|
THE WALL STREET FIX
Senior Producer and Correspondent Hedrick Smith
Written by Hedrick Smith and Rick Young
Produced and Directed by Rick Young
ELIOT SPITZER, NY Attorney General: What
we demand is integrity and honesty.
ANNOUNCER: Last week, regulators hit Wall Street
with its biggest fines ever.
ELIOT SPITZER: What is not tolerated, however, is
fraud.
ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE, the story behind
the fraud that cost investors tens of billions of dollars.
GEORGE MICKELIS, Investor: I was
robbed. I was lied to. I was stolen from.
LISA MCADAMS: It will be years and years before I
ever get over what's happened.
PHIL SPARTIS, Former Salomon Broker: They
were duped. They believed the
research. They bought the
research. They bought the stocks
based on the research.
ANNOUNCER: Correspondent Hedrick Smith goes inside
Wall Street, investigating the scam--
ELIOT SPITZER: It was brazen. The evidence of it was overwhelming.
ANNOUNCER: --uncovering the hype--
SCOTT CLELAND, Telecom Analyst:
We called that the trillion-dollar fib.
ANNOUNCER: --exposing the hidden connections--
SEAN COFFEY, Pension Fund Attorney: This
is a mortgage for a billion dollars.
ANNOUNCER: --and digging into Wall Street's biggest
bank.
KEN GUENTHER, Pres, Community Bankers Assn.: This
is hubris in the worst sense of the word.
Who do they think they are?
ANNOUNCER: Tonight, how Wall Street fixed the
game.
[July 8, 2002]
Rep. MICHAEL OXLEY (R-OH), Committee Chairman: The
committee will come to order. This
hearing of the Committee on Financial Services will begin. And as you all know, we have a number
of witnesses to hear from today.
WITNESS: Can I just ask that my opening
statement be entered in the record?
Rep. MICHAEL OXLEY: Without objection, all
these statements made part of the record.
I would ask the witnesses to rise and raise your right hand.
HEDRICK SMITH, FRONTLINE CORRESPONDENT: [voice-over] An all too familiar scene--
Rep. MICHAEL OXLEY: Do you swear that the
testimony you're about to give is the truth--
HEDRICK SMITH: --a corporate CEO hauled before
Congress, called to account for cooking the company's books.
Rep. MICHAEL OXLEY: You're sworn in.
HEDRICK SMITH: Over a decade, Bernie Ebbers's WorldCom
was America's hottest telecom stock.
It got as high as $96.75 a share.
Now it's worth just pennies.
Rep. MAX SANDLIN, Jr. (D), Texas: Mr.
Ebbers, you're the former CEO of WorldCom, is that correct? Mr. Ebbers?
BERNIE EBBERS: On instruction of counsel, I
respectfully decline to answer on the basis of my constitutional rights.
Rep. GARY ACKERMAN (D), New York: What I
would like to know--
HEDRICK SMITH: WorldCom was the most costly business
scandal in U.S. history.
Rep.
GARY ACKERMAN: Do you sleep well at night, Mr. Ebbers?
BERNIE EBBERS: I respectfully decline to answer on the
basis of my 5th Amendment constitutional rights.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] Corporate fraud -- that's the story we
know. But the real story behind
WorldCom's stunning rise and fall is more sinister. It's a story of pervasive corruption here on Wall Street,
how brokers and analysts shaped and hyped the telecom boom, pocketed enormous
profits and then took millions of ordinary investors on a catastrophic ride, $2
trillion in losses on WorldCom and other telecom stocks.
So before you bet again, watch as we peel back the layers
and look inside the culture of Wall Street and the world of investment banking
and examine the minds and the motives of the analysts.
[voice-over] To understand Wall Street's role in the
WorldCom story, I headed south, seeking clues to how things went so terribly
wrong. I found an all-American
story, entrepreneurs starting from scratch, raising money from friends and
neighbors and riding the incredible tide of telecom.
The story begins here, in the quiet backwater of Brookhaven,
Mississippi, where I met the man who gave birth to the idea that would become
WorldCom, small-town businessman Murray Waldron.
[on camera] You had some experience in telecom,
right? Not much, but you had some.
MURRAY WALDRON, Company Founder: Yeah,
not much. You're right.
HEDRICK SMITH: Are you a businessman or are you an
engineer?
MURRAY WALDRON: Neither one. Well, I-- I had been in several different kinds of
business. I was in the grocery
business, a used car lot-- just different things.
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] With the breakup of AT&T in the
early '80s, Waldron saw a golden opportunity to sell cheaper long-distance
service in places like Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
MURRAY WALDRON: I went into the Chamber of Commerce
office. The lady asked if she could
help us, and I says, "Yeah. You
can tell me how many long distance companies you have that service
Hattiesburg." And she said, "What
is that?" And I said, "Never
mind. We're at the right
place." So that's where we
started.
HEDRICK SMITH: They didn't even know what long
distance was.
MURRAY WALDRON: No.
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] Waldron hooked up with Dave Singleton,
who'd raised money for various local ventures, including some motels run by the
man who would eventually make WorldCom a household word, Bernie Ebbers.
DAVID SINGLETON, Company Director: Bernie
was a friend. He was a friend both
in the church and in business. We
had been involved in some of his motel things together.
HEDRICK SMITH: Ebbers grew up in Canada, came to
Mississippi for college in the 1960s and stayed. He became a high school basketball coach and then tried his
hand at business with some church buddies.
BERNIE EBBERS: [National Press Club] I actually started my working life as a
bouncer in a bar, but I don't like to say that publicly.
DAVID SINGLETON: He knew how to manage and enjoyed
managing a profit-and-loss statement-- revenue in, control of-- of expenses and
driving it to the bottom line, looking for good margins. He ran a very tight ship with his
motels, in terms of controlling his cost.
HEDRICK SMITH: Ebbers saw an opportunity when
Singleton suggested investing in Waldron's long distance telephone
company. Ebbers and his partners
got a $650,000 loan from a local bank to buy a computer switch to route long
distance calls.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] And what have we got here?
MURRAY WALDRON: That's the switch in Hattiesburg. At least about the size of four big,
over-sized refrigerators down there.
We had a service that was good, that would save people
money. And at that time, people
were paying a lot of money for long distance phone calls.
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] Long distance discount service -- or
LDDS for short -- offered cut rates to small businesses. They could do that because AT&T was
under court order to lease its phone lines cheaply to start-ups like LDDS.
[on camera] So you're reselling?
DAVID SINGLETON: That's right. That's basically all it was.
HEDRICK SMITH: Reselling and marketing, but not
building, no big overhead.
DAVID SINGLETON: That's exactly right. The telephone business, as we came into
it back then, was not asset-based.
You didn't have to have a huge amount of equipment. So it was just a huge cash flow stream.
