:(style="background-color:#ffcc66ff"):}:**The agency had previously charged the company with “pressuring consumers with false statements and churning out lawsuits using robo-signed court documents," as it said at the time. (Ina statement, Encore said the :{CFPB}:'s recent suit was unnecessary because it had fixed the alleged problems “years ago.")

In recent months, the only real bad news for debt buyers was that local courts across the country temporarily shut down. Debt collection lawsuits provide a key source of revenue for the companies, a way to extract payment from consumers, typically low-income, who don't offer it up.

But now even that hiccup is over. After a bit of a lull in the spring, Encore and other debt buyers are back at it, filing suits by the thousands every week, according to ProPublica's analysis of state court filings.

In August alone, Encore filed about 1,000 suits in Indiana and over 2,000 suits in the metro Atlanta area. Other debt buyers jumped back in as well. In Chicago, Portfolio Recovery filed over 3,000 suits in July, while LVNV, a major debt buyer privately owned by Sherman Financial Group, filed over 2,700 suits in Maryland in August. For all these companies, ProPublica found, thevolume was well above the number they'd filed before the coronavirus arrived, in January or February of this year. No national numbers on suits exist.

In statements, the companies said they have been actively working with consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic and only sue as a last resort on a small portion of accounts.

Elizabeth A. Kersey, a spokesperson for Portfolio Recovery, said the company's hardship program “allows for the suspension of collection efforts for ninety (90) days upon notification of a hardship event." The company is currently not seeking new orders to seize debtors' wages or bank account funds, she said.

Ryan Bell, an Encore executive, said, “We have consistently and proactively communicated to consumers the various relief options we've put in place in response to COVID-19, including temporarily stopping collections." The company said it had stopped seeking orders to garnish bank accounts. It is, however, seizing wages.

Sherman Financial did not respond to requests for comment.

If Congress is unable to pass any further stimulus , unemployment is likely to remain high. In that scenario, debt buying companies and the banks that sell defaulted accounts to them expect more Americans to fall behind on their credit card bills over the coming months.

Even that scenario turns out to be rosy for the debt buyers. While good times can mean that Encore collects on more debt than it expected, bad times typically bring a glut of people suffering under loans they cannot repay. The result is that Encore can scoop up the raw materials for its profit machine — defaulted accounts — more cheaply. Or as Encore CEO Ashish Masih put it to Wall Street: The company is “particularly excited about the prospects for increased supply in the future."

“The same giant debt buyers known for fighting consumer protection laws at every turn have been raking in cash during this pandemic," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, told ProPublica. “They are now licking their chops in anticipation of profiting even more off families who have their hours further cut or can't find a job, and can't keep up with their bills or their mortgage. This is disgraceful and reinforces the need for Congress to protect consumers and small businesses from this predatory behavior."

In recent years, Encore has bought around 2 million to 3 million U.S. accounts per year, according to public filings. Last year, on average, the company paid 8.6 cents on the dollar for each account. For a typical debt of $3,142, Encore paid $271.

To earn a profit on that investment, Encore and other debt buyers pursue debtors in near perpetuity. Encore is still collecting tens of millions of dollars each year from debts it bought in 2009 or earlier. The key to that persistence is the courts.

Since the early 2000s, debt buyers have flooded local courts nationwide with suits. The companies regularly account for more than a quarter of all debt collection cases in a given jurisdiction, according to ProPublica's review of collection filings over several states.

That disproportionate presence has been particularly apparent in recent months, as the banks themselves have mostly opted to suspend filing new suits. In normal times, Capital One files far more lawsuits than other banks, in numbers similar to those filed by Encore and Portfolio Recovery. But since March, although Capital One continued to seize pay via garnishments secured before COVID-19 struck, it has largely stopped filing new suits.

ProPublica did find one exception among the major banks that commonly file a significant number of suits: Citigroup, which resumed filing suits at its normal levels in July. The bank, for instance, filed over 200 suits in Oklahoma in August, more than it had filed there in January and February combined.

In a statement, Citi spokesperson Jennifer Bombardier said the bank has a special assistance program for customers impacted by COVID-19 and that it is not seeking to garnish the bank accounts of customers it has sued. The bank also did not sell charged-off accounts to debt buyers “for up to 120 days" in the states “most impacted by COVID-19," she said....

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/citi-report-sees-16-tn-drag-on-us-economy-from-racism/

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amazonwatch 320

see divest, greenwash, hypocrisy

Last week, we released a groundbreaking report exposing five major financial institutions – JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, BlackRock, HSBC and Goldman Sachs – which continue to pour billions into oil extraction in the western Amazon despite their recently celebrated climate commitments.

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/12/10/climate-global-finance-745-billion-coal-plant-development

BlackRock, Vanguard, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chaseare among the top global financers of new coal development, according to new research presented during the United Nations climate summit in Madrid.

That research, published by the German NGO Urgewald along with BankTrack and 30 partner organizations, reveals and ranks the financial institutions sinking money into the dirtiest form of fossil fuels in the three years since the Paris Agreement was signed. The research shows hundreds of billions of dollars have flowed to 258 coal plant developers between January 2017 and September 2019 in the form of loans, investments, and underwriting. These groups clarify underwriting as the process of banks raising “investment capital for companies by issuing bonds or shares on their behalf and selling them to investors.”

“Over the past three years, financial institutions have channeled $745 billion to companies planning new coal power plants,” said Heffa Schuecking, director of Urgewald.

“Financial institutions are bringing us on a road to runaway climate change,” Urgewald’s Katrin Ganswindt added.

Over 1,000 new coal plants totaling 570 gigawatts of capacity are currently planned or “in the pipeline,” according to the new research. These projects would expand the global coal plant fleet by 28 percent.

This comes at a time when the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that coal-powered generation must decrease by 78 percent by 2030 for the world to have any chance of limiting global temperature rise to 2.7°F (1.5°C). The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for no new coal plant development after 2020.

“The UN Secretary General, the IPCC, and climate scientists worldwide have time and again called for a speedy phase-out of coal-based energy production, but most financial institutions are still turning a deaf ear,” said Schuecking.

While Japanese and Chinese institutions were identified as the top lenders and underwriters of coal development over the past three years, U.S. institutions led in terms of coal investments. BlackRock, the research found, was thetop institutional investor with $17.6 billion in holdings in 86 coal plant developers. Vanguard ($12.4 billion) and Capital Group ($9 billion) ranked third and fourth.

Overall, 1,922 institutional investors held $276 billion in bonds and shares in coal developers. U.S. investors accounted for 29 percent of this investment. Other U.S. institutions ranked in the top 30 coal investors include JPMorgan Chase, Fidelity Investments, and Dimensional Fund Advisors.

