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Boston Globe Advertising – Herb Chambers

Boston Money — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:42:00 +0000

1 hour 52 min 13 sec ago

BBJ: Backup plans develop for Globe’s advertisers

7QEpFgU)
(NECN) – Last week’s New York Times’ threat to close down the Boston Globe has forced the local advertising community to plot emergency contingency plans.

For the past few years, ad revenues at the Globe have been declining. Now executives at the Globe have been forced to sell a product to advertisers which may not exist in a month.

Local advertisers, such as Herb Chambers, would likely move the print advertising over to online sites like CNN.com or Boston.com.

Some advertisers that the BBJ spoke with do not want the Globe to shut down out of personal reading preference, but feel the chances are high that it can shift advertising to a new venue.

Lisa van der Pool of the Boston Business Journal reports.

[15 hours ago]

Boston jury to probe Cognos deals, DiMasi

[16 weeks ago]

Globe photos with Ted Gartland

[4 weeks ago]

DiMasi refuses to comply with demand for records

[22 weeks ago]

Flutter Nano Blogs Twitter

Boston Money — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:39:25 +0000

Flutter – Roughage for your Vowels?

Flutter flies in the Face of Twitter – Flutter writes a new minimalist character chapter for the Social Media Savvy…

Social Media Marketing – Boston

Boston Money — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 08:10:17 +0000

Majority Use Social Media Marketing, Still Have Questions

By Chris Crum – Fri, 03/27/2009 – 14:00

Report Highlights Interesting Statistics on Social Media Marketing

Author and WebProNews Blog Partner Michael Stelzner, has put together an interesting report based on a survey of 900 marketers. The report looks at the state of social media marketing. Interesting stats from the report include:

- 88% indicated they were employing social media for marketing purposes

- 72% have only been using social media marketing for a few months

- 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week

- 39% are using it for 10 hours a week

- 81% say the number-one benefit is generating exposure, followed by increasing traffic and building new business relationships

- Over half saw a rise in search engine rankings

- Out of social media tools marketers most wanted to learn about, social bookmarking sites ranked highest followed by Twitter.

Marketers and business owners still have a lot of questions about social media marketing. The report looks at the top ten questions they have:

1. What are the best tactics to use?

2. How do I measure the effectiveness of social media?

3. Where do I start?

4. How do I manage the social balance?

5. What are the best sites and tools out there?

6. How do I make the most of my available time?

7. How do I find and focus my efforts on my target audience?

8. How do I convert my social media marketing efforts into tangible results?

9. How do I cohesively tie different social media efforts together?

10. Does social media marketing work, and if so, how effective is it?

Stelzner’s report contains plenty more information than what is sampled here, and it paints a pretty interesting picture of the overall impression of social media marketing. Most people appear to have accepted that they should be using it in one form or another, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions, and there is a large thirst for knowledge in this area.

The medium is still in its youth, yet continues to evolve rapidly. Some questions don’t have any concrete answers, and are perhaps best answered by the marketers/business owners themselves. Not every business is going to find success through social media marketing in the same manner. That’s one of the greatest appeals of the medium though. There are so many possibilities.

You can see Stelzner’s full report as well as a video narrated by Stelzner himself here.

Have the Answer to one of the top 10 questions? Share it here.

Have another question about social media marketing? Ask it.

News Tags: Social Media, Surveys, michael stelzner, Research, social media marketing, Reports, studies

About the author:
Chris Crum is a staff writer for WebProNews and iEntry Network.

By Laurel J. Sweet | Tuesday, March 31, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage

A state trooper attempting to shoo a Mercedes Benz SUV illegally idling in a bus lane at Logan International Airport was hit and dragged by the obstinate driver, a 57-year-old Wellesley woman, as she allegedly sped off to avoid getting a ticket.

Investment manager Margaret Greer was released on personal recognizance yesterday following her arraignment in East Boston District Court on charges of assault and battery on a police officer, assault with a dangerous weapon and failure to stop for police. An automatic plea of not guilty was entered on her behalf by the court.

According to state police Sgt. Danial Wildgrube’s report, Greer had a “slight odor of an alcoholic beverage” on her breath.

Greer’s defense attorney, Carol Ann Starkey, declined to answer questions about the alleged incident, but told the Herald today her client “is a highly respected member of her community and she pled absolutely not guilty to all of these allegations.”

“There are two sides to every story,” said Starkey, “and we strongly contest the facts as presented by the commonwealth in this case. We take the allegations very seriously and we look forward to presenting our side of the story in a court of law.”

Sunday night, Greer, parked in a marked bus lane, told Sgt. Wildgrube she was waiting for her husband and rolled up her window to ignore the officer when he first gave her the option of circling Terminal B or relocating her vehicle to a cell phone lot, according to the police report.

When she allegedly refused, Wildgrube approached the Mercedes ML320 to write her a ticket. Greer allegedly hit the gas, clipping him with her passenger side mirror, the Suffolk District Attorney reports.

While she was blocked by oncoming traffic, Wildgrube opened the driver’s side door and ordered her out, but Greer allegedly drove on and shut the door, prosecutors said.

Stopped in traffic again, Wildgrube made another attempt to get Greer out, but she allegedly accelerated directly at him, forcing him to run backward about 15 feet, prosecutors said. He managed to get the driver’s side door open, but as he was unfastening her seat belt, Greer allegedly sped away with him, a report states

The trooper freed himself and broadcast the vehicle’s plate and description to fellow police, who stopped and arrested Greer on the Massachusetts Turnpike.

“I had about 60 people on my bus. They were terrified by what they saw. My legs are still shaking,” a bus driver who witnessed the alleged assault at Logan told investigators.

A Newburyport man who had just stepped off a flight from Dallas said he saw the trooper “shouting for the woman to stop” with his hands extended.

“She kept the car in gear and shouted repeatedly, ‘I’m not stopping the car, get away from me’ ” the witness told police. “Then she gunned the engine and took off.”

Prosecutors said when Greer was booked, she refused to answer questions about whether she had ingested drugs or alcohol.

They also said she denied having been at the airport, claiming instead she was driving home from her work at Merrill Lynch in Boston. Yet, according to her online profile, Greer works at Citi Smith Barney.

Reached at her home today, Greer took a business card from a reporter but declined to comment.

Greer is listed as a portfolio manager at Smith Barney’s Waltham office with a finance license in 18 states. The Harvard Business School graduate and former Wellesley School Committee member lives at 24 Windsor Road in Wellesley in a mansion with an online assessed value of $1.5 million. Her husband, Gordon Greer, also 57, is a stock broker, according to public records.

As a condition of her release, Greer has been ordered to stay away from Logan. She is due back in court May 13.

Joe Dwinell and Marie Szaniszlo contributed to this story.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1162499

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Margaret Greer – The Wicked Witch of Wellesley

http://rockthetruth2.blogspot.com/2009/04/wicked-witch-of-wellesley.html

“a portfolio manager from Wellesley…. a highly respected member of the community…. served two terms on the five-member elected School Committee…. and served… as an elected member of the Town Meeting”

Seems like a nice lady, right?

“troopers said they noticed a slight odor of alcohol on her breath and found a small glass in the vehicle containing an alcoholic beverage, they did not ask Greer to submit to a field sobriety test…. did not appear to be impaired”

WTF?!!!!!

As you read this account of elite excess and arrogance, ask yourself if you would receive the same treatment?

“Airport dust-up got nasty, trooper says; Motorist in SUV accused of assault” by Brian R. Ballou, Globe Staff | April 1, 2009Perhaps you’ve been there, idling in front of an airport terminal hoping your family member or long-lost college buddy appears before the approaching state trooper shoos you away. Margaret M. Greer was told to move along Sunday evening as she waited for her husband at Logan Airport, but police say she didn’t go quietly – and ended up in court because of it.

Greer, a portfolio manager from Wellesley, allegedly lowered the window of her Mercedes Benz ML320 SUV just an inch when the trooper, Sergeant Danial Wildgrube, approached and told her she would have to move because she was obstructing traffic in a bus lane. Greer merely pointed to a nearby vehicle and told him to take care of that motorist first, Wildgrube said in his report of the incident. He said he repeated the demand, but she shut her window and ignored him.

