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Post on March 2, 2010 by 3 Comments »

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Some people at Brown University are now raising questions about the membership of their highly regarded president Ruth Simmons on the board of Goldman Sachs.

Simmons was one of the people who approved the recent bonuses for Goldman executives including $9 million for CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Simmons herself earned $323,000 for board service on top of her $576,000 salary at Brown.

The furor raises all sorts of questions, including why no one has talked much about the board memberships of UNC President Erskine Bowles.

Bowles did receive some publicity for offering his resignation last year as a board member of General Motors, but he currently serves on several other corporate boards, including financial industry giant Morgan Stanley.

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Comments (Closed):3

  1. John Rhodes
    March 2, 2010 at 8:37 pm

    As President of UNC, Bowles approved a board membership to allow the CEO of UNC Hospitals, Dr. William Roper, to sit on the board of Blue Cross administrative arm Medco Health Solutions. This has been completely overlooked here. Why, may I ask?

    This relationship presents a direct conflict of interest, especially given the damage done to the state health plan by Blue Cross and its affiliates. Who is Roper working for, anyway, the state, or Medco?

    And given the state of health care reform – a current issue both statewide and nationwide – why hasn’t the state press in Raleigh reported on any of this? As it relates to factual reports about UNC and its top executives, has someone in the state press been co-opted by Bowles, Incorporated?

  2. Lou Meyers
    March 3, 2010 at 9:08 pm

    Concerning John’s point, let’s hope Mr. Bowles fesses up to poor judgment before moving on to co-chair the Deficit Commission ordered by President Obama. In addition, he should immediately remove himself from all corporate boards. These glaring conflicts of interest could taint the recommendations yielded by the commission.

    What started off as a constructive approach by our president to fix what congress and Bush have screwed up, could end up backfiring on him simply because he failed to properly vet those he’s counting on to get the job done.

    Sound familiar?

  3. John Rhodes
    March 3, 2010 at 9:47 pm

    Lou Meyers has made several good points, but a vetting process, in this case, even one that would have dredged each section of the News and Observer from front page to back, incorporating the time from whence Roper received his blessing from Bowles and former Chancellor James Moeser to serve on Medco’s board – which was November or December 2007 – to the present, Obama would have found zilch!

    But why, I must ask, especially given the fact that Senior Editorial staff at the N&O have received e-mails, some as far back as July, 2008, concerning Roper’s conflict of interest and have replied acknowledging they know of the relationship but remain, to date, silent about the issue.

    The question now is, why is the N&O censoring this from the public? Could someone at the News and Observer have a conflict of interest, too?