More stuff keeps coming out about the Mets owners. This time the spotlight is on Saul Katz.
Fred Wilpon, Katz’s brother-in-law and the principal owner of the team, was its public face. Katz was supposed to be the brains behind the real estate and investment businesses that had first made ownership of the Mets possible. One former executive with the Mets nicknamed him Rain Man for his business brilliance.
Interesting that they called hime Rain Man. When I think of that movie, I think of Dustin Hoffman saying he’s a great driver and recalling phone numbers out of a phone book from memory.
As chief strategist at Sterling, Katz was also primarily responsible for Sterling’s investments, including those in real estate, in private equity and, until Dec. 11, 2008, in Madoff’s firm, the trustee says. Katz, it appears from the lawsuit, was also Sterling’s point of contact with Madoff. The men talked regularly, the suit says, and during certain periods they did so on a daily basis. Madoff’s former secretary said Katz was a much more frequent visitor to Madoff’s offices than Wilpon. With few exceptions, the suit asserts, when Katz called Madoff’s firm, “he did not speak to anyone other than Madoff.”
To me that sounds like Katz had a lot more of the dealings with Madoff then the Wilpons.
But the lawsuit says Katz never performed any kind of meaningful due diligence on Madoff’s firm. “Although Saul Katz was well aware of the risks associated with” Madoff’s operation, the suit says, “he never once attempted to confirm through any third party that Madoff actually traded the securities identified on his or other Sterling-related monthly account statements.”
Katz failed to do that, the suit says, even though he “confessed to his friends that he could not figure out how Madoff generated such smooth positive returns.”
Personally if it was my investments I would be trying to see how I was making the money. If Katz was a financial whiz why didn’t he check this out more?
Read the whole story from the NY TIMES HERE.