What ensued before shocked onlookers was a protracted confrontation in which, court papers allege, Greer nearly ran the trooper over as she repeatedly drove out of reach, only to be chased down by the trooper as he tried in vain to wrest Greer from her car.

“I’m not stopping the car! Get away from me,” Greer shouted repeatedly, according to one witness, George Kaniwec. Greer, 57, was charged yesterday in East Boston District Court with assault and battery on a police officer, assault with a dangerous weapon, and failure to stop for a police officer. Her lawyer, Carol Starkey, entered a plea of not guilty on her behalf, and Greer is to return to court May 13 for a preliminary hearing.

“Mrs. Greer is a highly respected member of the community and has plead not guilty to all allegations,” Starkey said later. “There are two sides to every story, and we strongly contest the facts as presented by the Commonwealth and look forward to presenting our side of the story. It’s very upsetting and traumatizing to her. . . . Anyone who has picked up or dropped off anyone at the airport may understand there’s two sides to the story.”

Wellesley Town Clerk Kathleen Nagle said Greer served two terms on the five-member elected School Committee, from 1995 to 2000, and served from 1995 to 2003 as an elected member of Town Meeting. Greer did not return calls made yesterday to her home and to her employer, Citi Smith Barney. Greer’s driving record is mostly clean, with one “at fault” accident in 2004, according to the Registry of Motor Vehicles.

On Sunday, Wildgrube’s report says, the trooper got out his ticket book after she refused to move her car and walked to the front of the vehicle to take down the license number. Then, he reported, Greer gunned her engine and sped off, clipping him with her side mirror and forcing him to leap out of the way.

Wildgrube said he yelled at Greer to stop, but she continued driving until she was stopped by traffic a short distance away. The trooper approached again, opened the driver’s-side door, and told her to get out because she was under arrest, but Greer refused and drove away again, he alleged.

Wildgrube said he caught up to her a third time as she sat in traffic in front of the terminal. He moved to the front of the vehicle and put his arms up. She allegedly hit the gas again, causing the trooper to place his hands on the hood. “She pushed me approximately 15 feet while I ran backwards fearing that I would fall under the car,” Wildgrube wrote. “All the while she was looking directly at me.”

Wildgrube said he was forced away from the car again, falling to the ground. He got up, opened the driver’s-side door, and attempted to undo her seatbelt, he alleges, but she started driving away, dragging him along. Wildgrube said he broke free and Greer drove away, but he radioed in her plate number.

Greer was stopped by other state troopers on the Massachusetts Turnpike, near the entrance to the Copley tunnel. Although troopers said they noticed a slight odor of alcohol on her breath and found a small glass in the vehicle containing an alcoholic beverage, they did not ask Greer to submit to a field sobriety test. David Procopio, spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Public Safety, said Greer did not appear to be impaired.

I think THREATENING to RUN OVER a COP is IMPAIRMENT, don’t you?

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said: “If a trooper asks you to move your car from a bus lane, you do it. . . . The trooper gave her every opportunity to do the right thing and she blew it. Now she’s looking at a felony charge.”

WHY no BOOZE CHARGE?

What, he forget!!!!?

WTF?

–more–”

Update: This lady must have been SOMEONE VERY, VERY IMPORTANT to have gotten THIS AMOUNT of PRINT in the Globe. Somebody down there know her or something?

Meg Greer

Second VP – Wealth Management, Financial Advisor

Portfolio Manager, Smith Barney Div., Citigroup Global Markets

Margaret (Meg) Greer is a graduate of the University of Michigan, and holds the degree of Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Harvard Business School. She joined Smith Barney as a Financial Consultant in 1997, and has thirty years of individual investing, corporate and small business experience. Meg is a frequent public speaker and has appeared on “Good Morning America,” “Good Day New York,” The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Forbes Magazine and Money Magazine. In addition to her business success, Meg is committed to community service and education. She has served as Vice Chairman of the Wellesley MA School Committee and an elected member of the Wellesley MA Town Meeting. She has been a Board Member and Troop Leader for Patriots’ Trail Girl Scout Council, with whom she created the Smith Barney Financial Camp for Girls. Meg lives in Wellesley, with her husband, Gordon, has two grown children, and works in the Waltham, MA, Smith Barney office.”

And check out the SELECTED PHOTOGRAPHS!!

Globe:

Margaret M. Greer has pleaded not guilty to charges of assaulting a police officer. (WBZ-TV)

Other:

Photo of Margaret Greer, left, and her booking photo, right.

Also see: AmeriKa’s MSM: We Take Care of Our Own (Part II)

Let’s see if something (booze) is missing from the Globe report…

“After airport tiff, a plea for help on Craigslist; Witnesses sought to confrontation” by Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff | April 2, 2009

The posting on Craigslist by a user named Matron appeared at 3:59 a.m. Monday, just hours after a high-powered Wellesley portfolio manager had been released from police custody following an explosive parking altercation with a state trooper at Logan International Airport.

Matron described herself as “a middle-aged lady driving a silver van” and said she had “an altercation with a Mass State Cop outside Terminal B around 8:15 p.m.

“I am seeking witnesses who were there and saw the State Trooper bang on my car and try to get through my door,” Matron wrote in a message deleted, along with a rambling missive, yesterday after Boston.com published a story about the postings. “Several State Police cruisers pursued me and arrested me on the Mass Pike. Please help me, if you saw this event.”

I ALWAYS LEAVE MY STUFF UP!!!!!

The description nearly matches the alleged confrontation Sunday night involving the portfolio manager, Margaret M. Greer, who is accused of sideswiping a trooper with her side-view mirror, driving at him so he had to run backward for 15 feet, and dragging him for a short distance as she drove away. The one difference: Instead of a silver van, Greer was driving a silver Mercedes Benz ML320 sport utility vehicle.

There is no definitive evidence that Greer used the alias Matron and trolled Craigslist for witnesses. Greer did not respond to a message yesterday seeking comment. Her lawyer, Carol Ann Starkey, declined to discuss “anything about any discussion that occurred on the Internet.”

“Mrs. Greer is taking these allegations very seriously,” said Starkey, adding that Greer “strongly refuted” the accusations and had her own side of the story for ready for a courtroom.

Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney’s office, said: “Prosecutors are aware of the postings and are examining them for any potential connection to our Logan Airport case.”

If Greer did post the query on Craigslist, she apparently did not uncover any witnesses, or sympathy, in cyberspace. A poster named golf22 wrote: “I’m sure the District Attorney appreciates your help in rounding up witnesses to testify against you as to the several illegal actions you took.”

Mr_Twister added: “We’ll all be *VERY* happy when the judge throws the book at you.”

Greer, 57, pleaded not guilty Monday in East Boston District Court to charges that included assault and battery on a police officer. She is accused of closing her window and ignoring an order to move out of a bus lane from the trooper, Sergeant Danial Wildgrube.

What followed was described in court papers as a battle of wills between a trooper with a ticket book and an executive in a hulking SUV. Matron defended herself, saying she was “blocked in by a bus on one side, and cars parked in front of me, and behind.” The chase on the turnpike “was slow speed, and required five state cruisers,” Matron wrote, “I was freaked out and traveling at 50.”

When the posters turned nasty, Matron sharpened her rhetoric.

Hey, LYING ASSHOLES DESERVE IT!! They BRING IT ON THEMSELVES!!!!!!

“Wake up people, you are being controlled by a government who thinks they can do anything,” she wrote. “. . . When has it become a crime to pull up to the curb to pick up your husband at the airport?”

A rambling lecture followed.

“Why did the State Police come after me?” Matron wrote. “The same reason that the IRS audits every pizza parlor owner in town, but never audits Enron Corporation. The same reason the SEC audits all those you know who are a registered brokers, but never audited Bernie Madoff. . . . Because it’s easy for the cops to pick on these helpless people. . . .