JPMorgan Chase also ranked in the top 30 in terms of underwriters and lenders in coal development, as did Citigroup.For lending, Citigroup was ranked fourth with $5.7 billion. Chinese institutions accounted for 69 percent of underwriting in coal development, but Citigroup ($8.8 billion) and JPMorgan Chase ($6.2 billion) were still significant underwriters. A report released earlier this year found JPMorgan Chase to be the leading financer of fossil fuels overall, sinking $196 billion into coal, oil, and gas since 2016.

Financing for coal alone, as the new NGO research shows, is still huge and must be addressed under the guidance of the Paris Agreement. In November, French insurer AXA announced its intention to phase out investments and underwriting of the coal industry and its backers, which according to Urgewald’s Global Coal Exit Database, represents nearly $664 million in investments.

“Financial institutions that continue channeling money to coal plant developers are actively working against the Paris Climate Goals and ruining our chances for a livable future,” said Schuecking.

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talib asks ~ FF vow striaght up phaseout, reply we support FF, which are Am co's

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https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/03/20/jpmorgan-chase-tops-banks-financing-fossil-fuels-climate-change

A report published today names the banks that have played the biggest recent role in funding fossil fuel projects, finding that since 2016, immediately following the Paris Agreement's adoption, 33 global banks have poured $1.9 trillion into financing climate-changing projects worldwide.

The top four banks that invested most heavily in fossil fuel projects are all based in the U.S., and include JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, and Bank of America. Royal Bank of Canada, Barclays in Europe, Japan’s MUFG, TD Bank, Scotiabank, and Mizuho make up the remainder of the top 10.

This report comes as March has already brought deadly weather to places such as the American Midwest, where historic flooding has left four dead and farm losses could reach $1 billion, and Mozambique, where Tropical Cyclone Idai has devastated the East African country and President Filipe Nyusi estimated that more than a thousand people are likely dead.

Both disasters have been linked to climate change. “Increased flooding is one of the clearest signals of a changing climate,” said 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben in a statement published by ThinkProgress, adding that flooded Nebraska’s “current trauma is part of everyone’s future.”

“One inescapable finding of this report is that JPMorgan Chase is very clearly the world’s worst banker of climate change,” the report, titled “Banking on Climate Change,” found. “The race was not even close: the $196 billion the bank poured into fossil fuels between 2016 and 2018 is nearly a third higher than the second-worst bank, Wells Fargo.”

A half-dozen environmental groups — Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, Sierra Club, Oil Change International, Indigenous Environmental Network, and Honor the Earth — authored the 2019 report, which was endorsed by 160 organizations worldwide. It tracked the financing for 1,800 companies involved in extracting, transporting, burning, or storing fossil fuels or fossil-generated electricity and examined the roles played by banks worldwide.

Global Snapshot of Fossil Fuel Sector Finance

Past report cards by the groups have focused only on coal, or on “extreme” fossil fuel projects, like tar sands extraction, ultra-deepwater oil drilling, and coal mining, and power generation. 2019’s report card expands, for the first time, to cover the fossil fuel sector as a whole.

Total fossil fuel financing, in billions of U.S. dollars, by bank and year, 2016-2018. Credit: Banking on Climate Change 2019 report

This year’s report card also dived deep into lending to shale oil and gas companies for the first time, finding that Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase “are the biggest bankers of fracking overall — and, in particular, they support key companies active in the Permian Basin, the epicenter of the climate-threatening global surge of oil and gas production.”

JPMorgan Chase also provided the most financing to LNG projects, Arctic oil and gas projects, and ultra-deep-water oil and gas extraction, the report concluded. The Royal Bank of Canada topped the list on tar sands oil financing.

“Coal mining finance is dominated by the four major Chinese banks, led by China Construction Bank and Bank of China,” the 2019 report found, adding that Bank of China provided the most financing to coal power projects as well.

On March 19, China’s State Development & Investment Corp., listed as one of the report’s top coal power companies, reportedly confirmed that it would stop investing in thermal coal power plants three years ahead of schedule.

“Since the Paris Agreement, JPMorgan Chase has provided $196 billion in finance for fossil fuels,” the groups wrote, “10 percent of all fossil fuel finance from the 33 major global banks.”

...

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City of Angels Funds Some Hellish Fossil Fuel Projects

By Doug Norlen

This month the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a startling report, which finds that severe impacts of climate change are happening much sooner than previously expected, and that countries must take far more aggressive actions to avoid the most catastrophic impacts. The report finds that the burning of fossil fuels must be curbed sharply.

The harmful role Wall Street banks play in propping up fossil projects around the world is increasingly known. Yet there is much less awareness of the role major cities play when they place billions of dollars of their public funds into these same Wall Street banks. According to L.A. city records, as of July 2018, Los Angeles had banking and/or investment relationships with several Wall Street banks, many of which are notorious for their financing of fossil fuel and human rights debacles around the world, including JP Morgan Chase, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

According to Banking on Climate Change, a fossil fuel finance report card, between 2015 and 2017 these Wall Street banks collectively provided over $50 billion in financing for tar sands, ultra-deep water drilling, coal mining, coal power and liquid natural gas projects around the world. These projects contribute vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and many of them have severe local environmental, social and human rights impacts as well.

But in 2018, cities have more ethical options. Rather than investing the public's money in environmental and human destruction, cities can establish public banks. When properly structured and operated, public banks can prohibit the use of their funds for fossil fuel and other harmful projects. Instead, they can fund renewable energyand other green enterprises, affordable housing, education and low-cost loans to job-creating entrepreneurs—all while avoiding paying hundreds of millions of dollars in exorbitant fees to Wall Street banks.

The movement to establish public banks is growing nationwide. California is at the forefront, with efforts to pass state-wide legislation allowing establishment of municipal banks as well as campaigns to establish public banks in San Francisco, Oakland and other East Bay cities, Los Angeles and other municipalities.

When Los Angeles voters go to the polls next week, they will decide whether to approve Charter Amendment B, which amends the city's charter to enable it to take affirmative steps to establish a public bank. And Los Angeles is a great case study on the need for public banks. According to Public Bank L.A., the city maintains bank accounts with between $4 billion and $12 billion in cash, and manages up to $45 billion in investments through large commercial banks.

The enormous sum of public funds that L.A. entrusts to fossil fuel banks undercuts the climate leadership of city officials. For example, this past August L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti joined a coalition of hundreds of mayors across the country to condemn Donald Trump's plans to weaken vehicle efficiency standards and rescind California's waiver right to set stronger greenhouse gas regulations. In December 2016, Garcetti joined other mayors to denounce Trump's decision to walk away from the Paris agreement. The city council has shown progressive streaks on banking issues as well. In December 2017, the Council unanimously voted to enforce both federal and state Community Reinvestment Act ratings disqualifying Wells Fargo from submitting a Request for Proposal for the city's commercial banking services. And yet, the city still banks with Wells Fargo.

