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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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081489
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08148900.012
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1990-09-17
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BUSINESS, Page 52Welcome to the World of Sleaze
Federal prosecutors were popping champagne corks in New York
City as well last week. A Manhattan jury convicted five executives
of Princeton/Newport Partners and a former trader for Drexel
Burnham Lambert of 63 felony counts stemming from illegal
stock-trading schemes. They were fined a total of $3.8 million. The
case marked the first time the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations Act has been used against Wall Street executives, and
thus lays the groundwork for the Government's prosecution of
junk-bond king Michael Milken, formerly of Drexel. Since Drexel was
Princeton/Newport's main partner in the illegal trades, evidence
from the trial is likely to be used again, against Milken.
For nearly two decades Princeton/Newport paid investors a 19%
annual return by using computers to take advantage of small
discrepancies between the prices of stocks and their associated
warrants, which are the rights to buy stocks at a certain price.
But then founding partner Jay Regan got greedy. According to the
Government's case, the Princeton/Newport executives tried to
manipulate the market, starting in mid-1984, through a technique
called stock parking. They arranged to sell some securities at a
loss and then repurchase them at the same or slightly higher
prices. The party ended one wintry day in 1987, when 50 federal
marshals burst into the firm's offices, situated above a
Haagen-Dazs shop in Princeton, N.J., and confiscated 255 boxes of
company records and 336 hours of taped phone conversations.
The most damning -- and colorful -- evidence was on tape. In
one casual exchange between Drexel's Bruce Newberg and
Princeton/Newport partner Charles Zarzecki, the prosecution saw
evidence that the co-defendants knew exactly what they were up to.
Newberg teasingly calls Zarzecki "a sleaze bag." Zarzecki's retort:
"You taught me, man." Replies Newberg: "Welcome to the world of
being a sleaze."