Posted on 07/22/2008 6:48:55 AM PDT by Hiskid
For the Pritzker family of Chicago, the 2001 collapse of subprime-mortgage lender Superior Bank was an embarrassing failure in a corner of their giant business empire.
Billionaire Penny Pritzker helped run Hinsdale, Ill.-based Superior, overseeing her family's 50% ownership stake. She now serves as Barack Obama's national campaign-finance chairwoman, which means her banking past could prove to be an embarrassment to her -- and perhaps to the campaign.
Superior was seized in 2001 and later closed by federal regulators. Government investigators and consumer advocates have contended that Superior engaged in unsound financial activities and predatory lending practices. Ms. Pritzker, a longtime friend and supporter of Sen. Obama, served for a time as Superior's chairman, and later sat on the board of its holding company.
Sen. Obama has long criticized predatory subprime mortgage lenders and urged strong actions against them.
In a prepared statement, the Obama campaign noted that Ms. Pritzker was never accused of wrongdoing by regulators in connection with Superior, and that her family agreed to pay $460 million to help defray the costs of Superior's collapse.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Well, that's mighty white of them. How much did they keep?
Here’s a Pritzker in the the news.
Don't worry, Barry and his magic tricycle will fix everything wrong in the world.
Not the Pritzker he knew!
I don’t know any of them personally, but I’ve met a couple.
I have a friend who used to work for one. He’d hand the paychecks out to the entire office. Pretty funny.
OBAMA.. he is not my presidential candidate
With tears running down his face? LOL
How stupid would a subprime lender have to be to fail when the bubble was just getting started?
No kidding. LOL!
I think he used to thank each employee, as if he had a clue what anyone did.
Tom’s most public battle is against Liesel Pritzker. In the mid-1990s, Tom, his uncle Robert and the family’s attorney Marshall Eisenberg made extensive changes to the holdings in trust accounts that benefit Liesel and her brother, Matthew. Liesel sued last November, and was joined the following April by 21-year-old Matthew, accusing Tom and Robert of “looting” wealth from her trusts, which now hold a fraction of the $1.3 billion-per-cousin contained in trusts for Tom and his cousins. In court filings, Tom’s attorneys acknowledge many of the transactions that Liesel alleges, including the giveaway to the Pritzker Foundation of her 5% stake in Hyatt hotel chain parent H Group. But they insist they were allowed by the rules that grantor A.N. Pritzker wrote when he established the trusts in the 1960s and 1970s. They’ve filed a 137-page motion to dismiss.
I know one, personally. There are a lot of them.
Leisel’s problem is that she is Robert’s daughter, but a generation younger than the children of the first marriage. She thinks she is entitled to the same share as her half-sibs, but Grandpa’s trust says differently. AFAIK, the trust will rule.
When Leisel decided to work under *Matthews*, that was a problem, too. All the Pritzkers use *Pritzker*, even after they marry. The children and grandchildren of Pritzkers use it as a middle name. Robert wanted her to work under the name Pritzker. It was a big deal within the family. Robert and Leisel’s mother were eventually divorced. Who knows what family dynamics were at play after that.
It is not a happy family.
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