He will be the next governor because he runs in the right circles. The die has been cast.
"After 2010, Charlie Baker’s business options rich with complications" by Stephanie Ebbert and Beth Healy | Globe Staff October 26, 2014
Numerous opportunities would come Charlie Baker’s way to advise companies and serve on their boards — lucrative appointments that were less time-consuming than leading one large enterprise. A review of Baker’s career over the past four years found he leveraged his connections in business and politics with ease, expanding his resume and his investment portfolio while he mulled his next run for office.
General Catalyst provided more than half of the $865,000 he earned last year, according to his tax returns.
Related: Garden State is the General Catalyst For Baker Scandal
Never $eemed to take.
Separately, he made hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting on the boards of two high-profile Massachusetts companies led by businessmen in his circles.
In one case, Baker was paid $180,000 a year to attend six meetings of the mutual fund board of Natixis Global Asset Management, a Boston company run by John Hailer, a relative by marriage.
In the other, he was offered more than $150,000 a year to serve on the board of publicly traded athenahealth Inc., a fast-growing company that won a $9.5 million state tax credit in exchange for the promise of nearly tripling employment and dramatically expanding its Watertown campus.
See: Time For Buffett
At the same time, Baker was invited to invest in a private real estate project with athenahealth’s exuberant CEO, Jonathan Bush, a first cousin of former president George W. Bush.
So much for all the political sniping.
Jonathan Bush had a grand vision of transforming Watertown’s historic Arsenal section into a new tech corridor combining the best of Kendall Square and Brooklyn’s Williamsburg, with restaurants, shops and thousands of young high-tech workers. His redevelopment of the adjacent Arsenal Mall property would create an appealing live-work playground for the new employees athenahealth recruited.
While the mall redevelopment is legally separate from athenahealth’s project, their fortunes are deeply entwined — a point Bush acknowledged.
“I have this beautiful symphony of self-interest,” he told the Globe.
He means $ymphony of $elf-intere$t.
Baker, however, bristled at questions about his investment in the mall project, saying it had nothing to do with the expansion of the company where he was a director until last December . He said he had merely responded to a “boilerplate” solicitation to invest in a real estate opportunity.
“The Bakers have a sort of long list of things we’ve invested in. Some successfully, some not so,” he said.
General Catalyst
Baker dove into the world of venture capital at General Catalyst in March 2011, agreeing to become an executive-in-residence — a consulting position that would pay him to help startups in which the venture firm invested.
In his three years there, he worked closely with three companies, traveling to meet with their executives, sitting on their boards of directors, and serving as a sounding board as they made plans to grow and attract more customers and revenue.
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Baker’s longest term board appointment was at Natixis, a Boston investment group owned by a French bank. Natixis is one of the world’s largest investment firms and the parent of more than 20 brands, like the Boston bond firm Loomis, Sayles & Co.
Natixis is run by John Hailer, whose sister is married to Baker’s brother.
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ATHENAHEALTH
The best known company where Baker held a board seat was athenahealth, a national leader in computerizing health care records. CEO Jonathan Bush had crossed paths with Baker in the health care world and became a major fund-raiser for his campaign in 2010.
“I’m a huge Charlie Baker fan,” Bush said in an interview. “I pinched myself when I got him to join the board.”
The ince$tuous politics of Ma$$achu$etts.
Baker was a guy after Bush’s own heart — fiscally conservative and socially moderate. He was a respected manager, a master of high finance during the Big Dig years and when Harvard Pilgrim was in receivership. Bush invited Baker to join the board in June 2012.
Over the next 13 months, Baker would have a front-row seat to a flurry of activity, as athenahealth would ink a $168.5 million real estate transaction, acquiring the historic Arsenal on the Charles property where it had been renting its headquarters from Harvard University.
That same month, in December 2012, athenahealth notified state and local officials it would seek a tax credit in exchange for creating 1,900 new jobs within a decade. The tax credit push was led by Dan Haley, athenahealth’s vice president of government and regulatory affairs, and one of four Baker campaign aides hired by the company.
Two months later, Bush approached board members, including Baker, inviting them to invest in the Arsenal Mall property down the block.
Baker was one of about 50 people who bought in, investing $250,000. Other athenahealth directors also invested, though Bush declined to say which ones.
“I found anybody who looked remotely rich,’’ Bush recalled. “Two days later, I was oversubscribed.”
That's Bo$ton.
Baker’s investment was perfectly legal.
That makes it all right then?
And neither he nor the board thought it needed to be disclosed to athenahealth stockholders. Directors primarily disclose relationships with a company when they are selling something, like legal services.
But in the case of athenahealth, matters could arise that could impact both developments — for example, improvements to the property that could also work to benefit Baker and other investors with a stake in the mall project.
An athenahealth spokeswoman said the company “will review situations in the future on a case-by-case basis, as to whether there are conflicts, in the event of any transaction between athenahealth and the mall development.’’
Regulators do not require public companies to disclose all board relationships, noted Jill E. Fisch, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in Philadelphia. But some relationships can raise questions about independence, Fisch said. “It’s the job of the board to decide if the director can be independent.”
Baker, a member of athenahealth’s audit committee, said he never gave any thought to whether his mall investment might benefit from the tax break, or the growth of the company.
“Nope. Nope,” he said, his tone frustrated. “It never occurred to me.
“That would mean that everyone who’s an investor in that real estate investment would somehow be a beneficiary.”
Baker took offense when asked whether, as a veteran of state government, he had helped advise the company on securing the tax credit. “No!” he said angrily.
He suggested he was so far removed from the tax credit decision process that he never learned of its outcome or its value — although he was on the board at the time and his name appears on athenahealth’s application for the tax break.
So far, Baker hasn’t made money on the investment, recording a $100,785 loss on his taxes last year. But he expects to eventually earn a profit.
I smell Whitewater.
“I mean, that is going to be a growth area. It just is,” he said.
That would be the electronic records they can't protect and don't have to tell you were hacked.
--more--"
Also see:
5 things next governor should do for innovation economy
Baker, Coakley weigh in on the Mass. economy
Baker’s election would signal change in what the state values
GOP is still anathema in Mass.
Boo-hoo-hoo.
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
This time around, Baker’s wife steps into foreground
Sorry I'm putting that in the background.
Editorial | Endorsement: Charlie Baker for governor
But the Globe admits they are BOTH GREAT CANDIDATES!
"Something unusual happened at a packed Boston church on Sunday: Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Charlie Baker agreed. Again and again. On their own, each worked to draw distinctions with their main rival. But together — at least for most of the forum — Baker and Coakley offered stances in line with each other and the interfaith group, nine days before voters choose Governor Deval Patrick’s successor on Nov. 4."
The photo in my printed paper was Marty and Chuck shaking hands after the event, with Charlie looking awkward and stiff like he didn't want to do it and Marty with her left hand on his right arm.
Given the choice between the two, the circles they run in, and the money part of the campaign, Coakley does look like the more humane candidate for all that it matters. I think the rigged results are in and the recent polls and Globe articles and editorials are a way of preparing you for the pre-programmed results. Sorry.