“Please do not think you are holier than me, because you are not,” Matron continued in her posting. “When it happens to you, I hope I can be there to support you.”

Yeah, yeah, CRY ME a RIVER, lady — and THEN GO TAKE a DRINK (that was KINDLY OMITTED from the Globe’s follow-up report, imagine that).

–more–”

And the SYMPATHY does NOT STOP THERE, folks(?)!!!

“At Logan, picking up is an art form; Timing is crucial at busy terminal” by Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff | April 2, 2009

The full-size pickup truck was there only seconds when the burly State Police trooper approached and blew a whistle that echoed throughout Terminal C at Logan Airport, urging the car to move.

But Paula Anderson just waited. “I was trying to get my son’s attention,” the Saugus woman said, as her son loaded his luggage into the truck yesterday. Then they were off.

Her timing was perfect. But for others, the system of picking up a relative or friend at an airport terminal can be confusing, frustrating, even intimidating.

With federal policies banning parking outside airport terminals, state troopers are quick to move cars picking up passengers who are not yet waiting by the curb with their luggage ready in carts that ironically read, “Go Ahead and Push Me.”

The question is where do you go? Drivers who do not correctly time their arrival, whether they are early or their passenger is still retrieving luggage, can expect to pay to park at a rate of $3 just to enter the lot, and $6 for those who are there for more than 30 minutes. Few know about a cellphone lot where drivers can wait at the other end of the airport.

See: Don’t Park at MassPort

Some choose to just drive in circles around the terminal until their passenger is curbside. Melissa McCagg of Malden circled the busy roadways three times to pick up a relative after a trooper shoed her away from Terminal C yesterday, after she was there for just seconds.

“They have been moving us constantly,” she said. “They should at least give us a minute.”

This is a “newspaper” I’m reading a reporting on?

Luis Falcon, 27, of Puerto Rico found a perfect spot away from troopers’ view in between two terminals, where parking is still prohibited but in an area that seems to get less scrutiny. Falcon, who had already been shoed away from Terminal C while waiting to pick up his aunt, was checking the rearview mirror for approaching troopers.

“They just told me I got to move,” but never said anything about that spot, he said.

David Procopio, a State Police spokesman, said the federal Transportation Security Administration prohibits curbside parking at terminals as a safety and security policy. He said troopers do have discretion in letting drivers park momentarily, letting them wait if they can see their passenger nearby or if the passenger is just grabbing luggage. Many times the decision depends on the traffic, he said.

But in today’s post-9/11 world, troopers remain vigilant, he said, pointing out cases in which people have parked their car, got out, and entered the terminal, leaving the car alone.

Did she OPINE about THAT WHOPPER of a LIE, Globe?

See why you need to FACE UP to 9/11 TRUTH, readers?

“In this day and age, that’s a red flag and something we can’t allow,” he said. “We have a job to do; one is to keep the traffic moving and, two, to keep the safety and security of the airport.” For some, the system can be intimidating, as state troopers in uniform whistle and holler at cars to move. Some see it as confusing and many as frustrating.

I’m tired of the Globe playing good cop, bad cop.

This guy was a BAD COP in the Globe’s eyes and WE KNOW WHY!!!!

State Police allege a Wellesley woman refused to move her sport utility vehicle Sunday, then drove at a trooper who tried to record her license plate number. The woman, Margaret M. Greer, 57, a former Wellesley School Committee member, faces several charges, including assault and battery on a police officer. Through a lawyer, she has disputed the police version of events and has pleaded not guilty.

Nothing about the BOOZE in the CAR, ‘eh?

Bob Cummins of Holliston has perfected the system after 13 years driving limousines. He has been frustrated by some troopers who seem a little overzealous, he said, and confused by the system of roads at the airport.

Unless, of course, they are ending the life of young Mr. Woodman.

But Cummins, who was picking up a relative yesterday, has learned to use what is somewhat of an unknown at the airport: the cellphone lot. The lot seems far from the central part of the airport and difficult to find by following signs. But it allows drivers to wait and contact their passenger for a perfect arrival.

Cummins waited with a coffee and a newspaper, then wasted no time picking up a relative who called to say she was ready. “It took me less than two minutes to get here,” he said. “When you follow the rules, it runs perfectly, it really does.”

Jay Cashman – Infrastructure Maintenance

Boston Money — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:53:49 +0000

Boston Magazine CLICK HERE

Zen and the Art of Infrastructure Maintenance

Building Boston’s thorniest construction projects made him rich enough to afford his own island. Now he’s plotting a giant wind farm-an undertaking that could bring Jay Cashman the one thing that’s always eluded him.

By John Wolfson

If you wanted to see Jay Cashman this summer, you needed an invitation to his island. As he has for the past three years, Cashman was using the 200-acre Strong Island, just off the coast of Chatham, as a retreat for himself and his family. One day each week he’d make the four-hour roundtrip drive to his office in Cambridge-he had sworn off helicopters in June after nearly crashing in bad weather-and he’d occasionally agree to important off-site meetings, but that was it. As the season wore on, one of Boston’s most prominent construction moguls pretty much dropped out of sight.

Jay Cashman

Cashman has long been known as much for his personal life as his huge civil works projects. He lives in what he says is the largest single-family residence in Boston, a six-floor, 16,000-square-foot home with two kitchens, a mini movie theater, and an authentic pub shipped piece by piece from New York. He spent much of the ’80s and ’90s tearing through Boston’s singles scene, cruising the streets in a blue Rolls-Royce, a millionaire Casanova whose tomcatting became a staple of the gossip pages. His role in some of the city’s most controversial construction projects, meanwhile, caused less of a stir. Cashman does the dirty work, the digging and drilling and dredging, yet he’s always managed to keep his hands clean. The work he did on the Big Dig achieved the rare distinction of having no one complain about it. The diffuser tunnels he dug in 100 feet of water for the Deer Island sewage treatment plant were an unqualified success. And while half the South Shore howled in opposition to the Greenbush commuter rail line, Cashman efficiently went about the business of laying track.
Now, however, everything’s turned on its head. Cashman’s private life has settled down since he remarried in 1999, while his business dealings have become the subject of intense scrutiny. First came the news that he’d agreed to sell 73 acres he owns in Fall River to a group proposing to build a liquefied-natural-gas terminal, a project that city’s mayor called “stupid.”

