Ethics Questions Raised About Ex-eBay Exec Who's Running for California Governor

[mandy]

When he worked as a top executive at eBay, state Controller and gubernatorial candidate Steve Westly made $1.6 million through a controversial but widespread practice involving hot IPO shares.

During the dot-com boom, favored insiders often got lucrative stock from investment banks courting their companies' business...

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/silicon...805962.htm

[rose]

I won't be voting for him.

[regic]

The state controller urged CalPERS to look at a firm whose partners raised funds for him.

State Controller and gubernatorial candidate Steve Westly steered California's giant pension system to invest in a fledgling venture capital fund whose politically connected partners helped him raise campaign cash.

Before Westly's involvement, the pension board's outside advisors had rejected the fund as ill-suited for its portfolio. After the investment was made, one of the partners became enmeshed in an unrelated pension-fund scandal in Illinois, pleading guilty to attempted extortion...

full article: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-me-we...ory?page=1&coll=la-home-headlines

But to summarize, what is unseemly here is that Westly, who sits on the board of CalPERS, met with its staff officials to discuss the merits of investing in a particular fund that had been helping him raise cash for his campaign.

We will reserve judgement until we know more facts about the investment. Our gut reaction on the basis of this article, though, is that Westly has got too much else to do to be second guessing outside advisors to CalPERS, such as Grove Street Advisors who have the expertise to do true due diligence on whether to invest or not in this New York-based Healthpoint Partners LP. CalPERS invests in hundreds of firms, many of them through Grove Street, and Westly simply does not have the mental bandwidth to know which ones are a good investment, and which ones aren't.

full article: http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/...raged.html

[amy]

This older article has some more information about Westly's stock trading.

Securities and Exchange Commission regulations ban laddering as a form of investment fraud.

Experts say 33 of state Controller Steve Westly's dot-com-era stock purchases appear to be consistent with the banned practice of laddering.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...HBH511.DTL

Improper stock trading must be a requirement for eBay's top management.  Meg Whitman, Pierre Omidyar, and Jeff Skoll settled a $3 million suit over improper IPO trading.

[rose]

I'm planning to sleep-in on primary day and election day this year.  The Democratic candidates Westly and Angelides are a choice between bad and bad, and I woudn't vote to re-elect  Republican Arnie if you paid me.

[amy]

Westly says he'll apply eBay lessons to government

When Steve Westly joined eBay in 1997, his button-down shirts, slacks and sport coats came as something of a culture shock to his new colleagues in a place where shorts, T-shirts and ponytails were the norm. But Westly's aggressive ideas for growing the online auction company were even more of a stunner for folks who thought of their company as the center of a community that should grow through word of mouth and positive reviews from its users.

Westly, who brought a Stanford MBA and several years of experience in government and finance to the task, quickly proposed, then negotiated and nailed down, an agreement with America Online to push users to the eBay site -- for a fee.

Paying another company to send eyeballs to eBay offended the sensibilities of the company's early employees, to whom such tactics smacked of crass commercialism...

full article: http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/st...5292c.html

[xppman]

What does MBA stand for?

Miserable Back-stabbing Asphat?  :blinkie:

[rose]

The primary is mañana

Phil Angelides, the state treasurer, and Steve Westly, the controller, are virtually tied in a nasty race to become the Democrat that faces Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in November. About one in four likely Democratic primary voters still can't choose between the two, according to recent polling. Private polls also are said to reflect a dead heat.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercuryne...source=rss

[regic]

Unethical eBay Suit Guy spent $35 million, or nearly $39 per vote, and lost.  The final tally: Angelides  980,065 votes, or 48 percent, to Westly's 888,948 votes, or 43 percent

[maggie777]

[quote author=regic link=topic=663.msg15842#msg15842 date=1149800110]
Unethical eBay Suit Guy spent $35 million, or nearly $39 per vote, and lost.  The final tally: Angelides  980,065 votes, or 48 percent, to Westly's 888,948 votes, or 43 percent
[/quote]