Dianne Feinstein wikipedia
EXCERPT:
In 1980, Feinstein married Richard C. Blum, an investment banker. In 2003, Feinstein was ranked the fifth-wealthiest senator, with an estimated net worth of $26 million.[6] By 2005 her net worth had increased to between $43 million and $99 million.[7] Her 347-page financial-disclosure statement[8] – characterized by the San Francisco Chronicle as "nearly the size of a phonebook" – draws clear lines between her assets and those of her husband, with many of her assets in blind trusts.[9]

MGM Mirage Perini mismanaged city center project
MGM to take steps to pay off workers

Casino company says its problems aren't with subcontractors

By HOWARD STUTZ
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL MGM counterclaim document

Jim Murren
MGM MIRAGE CHIEF SAYS COMPANY'S ISSUES ARE WITH PERINI

MGM Mirage said Friday it would take steps toward paying some 600 subcontractors who worked on the $8.5 billion CityCenter development and are now caught in the middle of a legal skirmish between the casino operator and general contractor Perini Building Co.

In a filing in Clark County District Court, MGM Mirage said Perini mismanaged the project and performed defective construction work at the Strip complex.

Because Perini recorded a $490 million lien on CityCenter's property and filed a lawsuit seeking payment, MGM Mirage believes the general contractor breached its construction agreement with the company.

"(Perini) embarked on a massive publicity campaign to smear CityCenter and its management for failing to pay Perini's demand, all before Perini had submitted its final application for payment to CityCenter," MGM Mirage attorneys said in the filing. "Because of Perini's actions, the subcontractor close-out process ... was derailed. CityCenter has undertaken this process even though it has no contractual obligation to Perini's subcontractors."

MGM Mirage said previously that hundreds of small minority- or women-owned subcontractors were brought into the project by the company's corporate diversity hiring program.

"Our issues are not with those firms. Our issues are with Perini," MGM Mirage Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jim Murren said May 7.

MGM Mirage officials Friday declined comment beyond the filing.

In an e-mailed statement that didn't directly address MGM Mirage's court filing, Perini Building Co. CEO Craig Shaw said he was confident the casino operator would be held accountable and required to pay money owed the subcontractors and Perini.

"MGM Mirage, which faces significant debt payments, is attempting to avoid its responsibility to pay the subcontractors," Shaw said. "MGM Mirage should do the right thing by the subcontractors, Perini and the Las Vegas community and pay for the work that was performed."

In court documents, MGM Mirage said Perini mismanaged CityCenter and performed defective construction work on some of the development's components, namely the stalled Harmon Hotel. The casino operator, which owns CityCenter in a 50-50 joint venture with Dubai World, said Perini has now embarked on "a scorched-earth legal, media and political attack" to be paid money that it is not owed.

Last week Perini and its subcontractors asked Gov. Jim Gibbons to intervene in the dispute and the governor's office said a meeting with the general contractor and the subcontractor representatives will take place on Friday.

Perini also launched a media and Internet campaign to force MGM Mirage's hand.

In the filing, MGM Mirage attorneys said the general contractor began "a massive publicity campaign to smear CityCenter and its management for failing to pay Perini's demand, all before Perini had submitted its final application for payment."

MGM Mirage went on to claim that Perini's payment request consisted of "140 banker's boxes containing over 300,000 pages of disorganized, allegedly supporting documentation that CityCenter must now organize and analyze to determine how much money, if any, is actually owed to Perini."

The casino operator believes the amount will be far less than Perini has claimed.

Perini was accused of overseeing defective work at the Harmon, which had to be scaled back and redesigned from 47 floors to 26 floors after subcontractors installed defective steel reinforcement bars. The Harmon was delayed and remains unfinished.

"Perini was responsible for supervising and managing the work of its subcontractors," the filing stated. "Perini breached the construction agreement and applicable standard of care by failing to perform its own work and failing to supervise the work of its subcontractors."

The company said in the court filing that Perini owes MGM Mirage "hundreds of millions of dollars" for the defective work on Harmon. The company said Perini paid a fine to the Nevada State Contractors Board last year for "substandard workmanship" at Harmon.

