AP on Romney's "complicated business relationship"

[ProSense]

SEC filings limited in proof of Romney CEO role

By JACK GILLUM and STEPHEN BRAUN

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Bally Total Fitness filed a proxy statement with the federal government in April 2000 identifying its major investors, the list included Mitt Romney as "sole shareholder, sole director, president and chief executive officer" of Brookside Capital Investors Inc., a Bain Capital investment fund that effectively controlled 5 percent stock ownership in the national health club chain.

Romney was the undisputed owner of Brookside, a Bain management partnership. It had been used for years to oversee some of the private equity company's expanding investments and takeover deals, including a $1 billion acquisition of Domino's Pizza the same year. But other Bain partners also held voting power in the interlocking investment funds the company used, along with Brookside, to exercise its stock ownership.

That complicated business relationship is at the core of the presidential campaign dispute over whether dozens of reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission show Romney's continuing role as CEO in the three years after he left Bain Capital in February 1999 to head Salt Lake City's Winter Olympics. Romney was named at least 39 times in SEC filings as sole shareholder and chief executive of Bain funds used in corporate takeovers and other investment deals, according to an Associated Press review.

Former SEC officials and other legal authorities familiar with securities law say such filings were legal formalities that reflected Romney's ownership stakes, not his actual management of the shares. Romney could have kept his management role during that period, they said, but the SEC documents are useful in establishing his "beneficial ownership" — the voting power over stock holdings that he shared with his Bain partners.

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http://news.yahoo.com/sec-filings-limited-proof-romney-ceo-role-181310445.html

OK, how about Romney's own testimony:

Romney Interview Directly Contradicts His Previous Statements About Bain Tenure

By Igor Volsky

Mitt Romney told CBS News‘s Jan Crawford Friday evening that he did not attend Bain Capital meetings after he left the company in February of 1999 to run the Winter Olympics. But this answer appears to contradict sworn testimony he delivered in 2002 “as part of a hearing to determine whether he had sufficient residency status in Massachusetts to run for governor”:

– 2002: “(T)here were a number of social trips and business trips that brought me back to Massachusetts, board meetings, Thanksgiving and so forth.”

– 2012: “I was in Salt Lake City for three straight years. I don’t recall even coming back once to go to a Bain or management meeting. We were, I was out there running the Olympics and it was a full time job, I can tell you that.”

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http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/07/13/516951/romney-interview-directly-contradicts-his-previous-statements-about-bain-tenure

Was he lying: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002960206

Brad DeLong:

It would be very unusual for somebody to have the titles of not just "CEO" but "President", "Chairman of the Board" and be "sole stockholder" and to have no responsibilities whatsoever. In fact, I defy Glenn Kessler to come up with any example of anybody anywhere--save for Mitt Romney--who has been characterized to the SEC as "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president" and also claimed to have no responsibilities whatsoever and to have merely been a passive investor.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002942909

Romney can't shirk responsibility for Bain

By Roberta Karmel

Editor's note: Roberta Karmel is Centennial Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School and a former commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

<...>

Romney contends that he ceased actively managing Bain in February 1999 when he joined the Olympics organization. As a candidate for president, he filed a Public Financial Disclosure Report with the federal Government Ethics Office stating that "Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999, to head the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way."

As we learned last week, documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission contradict this statement.

Some of these documents were Schedule 13D reports, required to be filed pursuant to the Williams Act whenever any person or group acquires 5% or more of the stock of any public company. The purpose of such reports is to notify the securities markets of a possible change in control of a public company.

<...>

The contradictory representations in the Government Ethics Office and SEC filings are at best evasive and at worst a violation of federal law. A federal statute -- 18 U.S.C. § 1001 -- provides that anyone who "in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully -- (1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation" shall be fined or imprisoned. Violations of federal securities laws, including the making of false statements in a 13D filing, are independently punishable under the securities laws.

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http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/20/opinion/karmel-romney-bain/index.html

Bain is back in the news, and Romney is again trying to run from his record.

[C_U_L8R]

1. Can we just call Mitt a liar please.

I mean how much mangling of the truth is it going to take
before the press really points out the fact that Mitt is lying to us.

[ProSense]

2. Mitt is a liar. n/t