Thursday, July 19, 2012

Scandal-Ridden Barclays Is a Key Financial Booster for Campus Crest CEO Ted Rollins

Barclays CEO Bob Diamond

Campus Crest Communities, whose CEO was the beneficiary of a  grossly unlawful divorce judgment in Alabama, draws major financial support from a bank at the center of an international rate-fixing scandal.

Barclays, the London-based bank at the heart of the evolving LIBOR scandal, is a primary backer of Campus Crest Communities. In fact, Barclays joined with Raymond James and Citigroup as underwriters for a $62.7 million public offering that Campus Crest launched in late June.

The public offering was announced on the same day that Barclays agreed to pay $453 million to settle allegations that it manipulated a key interest rate known as the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). Several top executives, including CEO Bob Diamond, have stepped down.

Barclays, however, hardly is out of the woods. Robert Reich, a former U.S. labor secretary in the Clinton administration, has called LIBOR the "Wall Street Scandal of All Scandals" and hinted that criminal penalties could be coming.

That can't be good news for Ted Rollins, CEO of Campus Crest Communities. His company completed a $380-million Wall Street IPO in 2010 and has built and managed student housing at 33 universities around the country. It has a $26.3-million project planned for Auburn University.

Ted Rollins
The Auburn project is one of several ties that Rollins has to Alabama--most of them of a dubious nature. Rollins was convicted in 1995 for the assault of his 16-year-old stepson. The assault took place in Franklin County, North Carolina, and under the laws of that state, should have been reported to social services as a case of child abuse. Zac Parrish, the stepson, is now 33 years old and manages a construction company in Birmingham.

Zac Parrish's mother, Sherry Carroll Rollins, was married to Ted Rollins for almost 15 years. She filed for divorce in Greenville, South Carolina, where the family lived, and the case was litigated there for more than three years. But she and the couple's two daughters, Sarah and Emma Rollins, were forced out of their home when Ted Rollins failed to pay the mortgage as ordered by a court--and they fled to Alabama, where Ms. Rollins had relatives.

Ted Rollins, contrary to clear law, somehow managed to get the divorce case moved to Shelby County, Alabama, where he wound up with a judgment that was so one-sided that it has left his daughters and ex wife on food stamps. How did Ted Rollins pull that off? Well, it probably helped that his primary corporate law firm is Birmingham-based Bradley Arant, the largest and perhaps most powerful "pro corporate" firm in Alabama.

The CEO of Campus Crest Communities is no stranger to scandal. And now it looks like one of his strongest financial backers is immersed in ugliness of epic proportions.

Matt Taibbi recently put the LIBOR scandal in perspective for a piece at Rolling Stone, saying the public has yet to comprehend the massive scope of the deceit involved. Wrote Taibbi:

The furor is over revelations that Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and other banks were monkeying with at least $10 trillion in loans (The Wall Street Journal is calculating that that LIBOR affects $800 trillion worth of contracts). 
The banks gamed LIBOR for two semi-overlapping reasons. As noted here last week, there were instances of Barclays traders badgering the LIBOR submitters to "push down" rates in order to fatten their immediate bottom lines, depending on what they were trading or holding that day. They also apparently rigged LIBOR downward in order to produce a general appearance of better health, essentially tweaking their credit scores a few ticks upward.

A piece at The Economist says the scandal exposes "The Rotten Heart of Finance" and could turn into a global banking crisis:

What may still seem to many to be a parochial affair involving Barclays, a 300-year-old British bank, rigging an obscure number, is beginning to assume global significance. 
The number that the traders were toying with determines the prices that people and corporations around the world pay for loans or receive for their savings. It is used as a benchmark to set payments on about $800 trillion-worth of financial instruments, ranging from complex interest-rate derivatives to simple mortgages. The number determines the global flow of billions of dollars each year. Yet it turns out to have been flawed. . . . 
As many as 20 big banks have been named in various investigations or lawsuits alleging that LIBOR was rigged. The scandal also corrodes further what little remains of public trust in banks and those who run them.

It seems clear that LIBORGate will, indeed, grow way beyond Barclays. Some are saying this could be the banking industry's "tobacco moment." From The Economist report:

Regulators around the world have woken up, however belatedly, to the possibility that these vital markets may have been rigged by a large number of banks. The list of institutions that have said they are either co-operating with investigations or being questioned includes many of the world’s biggest banks. Among those that have disclosed their involvement are Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, RBS and UBS.