Then, at around the same time Cashman went into semi-seclusion on his island, he announced plans for a spectacularly audacious development venture all his own. No longer satisfied doing the contract work on someone else’s deals, Cashman wants to erect a $750 million cluster of massive windmills in Buzzards Bay. He believes the wind farm could supply half of Cape Cod with electricity-but he’ll have to build it first. A flurry of resistance has so far stalled a similar proposal in Nantucket Sound, and already Cashman has heard from outraged citizens who want to know what business a guy who digs tunnels has constructing 400-foot windmills that are certain to jeopardize narrow shipping lanes, a fragile ecosystem, and, by the way, the view.
The controversy didn’t seem to particularly disturb Cashman. He kept busy with his plans, enjoying his time on the island. Then, on the night of July 10, a 38-year-old Jamaica Plain woman was crushed to death by several tons of plummeting Big Dig ceiling tiles. The demise of Milena Del Valle, unlucky enough to have been traveling with her husband through the I-90 connector at the precise moment 24,000 pounds of tiles came loose, precipitated a public firestorm in Boston. No longer merely an embarrassing boondoggle, the costliest construction project in U.S. history was now a deathtrap, and somebody was damn well going to be held responsible.
Jay Cashman Inc. had done several hundred million dollars’ worth of Big Dig work-but that wasn’t the source of his problems. It turned out that the ceiling tiles at the center of the unfolding tragedy had been installed in 1999 by Modern Continental, the construction behemoth that had made itself the perfect symbol for the entire Central Artery debacle by somehow managing to parlay a few billion dollars of Big Dig contracts into impending bankruptcy. To head off that looming financial disaster, the insurance firm that was on the hook for Modern’s failures hired Cashman in 2004 to provide management oversight of the company. That meant media inquiries about Modern Continental’s role in the tunnel accident were directed to Jay Cashman Inc. Cashman, ensconced on his island, was uncharacteristically silent. He wasn’t returning my messages, either, even though he’d invited me to his island weeks earlier. Just as I started to think he was going to cancel on me, I got a call: It was Cashman, wondering when I was coming down.
Cashman can seem a little distracted at times. You’re never quite sure if he’s heard what you’ve said, or remembered what he’s told you. Which is why it crossed my mind, when I called him from Route 6 on Cape Cod, exactly as he’d instructed me to do just two days earlier, that he might have forgotten about me. “Oh, you’re at Exit 11,” he said, sounding surprised. “Do you swim?”
Upon arriving at the Strong Island landing, I walked down a gently sloping beach, past several overturned dinghies, and approached the water. Cashman sat in a Boston Whaler bobbing five feet offshore, talking into a cell phone and puffing on a cigar, an empty Coors Light can at his feet. He looked tanned and healthy in a black rugby shirt, nylon cargo pants, and sunglasses, still possessing, at 53, a splash of the charm that had made the bedroom conquests of his bachelor days the topic of so much conversation. So engrossed was he in his phone conversation that I assumed it involved the Big Dig accident. Gradually I realized he was discussing the 16-foot gazebo he was building outside his island home. He’d been authorized to build only a 12-footer. He told his lawyer he’d make it right, and then he hung up.
For a man who routinely deals with some of the toughest characters in Boston, this seemed a strangely accommodating way to negotiate. “I don’t like the hard-line approach-it takes too much time,” he explained as a handyman named Mark steered us out into the bay. We were heading for Nauset Spit, a long strip of sand a couple of miles from his island, where Cashman’s wife and her visiting family were swimming. “I always worry that if I get too greedy about something I’ll blow the deal, I’ll have nothing.” He narrowed his eyes, the way he often does during conversations, as though searching for a sign that his point is getting across. “Some people have to milk every deal. My father was that way. He hated to think he’d left a nickel on the table. I often know I could have gotten more out of a deal.”
This approach should not be mistaken for passivity. After all, you can’t compete in Boston’s tooth-and-claw construction industry by playing nice. Peter White, president of J. F. White Contracting, describes Cashman as an extremely aggressive rival. “Until you’ve banged heads with Jay,” he said, “you can’t know him or respect him.”
Cashman’s certainly willing to roll up his sleeves when the need arises. In 1994, while separating their interests after 20 years in business together, he and his brother Jamie got into a fistfight in their lawyer’s office. Jamie had accused Cashman of stealing money from the company. (Friends of both men say there was nothing to the claim. Jamie Cashman did not respond to requests for comment.)
Then there’s the feud with Boston’s mayor. “The problem with Tom Menino,” Cashman told me, “is when everyone is kissing your ass, you start to believe your ass is beautiful. But it’s really just a big, fat ass.”

He went on like this for a while. “Tom Menino works that job like no other mayor. Every little bakery that opens up, he’s there.” Cashman and Menino were good friends going back 25 years. They used to meet for beers during the summer at the Red Coach Grill in Braintree. Cashman traces their falling-out to an incident five years ago, when one of his employees “ripped Menino a new asshole” after Jay Cashman Inc. failed to land a particular contract for the new convention center. “I tried to explain the story to him, that the guy was nuts,” Cashman said, “but it didn’t seem to do the job. Ever since then, it’s been weird.” The frostiness, he said, didn’t inhibit Menino from requesting a $30,000 contribution for the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
A Menino spokesperson was a little more circumspect: “Mayor Menino is surprised that Jay would characterize their relationship in that way. He believes he has a good relationship with Jay Cashman.”
Zipping across Pleasant Bay, we finally arrived at Nauset Spit, and Cashman hopped into the water. He waded over to a pontoon boat that had ferried his wife and her family to the spit and grabbed a few cans of Coors Light. He handed me a can and we set out across the spit. As we walked, patches of sea grass peeking out of the white sand, Cashman told me about the first time he’d seen Strong Island, when he was a boy and he and his father were scouting summer rentals. “I kept bugging him about it,” he said. “One day in the garage-my father could be a real grouch-I asked him why we couldn’t rent the island. I still remember this; he said, ‘Cause I don’t know if I want to spend seven thousand on it! I knew then to drop it.”
The Jay Cashman Inc. headquarters overlook the Charles River from the top two floors of the Modern Continental building on Memorial Drive in Cambridge. Cashman’s company has moved at least seven times in the past 15 years, and will soon vacate the Cambridge building as well now that Cashman’s work with Modern Continental is nearly finished. “We’re like gypsies,” he said.
Cashman’s office is overrun with photographs of his family and certificates of his achievement. On one wall is a framed yellowed flyer for Humpty Dumpty Construction, the snow removal company Cashman, then 12, founded with his brother Jamie, who was 10. Cashman was born into construction. He grew up in Quincy, where both his grandfather and father ran contracting companies. His father, Jack, had a reputation as “a bit of an Irish rogue,” says Paul Losordo, Cashman’s longtime friend and attorney. “You might find him after work at Jimmy’s Harborside with a bunch of the other Irishmen.”
Cashman has been known to enjoy the odd tavern himself. His daughter Jaclyn Cashman, a television news anchor, recalled the time her father disappeared during a family vacation in the Caribbean. Frantic, Jaclyn burst into a bar looking for him, tears streaming down her face. There was Cashman behind the bar, shirtless. “He says, ‘Jaci, you want a beer?’” Cashman was buying drinks for everyone, but only on the condition that he got to pour them. “One of the things I really liked about my father,” Cashman told me, “he’d go and thump a bar. He’d set it up, beer and champagne for everyone.” That was on the good days.
Cashman said his father also had a vicious temper, and his mood could blacken without warning. “We’d go places in the family car and we’d be singing. Other times, he’d be other ways. Why do you think my favorite charity is battered wives and children?”

Cashman’s best friend, the auto magnate Herb Chambers, says the complicated relationship has affected Cashman throughout his life. “That’s part of what’s made Jay so loving,” Chambers said. Despite building a thriving business, Jack eventually ran into financial trouble and suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 51.
Cashman played sports in high school, “but he was always more interested in making money,” his classmate, and now employee, W. Bruce Wood, once told the Patriot Ledger. When it came time to choose a quote for the yearbook, Cashman settled on “Why should the devil have all the good times?” He married at 19, fathering two daughters, and worked his way through Boston University. During college, he leased dorm room refrigerators to students across the city. By his junior year, he was worth $31,000.

While in school, Cashman founded a construction company with his brother. They ran J. M. Cashman out of a trailer in Weymouth. Paul Losordo remembers that he first represented them in 1977 on a $40,000 job for the town of Hull. The Blizzard of ’78 hit Boston the following year, doing millions of dollars in damage, much of it to seawalls and piers-precisely the sort of work the brothers specialized in. Losordo said the storm had an effect “of biblical proportions” on the company. Cashman won federal repair contracts worth more money than he’d ever dreamed of. “That’s when I became a millionaire,” he said. Two years later, Cashman stretched his company even further, winning a $3.5 million job to overhaul the Vineyard Haven ferry terminal.
By the time the brothers split in 1994, their company was bringing in $100 million a year, according to David Ferrari, who was hired to liquidate the business. After paying off the banks and shutting everything down, each brother walked away with about $17 million. By then, Cashman had already cashed in his 401(k) and mortgaged his house in order to seed his new business. “I hit a couple of big jobs right off the bat and I was back in the game,” he said.
He told me what he’s worth these days but insisted I keep the information private. It’s a staggering figure, heavy on the “multi” part of multimillionaire. All told, Cashman employs a thousand people. He has offices in three states and in India, and did $250 million in sales last year.
“In my family, being a financial success was a source of pride,” he said as we talked in his office. “My father respected that. You were valuable if you were successful.”
Cashman is comfortable with the language of psychotherapy. He saw a therapist for 10 years, starting when his first marriage began to fall apart. Among his discoveries was the source of his need for constant activity. “Psychologically,” he said, “there is a fear with people that if they don’t have anything to do, they’ll be by themselves. They’ll have to face themselves.”
Cashman wound up alone in 1985, when he and his wife divorced. It’s debatable whether he used the time as an opportunity to face himself. He drank and caroused and hit Newbury Street in his flashy Rolls. He was romantically linked to glamorous models, and is said to have once offered $50,000 to anyone who could broker a date for him with Madonna. A worn-out Herb Chambers was once compelled to tell Cashman that it was not, in fact, a good idea for them to buy adjacent residences on Commonwealth Avenue. “I couldn’t possibly live next door to him,” Chambers told me with a laugh. “This guy would kill me!”

