May 29 (Bloomberg) -- Richard Kinder, co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Kinder Morgan Inc., operator of about 43,000 miles of pipelines in the U.S. and Canada, is leading a group that wants to buy the company for $100 a share or about $13.4 billion.
The group includes a fund run by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., insurer American International Group Inc. and buyout firms Carlyle Group and Riverstone Holdings LLC, according to a May 28 letter to Houston-based Kinder Morgan's board released today by the company. [...]
Kinder Morgan's network of pipelines carries oil, petroleum products like gasoline, natural gas and carbon dioxide. The company operates more than 150 terminals that transfer products such as gasoline, oil and coal, and its utilities provide natural gas to about 1.1 million customers.
Kinder Morgan Inc. was formed in July 1999, when Kinder and his partners bought KN Energy, a Colorado-based pipeline company. Kinder and Bill Morgan, another former Enron executive, formed the company that would become Kinder Morgan Energy by buying Enron's stake in natural-gas liquids and carbon dioxide lines after Kinder left the company. [...]
Last month, Washington-based Carlyle and New York-based Riverstone raised $3.8 billion to purchase power, oil and energy companies. Carlyle and Riverstone have made 19 investments in energy companies since 2000 and their Carlyle/Riverstone Global Energy & Power Fund II generated annual returns of 78 percent as of Sept. 30.
Goldman Sachs raised an $8.5 billion buyout fund in April last year and put more than $2.5 billion of the firm's money into it. The new fund's aim is to double or triple its invested capital, Richard Friedman, head of Goldman's merchant banking division, said in an interview last year.
Going private may allow Kinder to buy assets out of favor with analysts and other investors, acquisitions that could cause a drop in the stock price of a public company, said Simmons, author of "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy.''
Kinder has been successful buying assets shunned by other investors, said [investment banker Matthew] Simmons, 63. "It's just exactly the opposite strategy that Rich Kinder's old partner, Ken Lay, did,'' Simmons said. Lay sold assets such as pipelines to build energy trading and telecommunications businesses. [...]
According to an April filing, Kinder owns 24 million shares of Kinder Morgan Inc., or about 18 percent of the company.
Let's see how this works. To reprivatize his company, Ken Lay's former partner Rich Kinder has to buy back his own shares in the publicly held company. Kinder owns 24 million shares and, with the help of Goldman Sachs and the Carlyle Group, he's generously offering himself $100 a share.
I'll do the math for you: $2.4 billion with a capital "B."
Kenny Boy, you was set up but real good. Your $70 million in Enron loans (taken in cash, but repaid in crashing stock) in 2001 seem like cow chips next to Richard Kinder's windfall of $2,400 million. As fellow Texans and energy moguls and Bush Pioneers, looking at the two of you back in 2000 no one could have guessed whose star would rise and whose would set. You and Rich Kinder were probably running about neck and neck in your competition to see who could suck up to the Bush family the most extravagantly. You even got to secretly set US energy policy in 2001 with Dick Cheney. Pretty cool!
I always had Kenny Boy pegged as a plutocrat, but he was actually a patsy. Rich Kinder is the true plutocrat. Six years later, he pulled out ahead, doing what Kenny Boy only hoped to do. He made billions, a bloody fucking fortune, and Kenny Boy's probably going to jail.
Meanwhile, while the average 401(k) account has been flat or underwater for the five long years of Bush 2, "Carlyle and Riverstone have made 19 investments in energy companies since 2000 and their Carlyle/Riverstone Global Energy & Power Fund II generated annual returns of 78 percent as of Sept. 30." Did you think your privatized Social Security account would do as well as that? Guess again.
Other strikingly odd coincidences: Poppy's 80th birthday party was thrown by none other than Rich Kinder, who also happens to have been Dubya's top career patron in 2000. Poppy, of course, is part of the Carlyle Group, which famously also included Osama bin Laden's brother on 9-11-01, and Poppy's Secretary of State James Baker, who also headed Dubya's post-election campaign (i.e., Florida) in 2000. Naturally, Henry M. Paulson, the new Treasury Secretary [!] and former CEO of Goldman Sachs, is a Bush Pioneer. And Rich Kinder's wife Nancy, who also once worked at Enron, was in charge of the invitees who paid $100,000 and $250,000 (no kidding) to Dubya's second inaugural ball.