If L.A. voters approve Charter Amendment B, the city will be one step closer to creating a municipal bank and redirecting its billions of dollars of public funds to environmentally sound, fiscally smart, sustainable community needs. In doing so, L.A. will serve as a beacon of progress to inspire the larger national movement to establish public banks.

For a sense of why Los Angeles so badly needs to approve Charter Amendment B, we've included descriptions of just a handful of the harmful projects Los Angeles is currently supporting by keeping its money in fossil fuel banks (based on publicly available information). Here is a sample of some of the projects that LA's banks support:

Dakota Access Pipeline (United States):

• Citi — $235 million in project finance
• MUFG — $235 million in project finance
• Wells Fargo — $120 million in project finance

The Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL, extends over 1,000 miles across several U.S. states, damaging Native American ancestral lands and water. Passing within just a half-mile of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, the pipeline has destroyed sacred sites and threatens the tribe's drinking water with potential oil spills. Beginning in 2016, Native American water protectors, including Standing Rock Sioux tribal elders and members, led opposition to DAPL. Supported by thousands of allies, this grew into one of the largest and most iconic movements in the world to halt fossil fuel pipelines. In response to peaceful, prayerful resistance, police from several states and agencies, members of the U.S. National Guard and armed private security forces used military equipment and tactics, including attack dogs, to intimidate, assault, arrest and otherwise commit grievous human rights abuses against water protectors and their allies. Opposition to the pipeline expanded far beyond the project site and supercharged the growing global movement against financial institutions that support fossil fuel projects.

Atlantic Coast Pipeline (United States):

• Bank of America — $673.5 million in corporate loans (13)
• Citi — $673.5 million in corporate loans (14)
• JP Morgan Chase — $648 million in corporate loans (15)
• MUFG — $1.182 billion in corporate loans (16)
• Wells Fargo — $673.5 million in corporate loans (17)

The proposed 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline, running from West Virginia through North Carolina, is the third longest gas pipeline in production or in some phase of development over the past 20 years in the U.S. Trees have been cleared along the pipeline route and infrastructure development has begun. Although two lawsuits against the pipeline are now pending in federal and North Carolina courts, federal law allows pipelines to be constructed prior to the resolution of all litigation. The ACP was the only oil or gas pipeline to be on Donald Trump's list of 50 Priority National Security Projects prior to his election.

According to published reports, the central purpose of the ACP is to enter South Carolina and eventually reach Elba Island, Georgia where gas will be exported from a liquid natural gas facility now under construction. This recognition raises serious concerns regarding the use of eminent domain to take privately owned property for private gain instead of public use.

The ACP threatens the livelihood of more than 30,000 indigenous peoples that live along the pipeline route. In May 2018, an alliance of community, statewide and national groups filed a complaint to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Civil Rights Compliance Office, alleging that the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality discriminated on the basis of race and color in issuing permits and certifications to the ACP as part of the permitting process. In September 2018, environmental groups filed legal challenges in an appeals court against federal permitting agencies.

Kusile Power Station (South Africa):

• Bank of America — financial advisor
• JP Morgan Chase — financial advisor
• MUFG — part of 705 million euro corporate loan to South Africa's state power company, Eskom, to purchase boilers from Hitachi Power Europe for the Kusile coal power plant

Once completed, the 4,800-megawatt Kusile coal plant in South Africa will be one of the largest coal plants in the world. The estimated annual greenhouse gas equivalent emissions of the plant—30 million tons—would increase South African energy sector emissions by 12.8 percent and the country's total contribution to climate change by 9.7 percent. South Africa already has the distinction of being among the top global greenhouse gas emitters per capita. The Kusile project area already exceeds permitted ambient levels of hazardous air pollutants that create soot and smog, which cause harm to respiratory, cardiovascular and nervous systems, leading to heart disease, cancer, stroke and chronic lower respiratory diseases, according to Physicians for Social Responsibility. If completed, Kusile will increase the cost of electricity for the poor and household consumers to compensate for Apartheid-era "special pricing agreements" that give large industrial users, which consume most of South Africa's electricity, guaranteed rates that are among the lowest in the world. The cost of Kusile, which in 2007 was estimated by Eskom to be 80 billion rand, had more than doubled to 172 billion rand by 2016. It is "expected to further strain Eskom's financial resources, and place upward pressure on Eskom's electricity price trajectory in the years ahead." In 2015 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Hitachi with violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in connection with contracts to build Kusile and Medupi (another enormous coal plant in South Africa), resulting in a $19 million settlement.

Long Phu-1 Coal Plant (Vietnam):

• MUFG and JP Morgan Chase — among the lead financial arrangers, with potential combined $650 million in finance

Long Phu-1 in Vietnam would emit an estimated 6.3 million tonnes of CO2 per year. As a "supercritical" coal power plant, Long Phu-1 is prohibited from being financed by most official government export credit agencies (ECA), including the U.S. Export-Import Bank. However, the former director of the EPA's Air Enforcement Division, Bruce Buckheit, revealed that the project consulting firm Environmental Resources Management doctored the coal plant's greenhouse gas emissions estimates to make Long Phu-1 appear to be a more efficient "ultra-supercritical" plant, which would be allowed under ECA coal financing restrictions. Analysis of Long Phu-1 by Friends of the Earth U.S. reveals that the project violates other international policies, including requirements to analyze alternatives, identify cumulative and associated risks and impacts, evaluate labor and working conditions, prevent pollution, protect community health, provide safety and security, and ensure biodiversity conservation. In February 2018, the New York Times reported that U.S. Export-Import Bank financing for Long Phu-1 had collapsed after it was revealed that project financiers included Vnesheconombank, a Russian bank that is on the U.S. government's sanctions list and is part of a federal investigation into possible collusion between the Russian government and the Trump presidential campaign. It was also reported that a top Long Phu-1 project official had been sentenced to prison for corruption. MUFG and JP Morgan Chase, like the U.S. Export-Import Bank, must also comply with U.S. sanctions. However, it remains unclear whether these banks continue to be potential financiers of Long Phu-1.

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Domhoff interlocks

https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/corporate_community.html

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nomi prins 12/17 AN

https://www.alternet.org/economy/next-financial-crisis-will-be-worse-last-one

...On the flip side of that euphoria however, is the fact that the median wage rose just 2.4 percent and has remained effectively stagnant relative to inflation. And although the unemployment rate fell to a 17-year low of 4.1 percent, the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.7 percent, its lowest level in nearly four decades—particularly difficult for new entrants to the workforce, such as students graduating under a $1.3 trillion pile of unrepayable or very challenging student loan debt. (Not to worry though: Goldman Sachs is on that, promoting a way to profit from this debt by stuffing it into other assets and selling those off to investors, a la shades of the subprime mortgage crisis.)

