Attorney General Cuomo, on his second-to-last day in office, has announced a settlement with Steven Rattner, whose case has been the subject of extensive coverage here.
The positive spin for Mr. Rattner is that the $10 million and 5-year-ban on appearing before any New York public pension fund that is the settlement with Mr. Cuomo is a lot, lot less than what Mr. Cuomo had sought. That was $26 million (plus potentially more if you include Mr. Cuomo's claim to any earnings that Mr. Rattner ever gets from Quadrangle) and a lifetime ban from the securities industry in New York. There were also vague reported threats of additional perjury charges, which are now no longer a threat, if they ever were. The $10 million sounds like a lot, but one can rack up a lot of legal fees pretty quickly taking a case like this to trial using high-priced lawyers like the ones Mr. Rattner had engaged. Also, while the settlement from Mr. Rattner includes the statement "I apologize if during the course of this process there is anything I did that may have made reaching this agreement more difficult," the statement is phrased conditionally ("if," "may"), so Mr. Rattner doesn't have to apologize for anything specific that he did. He also doesn't have to apologize or admit any wrongdoing in his dealings with the pension fund. Since Mr. Rattner's future plans seem to involve not managing New York public pension money but rather Mayor Bloomberg's personal money, the 5-year-ban doesn't really cost him anything.
The negative spin for Mr. Rattner is that he's wound up paying $10 million (for a total of $16.2 million if you include also his $6.2 million settlement with the SEC) for the sin of doing business with someone, Hank Morris, who had been recommended by Senator Schumer as a "straight shooter," and for then taking New York state pension fund money and investing it for a return that reportedly not only made money on an absolute basis for the fund but outperformed many measures of the market overall. And for making an introduction on a movie deal ("Chooch") that, notwithstanding its portrayal by Mr. Cuomo and the SEC as some kind of sweetheart deal, turned out to make money for Mr. Rattner's company.
The positive spin for Mr. Cuomo is he finishes this up while he is still attorney general. Now he won't have to worry about how his successor as attorney general will or won't defend him from a defense that seemed headed toward portraying Mr. Cuomo and his lawyers as engaged in a politically motivated prosecution. The Rattner team had sought copies of emails between Cuomo personal and campaign email accounts and attorney general's office personnel. Now Governor Cuomo won't have to worry about that.
