CAN YOU IMAGINE DATELINES EYES WHEN THE "BUYING 100% OF THE FLOAT STORY" TURNED OUT TO BE A FAKE. NO WONDER DONALDSON SNICKERED WHEN THE SENATOR TOLD HIM THAT WOPPER. MY GUESS IS DATELINE INTERVEIWED EITHER THE SENATOR OR OTHERS AND WAS READY TO GO WITH THE 100% FLOAT NAKED SHORT STORY ONLY TO FIND OUT THAT IT WAS NOT TRUE.
IN THE MONEY: 'Get Shorty's' Path From Utah To Washington
1 April 2005
Dow Jones News Service
English
(c) 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
By Carol S. Remond
A Dow Jones Newswires Column
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--A senior U.S. senator's surprising interest in an arcane campaign against short selling followed hefty donations to Republican causes by one of the issue's key champions.
Patrick Byrne, a prominent corporate leader in the home state of Senator Robert Bennett, R-Utah, last year donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to a political advocacy group that financed advertisements against Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards. Byrne was also the largest private donor to Utah Republican gubernatorial candidate Jon Huntsman Jr. He also gave to Swift Boat Vets and POWS for Truth, a group that financed anti-John Kerry ads.
Byrne, president and chairman of online retailer Overstock.com (OSTK), has become a crusader and benefactor for conspiracy buffs who believe that Wall Street firms are cheating investors out of millions of dollars by illegally shorting stocks. The practice is known as "naked short selling."
In recent months, Byrne himself has done battle with short sellers and those critical of Overstock.com. In February, Byrne helped write and finance a full-page ad in The Washington Post to raise awareness about naked short selling and its potential impact on President George Bush's plan to privatize social security. The ad was sponsored by the National Coalition Against Naked Shorting or NCANS, a group endorsed by Byrne.
Short sellers typically borrow shares to sell them, hoping that they will be able to replace them with shares bought at a lower price later. Trading without a borrowing agreement is called naked short selling. It's illegal for most investors, but legal for firms that make markets in stocks by bringing liquidity to the market.
The campaign against naked short selling got a major boost earlier this month when Sen. Bennett publicly confronted Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William Donaldson about purported short selling abuses and told him that a new regulation known as Reg SHO has failed to correct the problem.
"You put out a new rule in January to deal with naked short selling. And nearly as I can tell from my constituents who feel victimized by this, it's not working," Bennett told Donaldson during a Senate Banking Committee hearing. The senator from Utah, chief deputy majority whip and a respected Republican leader in Washington, cut short Donaldson when he tried to explain how Reg SHO works. Bennett demanded to be briefed on the issue. A meeting is planned for early April.
Sen. Bennett's support for the anti-naked shorting crusade was surprising because the issue has been centered around tiny companies many of them shells without real businesses and minimal revenues.
Especially puzzling was Sen. Bennett's choice of an example to illustrate trading abuses - Global Links Corp. (GLKCE) and Robert Simpson, an investor who says he tried to buy all of the company's shares.
Global Links, a development stage company that has generated but $1.6 million in revenue from 1993 through last September, had just $45,000 in cash as of last September, according to an SEC filing. It finances its tiny business by selling stock, something illustrated in other SEC filings. For example, as of last March, Global Links had 68 million shares outstanding. Three months later, that number rose to 107 million. Then as of late September last year, just six months later, it grew to 147 million.
It's most recent corporate development includes the acquisition of a small number of properties from Utah-based Diversified Financial Resources Corp. (DFLR), a company under SEC investigation for its participation in an offshore boiler room scheme.
Although brief, the exchange between Sen. Bennett and SEC Chairman Donaldson has become a rallying point for those who accuse brokerage firms and hedge funds of manipulating stock prices through illegal short selling.
Recently, Bennett's comments were featured in an infomercial about the evils of naked short selling produced by NCANS. Overstock.com's Byrne is also featured in the promotional piece, although he now claims that his company has not been a victim of naked short selling. Another person featured in the infomercial is Georgetown University professor James Angel who now says that his comments were taken out of context.