Those of us living in the actual world without billionaire family pedigrees possess a healthy dose of skepticism over the “Make America Great Again” sect that believes Trump has transformed America “hugely,” for record-setting markets don’t imply economic stability, nor do 40 percent corporate tax cuts translate into 40 percent wage growth. We can march forward into 2018 carrying that knowledge with us.

But first, a recap. For the U.S. financial system, 2017 was marked by five main themes: The GOP’s “You All Just Got a Lot Richer” Corporate Tax Reduction Plan; Big Banks Still Bad; The Fed’s Minor Policy Shift; Debt; and Deregulators Appointed to Positions of Regulatory Authority.

Banks Are Still Big and Bad

The Big Six banks have paid billions of dollars in settlements for a variety of frauds committed before and since the 2007-2008 financial crisis, but that didn’t keep them from tallying up new fines in 2017. The nation’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, agreed to pay $53 million in fines for scamming African-American and Latino mortgage borrowers with disproportionately higher rates than for white borrowers. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau**fined Citigroup $28.8 million**for not disclosing foreclosure-avoiding actions.Bank of America got fined $45 million for its foul treatment of a California couple trying to save their home.

But the Big Six bank that received the most attention in 2017, as it did in 2016, was Wells Fargo. The number of people affected by its fake-account creation scandal grew from 2 million reported in 2016 to about 3.5 million. That increase resulted in Wells Fargo expanding its associated class-action settlement to $142 million.

Wells Fargo was mired in smaller scandals, too. For instance, it charged 800,000 customers for auto insurance they didn’t need, raised mortgage rates for certain customers without properly disclosing it was going to, and made a bunch of unauthorized adjustments to people’s mortgages.

No Glass-Steagall Reinstatement, More Deregulation

The idea of reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 featured in both the Democratic and the Republican National Committees’ platforms during the campaign season. But Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, made it clear multiple times there would be no such push from the administration, arguing against doing so before senators including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

To emphasize his disdain for regulation and oversight, Mnuchin also pushed the Financial Stability Oversight Council, over which he presides, to vote 6 to 3 to rescind American International Group’s designation as posing a potential threat to the U.S. financial system. Thus, AIG will no longer be paying penance for its role at the epicenter of the last financial crisis by filing regular risk reports anymore. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen also supported the move.

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phil gramm (enron) 1999 finance mod act; linked banks and insurance to wall st.  1998 citi said wanted to buy travelers ins. ignored rules, paid $300M in lobbying,  r cmfa, also hasenron loophole to exempt from oversight eg to exclude derivs from regs

gramm head of sen bank comm, slipped amend on deriv? into big appropriation bill; wife, ex head of comodity Fut exge, joined enron bd to head AUDIT committee

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Citigroup Becomes Third Major Bank to Cut Financing to Coal Industry

Citigroup released a new policy today to cut its lending to the...

http://ecowatch.us7.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=214ab5fbb3f6015d74ffab4ec&id=b635fbc404&e=c2e8fdabfa

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/citi-report-slowing-global-warming-would-save-tens-trillions-dollars

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payday  http://jimhightower.com/node/8472#.VFz7QfnF_Qw

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$9 bill fine, no crim, no clawback exec bonus: http://nypost.com/2014/06/13/citigroup-doj-fine-speculated-to-be-10b/

Campaign contributions

2010 1st Quarter Campaign Contributions: $313,500 (52% to Democrats, 48% to Republicans) ^[24]^

Decade-long campaign contribution total (1998-2008): $19,778,382 ^[25]^

2008 Campaign Contribution (Top 20) Total: $4,270,678 ^[25]^

2008 Top Recipients:^[25]

1. Barack Obama (D) $543,430
2. Hillary Clinton (D) $423,417
3. John McCain (R) $301,301
4. Mitt Romney (R) $168,550
5. Chris Dodd (D) $157,244

Citigroup gave $594,100 to federal candidates in the 2006 election through its political action committee - 31% to Democrats and 68% to Republicans. ^[26]^

Lobbying

Citigroup has more lobbyists than any other financial company. The company was listed as a client by 46 of the 1,537 lobbyists filing to lobby on Financial Reform efforts. ^[27]^ The totals for the financial industry outnumber by a ratio of 25 to 1 number who registered to represent consumer groups, unions and other proponents of tougher regulations.

2009 Lobbying Expenditure: $5,560,000 ^[28]^

Decade-long lobbying expenditure total (1998-2008): $88,460,000^[25]

2008 Lobbying Expenditure (Top 12) Total: $7,875,000^[25]

2008 Top Lobbying Expenditure Recipients:^[25]

1. Citigroup Management Corp $5,520,000
2. Avenue Solutions $100,000
3. Barnett, Sivon & Natter $260,000
4. Capitol Hill Strategies $240,000
5. Capitol Tax Partners $200,000

The company spent $6,960,000 for lobbying in 2006. In-house lobbyists along with 11 lobbying firms were used including Ernst & Young, Federalist Group, Capitol Tax Partners, and Angus & Nickerson. ^[29]^

This year, even though the Wall Street bosses have presided over a 30 percent drop in their banks' profits, they've extracted a 15 percent raise in overall bonus money, totaling a ridiculous $27 billion. That averages out to $165,000 in extra pay to each Wall Street banker. But averages deceive, for thousands of lower-level bankers are given a dab, while those up in the executive suites make off with the bulk of the bonus heist.

Michael Corbat, CEO of Citigroup, for example, didn't just grab a 15 percent increase in bonus pay, but nearly three times that. His total haul was $16 million. Then there's Jamie Dimon, boss of JPMorgan Chase. He had a really terrible year in 2013, forcing his shareholders to shell out some $22 billion in penalties for tallying up a long list of illegalities. But that didn't stop Jamie from taking a 74 percent hike in bonus money this year — he pulled in a cool $18.5 million.

In a time when the 90 percent majority of Americans see their income falling, you'd think Wall Street might show a bit of modesty

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cpr:

Banking industry lobbyists helped members of the**House Financial Services Committee**craft a bill loosening regulators' oversight of various types of trading, with lobbyists from **:{Citibank:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:** playing a large role in the process, according to a report in today's *New York Times*. Seventy-one of the 80 lines in a bill recently approved by the panel were written with the assistance of lobbyists for major banks, said the report, which is based on emails reviewed by the paper's reporters; two paragraphs were copied from the lobbyists nearly word-for-word.

According to Center for Responsive Politics data, in the first quarter of 2013, members of that committee received more than $1.3 million in donations to their campaigns and leadership PACs from the securities and investment industry and commercial banks.

The donations came from PACs representing the financial firms, individuals they employ and lobbyists who represent the firms. By far the largest source of cash from the two industries was the**Investment Company Institute**, a trade association representing Wall Street firms. The ICI gave at least $129,000 to members of the House Financial Services Committee. Other trade groups representing banks and investment firms, including the American Bankers Association and the Independent Community Bankers of America, were also major contributors.

