The Anatomy of Public Corruption

Showing posts with label Banking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Banking. Show all posts

Chase Manhattan Bank and David Rockefeller

Chase Manhattan Bank and David Rockefeller

David Leslie Milne was Pete Bennett's grandfather accountant to the stars, billionaires and powerful. His clients were the goldplated ones from the 1920s to his death in 1962. Upon his according to family was David Rockefeller managed the family funds.
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JOB LOSSES SAP MORALE OF WORKERS - PLEASANT HILL MAN'S SUICIDE POINTS UP A RISING ANXIETY OVER OUTSOURCING AND THE TECH ECONOMY






JOB LOSSES SAP MORALE OF WORKERS - PLEASANT HILL MAN'S SUICIDE POINTS UP A RISING ANXIETY OVER OUTSOURCING AND THE TECH ECONOMY

May 13, 2003 | Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, CA)
Author: ELLEN LEE, TIMES STAFF WRITER | Page: a01 | Section: News
1362 Words | Readability: Lexile: 1140, grade level(s): 9 10 11-12 
In his oldest son's Pleasant Hill home, Tom Flanagan occasionally curses as he walks through the halls and gathers his son Kevin's belongings: the black-and-white photos his son developed in his makeshift darkroom, the household products he had a tendency to buy in bulk, the box-loads of books on computer programming.

More than once, Flanagan shakes his head. "It's a shame," he says. "We lost a good friend and a good mind."

One month ago, Kevin Flanagan took his life in the parking lot of Bank of America's Concord Technology Center, on the afternoon after he was told he had lost his job.

It was "the straw that broke the camel's back," his father said, even though the 41-year-old software programmer suspected it was coming. He knew that his employer, Bank of America Corp., like other giant corporations weathering the economic storm, was cutting high-tech jobs. He knew that Bank of America was sending jobs overseas. He had seen his friends and coworkers leave until only he and one other person remained on the last project Flanagan worked on.

Flanagan took steps to soften the blow. He considered studying law, and even made a list of California schools he was interested in researching. He applied for other jobs at the bank, but didn't receive responses.

In e-mails to his father, Flanagan sounded lighthearted. "I'm safe!" he would write in his Friday missives. "I'm safe for another week."

But Flanagan apparently masked the depth of the distress he felt as he fought to save his position. "He felt like he was fighting a large corporation that pretty much didn't care," his father said. "This final blow was so devastating. He couldn't deal with it." The father said he saw no other signs of depression before his son's suicide.

It is unclear if Flanagan lost his job because it had been sent overseas, or because the bank was slimming down because of the tight economy. Lisa Gagnon, a Bank of America spokeswoman, declined to comment, saying, "We're deeply saddened by this tragedy. We send our prayers to his friends, colleagues and family."

But his death underscores the anxiety that has swelled among technology workers at Bank of America and elsewhere as more businesses shift high-tech jobs and responsibilities to contractors offshore even as they cut jobs in the United States.

A report by Forrester Research projects that, led by the information-technology industry, 3.3 million service jobs and $136 billion in wages will move from the United States to such countries as India and Russia over the next decade or so.

Another survey by A.T. Kearney said that U.S. financial-services companies are planning to send overseas 8 percent of their workforces, thus saving them more than $30 billion.

Coupled with a rough economy and high unemployment, the phenomenon has left U.S. workers looking over their shoulders, wondering if their overseas counterparts could soon replace them. Blue-collar manufacturing jobs have for years crossed U.S. borders and waters. Some workers are bitter that white-collar, high-paying technology jobs are next.

"It could be me," said a Bank of America information-technology employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It could be anybody."

Flanagan's parents say that he complained about the company's move to shift jobs out of the United States and talked about taking care of problems that contractors in India couldn't solve.

"Outsourcing has led to tragedy for us," said Tom Flanagan. "We are devastated."

Flanagan landed at Bank of America seven years ago after spending time at a San Francisco technology company and at ChevronTexaco Corp.

