Kate Marymont Did YOU and Maria De Varenne Know that Some NISSAN VP's Called the Executive Floor the Play Pen.....

"Mr. Fuchs told me I'd never have as interesting of a job as I did during the Turner takeover... he was WRONG.” Sharyn Bovat speaking about Michael Fuch's the former President of HBO and Warner Music Group

In the 90's Sharyn Bovat started consulting for Bankers trust during the Derivitives Scandal AFTER she had worked on the executive floor at Warner Music Group. Michael Fuchs the President of Warner Music Group & HBO was forced to resign after Ted Turner made several appearances.

Sniffing a Scandal

Sharyn Bovat told NISSAN Board member Carlos Tavares that NISSAN’s executive floor was “dysfunctional”. Some of the VP’s nicknamed the 10^thfloor at NISSAN North America “The Play Pen”. Sharyn said she’d worked on executive floors in other companies and something was going on at NISSAN that was “not right.”

In the 90’s she did an Upward Feedback project at Bankers Trust (I took over for a Director that “took some time off”….DERIVITAVES SCANDAL. Sharyn was given a list of everyone at the company and their salary info…..interesting) this was in 1996. Prior to that job Sharyn worked for Paula Gabriele the most powerful woman at Bankers Trust (over 3,500 people report to her). Laurent her French Chief of Staff was annoying….he NOW works at GE, figures JJ He was an ass, he treated me like a “Jersey Girl.”

Paula Gabriele was one of the MOST powerful women on Wall Street and she go “caught in the storm.” The time Bovat spent with the Wall Street leader at the Exchange Place office was valuable. Up close she watched a BRILLIANT woman handle a crisis.

Sharyn Bovat hasd only lived in the East Coast for a couple years and during that time watched 2 NYC corporate “SkyDives” both good people falling from their pedestals both had negotiated grandiose GOLDEN parachutes...


In 1995 Sharyn Bovat was asked to be a neutral “gatekeeper”on the 30^th floor (executive floor) at Warner Music Group: The BIGGEST mistake made was she “thought’ she was having a discussion with Martha Stewart and it was really Diane Sawyer. Luckily the news legend was kind and told her who she was….this was at the END of the conversation.

Ted Turner: `Last Day Of Peace' In Race To Buy A Network September 28, 1994|By Tim Jones, Tribune Media Writer.

The quiet, behind-the-scenes talk over the possible sale of NBC noisily broke into the open Tuesday. Ted Turner lashed out at Time Warner Inc., charging that the media giant blocked a deal for him to buy NBC last year for $5 billion from General Electric Co. and continues to block his most recent efforts aimed at NBC

From Wiki: Michael Fuchs

in May 1995 he became vice president of Time Warnerand then chairman and CEO of the Warner Music Group. However due to his extensive changes during his position as chairman which saw the dismissal of several important executives at the company (Sharyn Bovat waved bye bye....it was bizarre), he was sacked by Time Warner chairman Gerald Levin, leaving the company with a reported US$60 million "golden parachute",

COMPANY NEWS;TIME WARNER SHARES RISE 3.5% AFTER SHAKE-UP AP Shares of Time Warner Inc. jumped 3.5 percent yesterday after a management shake-up that ousted Michael Fuchs as chairman of its music and pay television divisions. But the shake-up could face a legal challenge. A person close to U S West, Time Warner's partner in a venture that includes cable television systems, HBO pay television and the Warner Brothers studios, said the company's lawyers were examining whether the management reorganization announced on Thursday violated terms of their partnership. November 18, 1995

Graph "Prompling an lnquiryll plots unclaimed funds sent to New York State by Bankers Trust since 1992.

(Source: New York State Comptroller's Office responding to Freedom of Information request)(pg. 1)

Chart: "How Bankers Trust Strayed!!

OCT. 20, 1995 -- Frank N. Newman. a former Treasury official. is named chief executive of Bankers Trust in an attempt to clean up [he bank

after a derivatives scandal.

Sharyn Bovat started consulting at Bankers Trust for the most powerful woman at the company Paula Gabriele in December 1995

MARCH 1996 -- According to the bank, an employee discloses in an exit interview with Bankers Trust management that unclaimed funds

are being diverted. That was a REALLY interesting day!!

LATE 1996 -- In conversations with New York state auditors, senior executives of the bank acknowledge that something is wrong.

EARLY 1997 -- Mr. Kingdon resigns. A few days later the bank says there were accounting differences in his division.

SEPTEMBER 1997 -- Frustrated by the bank's failure to produce the documents they requested, New York State auditors demand access to

the missing records. The bank produces them.

NOVEMBER 1998 -- The Federal Bureau of lnvestigation, the Manhattan United States Attorney's office and the Federal Reserve take over

the investigation from the state auditors.

MARCH 1999 -- Bankers Trust pleads guilty to criminal charges of illegally diverting $19.1 million in unclaimed funds. It agrees to repay

the money and pay $63.5 million in fines.

Earnings, in mill ions of dollars

'93 -- $1,084

'94 -- $686

'95 -- $311

'96 -- $766

‘97 -- $866

'98 -- -$73

The Deep Slush at Bankers Trust

Full Article: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/30/business/the-deep-slush-at-bankers-trust.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN
Published: May 30, 1999

PORING over records at the Bankers Trust Corporation in early 1994, New York State auditors discovered something strange: Millions of dollars in unclaimed customer funds had disappeared.

For two years, the auditors' repeated requests for an explanation were ignored. But they pressed ahead, and what they found left them aghast. The bank, one of the nation's largest, was using the money to inflate its sagging profits.

''They were moving it back and forth between so many other parts of the bank that they lost track of the money,'' said one auditor, who spoke only on condition that his name was not revealed. ''I'd never seen anything on this scale before.''