BRIAN THOMPSON, Former VP, MCI:
Anybody could start up a company, and people did. There were-- almost overnight, some 400
companies were established, didn't exist before that, by people that said,
"Well, gee, here's the chance to do something. Here's a great opportunity." It was better than the gold rush.
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] One of those who signed on early to
Ebbers's gold rush was Lisa McAdams.
LISA McADAMS: Yeah, here are some things I pulled
together in 1988, which was the year I was hired.
HEDRICK SMITH: It paid off handsomely. Hired as a technician, McAdams worked
like crazy, won Ebbers's confidence and wound up as a WorldCom vice president.
LISA McADAMS: It was exhilarating. I mean, we knew we were doing something
very unique in this country. I
mean, it was growing, it was building.
HEDRICK SMITH: Ebbers grew his business the same way
he'd built his motel chain, buying up regional rivals one by one.
LISA McADAMS: As we grew, we grew into the adjoining
states. We grew out from the
Mississippi, Tennessee area, and we just kept expanding out further.
HEDRICK SMITH: Ebbers's currency for the buy-outs was
LDDS stock, selling in the late 1980s at a couple of dollars a share.
SCOTT CLELAND, Telecom Analyst: Bernie
Ebbers was a roll-up artist. And
what that is, is he realized if he took a fragmented industry and he rolled it
up, essentially rolled the revenues into one big pot, he could dramatically
lower costs. That's the simple
math of Bernie Ebbers. He was a
roll-up artist.
HEDRICK SMITH: Within 10 years, Ebbers rolled together
30 companies. Sales reached nearly
a billion dollars. The original
plan was to sell out.
MURRAY WALDRON: It didn't work out because the thing
was making money. And then it
just-- you know, it just kept on growing and getting bigger and bigger and
bigger. It was a great
feeling. I mean, you talk about an
old country boy's dream? This was
a dream, I'll tell you.
HEDRICK SMITH: But country boy Bernie Ebbers now had
bigger dreams. He renamed his
company WorldCom, and when Congress threw competition wide open with the
Telecom Act of 1996, Ebbers went hunting bigger game. And his timing was right.
The dawning of the Internet age was transforming Ma Bell's
old-fashioned phone network into the backbone for the World Wide Web and the
high-tech channel for rivers of data flowing across corporate America.
SUSAN KALLA, Telecom Analyst: There was a thought that
the information superhighway was going to be enormous. There was going to a huge build-out
everywhere in broadband to every doorstep of every business, every doorstep of
every house. And so it looked like
an upgrade that people were beginning to think would be $300 billion to $500
billion in build-out.
HEDRICK SMITH: A potential gold mine for Wall Street
banks.
[on camera] What's their role in the whole telecom
bubble, the investment banks?
SCOTT CLELAND: Well, they were really the glue that
brought it all together. They were
the enablers. You know, if you
didn't have Wall Street, you wouldn't have had a bubble because you wouldn't
have been able to bring together all the pieces necessary-- the hype, the
analysis the credibility, the distribution system, the smarts. It wouldn't have happened.
HEDRICK SMITH: And the money.
SCOTT CLELAND:: And the money.
HEDRICK SMITH: Big, big money.
SCOTT CLELAND: Big money.
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] To outsiders, Wall Street is
overwhelming in its power, its immensity.
It is the Mount Olympus of finance, deciding the destinies of legions of
companies like WorldCom. Wall
Street's huge investment banks are the engines that drive corporate
America. They raise the money to
finance corporate mergers, sell corporate bonds, bring hot new companies
public. And their brokerage houses
market stocks to investors.
[television broadcast]
1st ANALYST: We want to be 100 percent invested, and
we think we have the right sectors by overweighting telecom and tech.
HEDRICK SMITH: To most of us, the face of Wall Street
is the market gurus--
2nd ANALYST: To look into the future of
communication services, you need several assets.
HEDRICK SMITH: --the research analysts, keeping score
on corporate America--
3rd ANALYST: We rate shares of WorldCom a buy.
HEDRICK SMITH: --coaching investors on winners and
losers.
GEORGE MICKELIS, Investor: I originally thought to
myself, "Gosh, what do I know about stocks and the stock market?" So I thought, "Let me go out to a
really reputable brokerage firm that I could trust." And so I picked Salomon Smith Barney.
ANNOUNCER: [television commercial] At Salomon Smith Barney, our research
analysts have the resources and determination to find the year's most promising
stocks.
STEPHEN FRASER, Wall Street Historian: People
are relying on Wall Street to sanction, to give them confidence in what they're
investing in. Wall Street is like
the seal of approval from Good Housekeeping for a consumer
product. If Wall Street says this
is a viable company worth investing in, if Wall Street says it's worth X amount
of money, people assume it's acting prudently, soberly.
HEDRICK SMITH: George Mickelis runs a family
restaurant in Houston. Like
millions of others, Mickelis put his faith in market analysts. He invested almost $300,000 of his
portfolio in telecom stocks to pay for his children's college education,
relying on advice from his broker.
GEORGE MICKELIS: He would constantly refer to a guy
named Jack Grubman. Never heard of
the man before in my life, but he would say, "This is Salomon Smith Barney's
top analyst. He is the man. This man eats, sleeps, drinks, breathes
telecom. And if this man says to
buy something, we need to listen to him and we need to buy it."
HEDRICK SMITH: On Wall Street in the '90s, no one had
a nose for telecom like Jack Grubman.
4th ANALYST: He has generated a pile of cash for
Salomon Smith Barney.
HEDRICK SMITH: Grubman knew telecom from the
inside. He'd been a math and
marketing whiz at AT&T for eight years before moving to Wall Street.
SUSAN KALLA: He had the industry contacts. He was friends with most of the
CEOs. He was very well connected
within the industry. So he really
worked the system very well.
HEDRICK SMITH: But Grubman wasn't really doing what
George Mickelis thought.
ARTHUR LEVITT, SEC Chairman 1993-2001: The
analysts morphed from being the serious, almost nerd-like students of numbers
and corporate strategies into being hyper-salespeople, as an adjunct of the
investment banking departments of the firms that employed them.
HEDRICK SMITH: Analysts like Grubman were not really
working for investors. They were
the bird dogs for the banks, sniffing out hot new corporate properties.
[on camera] Grubman said on television that he
first picked up Bernie Ebbers at LDDS in 1986.
KEVIN MOORE, Telecom Analyst: Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, as you know, 50 percent of all businesses fail in five
years. This is the risk Grubman
had to take if he was ever going to be great. And every analyst--
HEDRICK SMITH: What was the risk he was taking? Explain it to me.
KEVIN MOORE: The risk of going down there, finding a
guy in cowboy boots in Jackson, Mississippi, in a pool hall and saying, "This
guy is going to be great. He is
going to do something on the Street.
And if I hitch my career to him, this could make my career."
