A newly-reported contract between Madeleine Albright’s consulting firm and a major Wall Street hedge fund has only been a footnote in presidential campaign coverage, but it speaks volumes about how elites in both parties find common ground above the fray of partisan bickering and gridlock that tends to dominate the news cycle. A consulting firm …
Tag: revolving door
Former SEC Chair’s shift at Promontory Financial raises questions about revolving door
Last month former SEC Chair Mary Schapiro made an unexpected change to her employment in the private sector, moving from an executive position to an advisory role at Promontory Financial, the regulatory consulting firm that both services Wall Street’s compliance needs and serves at the top tier revolving door destination for former financial regulators. While it …
New CEOs, same door
On Sunday the Washington Post reported on the “new crop” of defense industry CEOs from the last two years, highlighting the industry’s troubled waters and desire for steady hands to brave the sequester. According to American Security Project fellow August Cole, the best strategy for navigating the coming changes would be one of relationship building: …
De Blasio goes with the status quo in economic development appointments
If you caught the news sometime this fall, you probably know the story of New York City’s changing of the guard. Populist de Blasio replaces billionaire Bloomberg as mayor. Wall St. already misses its buddy Mike. Economic inequality: watch out! So why is de Blasio surrounding himself with a cast of characters that signal it’s …
Of buddies and buyouts: Carlyle Group’s revolving door
Private equity firm The Carlyle Group recently announced that it was bringing on former Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski as a managing director and partner in its buyout group. As well-connected hires go, Carlyle couldn’t do much better than Genachowski; a friend and basketball buddy of Obama since his Harvard Law Review days, he led …
Pa. DEP and PUC heads keynote gas industry events
This fall, Blank Rome LLP, a Pennsylvania-based law and lobbying firm, held two events titled “Environmental Issues Affecting Midstream & Downstream Oil & Gas Development.” The events, one in Philadelphia and one in Harrisburg, were co-hosted by Hull & Associates, a shale oil and gas project management and consulting firm, and featured a slew of …
Who’s spying on nonprofits for corporate America?
The Center for Corporate Policy recently released a report demonstrating how large corporations hire former law enforcement officials to spy on nonprofit organizations considered to be a threat to them. We added all of the firms in the report to a list in LittleSis–Corporate Espionage Firms–to take a closer look at some of the people …
Geithner does the Rubin Shuffle
The cooling-off period is over for former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who is joining the private equity firm Warburg Pincus as president and managing director. Geithner had initially joined the Council on Foreign Relations as a senior fellow after leaving the Treasury Department early this year. He had taken several plum speaking engagements at Wall …
For richer, for poorer: the revolving door between Boeing and Washington State
The State of Washington made headlines earlier this week for pledging the largest state tax subsidy in US history–$8.7 billion through 2040–to Boeing. Boeing is the country’s 30th largest company, with revenue of $81.7 billion and profit of $3.9 billion last year. CEO Jim McNerney made $27.5 million in 2012, a 20% raise from his …
Roundup: JPMorgan, FISA, StartUp New York, and the return of frackademia
The Eyes on the Ties blog has been popping with posts lately and addressing the latest in the news cycle. Kicking off this roundup is Kevin’s research into the negotiating table at JPMorgan as it reached a tentative $13 billion settlement with the Department of Justice. Turns out that negotiating table is little more than …
JPMorgan negotiates through the revolving door
It is quickly becoming clear that JPMorgan’s tentative $13 billion settlement with the Department of Justice is not the massive, overly-punitive sanction that some press reports have made it out to be. The weaknesses in the deal may be explained in part by the fact that in arranging the settlement, JPMorgan was negotiating through the …
Oh, what a tangled web CCA weaves
Last week hundreds of people gathered in Arizona to protest record-high levels of deportations from the US this year. Activists shut down Operation Streamline by chaining themselves to buses carrying detainees and to the Eloy Detention Center entrance, where detainees are held. Operation Streamline is a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy that requires …