Among individual corporations, **UBS**was the top donor to the committee's members, contributing $88,000 so far this year.

The banking and securities and investment industries together contributed about the same amount overall to members of the committee in the first quarter of 2011 as in the first three months of 2013 -- roughly $1.3 million. But the commercial banking industry -- including Citigroup -- gave substantially more this time around, while the securities industry gave less.

Banking industry companies increased their contributions in 2013 to $640,286, from $497,169 in early 2011. Citigroup, in particular, jumped from $19,500 in donations to committee members to $39,500. UBS went from $64,250 to $88,000. Wells Fargo also opened its checkbook a little wider this year, giving $80,000, compared with $31,250 in 2011.

The ABA gave $90,750 in the first quarter of 2013, up from $58,650 in the comparable period in 2011.

Although the New York Times article cites a growing friendliness between the banking industry and congressional Democrats, the money going to the members of the committee this year overwhelmingly tilted towards Republicans. Seventy percent of the $1.3 million went to GOP lawmakers. Republicans control the House, and thus the committee, and it is not unusual to see the majority party pick up more cash from donors, regardless of the topic or committee.

The top recipient of cash from the two industries so far this year is Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), the chairman of the committee, who has picked up $140,400. The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who has criticized the legislation in question, received only $6,000.

The bill, the Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act (H.R. 992), was sponsored by committee member Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.), who has received $50,100 from commercial banks and the securities and investment industry, the majority of which came from individuals rather than PACs. One of his co-sponsors, who defended the legislation to the Times,is Rep. Jim Himes(D-Conn.) who took in a similar amount from the two industries -- about $47,700.

According to FEC records, Citigroup's PAC gave Hultgren's campaign committee $2,000. And it gave Himes' campaign $1,000 and his leadership PAC, Jobs and Innovation Matter PAC (JIM PAC) another $2,500. The donations to Hultgren, JIM PAC and a $5,000 donation to Hensarling's leadership PAC were all made on March 26.

The panel passed the bill this month despite objections from the Treasury Department. It awaits action in the full House

Robert Reich's Blog [1] / By Robert B. Reich [2]

Why Democrats Can't Be Trusted to Control Wall Street

May 25, 2013 |

Who needs Republicans when Wall Street has the Democrats? With the help of congressional Democrats, the Street is rolling back financial reforms enacted after its near meltdown.

According to the *New York Times* [3], a bill that's already moved through the House Financial Services Committee, allowing more of the very kind of derivatives trading (bets on bets) that got the Street into trouble, was drafted by Citigroup -- whose recommended language was copied nearly word for word in 70 lines of the 85-line bill.

Where were House Democrats? Right behind it. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, Democrat of New York, a major recipient of the Street's political largesse, co-sponsored it. Most of the Democrats on the Committee, also receiving generous donations from the big banks, voted for it. Rep. Jim Himes, another proponent of the bill and a former banker atGoldman Sachs, now leads the Democrat's fund-raising effort in the House.

Bob Rubin -- co-chair of Goldman before he joined the Clinton White House, and chair of Citigroup's management committee after he left it -- is still influential in the Party, and his protégés are all over the Obama administration. I like Bob personally but I battled his Street-centric views the whole time I served, and soon after I left the administration he persuaded Clinton to support a repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.

Jack Lew, Obama's current Treasury Secretary, was chief operating officer of Citigroup's Alternative Investments unit, a proprietary trading group, from 2006 to 2008, before he joined the Obama administration. Peter Orszag, Obama's Director of the Office of Management and Budget, left the Obama Administration to become Citigroup's vice chairman of corporate and investment banking, and chairman of the financial strategy and solutions group.

All these men are honorable. None has broken any law. But they and their ilk in congress -- the Democrats who are now rolling back Dodd-Frank -- don't seem to appreciate the extent to which Wall Street has harmed, and continues to harm, America.

It's not entirely coincidental that the Obama administration never put tough conditions on banks receiving bailout money, never prosecuted a single top Wall Street executive for the excesses that led to the near meltdown, and still refuses to support a tiny tax on financial transactions that would bring in tens of billions of dollars as well as discourage program trading.

Democrats can't be trusted to control Wall Street. If there were ever an issue ripe for a third party, the Street would be it.

Citigroup quelled a shareholder revolt on executive pay on Wednesday but told investors not to expect a quick wind-down of its pile of toxic assets or a split of the sprawling banking group.

More than 90 per cent of shareholders approved Citi’s executive pay scheme in a vote at the bank’s annual meeting, a year after more than 50 per cent of votes went against the company and six months after Vikram Pandit was ousted as chief executive.

About 20 protesters gathered outside the meeting at the Hilton Hotel on 6th Avenue in New York, chanting “Banks got bailed out; we got sold out”. While they mostly walked in a circle holding signs, one female protester skated by on roller blades, dressed in spandex, carrying a sign that read “bankers need a spanking”.

haiti chattle repaarion to france, then fr bank, then precursor till 20's?

But what's astonishing is that Wall Street bankers seem not to have paid any social cost either. They sit on corporate and nonprofit boards and attend functions and galas. They remain top Wall Street executives, or even serve as regulators. The nation's prominent op-ed pages, talk shows and conferences seek their opinions. If you are rich, you must be intelligent. Your views must be worthwhile, never mind the track record.

The embrace of Mr. Weill sets a new standard for reputation rehabilitation.

Some disagree that he played a central role in creating the modern financial system that blew up the world economy. Perhaps. But these people must concede that he failed on his own terms as a businessman.

Sandy Weill was a deal maker who aspired to more. He had a vision to create a financial supermarket. The scrappy public school graduate from the streets of Bensonhurst in Brooklyn realized his dream and created Citigroup.

And it didn't work.

Mr. Weill's only unambiguous success was to make himself enormously rich.

By the mid-2000s, Citigroup was a flop. The business synergies never materialized and the stock was lagging. Its chief executive then, Charles O. Prince, was divesting divisions. In 2007, investors and analysts called for the very sort of breakup that Mr. Weill now endorses. Then the financial crisis hit and the government had to bail out the behemoth Mr. Weill created.

His institution had also served as a (unheeded) harbinger of the banking rot to come. Throughout the 2000s, Citigroup was riddled with scandal. It settled with the Federal Trade Commission over deceptive practices. Its CitiFinancial unit was embroiled in predatory lending controversies before it was fashionable. The bank was an entwined backer of both Enron and WorldCom. Citigroup employed Jack Grubman, who was at the heart of the research conflict-of-interest scandals of the early 2000s. Even back in his less reflective days, Mr. Weill had to apologize for that.

Things got so bad that the otherwise somnolent Federal Reserveactually banned Citi from making any more acquisitions while it sorted out its mess....

