Reply #6: Well, he was AN owner. [View All]

[SophieZ]

Tom Hicks is a board member and major stockholder of Clear Channel Communications. Clear Channel executives give a greater portion of their political contributions to Republican candidates than any other large media entity.

Tom Hicks was part of the group of investors who bought the Texas Rangers from Bush. In that windfall deal, Bush put up less than 2% percent of the Rangers syndicate's original capital, was entitled to about $2.3 million from that sale, but somehow fortunately received $14.9 million of the proceeds. {source: Paul Krugman, New York Times}

A 2002 NYT article says that Bush got a stock loan to himself of Harken stock, from which he derived a profit, which he used to repay the loan of $500,000 he used to become a minority partner in the Ranger deal.


Bush Calls for End to Loans of a Type
He Once Received
By JEFF GERTH and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/business/11HARK.html?pagewanted=1
WASHINGTON, July 10, 2002

Harken Energy allowed Mr. Bush to acquire 105,000 shares in the company — 80,000 in late 1986 and 25,000 in 1988 — through a stock option program that was available to top corporate officials. Harken did not require repayment of the principal for eight years and charged 5 percent annual interest. The prime rate in December 1986, when Mr. Bush received the initial loan, was 7.5 percent.

He ultimately returned the stock he acquired this way, canceling the loans. Such loans were not uncommon among companies seeking to promote long-term shareholding among executives and directors.

...That sale, in June 1990, brought him $848,000, which he used to pay off a $500,000 loan he had taken out to help him buy into the Texas Rangers baseball team, a deal that helped secure his own personal fortune and propel him into Texas politics.

...The June 1990 Harken stock sale led to an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission — during his father's administration — of whether Mr. Bush had knowingly sold the stock in advance of worse-than-expected financial results that temporarily drove down Harken's share price. The S.E.C. took no action against Mr. Bush. But the issue has dogged him politically for almost a decade and has again come up in recent weeks as accounting and insider trading accusations have dominated the headlines.