ALL IN THE FAMILY
WEILL’S DAUGHTER’S FIRM TARGETED BY SPITZER
October 28, 2006 — New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, having successfully embarrassed former Citigroup chairman Sandy Weill a few years ago, has now taken aim at Weill’s daughter - who runs wealth management firm National Financial Partners.
On Thursday, Spitzer cited National Financial several times in a civil suit filed against Coventry Financial for “repeated and persistent fraudulent and illegal acts” in the sale of so-called life settlements, which give cash to life insurance policy holders in exchange for them naming the firm as their prime beneficiary.
Firms like Coventry then continue to pay the premiums on the policy and collect the payout when the person dies.
National Financial, run by Weill’s daughter Jessica Bibliowicz, operates one of the nation’s largest life settlement brokers, which bring together life insurance policyholders with company’s that offer life settlements.
National Financial wasn’t named as a defendant in the lawsuit, but its life settlements subsidiary, called Advanced Settlements, is mentioned by Spitzer as taking over $132,000 in an alleged bid-rigging scheme that defrauded the owners of the life insurance policies.
He alleges that Coventry paid kickbacks to brokers like National Financial for giving them lower prices on life settlements even though the brokers were supposed to be working solely for policyholders.
UBS analyst Andrew Kligerman doesn’t see Spitzer’s complaint hurting National Financial’s stock price.
Life settlements will only represent about 4 percent of the company’s revenue this year and it is looking to curtail the business anyway, Kligerman said.
Bibliowicz left Citigroup to join National Financial after a highly-publicized tiff with her father in 1997 over the fate of J.P. Morgan head Jamie Dimon, who was slated to take over the helm of Citigroup when Weill retired.
Dimon’s own run-in with Bibliowicz poisoned the relationship he had with Weill and in 1998 Dimon left the company to join Bank One.
Shares in National Financial closed yesterday up $1.45 to $39.07.
Source: Zachary COve - NYPost