What does all of this mean for companies who depend on these banks for financing? The answer is not clear, but perhaps that question has crossed Ted Rollins' mind.

Public documents show that notable holders of Campus Crest Communities stock include UBS, Deutsche Bank, and Goldman Sachs. Among its prime financial underwriters are Barclays, Citigroup, and RBC Capital Markets. Published reports indicate that some, maybe all, of those entities will become ensnared in the LIBOR scandal.

What was the motive for rigging LIBOR? One, not surprisingly, was to make money. Here is how an article at ProPublica explains it:

The traders wanted to influence the rates in order to profit on positions they had taken in particular trades and to benefit Barclays’ derivatives portfolio as a whole. Emails and other records show that this occurred frequently from 2005 to 2007 and occasionally until 2009. It’s not clear when, and by how much, the traders’ requests actually affected the rates, though the U.S. Justice Department says they sometimes did.

Could investigations show that ill-gotten funds wound up supporting up-start firms such as Campus Crest Communities? Are some companies built on a foundation of the LIBOR scandal? Is Campus Crest one of them? Time, perhaps, will tell.

Bradley Arant apparently was able to get Ted Rollins out of a jam on his divorce case. Some far bigger jams than that might be waiting around the bend.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bravo Legal Schnauzer for sniffing out yet another public taxpayer funded company on wall street welfare.
I recently viewed Mr. Vivek Seth , Raymond James IPO fame. He was quizzed as to how he pulled off the successful IPO for Campus Crest and Mr. Rollins. He of course gave a vague, investor inspiring answer. He failed to mention that he had previously worked for HSBC Bank India and the connections to wall street backers of his and Rollins.
In yet another public funded corporate welfare scam; Freddie Mac paid off the debt on two of Campus Crest communities, one in Tennessee and one in Missouri...Business wire article July 2012

Anonymous said...

HSBC. In the news at this time for its laundering of drug money.

Carl Levin and his team produced a paper just now on HSBC, only half the report -- similar to the six hundred pages plus "bankster tome."

The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, HSBC.

Chinese nationals were coming to America, with no less than a promise of $5,000.00 per month, no taxes withheld and for five (5) years. Beginning in Bush's aught years of virtual credit to all BUT the Legal Schnauzer type citizens.

Also, promised employment. All other social contract amenities were included [medical, dental, etc]. This "money" paid to these Chinese nationals perhaps was from HSBC?

Houses were target purchases.

http://livinglies.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/getting-lost-in-the-weeds-following-the-money-trail/

Simple contract law is MONEY must not be a non-transparent commodity that defrauds, such as Jefferson County via WIRE FRAUD in how many ways and means?

Come on now, the time is here for virtual credit, that is SOCIAL CREDIT enjoyed by KARL ROVE ET AL to be enjoyed by We The People entrepreneurial American spirits.

Anonymous said...

LS: This post has some interesting facts and figures. But what jumps out at me is the mindset that Mr. Rollins seems to share with the folks who run Barclays. I see this as mostly a psychological story--and from that perspective, Mr. Rollins and Barclays seem like a match made in heaven (or maybe hell would be the better term).

jeffrey spruill said...

The banks ARE "organized crime."

And slimy "little people" like Ted Rollins know this when approaching them for another handout.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/business/goldman-sachs-and-a-sale-gone-horribly-awry.html?_r=3&smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2012/07/19/india-investigating-hsbc-banks-black-market-finance/

Anonymous said...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31982

Are Big Banks Criminal Enterprises?, by Washington's Blog

Here are some recent improprieties by the big banks:

Laundering money for drug cartels. See this, this,this and this (indeed, drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis)

Laundering money for terrorists

Engaging in mafia-style big-rigging fraud against local governments. See this, this and this

Shaving money off of virtually every pension transaction they handled over the course of decades, stealing collectively billions of dollars from pensions worldwide. Details here, here, here,here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here

Charging “storage fees” to store gold bullion …without even buying or storing any gold . And raiding allocated gold accounts

Committing massive and pervasive fraud both when they initiated mortgage loans and when they foreclosed on them (and see this)

Pledging the same mortgage multiple times to different buyers. See this, this, this, this and this. This would be like selling your car, and collecting money from 10 different buyers for the same car

Cheating homeowners by gaming laws meant to protect people from unfair foreclosure

LS, evidently there was a lone gun shooter in Colorado. A movie of the Dark Night premier, a number of 50, and then the reports are vague at this time, but it looks like the same typical Norway "terrorist?"