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] Getting to know WorldCom meant getting
to know Bernie, and that meant hanging out with Bernie in his favorite local
haunt, the Cherokee Inn.
ROB GENSLER, Telecom Portfolio Mgr: It was
a great place. It was a great
place. It's a-- it's a dive, where
people over the years have taken their knife out and carved in their
girlfriend's name. And only one or
two pool tables in the place, really cheap burgers and beer, and you sit around
and chat.
HEDRICK SMITH: Grubman wasn't just playing pool, he
was shooting for a jackpot with Ebbers and WorldCom.
KEVIN MOORE: They're in a generally
capital-intensive industry, which means they'll be raising lots of money, which
means lots of banking fees. They
are going to be doing lots of acquisitions, which is lots of M&A banking
fees, OK? They're in this growth
industry of telecom. This is the--
this is the mother lode for Jack Grubman.
That is the dream of every analyst, to be able to do what Jack did.
HEDRICK SMITH: On Wall Street, Grubman personified the
new-age analysts, the power brokers who connected companies with banks and
banks with corporate decision-makers.
These close links between stock analysts and Wall Street's corporate
clients were the focus of a two-year investigation by New York attorney general
Eliot Spitzer.
ELIOT SPITZER, NY Attorney General: What
we found was that analysts were involved from the very beginning of the
investment banking relationship, going out there, soliciting a client,
promising that, "If you bring your business to our firm, we will take your
company, proclaim to the world that it is the best thing since sliced bread,
take your company public, keep a strong buy on your stock and become part of
your management team."
HEDRICK SMITH: Gone was the very idea of independent
analysis for ordinary investors.
ARTHUR LEVITT: And the companies say to the analysts,
"Look, we'll choose your employer, but we expect coverage." And what they mean by coverage is they
expect that analyst to write favorable research reports about their company.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] So there's a quid pro quo.
ARTHUR LEVITT: There's an absolute quid pro quo. And coverage means "We're going to
promote the heck out of your stock."
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] But if that's how an analyst like
Grubman worked, where did that leave investors?
ELIOT SPITZER: It means you're turning your back on
one set of clients. That's what he
did. That's what the analysts were
doing when they played ball just with the investment bankers.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] And the people who got hurt were the
investors, the ordinary investors.
ELIOT SPITZER: It was the ordinary investors, who
didn't understand the game.
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] A game with huge payoffs for Wall
Street banks.
ELIOT SPITZER: There were billions of dollars in
investment banking fees generated by the telecom sector. It was the sector where there was a
vast infrastructure being built, vast amounts of capital being raised to build
it.
HEDRICK SMITH: The banks were the midwives, selling
multi-billion-dollar deals to companies and then getting investors to finance
them.
SCOTT CLELAND: Generally, the ideas come from
investment bankers. They're the
ones out there that are thinking of deals because they're the ones that will
benefit from a deal.
HEDRICK SMITH: So as Ebbers was gobbling up companies
one after another, Grubman was whispering in his ear, egging Bernie on.
SUSAN KALLA: You had a very small player that came
from nowhere, with a CEO that did not have a technical background, did not have
a financial background and did not have an industry background. And he was being catapulted into number
one. You couldn't do it with a--
without a lot of help.
[www.pbs.org: The WorldCom-Wall St. connection]
SCOTT CLELAND: Jack Grubman and Salomon Smith Barney
were essential enablers for WorldCom to take off. It took a rising stock price. It took some very good investment banking and some very good
salesmanship in order to sell the marketplace.
HEDRICK SMITH: And the marketplace for big money was
selling institutional investors-- pension funds, mutual funds. And in that league, Jack Grubman was
the Pied Piper of telecom.
SUSAN KALLA: Could Jack Grubman move markets? Absolutely. Unqualified.
Yes. Did people believe
him? Yes. Was he very good at putting together
the details? Did he know the
business? Did he understand the
players? Did he understand
investors? Yes to all of those.
HEDRICK SMITH: Rob Gensler, as manager of the telecom
portfolio for T. Rowe Price mutual funds, heard many a pitch from Grubman.
ROB GENSLER, Telecom Portfolio Mgr: Jack
Grubman was a shoe salesman. The
shoe salesman wants you to buy the shoes.
And in fact, they want you to buy the more expensive shoes. Not to take anything away, but they are
selling stocks. They are selling
ideas. And one should never forget
the term "selling." Like all sales
people, they'd like to sell you what profits their organization.
HEDRICK SMITH: Grubman's prime selling turf was the
annual gathering of telecom's top tier at the La Quinta resort in Palm Springs,
California. They came for Salomon
Smith Barney's annual telecom conference.
DAN HESSE, Former CEO, AT&T Wireless: All
the major players wanted to be there.
As a telecom company or CEO, you wanted to be on the stage because the audience,
in terms of the institutions, was-- was fantastic.
HEDRICK SMITH: They came to be seen with Jack Grubman,
who was mobbed like a rock star.
DAN HESSE: Jack was the one who gave out the
invitations. He decided who was
going to speak and whether you were by yourself or on a panel. So Jack pretty much set the
agenda. Jack also did lots of the
introductions.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] Jack was the Johnny Carson?
DAN HESSE: Jack was Johnny Carson, in that he-- he
decided who he was going to have on the show and where they were going to
sit. And Bernie Ebbers, at least
in the couple conferences I remember, always had a very prominent position.
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] But Grubman did more than give his
favorites the spotlight. Salomon
awarded them sweetheart deals so hush-hush that even insiders, like former
Salomon Smith Barney broker Phil Spartis, were kept in the dark. Spartis, who was dismissed and later
sued Salomon, used to manage personal stock option accounts for WorldCom's top
brass. But one thing puzzled
Spartis: He had all the WorldCom executives except Bernie Ebbers.
So in August, 1999, Spartis called Ebbers's personal
financial manager to solicit Ebbers's business and stumbled into a surprising
discovery.
PHIL SPARTIS, Former Salomon Broker: And he
said, "Well, Bernie already has an account at Smith Barney." And I said, "What do you mean?" And he said, "Well, he's had an account
for over a year in L.A." And I
said something to the effect, "With who?"
And he said, "With Rick Olson."
I said, "Rick Olson? Who's
that?" He said, "Well, he was
referred to Bernie by Jack Grubman.
He's one of Jack's boys."
HEDRICK SMITH: What Spartis had discovered was
Salomon's exclusive boutique brokerage in Los Angeles run by Rick Olson and his
former deputy, David Chacon, who was forced out after blowing the whistle.
DAVID CHACON, Former Salomon Broker: At one
point, our clients collectively controlled, according to Olson, over $100
billion in assets. You probably
had, you know, eight to ten billionaires as clients under one roof.