The Concord Technology Center, a cluster of four buildings that opened in 1985, employs programmers such as Flanagan to develop software programs that handle jobs like wire transfers. Throughout the Bay Area, the bank employs some 13,400 workers; the bank would not release the number of workers at the Concord center.

About two years ago, Bank of America created the Global Delivery Center to identify projects that could be sent offshore[JNI2]. In the fall of 2002, it signed agreements with Infosys, whose U.S. headquarters are in Fremont, and Tata Consulting Services, two of the largest players in information-technology consulting and services in India.

Overall, this deal should affect no more than 5 percent of the bank's 21,000 employees, or about 1,100 jobs, in its technology and operations division, Gagnon said. So far, it has been less than that, she added.

But Gagnon declined to say how many U.S. and Concord workers have been affected so far.

"It's important to note that just because we decide there is a good business reason to send a project (overseas) does not mean it will necessarily result in job displacement," she said.

Employees at Concord, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described shrinking project teams as work is shuffled around. One veteran worker said that in the middle of a project, he and his team members were asked to hand over documentation and explain their work to a group of engineers from India. He and his co-workers were then transferred to another project. A short time later, he lost his job.

Gagnon confirmed this, saying that in some cases it made sense to have workers train their overseas successors before they are let go.

"The knowledge transfer is essential to continue to provide our customers with the best possible services and solutions," Gagnon said.

One software engineer, who was laid off about two months ago, said that he lost his job because the bank was tightening its budget. But he argued that had other technology jobs not been moved offshore, he would have had more opportunity to shift jobs.

The harshest critics have called Flanagan's death an example of the collateral damage brought on by businesses expanding their offshore operations. A former software programmer said that morale in the office is so low that some employees feel like they're on "death row."

"Every day you think, 'Is this the day I'm gone?'" he said. "The next day you think, 'Is this the day I'm gone?' The stress builds up."

But other Concord employees have taken it in stride. "It's a fact of life in business," said one worker. "It's not perfect here, but it's a pretty darn good place to work," he said.

Proponents say that hiring technology workers overseas will make the company stronger: For one, it cuts costs. A contractor in India, the most popular locale, is typically paid $10,000, compared with $100,000 for a U.S. worker with the same skills. Proponents argue that this allows companies to stay competitive, saving and creating U.S. jobs.[JNI3]

Growing overseas does not necessarily translate into a loss in the United States, said Debashish Sinha, principal analyst for information technology services at Gartner, a research group.

"Very rarely is there a direct staff substitution," he said. "Very rarely will a U.S. enterprise lay off their internal IT folk to hire an external offshore service provider."

But as offshore workers graduate from basic jobs to more sophisticated technology work, critics here wonder if there will be high-paying, high-tech jobs left in the United States.

"There's a huge hole opening up here and no one is seeing it," said Pete Bennett, a former technology consultant in Danville who is now in the mortgage industry. He founded NoMoreH1B.com to protest businesses bringing in non-U.S. workers through the government's visa programs for highly skilled workers, a program that he believes helped fuel businesses' move to transfer jobs offshore.

A few weeks before his death, Tom Flanagan helped his son on yet another home improvement project in his Pleasant Hill fixer-upper. That night, they stayed up until 4 in the morning, "just shooting the breeze."

They often had these long discussions, about California politics, about the Enron debacle, about other world issues. They would argue until they couldn't keep their eyes open.

"He would never give up," Flanagan said. "He would never give up. But he gave up."

In a note that he left behind, Kevin Flanagan said that he felt like he had finally found his home when he moved to Pleasant Hill and landed his job at Bank of America.

"He loved working there," his father said. "He loved his house. He loved it here. He was happy. This was his life."