False flags are going to be happening in the U.S. Lots as the majority discover the fraud.

BE PREPARED!

We The People, ALL!!!

All Legal Schnauzers at the Legal Schnauzer news resource of real American spirit, "intuit" 24-7.

Anonymous said...

In Thailand, when I lived there during the 1960s, ten years before the TIMOTHY GEITHNER ET AL "CULTISTS" were in Thailand, too, attending the "International High School," where brother also attended, ten years earlier.

NOTICE HSBC HISTORY? Thailand too, hmmm, and not just Hong Kong.

Well, anyway, the saying was should you meet an Indian [from India] in the jungle or a cobra, which do you kill first? Answer: The Indian.

Reading at the link provided by a LS deep mole, the Indians are also working with Washington DC to probe the scandal of HSBC India.

. . . “I think this is a very serious matter and we will get to the bottom of it. We need to get some more information from the Americans. We will get that very soon. This has been worrying us,” Home Secretary R K Singh told the ET . . . .

Laugh out loud. India allowed GANDHI to be executed. Gandhi and his wife gave their lives for India!

In the very beginning of the GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR, the internet was not as censored. Thus, in early aught years [2000-2100], and earlier, in the 1990s, INDIA had a website very visible on the www.

PARTNERS, CLOSE WITH WASHINGTON DC, PAKISTAN HAS A TRANSNATIONAL PEPPER SPRAY CORPORATION, to poison and it trades-exchanges in the retirement portfolios of the JUSTICES in America.

India, Pakistan, US, Israel, et al were intentional, and are definitely not going to give up trillions of "wealth" ill gotten at the CLEANSING too many humans, call it nicely AGENDA 21.

Anonymous said...

". . . But in a symbol of what's to come, the giant European aircraft maker Airbus announced plans to build a factory for assembling its new A320neo plane line in ALABAMA [my emphasis added, anon] Alabama, a right-to-work state. This deal was touted by French media as an attempt to implant Airbus in the U.S. market in order to better compete with Boeing in U.S. Southern states. Of course, no mention was made of the fact that Airbus was relocating production outside Europe to take advantage of lower wage rates – nor that Airbus' move will give Boeing more leverage over its workforce to push for concessions.

From Sarkozy to Hollande: What Will Change in France? by François Laforge, Global Research, July 19, 2012, and at the Socialist Project.

Legal Schnauzers, do you have your applications in at the new AIRBUS "Boeing" "a-right-to-work-state?"

jeffrey spruill said...

Who's guarding the guardians?

Looks like we're in "BIG TROUBLE!"

*

The bank faces large fines from the U.S. Justice Department for lapses in its safeguards.

http://bcove.me/xh82za7f

Anonymous said...

". . . For decades the Fed has operated without any meaningful oversight whatsoever, resulting in the loss of savings, loss of purchasing power, and loss of quality of life for all Americans. It causes individuals and businesses to make bad decisions, misallocating their capital because market signals have been distorted. It causes financial ruin by engineering the inevitable boom and bust cycles that so many erroneously blame on capitalism. And it does all this in secrecy, to the benefit of the financial and political classes. It is time to Audit the Fed, as a first step toward ending its unchecked power over our money and economic fortunes.

House Vote on Audit the Fed Bill Planned for July 24

Editor’s note: Campaign for Liberty’s Matt Hawes says the House is expected to vote on the Audit the Fed bill on July 24. See here for more information.

@ American Free Press

Robby Scott Hill said...

And undoubtedly, the same "millionaires without borders" who already hold stock in Boeing are now buying up Airbus shares to hedge their bets & make money from the horse race no matter which company loses. The American Worker is fucked. MiG or Antonov could win the race, but as long as Airbus & Boeing both show or place, the millionaires without borders win by turning a profit.

e.a.f. said...

I used to read these detective/mystery novels & the writer used to say the world was made up of 500 families. I guess he wasn't wrong. Its such a small world.

Now if they would stop fining those companies & ceos & start sending them to jail for 10 yrs. at a time. They steal just like a bank robber but bank robbers go to jail for longer periods of time. That just seems so unfair because many bank robbers have social, mental, financial problems. Bankers, they know exactly what they are doing when they "rob".

They have broken trust with the public & they should be required to serve time & not at the country club jail. They are very bad criminals. Much worse than any small time drug dealer on the corner or any regular stick'em up bank robber.

Pat said...

Red, white and blue crime on display is no comforting sight.

In the battle over predator-rights vs principle-rights, there should be only one winner in the U.S., but is there?