HEDRICK SMITH: Salomon's strategy, Chacon said, was to
win telecom banking deals by giving personal windfalls to corporate VIPs, a
strategy guided by Jack Grubman and run by a team nicknamed the "Telecom Mafia."
DAVID CHACON: The point is, if you can dominate the
relationships within a sector that's tremendous in size and scope and has very
few individuals whom you need to use as a pawn to accomplish your objective,
well, then, you know, you have a winning business plan.
HEDRICK SMITH: The crown jewels were shares of hot
telecom IPOs, or initial public offerings. Premium clients got huge IPO allocations of new companies on
the first day of trading and made a killing.
DAVID CHACON: These shares would rise by, you know,
30, 40, 50, 100 percent the first day.
So that, in itself, is free money.
But Salomon took it to another level. Oftentimes, they did not allocate these shares until after
the stock had been trading.
Salomon would be able to call these same officers and directors, saying,
"Look, I have," you know, "20,000 shares of this company. It's trading at $85 right now, and
wanted to give you," you know, "the opportunity to invest at the IPO price."
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] Which is much lower.
DAVID CHACON: Fifteen dollars, twenty dollars. It allowed the-- Salomon Smith Barney to
buy people, to buy their decisions, to buy their influence, and to buy their
business.
HEDRICK SMITH: By handing them free money.
DAVID CHACON: By handing them free money.
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] The company reported to Congress that
Salomon had handed Bernie Ebbers $11 million through 21 IPOs. But David Chacon recalls hearing from
his boss, Rick Olson, who handled Ebbers's accounts, that Ebbers made far more
than that from IPOs. Just one
example. A company called Rhythms
Net Connections, which Salomon took public in an IPO in April, 1999.
DAVID CHACON: Well, several days after the stock was
trading, I sat right next to Rick, and he said, "Well, between us girls" -- and
what that meant was, you know, that's kind of telecom mafia lingo for, "This
doesn't leave the room" -- "Bernie Ebbers just got 350,000 shares."
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] Now, are you sure he said 350,000
shares?
DAVID CHACON: I'm sure he said 350,000 shares.
[www.pbs.org: Read Chacon's interview]
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] Olson would not talk to FRONTLINE, but
Chacon, in a lawsuit disputed by Salomon, said that Salomon gave Bernie Ebbers
an immediate kickback of $16 million on that one IPO.
PHIL SPARTIS: This was a well-orchestrated con game,
meaning that here's this group of elite telecom executives that were given
preferential treatment on IPOs and loans and other things so that the firm
could generate their banking business.
HEDRICK SMITH: Wall Street, like telecom, was
booming. Salomon's profits from
WorldCom's investment banking business were huge, but they wanted more. What if Salomon merged with a
commercial bank, like Citibank, so as one bank, a superbank, they could handle
all the needs of a cash cow like WorldCom?
SCOTT CLELAND: If you're Citicorp, you see WorldCom as
a meal ticket. It is the perfect,
quintessential client. They have
tons of investment banking needs and tons of debt needs. You can't find a better client than a
telecom serial acquirer.
HEDRICK SMITH: If one man understood the potential
power of a superbank, it was Sandy Weill.
Weill began on Wall Street as a stock runner, and over 50 years, made
himself the street's dominant banker.
Like Bernie Ebbers, Weill is a deal-maker, a master of the merger, the
bold buyout. Like Ebbers, Weill
is an imperial boss, a ruthless
cost-cutter driven to be king of the hill. And now a billionaire.
As a superstar among New York's financial elite, Weill was
crowned in 2002 as CEO of the Year.
His crowning glory was putting together Citigroup, the largest financial institution in the
world, 250,000 employees in over 100 countries.
But it almost didn't happen, for smack in the way of Weill's
superbank stood a 1930s law that prohibited commercial banks from selling
securities. The law was called
Glass-Steagall.
ARTHUR LEVITT, SEC Chairman 1993-2001:
Glass-Steagall was enacted to respond to some of the scandals of the
early part of the century, where individual investors were grievously hurt by
banks who were promoting stocks that were of interest to the banks rather than
to investors. And that was a very
sensible division of investment banking and commercial banking.
HEDRICK SMITH: For decades, the big banks had pushed
Congress to repeal Glass-Steagall, but Congress had refused. Then in 1987, the big banks got a
break. Wall Street's own Alan
Greenspan, a critic of Glass-Steagall, was named chairman of the Federal
Reserve Board. Greenspan favored
greater deregulation to help U.S. banks compete with big foreign banks, and he
found room to reinterpret existing law.
CHARLES GEISST, Wall Street Historian: Alan
Greenspan is central to the change in banking that we saw in the 1990s. By looking at the loopholes, Alan
Greenspan began to allow commercial banks, including Morgan at the time -- and
Citibank -- into the corporate securities business on a limited basis. And that began to increase as the 1990s
rolled on.
HEDRICK SMITH: Greenspan let banks do up to 25 percent
of their business in securities-- enough for most, but not for Sandy Weill. As head of Travelers Insurance, Weill
bought Salomon in 1997 and then set his sights on the biggest commercial bank,
Citicorp.
KEN GUENTHER, Pres, Community Bankers Assn.:
We are talking about the largest financial merger in the world. We are talking about, for the first
time in the modern history of the United States, since 1933, the largest bank,
one of the largest securities firms, one of the largest insurance firms being
put together under common ownership.
HEDRICK SMITH: But that was against the law, so Weill
privately lobbied Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and President
Clinton. Then he made a
breathtaking announcement.
SANDY WEILL: I think what we are doing is creating a
model of the financial services company of the future that will--
KEN GUENTHER: And here you have the leadership --
Sandy Weill of Travelers and John Reed of Citicorp -- saying, "Look, the
Congress isn't moving fast enough.
Let's do it on our own. The
heck with the Congress. Let us
effect this." I mean, this is
hubris in the worst sense of the word.
Who do they think they are?
Other people, firms cannot act like this.
[www.pbs.org: More on Weill's Washington clout]
HEDRICK SMITH: It was a brazen gamble, upstaging
Congress. But Weill had made a
deal with Greenspan. The Fed gave
temporary approval for Weill to operate his superbank for two years. And if Congress repealed Glass-Steagall
within two years, Weill was home free.
Rep. JOHN DINGELL (D), Michigan: I
think it's pretty clear to say that Sandy Weill forced the hand of
Congress. I think it's equally
clear to say that the Fed forced the hand of Congress to do something that they
knew full well could not be done.
What they said was, "At the end of two years, if you haven't-- haven't
gotten it done, you will have to disgorge." But everybody up here said, "Oh, my. We can't do that to our dear friend,
Sandy Weill."
HEDRICK SMITH: Congress relented and finally buried Glass-Steagall
by repealing it in November, 1999.
