Charles Sanford

Charles Sanford   (businessman, bankster)
Born	October 8, 1936 Savannah, Georgia (state)
Died	September 4, 2018 (Age 81) Florida, US
Nationality	US
Alma mater	University of Georgia, Wharton School of Finance
Member of	Council on Foreign Relations/Historical Members
Interests	Lincoln Savings and Loan Association
American bankster who attended the 1988 Bilderberg conference as chairman and CEO of Bankers Trust Company, where he introduced "innovative" financial instruments. Retired after tapes of "fleecing customers" and losses from financial speculation emerged.

Charles Steadman Sanford, Jr. was an American bankster who attended the 1988 Bilderberg conference as chairman and CEO of Bankers Trust Company. He retired after tapes of "fleecing customers" and losses from financial speculation emerged.

Background

He was the son of Charles and Ann Lawrence Sanford, and grew up in Savannah, Georgia. He graduated from the University of Georgia, where he was a member of the Gridiron Secret Society. Sanford was a United States Army lieutenant, before returning to school and obtaining an MBA from the Wharton School of Business in 1960.

Career

After receiving a MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Sanford joined Bankers Trust as a lending officer in 1961, was promoted to president in 1983 and was promoted to chairman and CEO in 1987, positioning he held until he retired in 1997.

Sanford was widely regarded as one of the most influential bankers of his time. During his career, he engineered the transformation of Bankers Trust from a struggling, full-service bank into a bank that achieved higher returns for its shareholders than any of its commercial banking peers through "innovative" financial instruments.

The New York Times wrote in 1990 how Bankers Trust Company was involved in the savings and loan fraud:

The collapse of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association produced an array of victims, from retired California investors who bought unsecured bonds to American taxpayers. But it also turns out that not all the investors in the failed institution were losers.

Thanks to a Reagan Administration policy intended to bolster the savings industry, the Bankers Trust Company was able to sell hundreds of millions of dollars of the savings unit's best assets for the benefit of foreign financial institutions six days after the savings institution was seized by Federal regulators, executives who were involved in the deal said. The sale took place even as confused Federal regulators were trying to secure those same assets, regulators and Government documents contend.

This lawful transaction is but one piece in a complicated financial structure erected by Charles H. Keating Jr., the chairman of Lincoln, and respected financial institutions with help from the Federal Government.

Bankers Trust itself has not been charged with any improper dealings.

He retired in 1995 amid mounting troubles in the bank’s derivatives speculation. The management shuffle happened after the embattled bank faced damaging publicity about its derivatives sales department after a Cincinnati court unsealed 750 pages of documents detailing taped conversations of employees who spoke crudely of fleecing customers. The bank also took a $205 million writeoff for its leveraged derivatives contracts, an exotic and highly risky form of derivative, that were not paid.

During his career and continuing into his retirement, Sanford was a director on several large corporations, including Mobil Corporation, Baltimore Gas and Electric Company, Constellation Energy Group, J.C. Penny Company, and General Re-Corporation.

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/1988	3 June 1988	5 June 1988	Austria Interalpen-Hotel Telfs-Buchen	The 36th meeting, 114 participants

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