Stanford Financial Group
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| Privately owned | |
| Industry | Global financial services |
| Genre | Global financial services |
| Fate | Placed in receivership on allegations that this company was a Ponzi scheme |
| Founder | Robert Allen Stanford |
| Defunct | February 17, 2009 |
| Headquarters | Houston, Texas, United States |
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Key people
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Robert Allen Stanford, chairman and CEO Laura Pendergest-Holt, chief investment officer James Davis, CFO |
| Services | Wealth management |
| Owner | Robert Allen Stanford |
| Divisions | Stanford Capital Management Stanford Group Company Stanford International Bank Ltd |
| Website |
www |
The Stanford Financial Group was a privately held international group of financial services companies controlled by Allen Stanford, until it was seized by United States (U.S.) authorities in early 2009. Headquartered in the Galleria Tower II in Uptown Houston, Texas, it had 50 offices in several countries, mainly in the Americas, included the Stanford International Bank, and said it managed US$8.5 billion of assets for more than 30,000 clients in 136 countries on six continents. On February 17, 2009, U.S. Federal agents put the company under management of a receiver, because of charges of fraud. Ten days later, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission amended its complaint to describe the alleged fraud as a "massive Ponzi scheme".
Allen Stanford traced his company to the insurance company founded in 1932 in Mexia, Texas, by his grandfather, Lodis B. Stanford. However, there was no direct connection between the insurance company and Allen Stanford's banking business, which he started on the British Overseas Territory of Montserrat in the West Indies in the 1980s. Allen Stanford's move into banking utilised funds he had made in real estate in Houston in the early 1980s.
In 2008, Stanford Financial Group announced it would open a new global management complex in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, to include the base for the corporate support functions such as business technology, compliance, finance, human resources, investment strategy and legal, as well as the chairman's office. Completion was planned for July 2009 but did not occur due to the company's dissolution.
The company was bound by a web of personal and family ties. Stanford's chief financial officer and second-in-command, James M. Davis, was his roommate at Baylor University. The chief investment officer, Laura Pendergest-Holt, grew up attending a church in Baldwyn, Mississippi where Davis was a Sunday school teacher. Many top officials were related to each other. This led former employees to claim the company was fraught with nepotism; former executive Charles Satterfield told Bloomberg News that whenever someone asked questions, a common response was "I'm not going to question my brother-in-law."
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Wikipedia