Ellen Lee covers technology and telecommunications. She can be reached at 925-952-2614 or elee@cctimes.com.
Caption: Photo, Kevin Flanagan mug.
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#DeadBankers

The Earlier Dead Bankers

There are other deaths near other banks with my former peers. 
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Gary Bell CEO

In 2012, Mr Bell fell ill near election day but within days he was in a coma.  Just like Councilman Shimansky, Tax Collector Pollacek they died from Spinal Meningistis.  The personal connection is the other bacterial deaths in the area and back in Florida with Jimmy Barnes death in Bradenton FL pushed the death count to almost ten. 
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Madeline Seeley 2010

Madeline Seeley mom and friends were often at the Round Up bar in Lafayette CA. One night the estranged husband decided to come down at the Mom's assistance. He worked for Pacific Services former banking arm of Pacific Gas and Electric. 


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#deadwitness One Dead PIMCO Banker is one too many

A Dead Banker was a PIMCO Banker

source:LA TIMES

Harvard Business Classes

Domestic Terrorism vs Insider Terrorism ~ Rapid Free-Falling quantitive analytics, depth of field analytics, opitcal illusions, deception and obstruction of justice, interference of investigation and placing children as your prop.

SEC Nipping at Problem

A federal investigation of Pacific Investment Management Co. is the latest crack in the armor of the $2-trillion Newport Beach fund giant, where a trustee recently questioned the $200-million salary, "bullying" behavior and "mediocre" recent performance of co-founder Bill Gross.
Word of the Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry follows a series of setbacks for Pimco, including the abrupt departure of Gross' heir apparent, Mohamed El-Erian, reports of clashes between the two and an outflow of more than $65 billion in investors' money from Gross' signature Total Return Fund.
dd Pimco said it is cooperating with the SEC, which is examining whether Pimco improperly inflated the price of bond holdings in an exchange traded fund. That could have increased the publicly reported value of the fund, which Gross personally managed.

The ETF, as such funds are known, was set up to mirror the investment style of Gross' Total Return Fund, which serves giant institutional investors. The Total Return Fund, which has $221 billion in assets, is the world's largest bond mutual fund and a staple of 401(k) and other retirement plans across the nation. The $3.6-billion Total Return Fund ETF reported investment gains of 8.7% from March through August 2012, its first six months of existence. That compared with a gain of 5.2% for the Total Return Fund it emulated, which at the time was growing rapidly and exceeded $270 billion in assets.
The Newport Beach company, which Gross co-founded in 1971, denied any wrongdoing.

"We take our regulatory obligations and responsibilities to our clients very seriously," the firm said in a statement. "We believe our pricing procedures are entirely appropriate and in keeping with industry best practices."
Pimco declined to comment further on the SEC investigation. A spokesman for the SEC in Washington declined to comment.
A person close to the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is confidential, told The Times that investigators from several SEC offices around the country have been working on the case.
The investigation was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which quoted unidentified sources as saying the SEC has been looking at the case for at least a year. Investigators have recently interviewed Pimco executives, and spent more than a day questioning the 70-year-old Gross.



The disclosure of the investigation follows other turmoil at Pimco. In a March interview with The Times, a longtime independent trustee on the board that oversees Pimco, William J. Popejoy, publicly criticized Gross — specifically his high pay, amid the fund's declining performance.
That followed high-profile clashes between Gross and El-Erian, including allegations that Gross had monitored El-Erian's phone calls.
A midsummer Pimco regulatory filing said Popejoy had resigned from the board. Popejoy's attorney said that was inaccurate but declined to elaborate on Popejoy's version of events.
Independent bond fund trustees such as Popejoy don't work for money management firms like Pimco; their job is to oversee the funds, monitoring performance on behalf of investors and negotiating the fees paid to the fund managers.