SCOTT CLELAND: The repeal of Glass-Steagall was a big
deal because it enabled kind of colossal combinations that just weren't
envisioned before, where you brought the savvy of an investment banking house like
Salomon Smith Barney together with a Citibank. And Citibank could loan an enormous amount of money.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] So Sandy Weill and his team can market
across the board to Bernie Ebbers.
"You don't need to go anywhere else, Bernie."
SCOTT CLELAND: It's a one-stop-shop strategy. It's very powerful.
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] I found evidence of the new powers of
the superbank in a surprising place, among these Mississippi pines. Land records show that these pines
belong to a company called Joshua Timberlands, a company controlled by Bernie
Ebbers. Ebbers bought nearly half
a million acres of timberland sprawling across Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee in late 1999, thanks to
Sandy Weill's superbank, which arranged the loan and gave Ebbers a $1 billion
mortgage.
SEAN COFFEY, Pension Fund Attorney: This
is a mortgage for a billion dollars.
It's a mortgage that Joshua Timberlands, which is the Ebbers-controlled
entity, got from Travelers, the Citigroup unit, in February of 2000.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] Is it conceivable that a loan of this
size could be made to Bernie Ebbers through his entity, Joshua Timberlands,
without the chief honcho at Citigroup, Sandy Weill, knowing?
SEAN COFFEY: Not the Sandy Weill I've read about.
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] Attorney Sean Coffey has sued Wall
Street banks to recover $300 million in WorldCom losses for the pension fund of
New York state employees. One
thing not disclosed to investors, he says, was that Weill's superbank became
Bernie Ebbers's business partner in the timber deal.
SEAN COFFEY: I think the average investor would like
to know, "Well, is there something here about the relationship between Salomon
or its parent, Citigroup, and the people at this company which should give me
pause about how objective they are being?"
HEDRICK SMITH: The whole deal was kept sub rosa
because it didn't look good on Wall Street for Ebbers to sell WorldCom
stock. So the superbank devised a
scheme to help Ebbers convert his WorldCom wealth into hard assets: Don't sell
stock, take a loan.
SEAN COFFEY: So here you have Bernie Ebbers getting
cash in his pocket by virtue of getting a loan from Travelers to buy this
timberland, and then turning around and selling part of it for cash.
HEDRICK SMITH: Timber was just part of Ebbers's
private business empire-- luxury yachts, a boat-building company, a lumber mill,
a ranch in Canada-- not just any ranch, but the biggest ranch in all of Canada,
500,000 acres, financed with a $43 million loan from Citibank. And the superbank's loan, Coffey says,
was backed by 2.3 million shares of Ebbers's WorldCom stock.
SEAN COFFEY: That's a very troubling link, in our
view. because Citibank has an interest in the stock price of WorldCom being
high enough to cover the loans they've made to Mr. Ebbers. And in yet another part of the same
building, you've got Jack Grubman issuing analyst reports saying, "Buy, buy,
buy that stock," to drive the price up.
HEDRICK SMITH: So Ebbers, WorldCom, Grubman and
Weill's superbank had become so intertwined that the ordinary investor was lost
in the trees.
TOM BROKAW, NBC News: Another record day on
Wall Street, another few points closer to the magic mark of 10,000--
DAN RATHER, CBS News: The Dow soared another
184 points today--
PETER JENNINGS, ABC News: The Dow finished above
11,000 for the first time today--
HEDRICK SMITH: As the new century approached, it all
looked so good. It seemed as
though the raging bull market would never end. Wall Street can be deceiving.
STEPHEN FRASER, Wall Street Historian: I
think Wall Street is distinctly different than every other part of the economy
because Wall Street, in the end, deals in fantasies. They trade in the promise. And when the trading and the promises get completely out of
hand and Wall Street is really just dealing in phantoms, that's where the
danger comes.
HEDRICK SMITH: The real danger for WorldCom and its
investors began with its biggest deal.
TOM BROKAW, NBC News: Some very big business
news tonight. The battle to take
over this country's second largest long distance telephone company, MCI, has
been won by that upstart, WorldCom.
HEDRICK SMITH: It sounded great, taking out telecom's
number two.
DAN RATHER, CBS News: The record-breaking $37
billion dollar deal -- that's with a "B"--
HEDRICK SMITH: But was Bernie Ebbers overreaching?
SCOTT CLELAND: It was the goldfish swallowing the
whale. I mean, WorldCom was
nowhere near the size of MCI, and it surprised everybody that they had the
audaciousness to try. And they
pulled it off.
HEDRICK SMITH: Ebbers dared because the superbank
engineered the deal. Jack Grubman
was so involved that the WorldCom board listed him as a financial adviser. Grubman wouldn't talk to
FRONTLINE. But he did talk to
Congress.
[House Financial Services Committee hearing]
Rep. MICHAEL OXLEY: Did you ever attend a
board meeting for WorldCom?
JACK GRUBMAN: Yes.
Rep. MICHAEL OXLEY: Is it rather unusual for
analysts to attend board meetings?
JACK GRUBMAN: It is rare, as it has been for me over
the years.
HEDRICK SMITH: Grubman was giving Bernie Ebbers
guidance on corporate strategy.
SUSAN KALLA: His point of view on the industry was
that the best way to be successful was to build out the biggest global network
possible. So suddenly, you heard
Bernie starting to talk about the same thing, It was a completely different strategy than what he
had talked about prior, a few years prior.
HEDRICK SMITH: A strategy that turned sour because it
was based on a wildly inflated premise for the whole telecom boom.
SCOTT CLELAND: WorldCom said that data traffic, the
thing that everybody was interested in, was doubling every 90 days. At one point, data traffic was doubling
every 90 days. But what happened
is, WorldCom repeated it and kept repeating it, and so for three or four years,
that became the mantra, and it just was flat wrong. Data traffic hadn't been growing at that rate since at least
1997. So the hype was a lie for
three or four years before it burst.
HEDRICK SMITH: That phantom mantra, Cleland says,
powered a $1 trillion increase in the stock of 14 core telecom companies that
evaporated when the bubble burst.
SCOTT CLELAND: We called that the trillion-dollar fib.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] You call it a trillion-dollar fib.
SCOTT CLELAND: Yes.
HEDRICK SMITH: They knew it was phony?
SCOTT CLELAND: Oh, I think the companies knew that
data traffic wasn't growing that fast.
SUSAN KALLA: there were very few faint voices that
were saying it was wrong. But by
then, the-- everyone was listening to the up-side story. And why shouldn't they? They were all making so much money.
SCOTT CLELAND: WorldCom was a gravy train for almost
everybody. It was a gravy train
for the investment bankers. It was
a gravy train for the-- for the stockbrokers that were advising it. It was a gravy train for investors who
owned it and benefited from its skyrocketing stock price.
HEDRICK SMITH: For Salomon Smith Barney, the gravy
train delivered more than $1.1 billion in investment banking fees from the
telecom sector in just four years, roughly $140 million from WorldCom.