CityCenter, which includes the 4,004-room Aria, two boutique-style nongaming hotels, a twin-building high-rise residential tower, and a 500,000-square-foot dining, retail, and entertainment district, opened in December after a five-year design and building process.

Review-Journal writer Arnold M. Knightly contributed to this report. Contact reporter Howard Stutz at hstutz@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3871.

Richard Blum (Feinstein's hubby and Pirini)
Perini Corporation
73 Mt. Wayte Avenue
Framingham, MA 01701
Phone: (508) 628-2000
Fax: (508) 628-2821
http://www.perini.com
Profile
Company Principals
Board of Directors
Contract History
Political Contributions
UpdatesBackground
Founded more than a century ago in Massachusetts as a civil infrastructure contractor, Perini is known today for its hospitality and gaming industry projects, and for its corrections, health care, sports, entertainment and educational expertise. It is the largest casino and hotel builder in the United States. It also builds hospitals, prisons and public buildings. In addition, Perini is a major player in civil infrastructure construction, working on everything from bridges and highways to subways and airports.

Chairman and CEO Ronald Tutor and billionaire investor Richard Blum, who together own investment groups that hold 75 percent of Perini's voting stock, control the company. Blum is the husband of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

In addition to Perini, Tutor and Blum conduct a great deal of business through another company called Tutor-Saliba. Among that company's largest projects is the Los Angeles subway system.

Iraq contracts
In April 2003, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Transatlantic Programs Center awarded a contract to Perini worth as much as $500 million to provide goods and services to the U.S. Central Command. Washington Group International and Fluor Intercontinental were awarded similar contracts. The indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract has a performance period of one year. The IDIQ contract allows the Corps of Engineers to call upon the contracted companies to rapidly execute design and construction services as needed anywhere in CENTCOM's area of operations to support military operations, other U.S. government agencies, or friendly foreign governments under established agreements. The area of operations encompasses 25 nations from the Horn of Africa into central Asia, including Afghanistan and Iraq. No specific work or location for work to be performed has been identified to date.

In late September 2003, the Army Corps of Engineers issued additional task orders totaling $278 million on the three individual contracts and the Corps decided to raise the contract ceiling from $100 million to $500 million.

Perini will repair electrical infrastructure in southern Iraq, while Fluor and Washington Group International will perform similar work in central and northern Iraq.

Afghanistan contracts
In March 2003, Perini was awarded a contract by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Transatlantic Programs Center, for the design and construction of facilities to support the First Brigade of the Afghan National Army, located near Kabul.

Perini is the prime contractor for this $25 million, fast-track project, providing overall program management, design management, construction management and supervision, and quality control. The Perini team includes Tetra Tech, Azad Architects, and POWER Engineers.

The project consists of three phases, with occupancy of some facilities to begin in May 2003 and a final completion date of August 2003. It is unclear if the work has been completed. The facilities consist of barracks, dining facilities, a power plant, a water treatment facility and a wastewater treatment plant. Construction was started on January 19, 2003.

On April 4, 2003, the Army Corps of Engineers' Transatlantic Programs Center announced that it had awarded three contracts "to rapidly execute design and construction services as needed anywhere" in the area of operations for the U.S. military's Central Command (CENTCOM). The one-year contracts, awarded to Fluor Intercontinental, Perini Corporation and Washington Group International, are indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) contracts with a guaranteed minimum value of $500,000 and a maximum of $100 million. However, in late September 2003, the Army Corps of Engineers issued additional task orders totaling $278 million on the three contracts and the Corps decided to raise the contract ceiling from $100 million to $500 million.

According to the Pentagon: Perini, alongside Fluor Intercontinental and Washington Group International, will remove and rebuild damaged roads and replace a destroyed bridge in Afghanistan as part of their individual IDIQ contracts to support CENTCOM.

Government ties
Principal shareholder Richard Blum, who co-owns 75 percent of Perini's voting shares, is the husband of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California who serves on the Appropriations Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence.