In 1992, after too many appearances in the gossip columns, Cashman resolved to put some distance between his professional and personal lives, taking an apartment in Manhattan. There, he continued the high life, drinks on the town and fabulous parties at the apartment.
At one of his bashes, Cashman met a striking brunette who intrigued him. They lost track of each other, though, and he forgot all about her until a few years later, when she showed up at a party on a 180-foot yacht he had rented for a cruise to Atlantic City. Her name was Christy, a model, and she wanted to be an actress. She’s his wife today, the mother of his two young sons. Cashman spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on their wedding in 1999, renting a castle in Ireland. He hired actors dressed as leprechauns to leap out of bushes and startle guests. Cashman sometimes puts money into Christy’s independent films, and when she landed a small part in What’s the Worst That Could Happen?, a 2001 comedy starring Danny DeVito and Martin Lawrence, he opened up his Back Bay mansion for filming.
Everyone says Cashman is much happier and calmer since meeting Christy. “Before my dad and she were married, he was so much more short-tempered,” Jaclyn said. Cashman told me it can be embarrassing to think about his past antics. “When I look back at dating and I look at the hurt I caused people-you start to think about needing to change. If you’re a playboy, you’re selfish. You endear people to you and then you move on.”
These days, Cashman is putting most of his attention into his wind farm project. The people who know him say his passion for alternative energies is real, and that he will shrug off any setbacks he might encounter. “There’s almost a clairvoyant part of Jay,” said his attorney Losordo. “He’ll see over the horizon. If it’s not in Buzzards Bay, Jay will surface in Puerto Rico or Venezuela or wherever the wind’s blowing. And if wave-generated power proves more effective, he’ll go that way. This is not about putting windmills in Buzzards Bay. It’s about seeing into the future.” It’s also about profit. “If we’re half as successful as we think we can be, it will be a real score,” said David Ferrari, who’s involved in the project. But Ferrari did add one warning: “The only thing I worry about with him is that he spreads himself too thin. I worry that something might slip through the cracks. I’ve mentioned that to him.”
Cashman, for his part, said the project represents a chance to transcend his local roots, to be a part of the international solution to our energy problems. But there’s something else. With the wind farm, Cashman finally has the opportunity to rise out of the dirt, to create something more than a hole in the ground. “I’ve mastered making $10 million on a deal,” he said. “I just bought a company for $25 million and I know I made at least $15 million. Now I’ve got my eyes on something bigger. I’ve got something that I’ve always wanted-the higher order.”
Reaching the ocean side of Nauset Spit, Cashman spotted Christy and her family on the beach. He stripped down to a pair of bright orange swim trunks and dove into the water. “Jay!” Christy called to him from the shore. “There’s a seal right there!” Off to Cashman’s right, the animal poked its head from the rolling waves, regarding Cashman for a few seconds before darting away.
Toweling off, Cashman talked with Christy’s brother Hans about the next day’s planned fishing trip. A tropical storm was heading for the Cape, Cashman told him, so it looked as if they might have to cancel the outing. “Those are no big deal,” joked Hans, an American Airlines pilot. “I’ve flown around them.” Cashman laughed, but the truth is he doesn’t like unnecessary risk. He hates sharks, aviation, and a lot of other things he can’t control. “Back when I was dating,” he told me, “I used to tell girls, ‘Let’s fly over for lunch on Nantucket.’ It was part of the bag of tricks, but I never liked flying.”
We headed back to the boat, and Mark brought us across the bay to the island. Once ashore, Cashman entered a boathouse and grabbed a couple of Coors Lights from a refrigerator. We cracked them open as we waited for Mark to bring around the golf cart. Cashman drove us up a path, eventually coming to a grassy clearing, in the middle of which sat his tastefully distressed summer home. Several landscapers and handymen worked the property. We stopped for a moment as Cashman chatted with his chef, passing by in another golf cart, about lunch for the fishing trip the next day. “You want me to make sandwiches?” the chef asked. “I don’t know if we’re going to go,” Cashman replied. “But make something anyway. And use those special cold cuts I bought at the deli.”
Inside the house, Cashman changed back into his clothes. He grabbed a couple of fresh Coors Lights and a cigar from a desk in the living room, then turned toward me. “You want to see something?” He led me downstairs into the basement. It was dark but I was able to make out a large metal box sitting atop a table. “I’m raising chickens!” Cashman said. There were 30 of them, just chicks, peeping in the box. Once big enough, they’ll be transferred to a proper coop Cashman is having built out by the old barn. “You know how they come?” he said. “They ship them live right to the post office. I couldn’t believe it.” Cashman said the chickens were mostly Christy’s idea, but he seemed pretty excited. He likes having things. He’s already accumulated about 40 19th-century paintings, and then there’s his latest passion, coins. He’d been buying them off eBay until receiving a letter from an expert appraiser, who informed him that he’d overpaid by double for nearly every piece in his collection, and advised him against buying rare coins from people who also have Barbie dolls for sale. Cashman laughed while reading me the letter. “I’ve spent like $300,000 on eBay, okay?” He said that he should probably stop drinking red wine when he makes his purchasing decisions.
Back in the golf cart, Cashman lit his cigar and we set off on a tour of the enormous island. A set of trails rings the perimeter, offering views of Pleasant Bay and the Atlantic. We ended up at a small shack outfitted with a couch, an easy chair, and an office workstation. Cashman settled into the chair and reached down to another small fridge stocked with Coors Lights. “I’m a little buzzed,” he said. He opened a new beer and relit his cigar.
I asked him about his plans for the wind farm. “My father always had a disdain for the construction business,” he said. “It hasn’t been until the last 10 years I’ve said, ‘You know something? The construction business is a good life. You build things that last.’ It wasn’t until I was 40 years old that I learned that. I finally decided that I was okay. I was okay with being a contractor. It’s okay.” The small room was growing hazy with cigar smoke and there was a drowsy calm to Cashman, not quite melancholy but a touch of sadness. “Maybe the windmills represent what my father always wanted.”
His father had also wanted Strong Island, but couldn’t afford it. “This was kind of his dream, so to speak, to have a place like this,” Cashman said. “One of his dreams was he was going to become a big national contractor. I went out and did that. Sons of carpenters become carpenters. Sons of doctors become doctors. Why does a guy who gets born pursue a certain path? Why did I come here? I’m so happy to be here. I’m so proud to be here. I’m living the life my father always thought was valuable.”
We walked out to the golf cart and Cashman drove me back to the water. It was a quarter past 8 and, with all his assistants gone, we were alone on the beach. The sun had set and the sky was streaked with purples and oranges that reflected off the now still bay. A small plane buzzed overhead. Cashman stretched out his arms, silently encompassing all of it. Then he grabbed a rope and, hand over hand, hauled in the boat.

Penny Stocks – Boston Capital

Boston Money — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:16:23 +0000

BOSTON CAPITAL

Penny stocks pillory companies

By Steven Syre, Globe Columnist | March 6, 2009

Question: What could you get with a share of Citigroup Inc. yesterday?

Answer: Change from your dollar. That was true on and off during the day, when shares of the financial giant changed hands for as little as 97 cents before finishing the session at $1.02.

The fact that shares of a company such as Citigroup would trade at penny-stock levels was a shocking development, no matter how much trouble the financial conglomerate faces. But stocks trading below $1 per share, sometimes far below that level, are becoming increasingly common.