But let's get back to the original bit of news — the multibillion dollar privatization of 43,000 miles of pipelines in North America. Of all days, what an interesting bit of news to choose to release on Memorial Day, when we're supposed to be honoring those who so recently died for the USA's flagrant ability to waste energy!
(Actually, the sacrilege was probably just an oversight. I doubt that any of this group truly gives a shit about our troops, so much so that they didn't even notice the coincidence. They were probably just waiting for the moment when Enron would fall out of the news cycle — God knows our tonedeaf media can't handle anything more complex than the monotony of their single-minded "narratives." Now that Enron as a narrative told in CNN crawls is finished, Kinder is as anonymous to big media as this teeny-tiny blog.)
Coveted invitations to join the Bush-Cheney inauguration celebration at the highest levels — $250,000 and $100,000 — have begun landing in the mailboxes of wealthy Republicans and corporate chieftains across the country.
And our town's Nancy Kinder is part of the national team in charge of harvesting those top-tier sponsorships.
As finance chair of the Presidential Inauguration Committee, Kinder, along with committee leaders Bill DeWitt, Brad Freeman, Mercer Reynolds and Jeanne L. Phillips, has the megaresponsibility of raising $45 million, the price tag for the four days of inaugural festivities. Kinder was offered the plum position directly by the White House.
With only a few weeks to raise that super sum, Kinder, who was one of the top female fund-raisers in the country for the Bush-Cheney campaign, is charging full steam ahead. But don't expect to see her in the D.C. office that has been reserved with her name on the door. This high-powered fund-raiser is conducting her inaugural business from home base.
The high rollers who pony up at the six-figure levels, with only 100 available in each category, earn multiple tickets to a variety of parties and special events during the Jan. 18-21 celebration. And despite the high price tag, Kinder says the VIP packages are going fast.
She adds that the pricy sponsorships allow ordinary citizens to enjoy the four days of festivities at a more reasonable price. It will cost regular folks $150 each to attend an inaugural ball.
Nancy Kinder is better known as the wife of Richard Kinder, an ex-president of Enron Corp., Bush’s top career patron, according to the Center for Public Integrity.
[June 13, 2004] Not since the 1990 Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations has Houston hosted such a wealth of dignitaries as the flock that winged through town over the weekend for 41's 80th birthday. And that made for some very interesting beneath-the-radar partying.
Five former heads of state, the sitting president and vice president all popped in at one time or another to honor former President George H.W. Bush.
Vice President Dick Cheney, secretary of defense under 41, and his wife, Lynne, all but sneaked into town for the Saturday afternoon reunion of the former president's cabinet. Mica and Bob Mosbacher, Bush's secretary of commerce, hosted the powerful get-together that included the former president and Barbara Bush, Brent Scowcroft, James A. Baker III, C. Boyden Gray and others.
Texas A&M University cadets sang Happy Birthday, and Max Fisher of Franklin, Mich., a Republican stalwart who at 95 is the oldest person on Forbes' 400 wealthiest list, was there to offer many happy returns.
The previous night, the congenial Mosbachers hosted the more intimate after-party that followed the 41@80 VIP reception for 400 that had been held across the street in the home of Nancy and Rich Kinder.
Billionaires Nancy and Rich Kinder, former president of Enron, are Dubya’s top career patrons, with over $400,000 in contributions through July 2000 alone (not including the last four years).
Sen. John McCain talking up the importance of staying the course in Iraq while wooing campaign contributors at the River Oaks home of Mica and Bob Mosbacher. In the mix — Patty and James Huffines of Austin, Kelly Day, Louise and Dr. Denton Cooley, Kristen and John Perry and Kathi Mosbacher with fiance Mike Wheeler.
One of the last times we saw a gathering like this was in 2004 when Mica and Bob Mosbacher and Nancy and Rich Kinder (former Enron prez) held back-to-back house parties for Bush-41's 80th birthday, attended by Dick and Lynne Cheney, Brent Scowcroft, Prince Bandar, and James A. Baker III (whose Iraq Study Group will forever remain an insignificant historial footnote).
With friends like this, you can almost smell McCain's desperation.
In Felton, south of San Francisco, [German utility and owner of American Water] RWE became embroiled in a battle with a group called FLOW, or Friends of Locally Owned Water. American Water secured ownership of Felton's water system in January 2002 when it bought the water holdings of a Connecticut company that had long controlled the asset. Eight months later, American Water, in the process of being acquired by RWE, asked the California Public Utilities Commission for approval to raise rates in Felton by 74% over three years. It noted that rates hadn't been raised since 1998 and cited the cost of infrastructure repairs.
