Leon Cooperman: Two changes that could help fix what is wrong with our regulatory process:
It seems logically manifest to me that something transpired between September 2016 and March 2017 that led to the Commission’s dramatically downwardly-revised settlement offer. Despite numerous attempts to ferret it out, I have been unsuccessful in getting a response, either from the current chairman or from his predecessor who oversaw my case (and who told me, when I saw her at a conference after she left office, that even innocent people often find settling with the government preferable to hazarding the system). As an American taxpayer, I believe that I deserve an answer to my question. And as an analytical person, it is hard for me to reconcile the significant, blood-sport destruction of my business that this matter has occasioned without understanding the dynamics behind the resolution from the Commission’s perspective.
“Something transpired between September 2016 and March 2017” that led the SEC to dial back the brutality of its regulatory attack on Mr. Cooperman’s firm. I wonder what that something could have been?
Elections have consequences. The Obama administration was so openly hostile to business, and so casually willing to use its power to reward allies and punish critics, that prominent business people were reluctant to criticize the Administration publicly, especially in the early days before the 2010 elections. If I recall, Mr. Cooperman was more courageous than most of his contemporaries in expressing public concern about Mr. Obama’s policies.
As the man said, this is how you get more Trump.
Howard Root’s book, “Cardiac Arrest,” is about the attack on his company led by former AG Sally Yates.
It was 5 years but they were exonerated.
Mr. Root, long-time CEO of Vascular Solutions (he founded the company) faced prison if convicted of “conspiracy to commit improper medical device labeling.” Mr. Root reveals himself to be a tough, no-nonsense CEO. He’s also a regular guy who was put under extreme duress by government prosecutors who manipulated the legal system to try to destroy his company and put him in prison.
He brings to life the terror of living through five long years of waiting for his, and his company’s, fates to be decided in court. Not only was he distracted from running his business, but the legal cost of $25,000,000 ate deep into his company’s profits.