The penny-stock ranks are growing as markets continue to take a pounding, sinking more than 4 percent yesterday alone. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 281.40 to 6,594.44, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index tumbled 30.32 to 682.55. The S&P benchmark closed at levels unseen since 1996.

US financial shares took a particularly hard fall, but the decline hit all industry sectors and stock markets around the world. Chinese officials dispelled hopes they would add to their stimulus plan, and investors braced for more bad news on US jobs that’s due out today.

Slumping markets have already prompted leading stock exchanges to loosen listing requirements for companies whose shares are under intense pressure. Last month, NYSE Euronext temporarily eased a requirement for companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange to maintain a minimum share price of $1. The Nasdaq Stock Market had already temporarily waived several listing rules, including the $1 per share minimum price requirement.

The danger of delisting is only one headache that develops when a company finds itself in the world of penny stocks. Financing becomes harder to arrange and much more expensive. Stock researchers are less likely to cover shares trading below a dollar, making it less likely investors will remember or remain interested in the business stories of those companies.

Worst of all, a stock that trades for less than $1 looks like a loser. “Once you’re there you’re in a netherworld and you’ve got a death rattle,” says Brian Stack, a portfolio manager at Pioneer Investments in Boston who invests in mid-size stocks.

There are stocks of all sizes in that category. Among companies included in the S&P 500, the ultimate blue-chip stock club, four saw their shares finish below $1 yesterday.

In Massachusetts, 37 of 232 public stocks traded below $1 yesterday. Virtually all of them have been clobbered since the stock market peaked on Oct. 9, 2007. On that sunny day, just five of the same 232 Massachusetts setts stocks were worth less than $1 per share.

Shares of Altus Pharmaceuticals Inc., a Cambridge company working on protein therapeutics, were worth $11.49 each in October 2007. They traded for just 17 cents yesterday. Shares of First Marblehead Corp., the student loan company in Boston, have plunged from $39.09 to 76 cents. Helicos Biosciences Corp., a Cambridge company that makes genetic-analysis equipment, saw its stock tumble from $8.75 to 50 cents. That’s a very long way down.

Stack points out that some small companies with share prices quoted in cents are salvageable businesses victimized by a dearth of stock-trading activity. Anyone who wants to sell shares of a big company like Citigroup can always find a buyer, but an investor unloading the stock of a small business in a bad market may see prices plunge because no one wants to purchase the stock.

The vast majority of Massachusetts companies with stocks under $1 qualify as small. A few names may be familiar, but most are relatively obscure. At those prices, the stocks are probably going to stay under the radar.

Many life-science companies and biotechnology businesses pop up on the local list of shares below a dollar. They usually need multiple rounds of financing to develop products and prefer to go to the stock market for that money. Raising money was their purpose for going public in the first place.

“These biotech companies tend to have a [cash] burn rate,” says Jim Weiss of Weiss Capital Management in Concord. “Until you get a product of some substance approved you have to continually replenish the cash.”

Companies with stocks below $1 are long-shot bets to bounce back, but it does happen sometimes. Shares of Boston’s American Tower Corp. sank to 75 cents in 2002 but climbed back to over $45 last year and closed yesterday at $27.35. Shares of Sonus Networks Inc., a Westford communications company, plunged below 20 cents in 2002 only to recover to more than $8 in 2007. Sonus stock has since slumped back to $1.18.

But most companies with shares below $1 don’t experience any big stock market recovery down the road. Some go out of business, others are acquired at low prices, and others just continue bumping along the bottom of the market.

Shares of Ibis Technology Group Inc., a semiconductor wafer company in Danvers, traded for just a penny each yesterday. But the same shares were worth just 7 cents when the market was riding high in October of 2007.

No matter where a company’s shares start, the penny-stock category is an expensive place that’s hard to escape. More companies are learning that every day.

Steven Syre is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at syre@globe.com.

Fidelity Investments – Fidelity Boston

Boston Money — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 16:38:49 +0000

Fidelity wants to hold your hand

As investors reel, the fund giant and others step up their advice-giving
By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff | March 11, 2009

It’s not easy peddling financial advice when people are queasy about opening their quarterly retirement account statements.

But Fidelity Investments, seizing on what it views as an opportunity in uncertain times, will introduce a three-pronged financial guidance program in an effort to reassure wary investors buffeted by the turbulent economy, the company said yesterday.
Fidelity will host more than 500 free seminars for customers and noncustomers this month at its investment centers across the country, including more than 50 at New England branches. The sessions will cover more than a dozen topics, from market intelligence to retirement road maps, promising “actionable financial strategies” for investors at different stages of their lives. Fidelity said it may extend the seminars beyond March if there’s demand.

It also is rolling out free online calculators and other Web-based tools to help investors evaluate their portfolios. And it is launching an advertising campaign promoting its program, called Guide to Personal Savings, or GPS, a play on the acronym for the navigational system that guides drivers.

The mutual funds giant, based in Boston, declined to say how much money it will spend on the program.
“Many individuals are looking at their portfolios with a fresh set of eyes,” Kathleen A. Murphy, the president for personal investing at Fidelity, said in a conference call with reporters yesterday. Fidelity’s goal is “to make this process easier” for those people, she said.
Murphy cited research showing 83 percent of Americans have not sought financial help in the past year because they feared it would be too costly or was designed solely for the affluent.
The campaign is designed to educate ordinary investors so they can “get back on track with their finances,” in Murphy’s words, not explicitly to sell stock-based mutual funds.

Fidelity unveiled its program on a day the Dow Jones industrial average jumped 379.44 points, or 5.8 percent, to 6,926.49 in a bounce-back rally. It was the biggest point gain for the Dow since Nov. 24.

Famously bearish investor Jeremy Grantham, chairman of the Boston investment firm Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo and Co., meanwhile, posted a commentary on his firm’s website yesterday, urging investors to start moving money from cash to stocks and suggesting stocks may now be undervalued by 30 percent.
The broad market retreat has hurt mutual fund firms particularly. More money has flowed out of stock mutual funds than into the funds in five of the seven months ended Jan. 31, the most recent period for which data are available, according to the Lipper unit of the Thomson Reuters research firm. That lowers the amount of assets fund firms manage, which in turn reduces the fees they collect. The lower revenue means fund companies don’t have as much money to reach out and give new customers financial help.
“The assets in the fund industry, like every other industry, are down, especially equity fund assets,” said Greg Ahern, spokesman for the Investment Company Institute, a mutual funds industry group in Washington. “You’re seeing the demand for professional advice increase exponentially at a time like this, not only for advice about retail funds but about 401(k)s and other retirement funds.”

Analysts said mutual fund companies and other financial firms have stepped up their hand-holding in recent months as the market has tumbled and the financial crisis has deepened, sending out investment newsletters, sponsoring Internet seminars called “Webinars,” and having more frequent phone conversations with rattled customers.

Other firms, such as Vanguard Group and T. Rowe Price, also host free seminars, though they are usually restricted to customers, and offer their own online planning tools. “We are continually coming up with new analyses helping people prepare for retirement and manage through this environment,” said Brian Lewbart, a spokesman for T. Rowe Price, a mutual funds firm based in Baltimore.
Fidelity’s program may be unique, analysts said, not only because it is backed by advertising but because it is tailored to investors – including noncustomers – spooked by the recession. The campaign, reaching out to individual investors and employees who are investing retirement funds through managed workplace accounts, is following the playbook of businesses that seek to capitalize on bad conditions to boost their market share in downturns, they said.

“A lot of fund firms are ramping up communications,” said Dan Sondhelm, partner at SunStar Strategies, an Arlington, Va., marketing consulting firm for the financial industry. “They’re getting more phone calls and Web hits than ever because investors are scared. But not a lot of firms can afford to invest in advertising right now when their revenue is down 50 or 60 percent” because of the stock market slump.

Fidelity said details of its program, including its interactive online calculators and the times and locations of its educational seminars, will be posted on its website, www.fidelity.com.
Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.

