Word: harkens
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press and others reported that Harvard had helped Harken Energy create an Enron-style, “off the books,” partnership to hide $20 million of Harken’s debt while George W. Bush was on Harken’s board. Why were most of us Harvard students the last to know? Although the deal may have been technically in accordance with the accounting rules of the time—it is hard to know without more information—it certainly did not live...
Robert G. Stone Jr. ‘45, another corporation member who also retired last year, seems to be equally embroiled in this mess. According to Scott Sperling who worked under Stone at Harvard Management Company, Stone was “the driving force” behind the Harken deal and Harvard’s other energy investments. Stone has a variety of ties to the Bushes including a father in law who invested in the elder George Bush’s oil drilling ventures in the 1940s and a brother who was the US envoy to Cyprus during...
Harvard’s early 1990s partnership with Harken Energy Company—by which Harvard, despite being Harken’s largest shareholder, helped the oil company remove debts and liabilities from its books—is deeply disturbing. For any company, such financial legerdemain is ethically wrong, even if it does not violate the letter of the law. By hiding Harken’s debts, Harvard was able to sell its Harken stock at an inflated price—a deceptive practice that smacks of the same corporate decadence that has plagued the U.S. for at least...
Harvard’s involvement in Harken Energy Company began just a couple of months after George W. Bush joined Harken’s board of directors. At the time the Harvard Corporation, the University’s seven-member top governing board, included Robert G. Stone Jr. ’45 among its members. Stone retired from the Corporation last spring; he remains a director of Harvard Management Company, Harvard’s investment arm. Stone is a fellow Texas oil executive and a contributor to Bush-family political campaigns. Such close ties between Harvard and Harken offer...
Harvard has demonstrated its susceptibility to conflicts of interest before. Harvard’s two representatives on the Harken board of directors, Michael R. Eisenson and Donald D. Beane, both held personal stock in Harken at the same time that they made investment decisions for Harvard—Harken’s largest shareholder. Had Harvard sold its sizeable amount of stock, the value of their own holdings would have been affected. For just this reason, most universities bar their representatives from holding personal stock in companies in which the university invests significantly. Harvard, however, has a much more lenient...