UTIMCO was back before the Senate Finance Committee today, and what a different one regent can make. Texas A&M regent (and TXU chairman emeritus) Earl Nye, replacing former UT regent Robert Rowling as chairman of UTIMCO, gave a calm and convincing analysis of UTIMCO’s performance and urged lawmakers not to…
The Capitol gossip machine has worked overtime since Thursday’s explosive Senate Finance hearing, but Chairman Steve Ogden vehemently denies any coordination with the Governor’s office to ambush former UT Regent Robert Rowling. Everyone who hasn’t had a paper sack over their heads knows by now that Dallas billionaire Rowling quit…
Former UT regent Charles Miller provided additional information about UTIMCO’s performance as well as the payment of bonuses. As was the case with his previous comments, I am publishing his communication exactly as he wrote it. I think Zimmerman and UTIMCO made several hundred million dollars in profits ($400 million…
Former UT regents’ chair Charles Miller, whose name I invoked in my discussion of the UTIMCO controversy, sent me an e-mail containing his views on the Senate Finance hearing and the issues raised therein. Mr. Miller asked that, if I chose to publish his remarks, that they appear exactly as…
For many years after I first started working in the Capitol, the major pension funds and endowments were limited to conservative investments such as stocks and bonds and government instruments. Then Wall Street began going crazy and the investment managers asked the Legislature for the authority to play in real…
The resignation of Robert Rowling as a University of Texas regent and as chairmain of the UT System’s beleaguered investment company, UTIMCO, following Rowling’s appearance at a stormy session of the Senate Finance committee, was rife with politics. Rowling is a former Perry supporter who is backing Hutchison in the…
Dallas billionaire Robert Rowling, chairman of the UTIMCO board, today abruptly resigned while under heavy fire from members of the Senate Finance Committee about $2.3 million in bonuses paid to fund managers for the University of Texas System and Texas A&M System’s endowment, which has declined 27 percent this year.