John F. Doorly – John Doorly

Boston Money — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:02:15 +0000

An Arrest in the House of Ayer

John Doorly – John F. Doorly

John F. Doorly has been charged with stealing $20 million from the family trust of Frederick Ayer and is looking at 20 years in jail.

Authorities allege that Doorly, the 60-year-old former chief operating officer at Tenens Corp., used his position to steal funds to buy himself, his family and his girlfrends real estate, cars, three airplanes, timeshares and golf club memberships at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club & Spa in Jupiter, Fla.

Our own Francis Storrs wrote about Doorly in the December, 2007 issue of Boston magazine.

Storrs describes the fateful events on March 21, 2006 when the family fired Doorly.

His head reeling, Doorly pulled his Cadillac Escalade out of Essex Street’s driveway and started dialing his cell phone, trying to manage the pieces of a secret life that was starting to emerge. His first call was to his mistress, Sarah Hunt (a former Ayer family employee herself), who had been named in the suit as a beneficiary of his stolen money. She couldn’t believe that Doorly had been fired. Neither could Peter Broom, the guy who serviced his jet down in Florida. When Doorly reached him, it was to tell Broom not to contact him through his Essex Street e-mail address. Broom was puzzled by the instructions: He’d always assumed that Doorly was Essex Street, that the vast fortune was his own. It was a common misconception among those in Doorly’s circle, one that he worked hard to cultivate—one that he himself might even have come to believe.

A Stranger in the House of Ayer

Illustration by David M. Brinley for Boston magazine

Case highlights family office risk

Boston Business Journal – by Craig M. Douglas & Todd Wallack Journal staff

W. Marc Bernsau

The Frederick Ayer mansion at 395 Commonwealth Ave. in Boston. The industrialist’s descendants are pursuing an ex-employee they accuse of stealing.

View Larger

Lowell industrialist Frederick Ayer Sr. and his descendants built a $600 million fortune over more than a century. But a family confidant allegedly siphoned about $58 million away in a few years, exploiting his position with the family office that manages the estate, according to a lawsuit by the firm.

That case, being played out in the Business Litigation Session of Suffolk Superior Court in Boston, offers a rare glimpse at the inner workings of the clubby and highly guarded world of family offices, the corporate entities often tasked with managing the day-to-day operations of large family trusts and other wealthy estates. The saga also highlights a little discussed but unavoidable fact in the arena of wealth management: Many family offices are vulnerable to fraud, especially by trusted insiders.

“It’s a fear that every wealth owner has,” said John Benevides, president of Family Office Exchange LLC, a Chicago company that advises more than one-tenth of the estimated 3,500 family offices in North America.

Adds Carrie Seligman, director of U.S. Trust’s estate and financial planning division in Boston: “If a trustee is bad, fraud isn’t difficult. It’s like giving away the keys to the safe.”

In the case of the Ayers, court documents and interviews indicate the trusts may have been especially vulnerable because of the complexity of the estate, relaxed oversight and what the family claims are auditing failures.

Tenens Corp., the family company charged with managing the estate for more than 100 relatives, operated in relative obscurity for years under the name Essex Street Advisors from a woodsy, non-descript group of offices in Beverly.

But the tranquility was shattered in March 2006 when Essex Street CEO Caleb Loring III terminated a longtime employee, John F. Doorly, after learning about a suspicious transaction, according to court filings.

Within days, Essex filed suit against Doorly, accusing him of stealing millions of dollars from the family fortune — money he allegedly spent on everything from a Gulfstream jet to gifts for his mistress and family, including a luxury condo in Boston’s Back Bay for his son’s girlfriend.

Doorly, 57, denied stealing any money, insisting many of the withdrawals were used for loans and investments that are still earning money for the Ayer estate. In fact, he argues that the jet and other properties were long on the family’s books, but were simply unnoticed due to lax oversight.

Doorly, a graduate of St. Mary’s High School in Lynn, joined Essex Street in 1973, when he was a self-described computer operator. He never earned a college degree, but he eventually became the company’s chief operating officer, managing most of the company’s daily operations, including the payroll and some of the family’s investments.

But over the last 14 months, Essex Street said in the lawsuit, its forensic accountants uncovered evidence that Doorly used a variety of schemes to steal more than $58 million, far more than Essex initially thought was missing.

Even more troubling, Essex Street alleged the embezzlement began at least a decade ago without detection.

According to court papers, it appears Ayer family members didn’t identify the missing money earlier for several reasons. Among them:

The complexity of the trust. According to the lawsuit, Essex Street maintained a network of 300 trusts for more than 100 family members, making money difficult to track.

Rather than operate as a single trust, the Ayer estate was set up as a so-called “separate shares” trust, whereby new trusts were added as the family tree grew. And each of the trusts requires trustees. But trust experts say separate-shares trusts can be complicated as the number of beneficiaries grows, as trustees often run into roadblocks when making decisions that require input from all family members.

“Some beneficiaries are very passive,” said Bob Holdway, a vice president with Fiduciary Trust in Boston, speaking generally. “As a good trustee, you try and reach out to them. But there are always some who are used to running on auto pilot.”

Inadequate oversight. Doorly testified that Loring, the CEO, and other trustees were rarely in the office, leaving Doorly to manage the operation largely on his own.

“I would be the first one in, last one out, seven days a week averaging 70 hours doing my work as well as work that should have been performed by Caleb Loring III,” Doorly said in his sworn affidavit.

A Loring associate, speaking on the condition he not be identified, said the characterization is unfair.

Auditing failures. Although Essex hired outside auditors, it appears they didn’t catch the missing money. Essex accused one auditor, Vitale Caturano & Co., of following Doorly’s instructions to ignore many of the accounts, leaving Essex Street vulnerable. Vitale said it did what it was hired to do.

Essex has sued Vitale and others in the case to try to recoup the missing money. But it has saved most of its ire for Doorly, calling him in a prepared statement a trusted employee who “abused that trust by looting the family’s cash accounts to enrich himself.” The family also vowed to pursue any parties who benefited from or aided the alleged theft.

Benevides says there are a number of safeguards families can put in place to protect themselves, including annual audits, strong internal financial controls and the screening of new hires. His firm’s research indicates that nearly three-quarters of its members had audits in the last two years, though audits can vary widely in scope.

But Benevides warns: “As any auditor will tell you, if someone has the intent to defraud, it is very difficult to detect.”

Essex Street has recovered around $9 million in cash and real estate from Doorly and Doorly-affiliated entities, according to court filings. Suffolk Superior Court Judge Allan van Gestel recently ruled that Doorly defied a court order to disclose and freeze his total income and assets. Doorly has since been forced to roll hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash into an escrow account.

It’s unclear, however, how much more Essex Street will be able to recoup. As of January, Doorly said he had an annuity worth $1.4 million, a time share at the Ritz Carlton in Jupiter, Fla., and two Cadillacs and a Jaguar. He also has claimed that Essex Street’s accounts hold around $2.5 million of his money.

Meanwhile, his personal life appears to be unraveling. Earlier this year, Doorly’s wife of 34 years, Maryjane Doorly, divorced him after learning through court filings that Doorly had a mistress. And as of a few months ago, John Doorly, who now lives in Peabody, was unemployed.

Meanwhile, the office of U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan has issued a number of subpoeanas as it investigates the matter, a person directly involved in the case said.

Craig M. Douglas can be reached at cdouglas@bizjournals.com. Todd Wallack can be reached at twallack@bizjournals.com.

U.S.: Exec John F. Doorly jetted off with $20M from Ayer trust

By Thomas Grillo | Friday, March 6, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Business & Markets

A Topsfield man has been charged with stealing $20 million from a family trust and spending it on Gulfstream jets, a waterfront condo in Florida, golf club memberships and girlfriends.

John F. Doorly faces up to 20 years in jail on multiple counts of mail fraud and money laundering arising from an alleged scheme to defraud more than 100 descendants of 19th century industrialist Frederick Ayer, according to the indictment filed in District Court by U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan.