[House Financial Services Committee hearing]
Rep. TUBB JONES (D), Ohio: --how
much financially you have benefited from working for Salomon Smith Barney--
HEDRICK SMITH: Big bucks for the banks meant big money
for Grubman.
JACK GRUBMAN: I've been compensated over the past
four years roughly $20 million per year, on average. But that is not tied to any one company.
HEDRICK SMITH: But to his bosses at Salomon, Grubman
justified his huge pay bonuses as rainmaker for the bank deal by deal, company
by company, claiming credit for landing $1 billion in bank fees between 1998
and 2001.
ELIOT SPITZER: He didn't argue, "Pay me as an analyst
because I'm a good stock picker."
He said, "Pay me a lot because I bring in investment banking revenue to
the firm, in essence, by promising those firms that I'm going to push their
stocks."
HEDRICK SMITH: Even when WorldCom stock hit its peak
of $96.75 a share, Grubman kept pushing it, predicting it would go much higher.
WYONZIE KRAFT, Investor: WorldCom-- it
sounded very, very good. I
invested a total of about $32,000 in it.
I was planning on that doubling for my old age.
GEORGE MICKELIS, INVESTOR: My broker said, "Look,
these people are saying, 'Buy these stocks. These stocks are good to buy at this time.'" And so I trusted him when he told me I
was listening to the best and the brightest analysts in the world.
HEDRICK SMITH: But at Grubman's telecom bash, insiders
were getting drastically different advice on the market.
SUSAN KALLA: It was January of 2000. And I was at the Salomon Smith Barney
media and telecom conference, and we were at a very big dinner that probably
housed 500 people.
ROB GENSLER, Telecom Portfolio Manager: The
market's flying. We'd just had a
year where telecom stock doubled.
SUSAN KALLA: And then suddenly, Bob Rubin shows up
HEDRICK SMITH: Bob Rubin, former head of a major Wall
Street firm, then Clinton's secretary of treasury, had just become Sandy
Weill's chief lieutenant at Citigroup.
SUSAN KALLA: And then we had had some wine at the
dinner. And then Bob opens up
saying that Sandy Weill had asked him not to give the speech.
HEDRICK SMITH: But Rubin gave the speech anyway.
SUSAN KALLA: And he suggested in no uncertain terms
that the stocks were way too high, they were on a levitation zone, and they
couldn't be sustainable. So as he
was speaking, my palms were sweating.
He was making the case that there was a bubble, there was an
Internet bubble, there was a telecom bubble. And this was three months before the Internet bubble
collapsed. So he gave every
investor in this room, which was every investor on the planet that mattered,
three months to recalibrate and to get out of these stocks.
DAN HESSE: And privately, at his table -- I was
fortunate enough to be at his head table.
But he told us that he had no money in the stock market. I wish I had taken his advice. And I think there's a lot of other guys
at the table that would say the same thing.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] Did you talk to Grubman?
SUSAN KALLA: I did talk to Grubman afterwards. My hands were shaking. I said to him, "What did you think of
Bob's speech? And he goes, "Stocks
go up, stocks go down. Doesn't
matter." He was completely blowing
it off.
[www.pbs.org: Read Kalla's interview]
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] What's more, Grubman kept pushing
Bernie Ebbers to maintain the image of growth momentum and reach for the
moon. But the regulators blocked
him.
NEWSCASTER: Today the WorldCom-Sprint merger became
the biggest deal ever to collapse.
SCOTT CLELAND: The beginning of the end for WorldCom
was when he couldn't buy Sprint because how WorldCom kept the story going is,
is they would have a big acquisition and then they would do the accounting
magic, where they hid what was going on, and then they'd move on and operate
until they had the next merger.
BRIAN THOMPSON: And it looked like your company was
growing beautifully, and it looked like all your costs were under control. And underneath all of this, you really
weren't merging companies.
SCOTT CLELAND: So what happened is, when the Sprint
merger was denied, the beast couldn't get fed again. They didn't have another opportunity to cook the books.
HEDRICK SMITH: Long distance prices were
plummeting. Telecom hype had
produced a glut of overcapacity.
Some analysts warned investors to get out.
SUSAN KALLA: We came out with a call that said that
the revenues are shrinking and that these companies are not going to be able to
cover the cost of servicing their debt.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] So you said underperform?
SUSAN KALLA: We said underperform, which was "sell."
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] With WorldCom's stock tumbling, Bernie
Ebbers was in trouble. The company
was desperate for cash. Weill's
superbank came to the rescue.
Despite the telecom capacity glut, despite plummeting phone prices,
despite Rubin's personal warnings, Citigroup led bank syndicates that sold
investors $17 billion of WorldCom bonds.
SEAN COFFEY: In effect, you have the investing
public giving money to WorldCom, which it then turned around and gave some-- at
least some of it to the banks, so that the banks' exposure from loans to
WorldCom was either reduced or eliminated.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] When they're floating the WorldCom debt
offerings in 2000, 2001, Citigroup and these other big banks have a financial
self-interest.
SEAN COFFEY: Well, in addition to the investment
banking fees, yes, some of the banks were looking to eliminate some of the
exposure they had from their loans to WorldCom.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] And while Citigroup was limiting its
own risk, its star analyst told investors WorldCom's plunging stock was now an
incredible bargain.
GEORGE MICKELIS: At this point, as the stocks are
starting to really get hammered, I'm talking to my broker two and three times a
day to see what kind of damage control we can do here. When WorldCom got down below $10, it
was, like, "This is a big company.
Our analysts are still feeling good about these companies. They still have strong buy
recommendations."
LOU DOBBS, CNN "Moneyline": Good
evening. We begin tonight with the
most egregious case of corporate corruption.
HEDRICK SMITH: Then the bombshell, June, 2002, charges
of massive corporate fraud from inside WorldCom.
SEAN COFFEY: But we're not talking about a few
pencils missing from the stockroom.
We're talking about $9 billion of earnings that were suddenly wiped out. And the investment bankers have an
obligation to look for the signs.
HEDRICK SMITH: The question remains: Just what did
Citigroup know about WorldCom's bogus bookkeeping?
Rep. ACKERMAN: Did you analyze everything, or did you
just take their word for it?
JACK GRUBMAN: No. We analyzed it based on the financial results, stress
testing the results, the reasonableness of their capital spending trends, their
margin trends, their financial performance relative to their competitors. There were no red flags.
HEDRICK SMITH: But Grubman knew WorldCom almost like
an insider. In fact, he wrote
emails coaching Bernie Ebbers what to tell Wall Street about WorldCom's
finances.
SEAN COFFEY: But there's one particular email,
Grubman is saying, "You got to talk about your accounting." And what does Ebbers do during the
phone call?
