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Investment banker Dan Cook ran the Dallas office of Goldman Sachs (see Peter Coneway and Henry Paulson), where he was in charge of the firm’s investment banking throughout the South. Cook told the Washington Post in 1992 that he was mystified by the “misguided” support that many Goldman partners gave to Bill Clinton over the first President Bush. Cook later became a senior advisor to investment bank MHT Partners (Pioneers Louis Beecherl and Jeff Heller also helped form MHT). Cook headed the Texas presidential fundraising operations of the first President Bush, as well as the state Treasurer campaign of current U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Cook sits on the board of the National Center for Policy Analysis, which promotes Social Security privatization. The think tank’s website features a George W. Bush quote saying that the group is “worth your time and your donations.” Cook sits on the board of restaurant chain Brinker International (see Nancy Brinker) and feathers Dick Cheney’s nest by chairing the Vice President’s Residence Foundation. Marcus joined Cheny, U.S. Senator John Cornyn and Pioneer Jeff Marcus in late 2003 on a 10-man hunt at Pennsylvania’s exclusive Rolling Rock Club. With shotguns blazing, the expedition bagged 417 of the 500 pheasants that the club released into their line of fire. Sentor Cornyn compared the scene to a slaughterhouse, saying it was “kind of like how Tyson’s and Pilgrim’s Pride [see Lonnie Pilgrim] …do it.” Dead-eye Dick Cheney reportedly bagged 70 birds. Goldman Sachs (see Peter Coneway and Jose Fourquet) was one of 10 major Wall Street firms that paid a record $1.4 billion in 2002 to settle charges that their researchers promoted the stocks of companies that provided their firms with lucrative underwriting contracts. Rather than putting this scandal behind it, in 2002 Goldman hired Andrew Melnick to run its stock research department. Melnick previously ran the research shop at Merrill Lynch, directly supervising bubble-blowing Internet analyst Henry Blodget, who publicly promoted stocks that he scorned in private. Melnick retired in 2003. Investors won a $1 billion settlement in 2003 from 309 companies accused of conspiring with investment banks to rig initial public stock offerings. Plaintiffs firm Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach (see Pioneer Sandra Stein) is seeking to recover much of this settlement from Goldman and other top investment banks. A 2002 U.S. House Financial Services Committee probe found that Goldman rewarded Pioneer Ken Lay for Enron’s investment banking business by granting him preferential access to the initial public offerings of Internet stocks that were sure to skyrocket in value.
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Membership
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Of Special Interest
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| Profile last updated
Jan 12, 2004
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