Ayer and his family built a $600 million fortune over more than a century. The Ayers include descendants of World War II hero Gen. George Patton, who married into the Ayer family in 1910.

Authorities allege that Doorly, the 60-year-old former chief operating officer at Tenens Corp., used his position to steal funds to buy himself, his family and his girlfrends real estate, cars, three airplanes, timeshares and golf club memberships at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club & Spa in Jupiter, Fla. Doorly was fired in March 2006 after the company said it learned of his alleged scheme.

In a separate civil lawsuit, the Ayer family alleges Doorly engaged in “systematic looting” of $57 million from the trust.

Similar, though on a much smaller scale, to the case of Bernard Madoff – the former Nasdaq chairman who has been charged with a $50 billion Ponzi scheme – investigators allege Doorly hid the theft by manipulating internal accounting systems and sent false statements to trust beneficiaries.

The indictment says that from 1999 to 2006 Doorly transferred millions of dollars from the trust for his own purposes, including payments of extravagant credit card expenses.

Doorly’s attorney, Marc R. Salinas, said his client denies all the allegations and will plead not guilty.

Through a spokesman, the Ayer family said they are pleased Doorly has been indicted.

“Doorly led a double life and exploited the trust of his victims, stealing their money for personal extravagances for himself, his wife and son, and his mistress,” the statement said. “He looted this family out of tens of millions of dollars and joins the likes of disgraced money manager Madoff. We are heartbroken by Doorly’s personal betrayal and stunned by the scope and audacity of his criminal acts.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1156521

Trade deficit falls to $36 billion

Boston Money — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:46:43 +0000

Trade deficit falls to $36 billion in January
By Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer | March 13, 2009

WASHINGTON –The U.S. trade deficit plunged in January to the lowest level in six years as a deepening recession cut demand for imported goods at an even faster rate than for exports.

The Commerce Department said Friday the trade imbalance dropped to $36 billion in January, a decline of 9.7 percent from December and the lowest level since October 2002.

The improvement was better than the $38 billion deficit that economists had expected and reflected the fact that crude oil imports dropped to the lowest point in three years and demand for a wide variety of other foreign goods from autos to heavy machinery and household appliances declined.

The import declines helped offset a continued slide in U.S. exports which fell to their lowest level since September 2006, a drop that has contributed to the severe recession in U.S. manufacturing.

For January, exports of goods and services fell 5.7 percent to $124.9 billion. Demand for a wide variety of U.S.-made products from farm goods to autos to civilian aircraft all dropped in January.

Boeing Co. and Caterpillar Inc. are among a number of major U.S. exporting companies that have announced layoffs due to falling demand for their products in key overseas markets.

Imports fell even more sharply in January, declining by 6.7 percent to $160.9 billion, the lowest level for imported goods since March 2005. The decline in imports was led by a 25.2 percent drop in imported crude oil, which fell to $11.9 billion in January, the lowest level since February 2005. The average price for a barrel of crude dropped to $39.81, also the lowest point since February 2005.

America’s deficit with many of its trading partners declined sharply although the politically sensitive imbalance with China bucked the downward trend, rising by 3.5 percent to $20.6 billion. U.S. exports to China plunged by 19.7 percent, a much bigger drop than the 1.3 percent decline in Chinese goods shipped to the United States.

U.S. manufacturing companies who have been battered by what they view as unfair competition from China said that the continued high deficit with China, the largest U.S. trade gap with any nation, pointed to the need for the Obama administration to take a tougher line than the Bush administraiton with China.

“The United States will not be able to jumpstart its economy unless it stops trade cheats like China from decimating U.S. manufacturing,” said Auggie Tantillo, the executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, a group which is pushing the new administration to impose trade sanctions on China.

The overall January deficit of $36 billion, if it continued for the entire year, would result in a deficit of $432 billion for 2010, a drop of 36.5 percent from the $681.1 billion deficit recorded in 2008. That deficit represented a 2.7 percent drop from 2007, the first year that the trade gap had narrowed after setting records for five straight years.

Many economists believe the improvement for this year will be sizable as the country’s most severe recession in decades trims Americans’ appetite for foreign goods.

U.S. exports are also falling as the recession that began in the United States spreads worldwide. However, so far, the drop in imports is larger than the fall in exports, reflecting in large part the fact that oil prices have plummeted from the record levels they hit last year.

The trade deficit has now declined for a record sixth straight month, beating the prior record for declines of five straight drops set in 2007.

By country, the U.S. deficit with Canada, America’s biggest trading partner, dropped by 10.7 percent to $2.5 billion, the lowest imbalance since May 1999. The deficit with Japan fell 18.4 percent to $4.3 billion, the lowest trade gap with that country since January 1998. The deficit with the 27-nation European Union plunged 50.1 percent to $3.5 billion.

Many economists are worried that the spreading global economic weakness could prompt countries to resort to raising trade barriers in an effort to protect their domestic industries.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was meeting in Britain on Friday with finance ministers from the Group of 20 countries, which include the world’s wealthiest economies and major developing countries such as China, Brazil and India. President Barack Obama is pushing the G-20 nations to adopt sizable economic stimulus programs to jump-start their stalled economies. The U.S. Congress recently passed a $787 billion stimulus package that had been championed by Obama.

Former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, tapped by Obama to be the nation’s top trade official, told the Senate Finance Committee at his confirmation hearing on Monday that his main objective as U.S. trade representative would be to enforce existing law and insist that U.S. trade partners play by the rules.

© Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Herb Chambers Braintree Collision Center

Boston Money — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:24:36 +0000

More modern environment:

Prescription for hurting vehicles in Braintree

Herb Chambers opens new collision center in Braintree

By Steve Adams

The Patriot Ledger

Posted Mar 13, 2009 @ 07:00 AM

BRAINTREE —

Car czar Herb Chambers wants to be the collision center king of Massachusetts. A collision center and truck repair garage that opened recently on Lundquist Drive in Braintree represents Chambers’ fourth and biggest service center.

“If you love your car and you have an accident, this is the place you want to go,” Chambers said. “This is Massachusetts General Hospital for cars.”

The former warehouse now contains 44 body shop repair bays and 16 repair spots for commercial trucks and buses. Chambers plans to hire 20 additional technicians to work at the Braintree center, which began operating last month.

Repair business had been steadily increasing at Chambers’ previous collision center on Washington Street, which is now closed. The closing of several local Ford dealerships in recent years overwhelmed its ability to handle the demand.

Chambers bought the 78,400-square-foot building on Lundquist Drive two years ago for $3 million. He estimated he has spent more than $5 million converting the space – a former Avon Home Fashions warehouse – into a collision center and truck repair shop.

The facility was designed to provide a more modern environment than most body shops, with windows allowing natural light. Vacuum hoses are attached to tools used to sand vehicles, sucking dust and particles out of the air.

The latest computerized diagnostic equipment helps technicians straighten frames or match paint to cars’ original colors.

Two offices – remnants of the Avon warehouse – are available for insurance appraisers to fill out reports.

The Chambers body shop has about half the capacity of Ernie Boch Jr.’s Collision Center in Norwood, even though it is actually larger than the Norwood center. That facility spans 35,000 square feet and contains 88 repair bays for cars and trucks, Manager Bob Brown said.

Chambers is also counting on the Braintree facility to expand his heavy truck repair business. He spent $500,000 to elevate the roof of the building to accommodate box trucks and buses. The truck repair facility replaces one on Wood Road, which has a lease that expires in May.

Chambers is also using part of the building to store new vehicles such as Ford Mustangs with accessories that are frequent targets of thieves when parked outside at a dealership.

Chambers’ Somerville-based auto group owns 43 dealerships in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He is opening new dealerships in Westboro and Sudbury in the next few months.

The Braintree facility is hiring painters and metal technicians for the body shop and diesel-certified mechanics for the truck repair shop.

“If they’re really craftsmen, I need them,” Chambers said. “They’ve got to have experience, because everything has to be done to a Rolls-Royce finish.”

Steve Adams may be reached at sadams@ledger.com.