[conference call February 7, 2002]
BERNIE EBBERS: First, accounting. Let me be clear. We stand by our accounting."
SEAN COFFEY: He actually ticks off the things that
he was told to say by Grubman
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] So he's in bed with management. Is that illegal?
SEAN COFFEY: Well, I think the fact that he's so
tight with them raises the question of how he could not know about $9 billion
in overstated earnings. And our
lawsuit alleges that, at a minimum, he saw red flags and decided to ignore
them, as he continued to tout WorldCom stock to the investing public.
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] Not until April, 2002, just weeks
before WorldCom was charged with fraud, did Grubman drop his buy rating. And he never did say "sell."
SCOTT CLELAND: Well, I think the simple thing that we
learned about WorldCom is if it looks too good to be true, it is too good to be
true. Now, what did we learn about
Wall Street? We learned that they
don't work for us, the investor.
They work for the company.
And it should be investor beware.
HEDRICK SMITH: Two years of investigating the world of
investment banks led New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer to a harsh
conclusion: Wall Street was riddled with abuses.
ELIOT SPITZER: It wasn't just one corrupt
individual. It was an entire
business model that was flawed.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] As you got into this, are these issues
complicated and difficult to follow?
ELIOT SPITZER: It was incredibly-- it was distressing
to me how simple and outrageous it was.
It wasn't so complicated that you said, "Wow, at least they're smart in
the way they're doing it." It was
simple. It was brazen. The evidence of it was overwhelming.
[www.pbs.org: Read Spitzer's interview]
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] Spitzer found damning evidence in firm
after firm, but one celebrated case embodied the cynicism of Wall Street. It was not about WorldCom but AT&T. And it reached to the highest levels of
Citigroup, to CEO Sandy Weill.
ELIOT SPITZER: Well, there's an interesting record on
the AT&T upgrade.
HEDRICK SMITH: Jack Grubman had long been a bear about
his old employer, AT&T. But
Sandy Weill, who had a cozy relationship with AT&T'S chairman, Mike
Armstrong, was bullish on AT&T.
ELIOT SPITZER: He felt that it would be good for the
stock to get an upgrade, and he wanted his analysts to take another look at
it. And he basically arranged for
Jack Grubman to gain access to the AT&T hierarchy. And there was a fair bit of back and
forth between Sandy Weill and Jack Grubman that led to Jack's changing his
view.
HEDRICK SMITH: Weill denied giving Grubman a direct
order to upgrade AT&T, but bank records show Weill's relentless pressure on
Grubman, who finally double-jumped his AT&T rating from a neutral to a buy.
PHIL SPARTIS: After hearing it, I leaned back and
said to Amy Elias, my partner, I said, "Amy, there's got to be banking deal
coming. Why would-- why would Jack
do that?" And sure enough,
AT&T announced a few months later that they were going to be spinning off
AT&T Wireless as an IPO.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] And who got the business, the banking
business?
PHIL SPARTIS: And sure enough, Salomon Smith Barney
was the lead banker in the deal.
NEWSCASTER: AT&T Wireless making a big splash
today on Wall Street.
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] It was the largest IPO in history,
raising more than $10 billion.
Citigroup made more than $63 million on the deal.
For five months, FRONTLINE asked to interview Sandy Weill
about his pressuring Grubman on the AT&T rating, about his bank's ties with
Bernie Ebbers and whether Weill's leadership permitted conflicts of interest
and fraudulent recommendations that hurt ordinary investors. Sandy Weill declined to answer
FRONTLINE's questions.
[on camera] What's the fraud that Citigroup and
Salomon Smith Barney have been charged with?
ELIOT SPITZER: The bank recommended a stock when it
knew the stock was a bad investment.
What was so revealing was this divide between the advice that was
rendered publicly -- wherein they said buy, strong buy, great stock, great
investment -- and the internal communications that made it eminently clear that
these investments were not worthy.
HEDRICK SMITH: Does the formation of superbanks
increase conflicts of interest that have the potential of hurting investors?
ELIOT SPITZER: Absolutely. No question about it.
There is no question that we have created a web of relationships that
provide the opportunity for massive abuse. And what we uncovered last year demonstrates there was
massive abuse.
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] Eager to get the scandals behind them,
Citigroup and nine other Wall Street banks struck a deal last December with
Spitzer and other regulators.
OFFICIAL: _[news conference]* It is time to close this, perhaps one
of the darkest chapters in the history of modern finance.
HEDRICK SMITH: The banks agreed to pay $1.4 billion in
penalties. Citigroup's levy was
$400 million. To get the banks'
agreement, Spitzer had to make a deal: no criminal prosecutions. Good news for Sandy Weill.
ELIOT SPITZER: [news conference] --and there will not be any charges
filed against Sandy Weill.
HEDRICK SMITH: No charges against Jack Grubman,
either.
ELIOT SPITZER: With respect to Mr. Grubman, there has
been-- there's a tentative resolution, a lifetime bar, a $15 million fine.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] Are you saying the evidence was not
sufficient to bring criminal charges against Jack Grubman or anybody else in
the Salomon Smith Barney Citigroup hierarchy?
ELIOT SPITZER: No. I believe that there are theoretical criminal cases that
could have been brought. The
judgment call that I have made is to bring civil resolution that imposes a
financial penalty and imposes on the company the structural reforms that we
sought.
[news conference] There are many very carefully
articulated rules that--
HEDRICK SMITH: Under the new rules, the banks agreed
to stop IPO giveaways to CEOs and promised to insulate research analysts from
investment banking. But the
ultimate test is whether investors get honest advice from Wall Street in the
future.
ELIOT SPITZER: I want to see the analysts put out a
sell recommendation on a stock that they brought into the marketplace.
HEDRICK SMITH: And even Spitzer is not sure.
ELIOT SPITZER: And I feel good about having moved
things forward, but there's a much larger question in my mind whether this will
work.
HEDRICK SMITH: Even those who cheered Spitzer's
investigation say that the reform won't work because it's not tough enough.
PHIL SPARTIS: It's really very simple. You have to separate banking and
research. Period. The end. Two separate companies.
SCOTT CLELAND: We've had good rules for a long time,
and the only thing that's going to make the situation get better is if those
rules are enforced and they have bite.
ROB GENSLER: People did things that are wrong. They should go to jail. It's just that simple.
HEDRICK SMITH: [on camera] And if they don't, then the message is?
ROB GENSLER: It's the wrong message. That you can make multiple millions of
dollars and dodge the bullet of breaking laws? It's ridiculous.
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] The Wall Street deal did little to
repay investors. Spitzer released
some key documents on Wall Street abuses, but it's now up to stockholders to
file suit to recoup billions in losses.
And the banks are girding for battle.
GEORGE MICKELIS: Is Wall Street fixed? Hah! Not by a long shot.
What have they done to restore my faith and confidence as an individual
investor? Zero. Zip.
