Yesterday, using basic features of LittleSis, I discovered that the key matchmaker in the biggest, most complex bank merger in the history of Wall Street was a construction aggregate supply company based in Birmingham, Alabama.

Strange as it may seem, the evidence strongly suggests that individuals associated with this company leveraged their networks to bring the two banking giants together against all odds, with tremendous consequences for shareholders, homeowners, and taxpayers.

I turned this up as part of our Bay Area research project. It’s been one of the more gratifying research experiences I’ve had on LittleSis, because it demonstrates the power of the platform to expose hidden, surprising connections that bring significant depth and fresh life to news stories (this merger is still quite relevant today). And my findings should raise questions about whether the merger was an example of cronyist self-dealing at the expense of bank shareholders.

I am going to detail my findings in a Valdis Krebs-inspired blog post (including network graphs), but first:

Please consider making a $10 or $20 donation to our Spot.us pitch. This kind of work is being supported by that pitch, and we are very close to our fundraising goal!

After about six weeks of drawing interest, building new friendships, and researching our brains out, we’ve managed to collect 27 donations from organizations and individuals who are rallying behind the Bay Area Research Project.  The result?  We’re inspired, and working harder than ever to close the funding gap, and publish our final research.

Why Donating Is Important

Hitting the $800 donation goal is more than a matter of pride for us.  Achieving our goal proves that ground-up, community-oriented projects are viable means for LittleSis to sustain itself in a future where grants and traditional sources of funding are scarce.

Cool Stuff We Have Already Done

If you haven’t donated yet, take a look at what we’ve already produced from our research:

• Northern California Elite: Interlocks – OK, so wealthy, successful Californians businesspersons share corporate connections.  But did you know that many sit on government boards and University Trustee Boards?  Can you guess which politicians they donate the most money to?
• In-depth company profiles on: McKesson, Apple, Chevron, and Hewlett-Packard
• Eyes on the Ties Visualizations

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At around noon Eastern time the International Olympic Committee is set to vote on the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The final candidates are Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo. The White House originally stated that President Obama would not attend the Copenhagen vote to lobby for Chicago’s bid, due to pressing work on health care reform, but announced earlier this week that he would attend after all. In recent years major heads of states have successfully lobbied for their country’s cities, and it’s kind of difficult to imagine the IOC disappointing the world’s most powerful man. Update: Chicago was eliminated in the first round of today’s vote.

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The same year that Hartford Insurance settled a $20 million fraud suit with the state of New York, board member and compensation chair Paul Kirk decided to make the company’s CEO the second-highest paid executive in the insurance industry.

Today, Kirk was named Kennedy’s successor in the Senate by Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick.

Sunlight’s Paul Blumenthal detailed Paul Kirk’s corporate ties in a post this morning, highlighting his role on Hartford Financial Services’ compensation committee and his past lobbying work for Aventis pharmaceuticals. He also noted that Kirk helped make CEO Ramani Ayer one of the most overpaid executives in the country, according to Forbes, with compensation of $9 million in 2008. The New York Times chose to report exactly none of this in an article posted this afternoon.

The Hartford is an insurance company, so it wasn’t very hard to find areas where they’ve run afoul of the law. Seriously: google “Hartford Financial” fraud. There you have it: in 2006, the company agreed to pay $20 million to settle an investigation by New York and Connecticut into fraudulent sales of retirement products:

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Being one of the largest and most-established producers of consumer technology in the world, it is no surprise that Hewlett-Packard maintains a dominating presence within northern California’s business, commerce, and and information networks.

(Want to learn more about the ties behind the Bay Area’s biggest companies? Donate to our investigation on Spot.Us.)

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Last week Kyle wrote about some of the important names behind Chevron as part of our latest research project on LittleSis, which we’ve posted as a pitch on Spot.Us. We’re going to be blogging about our findings as we go, so we’ll hopefully produce a post about each of the ten companies we’re scrutinizing as part of this project.

Today I want to introduce you to some of the bigwigs behind McKesson — the world’s largest health care company and the third largest company in the SF Bay Area, headquartered in downtown SF — without naming any of its leadership, as a way of illustrating the kinds of networks that today’s typical megacorporation is plugged into. You can follow along at McKesson’s interlocks page on LittleSis.

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In his nomination hearing today, State Department nominee Robert Hormats was forced to discuss his role in the IPO of PetroChina. The IPO was the focus of a LittleSis / PAI report in late July and led anti-genocide groups to raise questions about the nomination. The nominee also faced repeated questions from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the issues of human rights, sanctions, and transparency.

I am in DC for the Gov 2.0 summit, so I went to the hearing. Sam Bell of the Genocide Intervention Network also covered the hearing on twitter.

Hormats was introduced by Senator Schumer, who announced his “unthrottled, full-throated support” of the nomination based on their friendship of over thirty years. In an early (but not explicit) nod to the PetroChina issue, Hormats’s opening statement emphasized his time spent in Africa.

After asking about his views of human rights issues, Senator Cardin raised the issue of PetroChina and Sudan, and the fact that there was significant concern in the human rights community about his role in the IPO.

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The White House and Senate Democrats may consider splitting the health care bill into two pieces to get GOP support on at least one of them. (WSJ)

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will travel to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the Fed’s annual meeting. (NYT)

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced $1.2 billion in grant money to help train hospitals to use electronic health records, fulfilling an early Obama campaign promise. (Reuters)

Senator Ted Kennedy sends a letter to the State Senate, asking them to quickly name his successor who can get to work in Washington. (WSJ)

A report says government jobs have grown since the recession, but big cuts may on the horizon. (NYT)

Last week I wrote about the bizarre links between key players in the New York State Senate coup and NXIVM, an “executive success” program that has many characteristics of a cult. The story got some exposure on Monday when it made it into the Albany Times Union, where James Odato noted NXIVM’s connections to the Senate drama:

The odd bedfellows that joined to overturn the Senate have some links to the intriguing Nxvim. The Capital Region company runs some executive success programs that employ questionable tactics to break down clients, according to some people formerly associated with the group, which has made a one watchdog’s list of suspected cults.

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Yesterday’s Republican takeover of the New York State Senate was truly bizarre. Usually you can count on powerful social incentives to keep governing types from flouting basic standards of decorum and order. In this case, something went terribly wrong.

The lede from the New York Times, in case you missed it:

The Democrats’ tenuous control of the New York State Senate abruptly collapsed on Monday, throwing the Legislature into chaos with just two weeks remaining in its session.

Two dissident Democrats, who had been secretly strategizing with Republicans for weeks, bucked their party’s leaders and joined with 30 Republican senators to form what they said would be a bipartisan power-sharing deal. But the arrangement effectively re-establishes Republican control.

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