They generally work far from public scrutiny, and a bond fund trustee criticizing an asset manager, as Popejoy did, is "extremely rare," said Eric Jacobson, director of fixed-income research at fund tracker Morningstar Inc. "I cannot remember seeing anything like this in the last 10 to 15 years."
Popejoy has since declined to speak publicly about Gross and the proceedings of the board of trustees, citing the advice of attorneys. In a recent interview, he did say he had differences with the board chairman, Brent R. Harris, a Pimco managing director who is one of two insiders on the seven-man board.
One disagreement centered on the lack of diversity on the board, which is made up entirely of white men, Popejoy said.
He said that when the independent trustee Vern O. Curtis, 80, decided to step down, Harris wanted the replacement to be Peter B. McCarthy, a former banker and U.S. Treasury official. McCarthy already sits on the board that oversees Pimco's small collection of stock mutual funds.
Popejoy said he instead lobbied to add a female or minority member to the board.

Harris did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Pimco Funds have yet to replace Popejoy or Curtis.
The SEC probe focused on whether Gross' ETF fund misled investors through such actions as buying bonds at a discount, then putting a higher value on them when reporting fund results, the Journal reported. Doing so would increase the reported net asset value of the funds.
The SEC has conducted a series of investigations of such pricing issues at mutual funds, and in some cases has brought civil charges. In 2012, UBS Global Asset Management paid $300,000 to settle accusations that it improperly priced securities in three mutual funds.
Such cases, however, can be complicated to sort out. Investigations often find no violations, said Michael Herbst, a Morningstar director of manager research.
Exchange-traded funds often do better, at least at first, than the large funds they emulate. The smaller ETFs are "nimble" and can negotiate discounts and turn quick profits on deals too small for the large funds to pursue, he said.
A powerful bond ETF like the one headed by Gross, for example, might often be able to find small, thinly traded holdings of certain corporate bonds or exotic mortgage securities that could be purchased at a sharp discount.
If an independent valuation firm, such as Interactive Data or Thompson Reuters, was unable to find a recent sale of identical securities, as often occurs, it would then estimate the value for the holdings based on recent sales of similar bonds, Herbst said. That could yield a higher value.
If the mutual fund accurately reported the purchase price, along with the independent valuation, the SEC would probably find no violation, Herbst said. Any violations of securities laws would stem from the mutual fund lying about the purchase price or the independently estimated value.
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OBIT: Pasi M. Hamalainen / Former PIMCO Executive dead at 46

Former PIMCO Executive and peer of Mr. Hamalainen

Consumer of FICO data, records, analytics developed the brother of US Attorney Thomas Wales. Long term employee of Fair Isaacs