WYONZIE KRAFT, Investor: I still have the stock
today. They say it's worth 14
cents, but I can't find anybody who would give me 14 cents for it. I still have it.
GEORGE MICKELIS: I have no faith and no confidence, not
in the companies, not in the brokerage firms, not in the people that own the
brokerage firms, like Citigroup. I
don't believe in you. I don't
trust you. I don't want a thing to
do with you.
HEDRICK SMITH: Bernie Ebbers, facing civil suits but
no criminal charges, is living on his 2,100-acre estate. Jack Grubman was forced out of
Citigroup and handed a severance package worth $30 million. Sandy Weill got a vote of confidence
from Citigroup's board of directors, plus a bonus of $18 million in stock
options.
THE WALL STREET FIX
PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY
Rick Young
WRITTEN BY
Hedrick Smith & Rick Young
SENIOR PRODUCER
& CORRESPONDENT
Hedrick Smith
EDITOR
Cliff Hackel
PRINCIPAL CAMERA
Peter Pearce
FIELD PRODUCER
Gretchen Crary
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER
Josephine Hearn
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT
David Erickson
ORIGINAL MUSIC
Eric Kaye
ADDITIONAL CAMERA
Phil Geyelin
Foster Wiley
Brett Wiley
Tim Chumley
Tim Cothren
Murray Pinczuk
Jack Rayzor
Jake Tauferner
Josephine Hearn
PRINCIPAL SOUND
Steve Robinson
ADDITIONAL SOUND
Tom Craca
Peter Karl
Mark Mandler
Anthony Rowland
Bill Wander
J.P. Whiteside
PRODUCTION COORDINATOR
Janina Roncevic
MOTION CONTROL
Berle Cherney
TRANSCRIBERS
Patti Pancoe
Kathleen Wills
Jan Verrey
Donna Vricella
GRIP
Frank Caulder
INTERNS
Alex Fak
Arthur Hurley
Adrena Ifill
Shahan Mufti
Kristin Niedermeyer
Julie Ofstedal
Shiami Ranasinghe
Jacqueline Richard
ONLINE EDITORS
Michael H. Amundson
Julie Kahn
SOUND MIX
Jim Sullivan
SPECIAL THANKS
Federal Reserve Board
Thomson Financial/First Call
Thomson Financial Securities Data
Independent Community Bankers of America
Center for Public Integrity
ABS Capital Partners
Edward Jones
Cherokee Drive Inn
Delmonico's Steakhouse
Robert E. Jones
Dow Jones Indexes
ARCHIVAL MATERIALS
AP/Wide World Photos
CNNImageSource
FDCH/eMedia Millworks
New York Stock Exchange
CBC Vancouver
Robert E. Jones
Lisa McAdams
David Singleton
Murray Waldron
Nightly Business Report
Corbis
Michele Asselin
Brian Albert Broom
Andrew Brusso
Edmonton Journal
Philip Gould
Rob Kinmonth
James Porto
Ken Schles
J.D. Schwalm
George C. Sheinberg
The Clarion-Ledger
U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing
FOR FRONTLINE
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Tim Mangini
ON-AIR PROMOTION
PRODUCER
M.R. Frederick
SENIOR EDITOR
Steve Audette
AVID EDITORS
Michael H. Amundson
John MacGibbon
Julie Kahn
POST PRODUCTION
SUPERVISOR
Chris Fournelle
POST PRODUCTION
ASSISTANT
Chetin Chabuk
SERIES MUSIC
Mason Daring
Martin Brody
COMMUNICATIONS
MANAGER
Erin Martin Kane
SENIOR PUBLICIST
Christopher Kelly
PUBLICIST
Jessica Smith
PROMOTION WRITER
Jennifer McCauley
PROMOTION DESIGNER
Dennis O'Reilly
PROMOTIONS ASSISTANT
Jenna Lowe
FOUNDATION GRANT MANAGER
Jessica Cashdan
OFFICE COORDINATOR
Mary Sullivan
ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT
Danielle Gillis
COMPLIANCE MANAGER
Lisa Palone-Clarke
LEGAL
Eric Brass
Jay Fialkov
CONTRACTS MANAGER
Adrienne Armor
UNIT MANAGERS
Alex Fitzsimmons
Paul Plutnicki
BUSINESS MANAGER
Tobee Phipps
WEBSITE ASSOCIATE
PRODUCERS
Sarah Moughty
Kimberly Tabor
WEBSITE COORDINATING
PRODUCER
Stephanie Ault
WEBSITE PRODUCER/
DESIGNER
Sam Bailey
WEBSITE MANAGING EDITOR
Wen Stephenson
EDITORIAL RESEARCHER
Catherine Wright
COORDINATING PRODUCER
Robin Parmelee
STORY EDITOR
Ken Dornstein
SERIES EDITOR
Karen O'Connor
SENIOR PRODUCER
SPECIAL PROJECTS
Sharon Tiller
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
SPECIAL PROJECTS
Michael Sullivan
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Marrie Campbell
SERIES MANAGER
Jim Bracciale
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Louis Wiley Jr.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
David Fanning
A Frontline coproduction with Hedrick Smith Productions
in association with South Carolina Educational TV
(c) 2003
WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION and HEDRICK SMITH PRODUCTIONS,
INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
FRONTLINE is a production of WGBH Boston, which is solely
responsible for its content.
ANNOUNCER: This report continues on our Web site
with analysis of the historic settlement with 10 investment banks and whether
the reforms can fix Wall Street, more on the politics behind the rise of
Citigroup and Wall Street's lobbying power in Washington, a chronology of the
meteoric rise and fall of WorldCom, FRONTLINE's extended interviews with Eliot
Spitzer, Arthur Levitt and others.
And you watch the full program again on line or find out on the Web site
if your PBS station will be airing it again. Then join the discussion at pbs.org.
Next time on FRONTLINE: Since 1995, this company has been
cited for more than 100 environmental violations.
1st MAN: This is the source of the spill.
ANNOUNCER: --and more than 400 safety violations.
WOMAN: They didn't care about my daddy. They killed him.
2nd MAN: If a guy got killed, well, that's
bad. "But now get him out of the
way. We've got to make production."
ANNOUNCER: Why hasn't this company been
stopped? FRONTLINE and The New
York Times investigate A Dangerous Business.
To obtain a VHS copy of The Wall Street Fix, call PBS Home Video at 1-800-PLAY-PBS. [$29.98 plus s&h]
This program was made possible in part by the Schumann
Center for Media and Democracy, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Consumer
Trusts Fund, the Gilliland Family Fund, Paul Newman, Bernard Rapoport, the
Brightman Hill Charitable Foundation and Edson W. Spencer.
FRONTLINE is made possible by contributions to your PBS
station from viewers like you.
Thank you.
| 