Bankers Trust, an investment and commercial bank that is the nation's eighth-largest, finally faced the music two months ago. It pleaded guilty in March to criminal charges of illegally diverting $19.1 million in cash and other assets that the law requires to be turned over to states.

But a closer look at the scheme reveals that it goes well beyond the transgressions the bank owned up to.

………….

Bankers Trust said it uncovered the fraud in 1996 and quickly alerted Federal authorities. In fact, several senior executives learned that the state auditors were asking questions two years before that. And it was pressure from senior executives, Federal prosecutors said, that spawned the fraud in the first place.

Moreover, the extent of the diversion is much greater than has been publicly disclosed, according to individuals investigating the bank. New York State alone has identified more than $41 million owed to it -- more than twice as much as the bank has acknowledged.

And while the bank says its difficulties with unclaimed funds ended in 1996, at least two other states, Georgia and Illinois, are currently examining whether it has shortchanged them since then. An official in Georgia said Bankers Trust had turned over only $663.63 in unclaimed funds between 1996 and 1998, including a check for just $9.08 in 1996. That is so far below the minimum $500,000 that an institution of Bankers Trust's size would ordinarily turn over, he said, that the state has initiated an audit to discover why.

Mr. Shanks and Charles S. Sanford, the bank's chief executive, had reshaped Bankers Trust during the late 1980's and early 1990's into one of Wall Street's most innovative shops. Once known as just another stodgy corporate lender, Bankers Trust developed an expertise in computer-driven trading and in the creation of newfangled financial hybrids known as derivatives.

Mr. Kingdon's unit was a humdrum corner of this flashy institution, but analysts estimated that it accounted for about 15 percent of Bankers Trust's 1993 profit of $1.1 billion.

In 1994, though, Bankers Trust's highfliers were grounded by scandal. The bank, one of the most loosely managed on Wall Street, came under fire from clients and regulators who accused it of misleading customers about its risky derivative products. Tape recordings, later made public in court hearings, captured the bank's sales force snickering about the naivete of the clients. The fallout was brutal. In just a year, the bank's earnings plummeted to $686 million; a Federal investigation eventually concluded that senior management had suppressed efforts by compliance officers to rein in questionable practices.

Before the Government's investigation was completed, Mr. Shanks and Mr. Sanford, both of whom declined to comment for this article, retired. Frank N. Newman, a former Treasury Department official, was appointed the new chief executive -- a switch engineered by the New York Federal Reserve to help restore the bank's credibility.

But while derivatives were making headlines, trouble was quietly brewing in Mr. Kingdon's domain. It was also in 1994 that three New York state auditors started asking questions about the bank's unclaimed-funds accounts, setting off a chain of events that led to Mr. Kingdon's resignation in early 1997 -- and the bank's guilty plea two months ago.

Within a few days of Mr. Kingdon's resignation, which Mr. Newman at the time attributed to personal reasons, Bankers Trust said it would add $20 million to its reserves to reconcile ''accounting differences'' in the global assets unit.

Federal prosecutors had a harsher term, however, for what went on under Mr. Kingdon's watch. In court papers filed in March, they declared that the bookkeeping irregularities were part of a criminal conspiracy.

The prosecutors said several executives in Mr. Kingdon's unit, whom they declined to identify, treated unclaimed accounts like a vast slush fund. And far from being a rogue operation to fill their own pockets, the prosecutors said in a statement in March, the Bankers Trust scheme was initiated because senior executives ''placed severe pressure'' on underlings to enhance the bank's dismal performance from 1994 to 1996.

Stumbling Blocks On a Paper Trail

Auditors at the New York State Comptroller's office -- which audits banks for unclaimed funds originally owned by New York residents or institutions -- are known to be unusually dedicated, yet loath to see their names in print. True to their reputation, none of those involved in the Bankers Trust investigation would comment for attribution.

When the auditors noticed in 1994 that Bankers Trust's unclaimed-funds accounts had dropped from $10.2 million in 1993 to $3.9 million in 1994, they asked for records explaining the plunge. But despite repeated requests, the documents were not forthcoming. Because banks were ordinarily quick to assist them, the auditors were bothered by the fact that Bankers Trust was not.

''The bank initially wasn't very cooperative and indicated that records couldn't be located,'' Comptroller H. Carl McCall said in an interview. Bankers Trust's diversion of unclaimed funds ''is one of the more egregious abuses my auditors have uncovered,'' he added.

Again and again, for more than two years, the auditors were told that the records had been transferred from New York to a warehouse in Nashville. The audit moved ahead slowly, partly because the auditors' resources were stretched thin but also because they failed to use stronger measures available to them, like issuing subpoenas or fining the bank, in the hope that it would cooperate.

Remarkably, even as the state auditors were in the bank raising questions about unclaimed funds, several Bankers Trust executives were blatantly foraging through those same accounts to locate money they could withhold from the state, according to allegations in an unsuccessful civil lawsuit filed in 1996 by Let W. Lee, a managing director who reported to Mr. Kingdon, against Bankers Trust in Federal court in Manhattan.

In the spring of 1995, Mr. Lee asked two of his employees, Harvey Plante and Gerard Callaghan, to identify unclaimed funds that could be kept on the bank's books, according to the lawsuit. The suit said Mr. Lee and Mr. Callaghan directed Mr. Plante to set up a reserve account for unclaimed funds -- the same account that Federal prosecutors would later label a slush fund.

The suit said Mr. Kingdon and Paula C. Gabriele, head of Bankers Trust's retirement services business, knew about the reserve account. It also said Mr. Lee cleared all of his actions, which he believed to be legal, with Bankers Trust's compliance officers. (The bank's compliance officers notify senior management of routine requests like Mr. Lee's only if they believe a problem has arisen, according to a bank spokesman.)