The Murder of US Attorney Thomas Wales



Pasi Hamalainen
Pasi M. Hamalainen, a gifted financial executive, devoted father and cultivator of many long-term friendships, died in his sleep on Jan. 16 at his home in Manhattan Beach, Calif. He was 46. Though he came from modest beginnings in Finland, Hamalainen earned an Ivy League education and parlayed it into a stellar career with Pacific Investment Management Co. (PIMCO), one of the world's largest asset-management firms. He rose through the ranks to become a managing director and director of global risk oversight, helping the company amass $2 trillion in assets. All the while Hamalainen lived by two iron credos: once you were his friend you were "a friend for life"; and he insisted on "nothing but the best." He possessed an engineer's fascination with precision instruments, from watches to sound systems to airplanes to very fast cars. An audiophile with a keen ear, Hamalainen built an oceanfront house in Manhattan Beach and equipped it with a vacuum-tube stereo system that turned his home into an approximation of a concert hall. His constantly evolving car collection included BMW's, Aston Martins, Bentleys and a Bugatti Grand Sport Vitesse. He loved to drive the snaking roads of the Los Angeles canyons, and with his Bugatti he set a staggering record of 230.6 miles per hour at the Sun Valley Road Rally last year. Though he enjoyed his toys, success for Hamalainen was not measured in money or possessions. He was generous with friends and family, and toward causes he regarded as worthy. He was also known for his unique sense of humor. He departed PIMCO in 2008 after 14 years with the company, and the next year his wife, Dr. Carey Cullinane, gave birth to their son, Logan Patrick. Retirement gave Hamalainen the freedom to travel the world. It also introduced him to the joys of fatherhood. "This last year Pasi was so happy," said his brother, Janne Hamalainen. "He was able to spend more time with his son, which was the most important thing by far to him. One of their favorite things to do together was play with toy planes - my brother was typically the air-traffic controller and Logan was the pilot - and they had a great bond." In 2012 Hamalainen joined the Capital Group, a Los Angeles-based investment management firm, as a fixed-income portfolio manager. He was also busy with a variety of philanthropic endeavors. He endowed a professorship at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, and he joined the Advisory Board of the Jacobs Levy Center for Quantitative Financial Research at the university's Wharton School. He and his former wife, Dr. Cullinane, an oncologist, also endowed the Hamalainen Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Stanford University Medical Center. Pasi Matti Hamalainen was born in Helsinki on May 18, 1967, where his father was a sportswriter and his mother was an elementary school.  His mother, Raili, had competed twice with the Finnish national gymnastics team in the Olympics. The marriage ended in divorce in 1969 and Raili raised her two sons in the town of Tampere, where they briefly attended the Tampere University of Technology. Janne went on to study electrical engineering at the University of Tulsa, and Pasi, after a two-year stint as a pilot in the Finnish Air Force, won a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania. There he competed on the track team and completed a rigorous five-year program in just four years, earning dual bachelor's degrees in engineering and economics. He went directly into the Ph.D. program at the university's Wharton School, but left to join PIMCO in 1994 after earning a master's degree in finance. As a student at Penn, Hamalainen served as a research assistant for the professors Donald Keim and Ananth Madhavan, both of whom became life-long friends. Together they produced papers on such lofty topics as "The Upstairs Market for Large-Block Transactions: Analysis and Measurement of Price Effects." "Pasi was the guy who had the technical skills and the smarts to crack the data - load it, parse it, interpret it," says Madhavan, a native of India. "The guy was brilliant. But the thing that was important to him in his life were his friends. He was very close to the group at Wharton, and they remained friends. That's very Finnish." "He was very, very bright," adds Keim. "Very serious, very quiet, but always thinking things through. Everything he said was very measured, very precise. And once he became your friend, he was always a true friend." In lieu of flowers, donations in honor of Pasi Hamalainen may be sent via the Pasi Hamalainen Memorial Fund. - http://pasihamalainenmemorialfund.mydagsite.com 
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OBIT: Kevin Flanagan, The First Dead Banker - Well Almost

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PIMCO Signs Up as First Client of Accenture's WEBeSTP Solutio