Responding to emailed questions, a spokeswoman for Sen. Bennett said that Byrne was one of the constituents that complained to the senator about short selling abuses. She declined to identify others. She said one constituent gave Sen. Bennett a story about Global Links and the alleged trading abuses. She declined to identify that constituent. The spokeswoman said that Byrne's donations to Republican causes didn't influence Sen. Bennett's decision to take on naked shorting.
Byrne acknowledged he had a brief conversation with one of Bennett's staffers although he said in a later e-mail the conversation was not "substantive." In the e-mail, he said he had extensive conversations on the subject with staffers of other committee members. He said he did "open lines of communication between the Senator's office and folks in the naked shorting movement."
Despite Sen. Bennett's strong words to Donaldson during the March 9 public hearing, the spokeswoman said in an e-mail that in fact "Senator Bennett doesn't know whether all the allegations of short selling by NCANS and others are accurate or whether claims that the new SEC regulation isn't working (are accurate)- for this reason he's pleased Chairman Donaldson has agreed to come brief him on how the SEC is enforcing the new regulation and what it has seen since it has been in effect."
It's likely that Byrne's large political donations last year bought him lots of goodwill from Utah Republican leaders.
Federal Election Commission records show that Byrne and his father, legendary insurance man Jack Byrne, each donated $500,000 to a political advocacy group named Save American Medicine on Oct. 6, 2004. FEC records show that the 527 group was registered by Evan Twede on Oct. 1 "to support reform of medical liability laws." Jack Byrne is Overstock.com's vice chairman.
Expenditures records filed with the FEC show that $858,650 of the million donated by the Byrnes was spent airing anti-Edwards ads attacking his record as a personal injury lawyer in his home state of North Carolina. One ad can still be seen at www.saveamericanmedicine.com .
FEC records show Chuck Warren of Bully Pulpit Inc. was the only other person who donated to that 527 group, giving $200 on Oct. 4. Utah electoral records show that Bully Pulpit was a campaign consultant for gubernatorial hopeful Huntsman in 2003. Huntsman was elected last year. Warren is a long-time Republican staffer who in the late 1990s was chief of staff for then congressman Chris Cannon, R-Utah.
Meanwhile, Twede, the man who registered the 527 group, is also known as a Salt Lake GOP operative. According to news articles, Twede designed a bold marketing campaign that helped Bennett win his fist Senate seat in 1992. Stan de Waal, another GOP insider, is Save American Medicine's treasurer.
Sen. Bennett's spokeswoman said that Bennett has no relationship to the 527 group gifted by the Byrnes.
FEC records show that in the past Byrne gave to both Republican and Democratic candidates. But his political contributions took a sharp turn to the right in 2004. And in an e-mail, Byrne said he contributed to a number of Democrats in 2004.
He raised political eyebrows in Utah last year when he donated $75,000 to Huntsman's campaign, the largest contribution outside the Huntsman family.
Byrne also contributed $2,500 to Swift Boat Vets and POW's for Truth, a conservative group behind two of last year campaign's most memorable attacks on Sen. Kerry during his unsuccessful presidential bid.
Byrne doesn't believe that his political contributions influenced Sen. Bennett's decision to bring the naked short selling issue to the Senate Banking Committee. In an e-mail, Byrne said he believes he is one of the largest donors to the Utah Democratic party.
Meanwhile with Overstock.com stock quadrupling over the last two years, it is unclear why Byrne is so preoccupied with short sellers, those investors who bet that the price of a stock will go down.
For the last few months, Byrne has been voraciously posting about the topic on the NCANS Website and on Overstock.com's online message board. In one of the messages on his company Website, posting under the alias Hannibal, Byrne describes his "fight with Wall Street criminals." In another online message, Byrne discusses the "financial media and the criminals", musing whether hedge funds have journalists on the take.
-By Carol S. Remond; Dow Jones Newswires; 201 938 2074; carol.remond@dowjones.com [ 04-01-05 1645ET ] |