Scott Walker’s Plutonomy: An Economy for the One Percent

Submitted by Mary Bottari on January 24, 2012 - 8:32am

While volunteer after volunteer from each of Wisconsin's 72 counties marched into the state's election board to deposit over one million signatures for the recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Walker was nowhere to be found.

At the hour petitions were being deposited on January 17, Mother Jones revealed that Walker was scheduled to attend a high-dollar fundraiser in the heart of the New York's financial district at 339 Park Avenue -- the towering headquarters for global financial giant CitiGroup. The $5,000 per couple fundraiser was hosted by none other than Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, former CEO of AIG.

Walker's choice to be on Wall Street the day of the recall filing is so astounding, for many it goes far beyond the notion of a tin ear. "Walker could not have sent a clearer signal to Wall Street, that he is on the side of the 1 percent ready to do their bidding and take the heat," said Scot Ross of the Wisconsin group, One Wisconsin Now. Ross points to the data his group compiled to support his claim that Walker is constructing an economy that only the 1 percent could love.

CitiGroup and AIG

CitiGroup Headquarters, NYCCitiGroup Headquarters, NYCNo two institutions are more responsible for the economic collapse of America than CitiGroup and AIG.

Citi is the original too-big-to-fail bank. Citi's merger with Travelers Group in 1998 blew apart the Glass-Steagall protections that had kept the U.S. financial system safe from major financial crises for 60 years.

Citi was a primary driver of the subprime mess. A top Citi official testified before Congress that the firm was betting that the housing market would go sour as early as 2006, yet it remained the nation's top lender of subprime mortgages and continued to underwrite billions in subprime mortgage-backed securities. It hedged risk by taking out insurance in the form of credit default swaps with firms like AIG.

Like Goldman, Citi has been caught betting against its own customers. Citi's $285 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) -- for fraudulently selling packages of mortgage-backed securities that they knew would fail -- was just tossed out by a federal judge who called it "is neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest."

Today, Citi is considered by many to be a zombie bank, with billions in toxic assets and growing legal liability. Yet, Citi CEO Vikram Pandit hauled in $23 million in bonus money in 2011, giving him plenty of pocket change to support pet politicians.

It was a surprise to see Hank Greenberg's name on the Walker invite (below). Greenberg was last seen fleeing down Wall Street with Elliot Spitzer hot on his heels, pursuing him for securities fraud and bid-rigging in 2005. AIG later settled federal and state charges for $1.6 billion, one of the largest fines in history. Greenberg, now the CEO of global finance firm CV Starr, and Co., settled the charges against him for $15 million.

All this took place, before that critical week in September of 2008 when the Lehman Brother's and AIG collapse triggered a global economic meltdown. AIG had issued some $500 billion worth of credit default swaps it could not pay for when mortgage-backed securities went sour. In 2008, AIG was taken over by the U.S. government and bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of $68 billion. Most of that money is still outstanding.

Right now, Walker can raise unlimited sums due to a quirk in Wisconsin's recall law. How much he raised from Wall Street on January 17 is still unknown, although in his latest report, Walker raised 60 percent of his campaign war chest from out of state according to One Wisconsin Now. This included four eye-popping $250,000 contributions.

CitiGroup's "Plutonomy" Memos

In his 2009 movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore unveiled two explosive memos written by Citi analyst in 2005 and 2006. The memos coin the term "plutonomy" and describe in glowing terms Citi's view of a U.S. economy entirely driven by the wealth and purchasing power of the 1 percent. The memos can be accessed here and offer a stunning glimpse into the cognition of Wall Street elite.

Plutocrats Drive the Economy: "The world is dividing into two blocs -- the plutonomies, where economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few, and the rest. Plutonomies have occurred before in sixteenth century Spain, in seventeenth century Holland, the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties in the U.S."

The Future: "We project that the plutonomies will likely see even more income inequality, disproportionately feeding off a further rise in the profit share in their economies, capitalist-friendly governments, more technology-driven productivity, and globalization." "Society and governments need to be amendable to disproportionately allow/encourage the few to retain the fatter profit share."

Forget about Main Street, Invest in the Plutocracy: "Since we think the plutonomy is here, is going to get stronger..." "It is a good time to switch out of stocks that sell to the masses and back to the plutonomy basket."

While Henry Ford believed that the economy thrived when the people who made the cars could afford to buy them, the Citi plutocrats believe that growth is powered only by the super rich and that catering to their taste for imported baubles and bags should be the goal of every investor and policymaker.

Some believe Scott Walker got the memo.

In Wisconsin, a Budget Only a Plutocrat Could Love

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Corporate Centrality

"Centrality" is a concept with two components, a large number of interlocks, plus the degree to which those interlocks are with other companies with a large number of interlocks. These two components are brought together through programs based on matrix algebra (Bonacich, 1972) and Boolean algebra (Bonacich & Domhoff, 1981). (The matrix algebra algorithm, along with many other network measures, is available on UCINET, which can be found at www.analytictech.com.) In the past, banks were invariably the most central organizations in the corporate network, but not any more. In a study of centrality using interlocking directorates among 100 corporations and 109 nonprofits, Citigroup and J. P. Morgan Chase, both headquartered in New York, were among the 10 most central organizations, but they were joined by Sara Lee in Chicago and 3M in St. Paul, which by coincidence were the 104th and 105th largest corporations on the Fortune 500 list a few years ago (Moore, Sobieraj, Whitt, Mayorova, & Beaulieu, 2002, Table 3). According to TheCorporateLibrary.com, in 2004 Sara Lee had ten directors who linked to 31 other companies, which in turn linked to 267 companies, and 3M had 11 directors who linked to 31 other companies, which in turn linked to 297 more companies. In looking at the Sara Lee and 3M networks, keep an eye out for any companies they might share in common.  who rules

Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill (born March 16, 1933) is an American banker, financier and philanthropist. He is a former chairman and chief executive of Citigroup. He served in those positions until October 1, 2003, and April 18, 2006, respectively.

Early life

Weill was born in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York City to two Polish-Jewish immigrants. He attended P.S. 200 in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. He also attended Peekskill Military Academy in Peekskill, New York, then enrolled at Cornell University where he was active in the Air Force ROTC and the Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity. Weill received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government from Cornell in 1955.

Weill's middle initial of "I" is not an abbreviation for anything. Weill said:

My mother wanted to name me after somebody whose name started with an "I", but she couldn't think of a name she liked. So she gave me the initial with the idea that after I was 21 I could choose whatever middle name I wanted.^[1]

Weill married his wife, the former Joan Mosher, on June 20, 1955. The couple live in Greenwich, Connecticut. They have two adult children, Marc Weill and Jessica Weill Bibliowicz, and four grandchildren.