PIMCO IN THE NEWS  

Quick Facts




A PIMCO Project

PIMCO Signs Up as First Client of Accenture's WEBeSTP Solution
October 24, 2000


Leading Fixed-Income Manager Will Also Invest In Straight-Through Processing Solution
NEW YORK, October 24, 2000 – Accenture today announced that Pacific Investment Management Company ("PIMCO"), one of the world's leading fixed income asset managers, has signed a letter of intent to become the first client of WEBeSTP, the straight-through processing (STP) solution that Accenture is developing with industry participants and select service providers for the global investment / asset management community.
WEBeSTP is an Internet portal that will provide financial industry participants with a single automated point of entry for pre-trade, trade and post-trade activities. It will also link customer relationship management and enterprise resource management with real- time portfolio management capabilities. Its primary purpose is to help asset managers and other financial markets players reduce the costs and risks currently associated with the end-to-end process of securities trading.
Working closely with PIMCO, Accenture has defined the asset managers' requirements for a customer relationship management and market-data integration solution. Bloomberg, which announced its participation in WEBeSTP back in June, is working to develop the fixed income portfolio management and order management capabilities.
The securities industry today is being stretched to the limit by record trading volumes, extended trading hours, intense competition, changing customer expectations and the move to T+1 in the United States. A solution to this challenge is STP, an integrated approach to achieving automated, end-to-end trade processing through the trade's entire lifecycle, beginning and ending with the investor.
"From an asset manager's perspective, there are three primary drivers for implementing WEBeSTP – cost reduction, cost avoidance and risk reduction. According to the recently completed SIA T+1 business case, asset managers have the weakest return on investment economics. WEBeSTP is targeted to solve that problem," said Jim Honohan, partner, Accenture. "By leveraging the experience and knowledge of PIMCO and Accenture, we are able to focus specifically on what the asset managers' needs are in implementing an integrated STP solution."
"With increased pressure and competition, as well as heightened customer expectations, we have to focus now more than ever on strengthening our customer relationships and managing their portfolios. We were searching for a solution that would reduce risk and cost while allowing us to enhance our customer service, and WEBeSTP was the most comprehensive solution in the market," said Robert Ettl, Chief Information Officer of PIMCO.
"Finding a cost-effective STP solution is one of the greatest problems confronting asset managers. Our involvement with the Accenture WEBeSTP solution would be consistent with Bloomberg's commitment to provide STP solutions within a value proposition that enhances returns and will enable asset managers to focus on their core competencies of investment management and customer relationship management," said Lou Eccleston, director of global transaction and data services at Bloomberg.
Straight-Through Processing (STP)
STP solutions are needed to help financial markets firms meet the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's expected call for one-day trade settlement (T+1), as well as to meet the global demand that has resulted from the explosive growth of online trading. Presently, the entire trade lifecycle, from initiation to settlement, is a complex labyrinth of manual processes, taking several days. STP enables the entire trade process to be conducted electronically without the need for re- keying or manual intervention. When fully realized, STP will provide broker/dealers, asset managers, custodians and other financial services players with tremendous benefits, including greatly shortened processing cycles, reduced risk and lower operating costs.
WEBeSTP
The Accenture WEBeSTP solution was conceived and is being developed at the Accenture STP Center of Excellence, located in New York City. Accenture is in discussions with other select service providers and industry participants regarding their potential involvement in WEBeSTP.
About PIMCO 
PIMCO, with more than $200 billion under management, is based in Newport Beach, California. It is a subsidiary of the Munich-based Allianz Group, which is a leading global insurance company that is represented in 70 countries around the globe.
About Bloomberg
Bloomberg L.P. is a global, multi-media based distributor of information services, combining news, data and analysis for financial markets and businesses. Bloomberg provides real-time pricing, historical pricing, data, analytics and electronic communications 24 hours a day through 150,000 BLOOMBERG PROFESSIONALSM terminals used by over 400,000 financial professionals in 100 countries worldwide. Bloomberg's electronic trading products include: BLOOMBERG TRADEBOOK™, BLOOMBERG POWERMATCH™ and the BLOOMBERG™ Electronic Trading System. Bloomberg News, with 850 reporters in 78 bureaus, is live 24 hours a day over the BLOOMBERG PROFESSIONALSM service and is carried in over 850 newspapers worldwide. Bloomberg also produces a number of related print and electronic media products for distribution worldwide. These include BLOOMBERG TELEVISION® and BLOOMBERG RADIO programming, Bloomberg, Bloomberg Personal Finance and Bloomberg Wealth Manager magazines, The BLOOMBERG® Web Site (http://www.bloomberg.com) and the BLOOMBERG PRESS® line of investment books.
Accenture is the world's leading provider of management and technology consulting services and solutions, with more than 75,000 people in 46 countries delivering a wide range of specialized capabilities and solutions to clients across all industries. Accenture operates globally with one common brand and business model designed to enable the company to serve its clients on a consistent basis around the world. Under its strategy, Accenture is building a network of businesses to meet the full range of any organization's needs — consulting, technology, outsourcing, alliances and venture capital. The company generated revenues of $9.75 billion for the fiscal year ended August 31, 2000 and $5.71 billion for the six months ended February 28, 2001. Its home page is http://www.accenture.com.
A registration statement relating to the offering has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission but has not yet become effective. The shares may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of the shares in any state or other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

This announcement appears as a matter of record only and should not be taken as an inducement or solicitation to subscribe for shares in any subsequent initial public offering.


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