It seems that more and more information is becoming available regarding Republican John Kasich's Lehman Brothers career, his colleagues, and their work with Ohio pension funds. As you know, Ohio's public employee pension plans lost hundreds of millions of dollars when Lehman went bankrupt in 2008. Here are several articles that show how Kasich, and Lehman went after the pension fund money.
abc6onyourside.com:
...Kasich admits that one of his roles at Lehman Brothers was to make introductions and create the potential for future business for the firm. One of the men Kasich introduced to Ohio pensions in 2002 was John Dwyer, a member of Lehman's private equity team headed by Kevin Newman and James Swindell (who also met with the pensions).
Public records requests indicate Dwyer continued to try to pitch the pensions for years after the initial meeting. On August 25, 2008 - 21 days before the Lehman bankruptcy - Dwyer tried to sell OPERS on investing in several funds managed by Lehman. Many of the products Dwyer tried to sell involved real estate assets, but standing out from the others was a product Dwyer was personally working on - Lehman's Distressed Structured Credit Fund, which intended to invest heavily in collateralized loan obligations and collateralized debt obligations.
These toxic instruments are widely credited with bringing down Lehman in 2008, as they consistently downplayed the losses associated with their products. As such, according to his own account, Kasich "opened the door" for Ohio's pensions exposure to many of these products. Ohio Pensions owned other Lehman mortgage-backed securities and it is still unclear what Kasich's role was with these products....
Do you think that the people at Lehman Brothers knew that what they were "pitching" was completely worthless? With just 21 day before they collapsed, the Lehman people were still trying to sell their products to the pension funds. I wonder how many other states had similar experiences with Lehman and lost comparable money.
myfox28columbus.com:
Kasich Campaign States There Was No Contact Of "Any Other Ohio Governmental Entity About Doing Business With Lehman." According to the Columbus Dispatch, "Kasich campaign officials acknowledged that the former congressman helped arrange the two meetings between Lehman officials and representatives of the Ohio Police and Fire Pension Fund and the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, known as OPERS... Kasich never approached any other Ohio governmental entity about doing business with Lehman, the campaign said." [Columbus Dispatch 5/12/2010]
....But STRS Records Showed Kasich Contacted Them
STRS Public Records Response: John Kasich Contacted STRS. In response to a public records request STRS employee Alan Muench wrote in an email, "John Kasich called me to try to pitch Lehman's brokerage services to sell our mall portfolio in mid 2002. It was less than a 10 min conversation. We elected to use Eastdil and not Lehman." [Alan Muench email 6/22/2010]...
Kasich said he never "pitched" but it appears he did.