Business career

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2010)

Weill, shortly after graduating from Cornell University, got his first job on Wall Street in 1955 – as a runner for Bear Stearns. In 1956, Weill became a licensed broker at Bear Stearns. Rather than making phone calls or personal visits to solicit clients, Weill found he was far more comfortable sitting at his desk, poring through companies' financial statements and disclosures made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. For weeks his only client was his mother, Etta, until Joan persuaded an ex-boyfriend to open a brokerage account.

Building Shearson (1960-1981)

While working at Bear Stearns, Weill was a neighbor of Arthur L. Carter who was working at Lehman Brothers. Together with Roger Berlind and Peter Potoma they would form Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill in May 1960. In 1962 the firm became Carter, Berlind & Weill after the New York Stock Exchange brought disciplinary proceedings against Potoma.

In 1968, with the departure of Arthur Carter, the firm was renamed Cogan, Berlind, Weill & Levitt (Marshall Cogan, Arthur Levitt), or CBWL jokingly referred to on Wall Street as "Corned Beef With Lettuce". Weill served as the firm's Chairman from 1965 to 1984, a period in which it completed over 15 acquisitions to become the country’s second largest securities brokerage firm. The company became CBWL-Hayden, Stone, Inc. in 1970; Hayden Stone, Inc. in 1972; Shearson Hayden Stone in 1974, when it merged with Shearson Hammill & Co.; and Shearson Loeb Rhoades in 1979, when it merged with Loeb, Rhoades, Hornblower & Co.

With capital totaling $250 million, Shearson Loeb Rhoades trailed only Merrill Lynch as the securities brokerage industry's largest firm.

American Express (1981-1985)

In 1981, Weill sold Shearson Loeb Rhoades to American Express for about $930 million in stock. (Sources differ on the precise figure.) In 1982, he founded the National Academy Foundation with the Academy of Finance to educate students that would graduate from High School. Weill began serving as president of American Express Co. in 1983 and as chairman and CEO of American Express's insurance subsidiary, Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, in 1984. Weill was succeeded by his protégé, Peter A. Cohen, who became the youngest head of a Wall Street firm.^[2] While at American Express, Weill began grooming his newest protégé, Jamie Dimon, the future CEO of JPMorgan Chase.

Before Citigroup (1986-1998)

Increasing tensions between Weill and the chairman of American Express, James D. Robinson III, led Weill to resign in August 1985 at age 52.

After a failed attempt to become the CEO of BankAmerica Corp. (and "take over" Merrill Lynch, according to a Jamie Dimon interview in 2002), he set his sights a little lower and persuaded Minneapolis-based Control Data Corporation to spin off a troubled subsidiary, Commercial Credit, a consumer finance company. In 1986, with $7 million of his own money invested in the company, Weill took over as CEO of Commercial Credit. After a round of deep layoffs and reorganization, the company completed a successful IPO.

In 1987 he acquired Gulf Insurance. The next year, he paid $1.5 billion for Primerica, the parent company of Smith Barney and the A. L. Williams insurance company. In 1989 he acquired Drexel Burnham Lambert's retail brokerage outlets. In 1992, he paid $722 million to buy a 27 percent share of Travelers Insurance, which had gotten into trouble because of bad real estate investments.

In 1993 he reacquired his old Shearson brokerage (now Shearson Lehman) from American Express for $1.2 billion. By the end of the year, he had completely taken over Travelers Corp in a $4 billion stock deal and officially began calling his corporation Travelers Group Inc. In 1996 he added to his holdings, at a cost of $4 billion, the property and casualty operations of Aetna Life & Casualty. In September 1997 Weill acquired Salomon Inc., the parent company of Salomon Brothers Inc. for over $9 billion in stock.

In April 1998, Travelers Group announced an agreement to undertake the $76 billion merger between Travelers and Citicorp, and the merger was completed on October 8, 1998. The possibility remained that the merger would run into problems connected with federal law. Ever since the Glass–Steagall Act, banking and insurance businesses had been kept separate. Weill and John S. Reed bet that Congress would soon pass legislation overturning those regulations, which Weill, Reed and a number of businesspeople considered not in their interest.

To speed up the process, they recruited ex-President Gerald Ford (Republican) to the Board of Directors and Robert Rubin (Secretary of Treasury during Democratic Clinton Administration) whom Weill was close to. With both Democrats and Republican on their side, the law was taken down in less than 2 years. Many European countries, for instance, had already torn down the firewall between banking and insurance.[citation ^needed]^ During a two-to-five-year grace period allowed by law, Citigroup could conduct business in its merged form; should that period have elapsed without a change in the law, Citigroup would have had to spin off its insurance businesses. Weill's office holds a wood etching of him engraved with the words "The Shatterer of Glass–Steagall". Weill denies that the repeal of Glass–Steagall played a role in the recent financial crisis.^[3]

In 2001, Weill became a Class A director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Class A directors are those elected by Federal Reserve member banks.

Post-Citigroup

In 2002 the company was hit by the wave of Wall Street managerial restructuring that followed the stock market downturn of 2002. Charles Prince replaced Weill as the CEO of Citigroup on October 1, 2003.

In 2003 Citigroup repurchased $300 million worth of shares from Weill. It was reported among the $1.967 billion of "treasury stock acquired" in the Citigroup consolidated statement of changes in stockholders' equity. The average price Weill received for his shares was $47.14.^[4]

Advocate for bank break-up

On July 25, 2012 Weill apparently reversed course on the financial supermarket and stated “What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that’s not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that’s not too big to fail,” Weill said on CNBC. “If they want to hedge what they’re doing with their investments, let them do it in a way that’s going to be mark-to-market so they’re never going to be hit.” ^[5][6][7]^

Controversy

In 2004, Citigroup agreed to pay $2.65 billion to settle a class-action suit brought by investors over its role in the WorldCom scandal. Citigroup's Salomon Smith Barney had issued optimistic research reports on WorldCom and, at the same time, helped it raise money by selling its securities.^[8]

After receiving $263.9 million from Citigroup for his 5.6 million shares, Citigroup and Smith Barney employees were encouraged to contribute up to 25% of their pay to purchase shares in Citigroup stock through the Capital Accumulation Plan.^[9] Employee funds which were voluntarily used to purchase Citigroup stock were restricted from being sold while they remained in the CAP plan. On June 1, 2009, the day Smith Barney employees (and their restricted stock) were released into the joint venture Morgan Stanley Smith Barney the stock had fallen to $3.71, a 92% discount to the price Weill received from the company.