Soon after, FLOW was formed. Members handed out literature at shops, knocked on neighbors' doors and lobbied county politicians to stir opposition to RWE. "I've had no vacation in three years. It's all I've done," says 85-year-old Frank Adamson, a retiree and FLOW member.
People in Felton complained that response times to broken water mains and the like slowed as RWE centralized operations. Accident reports from Felton were routed to a call center in Alton, Ill. Daniel Kelleher, senior vice president at American Water, says the national call center is aimed at boosting service. "It became a much more difficult project than we anticipated, and it's still a work in progress," he says. While state regulators didn't grant the entire rate increase, they decided after more than a year that American Water could raise rates 44% in Felton. Momentum grew in the community to try to take over the Felton water system and return it to public control.
[...]
In Monterey, about an hour's drive south of Felton, RWE spent more than $300,000 to defeat a measure proposing a study of whether to buy back the water system. In Chattanooga, Tenn., where water has been in private hands since the Civil War, Mayor Ron Littlefield has approached RWE's local unit about a municipal buyout. He thinks the city can save money by combining water with municipally owned power and sewer utilities. Chattanooga's water, he says, is a "private island in the middle of a sea of public utilities."
Laurel Prussing, the mayor of Urbana, Ill., became interested in a municipal buyout after a growing number of "boil orders," when people are told they must boil their water to make it safe to drink. When she tried to investigate a boil order in February, she says she was put on hold for 25 minutes before being connected to a call center in another city. An American Water spokesman disputed that boil orders have risen in Urbana and said the company distributes special telephone numbers that municipal officials can call in an emergency.
Privatization is quite often the opposite of efficiency. In the case of water privatization, all it does is efficiently remove money from communities.
Meanwhile, the UN says privatized water is "creating social and political discontent, and sometimes outright violence" in poorer countries. Poorer countries like the USA — which happens to be trillions of dollars poorer than it was just a few years ago, thanks in no small part to the privatizers, the Halliburton/Bechtel/Enron/Kinder/Carlyle GOP, a crony scheme on a global scale.
With speculation escalating on an impending indictment, Ken and Linda Lay are not out much these days. Except for last week when they arrived at the very public Holocaust Museum Houston annual dinner, attended by more than 1,300.
The Lays were anything but hunkering down. They were seated at a table in the middle of the packed ballroom at the Hilton Americas-Houston and received well-wishers with bear hugs and kisses. You couldn't miss them with that steady stream of admirers.
Also not exactly in hiding in Houston is the insaneJeff Skilling who was dangerously near former Enron executive and current Bush Pioneer Nancy Kinder, proving that the Enron clique remains intact, complete with all the armies of lawyers and plastic surgeons that the richest criminals could possibly need.
Presidential brother Neil Bush -- putting aside remnants of a scandalous divorce, paternity questions and a scorned ex-wife -- married Maria Andrews Saturday night in the Memorial-area mansion of Rania and Jamal Daniel, longtime Bush family friends.
Close to 150 guests joined the newlyweds after a small family ceremony that included former President George Bush and Barbara Bush, parents of the groom. President George W. Bush and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush did not attend.
Standing with their father for the nuptials were Pierce, 17, and Ashley, 14. His eldest daughter, model and Princeton University student Lauren, did not attend.
Joining Andrews in the ceremony were her two older children, Elizabeth, 12, and Pace Andrews, 10.
The cocktail-attire evening included a seated dinner and dancing.
Neil Bush met Andrews several years ago when she was working as a volunteer in Barbara Bush's Houston office. They became engaged in December during a romantic dinner in a French chateau.
Meanwhile, his fake cowboy brother kisses up to real cowboys who apparently can't tell the difference between the one brother's pandering and the other's philandering enough to know that neither of them shares an iota of their own values.
And for dinner Dubya will take another $1 million on the way to his fundraising goal of $170 million for an unopposed campaign within his party.
Even now, Enron still plays an important financial role in the Bush campaign. The new Pioneer ($200,000+ donors) "list includes investor Peter Coneway, former Enron executive Nancy Kinder and businessman Fred Zeidman."
No word on where radioactive Neil and Maria are honeymooning.