Legal Action/Investigations
Perini entered into a contract worth roughly $41 million with the City of New York to upgrade and expand the structures and equipment at the Coney Island Water Pollution Plant. During performance of the contract, the city issued several change orders that increased the time required to complete the contract and caused Perini to incur extra costs. Perini notified the city that it had incurred or would incur damages as a result of the change orders. Perini and the city were unable to resolve the issue, so Perini sued. The federal courts ultimately ruled in the city's favor.

Updates
As of May 20, 2004
On March 12, 2004, the Program Management Office awarded Perini a contract with a ceiling of $500,000,000 for "electrical power distribution and transmission" in the southern region of Iraq.

—Bob Williams

Blum Capital wikipedia
EXCERPT:
Blum Capital is a private equity firm focused on leveraged buyout, growth capital and PIPE investments in small cap and middle-market companies across a range of industries. The firm is known for pioneering a hybrid private equity / strategic block investment strategy in public companies.

The firm, which is based in San Francisco, was founded in 1975 by Richard C. Blum. The firm has raised approximately $4.5 billion since inception across four institutional private equity funds raised since 1998.

[edit] History
Prior to founding Blum Capital, Richard C. Blum worked at Sutro & Co. an investment management and brokerage firm founded in 1858. While at Sutro, Blum led a partnership that acquired the struggling Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1967 for $8 million and sold it to Mattel Inc. for $40 million just four years later.

Among Blum Capital's most notable investments have been Fair Isaac[2], Lenovo[3], DHL Airways[4] and CB Richard Ellis.[5][6][7]

In 1994, Blum Capital entered into a joint venture, Newbridge Capital, with Texas Pacific Group and Acon Investments to invest in Asia and Latin America.

Richard C. Blum
EXCERPT:
Richard C. Blum is an investment banker and the husband of United States Senator from California Dianne Feinstein. He is a managing partner Blum Capital Partners, LP, an investment firm, and has a net worth of over $50 million. [1]
In 2002, Blum was appointed by California Governor Gray Davis to a 12-year term as a Regent of the University of California.

Blum serves on the boards of the following companies:

CB Richard Ellis (Chairman) [1]
Newbridge Capital, LLC (co-Chairman) [1]
Korea First Bank [1]
Northwest Airlines
Playtex Products [1]
Glenborough Realty Trust [1]
Kinetic Concepts (jointly owned with Fremont Partners) [1]

Critics have frequently accused Blum and Sen. Feinstein of political corruption and conflicts of interest arising from his business interests and his contributions to his wife's Senate campaigns. In 1992, Feinstein was fined $190,000 for failing to disclose that Blum had guaranteed nearly $3 million in loans to fund her 1990 bid for California governor. In 1997, a Los Angeles Times article revealed that while Feinstein was campaigning in the Senate for a lifting of trade sanctions against the People's Republic of China, Blum was managing millions of dollars of investments in Chinese businesses through his firm Newbridge Capital. Shortly after the scandal erupted, Blum announced that he would donate all of his profits from his China investments to charity.
Blum has a strong interest in Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. In 1981 he attempted to climb Mount Everest from the Tibetan side with Sir Edmund Hillary. He is the founder of the American Himalayan Foundation, which has given millions of dollars to build hospitals and schools in Tibet and Nepal.

References

Feinstein, Husband Hold Strong China Connections; Asia: Senator, Blum insist a solid "firewall" separates her foreign policy role, his growing business interests there. Glenn F. Bunting; The Los Angeles Times; March 28, 1997; pg. 1
Richard Blum hones art of upping shareholder value. Loren Steffy; Bloomberg News; August 4, 2002. [1]

Blum and Sutro and the Bush
EXCERPT:
On June 8, 1990, Ralph Smith, a trader for Sutro & Co., called Bush on behalf of an institutional client interested in buying a large block of Harken stock. Smith asked Bush if he was interested in selling. Bush said no, but added that he might be interested in about two weeks.

On June 15, 1990, lawyers from the firm of Haynes & Boone, which worked for Harken, sent a warning about selling on insider information. The memo to Harken staffers had the subject line Liability for insider trading and short swing profits.