On March 24, 2009, Citigroup employees who participated in the ailing company's stock purchase plan filed a suit in district court, charging that the financial services firm concealed its exposure to toxic subprime-related and other derivative products. The suit sought class action status.^[10]

Philanthropies

Joan and Sanford Weill at the opening night of the 2009 Metropolitan Opera's Tosca

Weill served as a Cornell Trustee for many years, and in 1998 he endowed Cornell's medical school, now known as the Weill Cornell Medical College. As chairman of the Board of Overseers of Weill Cornell Medical College and an emeritus member of the Board of Trustees of Cornell University, Weill orchestrated a $400 million donation to Cornell, of which he and his wife personally contributed $250 million.^[11] In June 2007, he endowed the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology at Cornell, housed in a new life science building named Weill Hall.

In May 2003, he received the Baruch Medal for Business and Civic Leadership, presented by Baruch College for his work in public education and his accomplishments in business.

He is currently the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Academy Foundation, a non-profit he founded in 1982. NAF supports career-themed academies in the areas of finance, hospitality and tourism, information technology and engineering in over 500 high schools across the United States.

He is also currently the Chairman of the Board of Carnegie Hall and is an avid champion of classical music in the United States.

In September 2006, Joan and Sanford Weill Hall was dedicated at the University of Michigan. The building is home to the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Weill donated $5 million towards the construction of the building and an additional $3 million to endow the position of the dean of the school.

Joan and Sanford Weill have been co-chairs, of the annual "Louis Marshall Award Dinner", for most of the past decade (2000–2010).^[12]

In 1990, during the period that the Weills were having marital disharmony, Joan suggested to her husband that they escape New York City for the wilderness of the Adirondacks.^[13] They purchased a tract of land and built a house close to Knollwood, the former summer home of Louis Marshall and his family overlooking Lower Saranac Lake. The Weills in the meantime returned to marital bliss, Joan endowing a library and student center at Paul Smith's College.^[14] ^[15][16]^

In 2010 the Weills bought a 362-acre estate in Sonoma County, California. In March 2011 the Weills announced a $12 million gift to Sonoma State University, providing the funds to complete the Donald and Maureen Green Music Center concert hall for a fall 2012 opening. The facility, inspired by Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, has been named the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Hall. "We love to be involved in the communities where we spend time," Sandy Weill commented to an interviewer.^[17]

In 2012, Weill was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[18]

References

1. ^ *King of Capital: Sandy Weill and the Making of Citigroup*, By Amey Stone, Mike Brewster, John Wiley and Sons, 2002 ISBN 0-471-33015-9
2. ^ "Vanities on The Bonfire: Peter Cohen". Time, February 12, 1990
3. ^ Brooker, Katrina (2010-01-02). "Citi's Creator, Alone With His Regrets". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-01-12.
4. ^ "Citigroup Purchases 5.6 Million Shares From Chairman Sandy Weill"
5. ^ "Wall Street Legend Sandy Weill: Break Up the Big Banks"
6. ^ http://www.slate.com/blogs/spitzer/2012/07/25/former_citigroup_boss_sandy_weill_says_big_banks_should_be_broken_up.html
7. ^ http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/wall-street-sandy-weill-break-big-banks-132940039.html
8. ^ Tran, Mark (May 10, 2004). "Citigroup settles WorldCom fraud suits". The Guardian (London).
9. ^ "Citigroup 2009 Stock Incentive Plan"
10. ^ "Citigroup Employees in Company's Stock Plan Sue in District Court"
11. ^ Ramirez, Anthony (June 13, 2007). "Cornell Medical School to Get $400 Million for Research Centers". The New York Times. Retrieved May 23, 2010.
12. ^ "JTS to Honor Visionary Leader Gershon Kekst at Louis B. Marshall Award Dinner" (Press release). October 15, 2009.
13. ^ Adirondack Life, 1992
14. ^ "Joan Weill Adirondack Library Opens at Paul Smith's College with Reading by Publisher Tom Hughes". 1 February 2002. Retrieved November 14, 2011.
15. ^ http://adirondackdailyenterprise.com/page/content.detail/id/530564/Joan-Weill-to-deliver-commencement-address-at-Paul-Smith-s-College.html?nav=5008
16. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSOC9jJHeJk
17. ^ Guy Kovner (March 22, 2011). "SSU gets $12 million donation for Green Music Center". The Press Democrat. Retrieved 2011-04-13.
18. ^ "Hillary Rodham Clinton, Tyler Jacks, Andre Previn, and Melinda F. Gates Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences" (Press release). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 2012-04-17. Retrieved 2012-09-01.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Sanford I. Weill

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sanford Weill

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Sanford I. Weill on *Charlie Rose*
• Sanford I. Weill at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Sanford I. Weill in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Sanford I. Weill collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• World's Richest People 2005: 72. Sanford Weill, Forbes
• Sandy Weill at Reference for Business
• *Booknotes* interview with Monica Langley on *Tearing Down the Walls: How Sandy Weill Fought His Way to the Top of the Financial World And Then Nearly Lost it All*, May 11, 2003.

Articles

• HW Wilson: Today's Profile - 1999
• The Banker: "Is Sandy losing focus?," September 2, 2002.
• "Knowledge at Wharton".
• Norris, Floyd. "Citigroup's Climb to Riches, One Merger at a Time with Sanford I. Weill", New York Times, July 17, 2003.
• "Sandy Weill Sits Down With the WJ", Wharton Journal, September 22, 2003.
• "Sandy's Story," Time, March 24, 2003.
• *USA Today* Q&A

Video

• *Wall Street Journal*, November 9, 2005.

Sandy Weill-- pigs fly

By Jim Hightower-Sat., 9/1/12

Why isn't Sandy Weill treated as a crook? He not only violated the law, but arrogantly flaunted it. Yet the system treats the criminal acts of Wall Street royals like him as the by-product of "financial innovation." Not a criminal, you see, Weill simply suffers from Narcissistic Avariciousness Disorder.

NAD prompted Weill in the 1990s to create Citigroup, the Wall Street conglomerate that hooked our bank deposits into reckless deal-making by global speculators. At the time, his too-big-to-fail model directly violated the Glass-Steagall Act, passed in 1933 to prevent another Depression. But in 1999, Weill got Congress to repeal that act, thus legalizing his house of cards that made him a billionaire--before it crashed on our economy in 2008.

But having NAD means never having to say "Mea culpa," much less "I'm sorry." So, while Weill now says that Glass-Steagall should be reinstated, he still insists that he was right to repeal it at the time--and that he's not responsible for any of the consequential pain that Americans are suffering.

Indeed, he's even playing the victim, wailing recently, "Our world hates bankers." No, Sandy. The world hates greed and self-aggrandizement. You are, after all, the guy who has kept a four-foot- wide wood etching of yourself in your office, labeled: "The Shatterer of Glass-Steagall." Now he wants us to remember him as a pious reformer.

Just weeks after American taxpayers ponied up $45 billion to bail out his once-haughty bank, Weill commandeered a Citigroup jet to give him a free ride to a Mexican vacation resort. This act of arrogance led to a New York Post headline that will be Weill's eternal epitaph: "Pigs Fly."