Richard C. Blum Biography, Dianne Feinstein , Boards, Controversy, High Speed Rail

Richard C. Blum Biography

Richard C Blum is an American investment banker and husband of United States Senator Dianne Feinstein. He is the chairman and president of Blum Capital, an equity investment management firm that acts as general partner for various investment partnerships and provides investment advisory services. Blum also serves in various boards of directors of several companies, including CB Richard Ellis, where until May 2009 he served as the chairman of that board. He has been a regent of the University of California since 2002.

Richard C. Blum Age

Richard C Blum was born as Richard Charles Blum on 31 July 1935 in San Francisco, California, United States. He is 83 years old as of 2018.

Richard C. Blum Spouse

He got married to Dianne Feinstein in m. 1980.

Richard C. Blum Education

Blum was born to a Jewish family. He went to San Francisco public schools. He received his B.S. in business administration in 1958 and an M.B.A. in 1959 from the Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkeley. In the 1970s, Blum supported then Mayor of San Francisco George Moscone. After Moscone’s assassination, Blum supported the new mayor Dianne Feinstein.

Richard C. Blum Career

In 1975, Blum founded Blum Capital and pioneered the firm’s hybrid Strategic Block/Private Equity investment strategy. Mr. Blum previously served as Chairman of the board of directors of CB Richard Ellis, as well as serving as director on the boards of directors of three other portfolio companies: Fairmont Raffles Holdings International Ltd., Current Media, L.L.C. and Myer Pty Ltd. in Australia. Mr. Blum co-founded Newbridge Capital in the early 1990s and is Co-Chairman of TPG Asia V, L.P. (the successor fund to the Newbridge franchise that has been incorporated into Texas Pacific Group). He has served on the boards of many prominent companies, including Northwest Airlines Corporation, Glenborough Realty Trust, Inc., Korea First Bank, URS Corporation and National Education Corporation. In addition, Mr. Blum is active in numerous non-profit organizations. He is the founder and Chairman of the American Himalayan Foundation and is Honorary Consul to Mongolia and Nepal. Mr. Blum also serves as a member of the Advisory Board of the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. Blum joined investment brokerage Sutro & Co. at the age of 23, becoming a partner before age 30. At Sutro, Blum led a partnership that acquired Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for $8m, selling it to Mattel four years later for $40m. On the back of this deal Blum started in business for himself in 1975, founding what is now Blum Capital Partners; a stake in URS Corp. was one of its first investments. On April 25, 2009, he was honored with the Berkeley Medal by UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgenau in front of the 14th Dalai Lama. The American Himalayan Foundation and the Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley, sponsored the talk.

Richard C. Blum Net Worth

He has a net worth of more than a billion dollars.

Richard C. Blum Boards

On March 12, 2002, he was appointed by California Governor Gray Davis to a 12-year term as one of the Regents of the University of California, and he was nominated for re-appointment to another 12-year term in 2014. He also serves on the boards of the following companies like: CB Richard Ellis as the Chairman, Newbridge Capital as the co-Chairman, Current TV and the Blum Capital.
He is also the primary owner of Career Education Corporation.

He has a strong interest in Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. In 1981 he attempted to climb Mount Everest from the Tibetan side with Sir Edmund Hillary. He is the chairman and founder of the apolitical American Himalayan Foundation, or AHF, which has given millions of dollars to build hospitals and schools in Tibet and Nepal but has refrained from political involvement with the Chinese control of Tibet.

Blum’s not-for-profit endeavors include service as Trustee of The Carter Center; former Co-Chairman of The World Conference of Religions for Peace; Member of Governing Council of The Wilderness Society; member of the Board of Trustees of The Brookings Institution; member of the Board of Trustees of the American Cancer Society Foundation; member of the Board of Directors of the National Democratic Institute; and the founder and a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley. The Center is focused on finding solutions to address the crisis of extreme poverty and disease in the developing world.

Richard C. Blum Controversy

Blum’s wife, Senator Dianne Feinstein, has received scrutiny due to her husband’s government contracts and extensive business dealings with China and her past votes on trade issues with the country. However, Blum has denied any wrongdoing. Critics have argued that business contracts with the US government awarded to a company controlled by Blum may raise a potential conflict-of-interest issue with the voting and policy activities of his wife. URS Corp, which Blum had a substantial stake in, bought EG&G, a leading provider of technical services and management to the U.S. military, from The Carlyle Group in 2002; EG&G subsequently won a $600m defense contract.

In 2009, Feinstein introduced legislation to provide $25 billion in taxpayer money to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, a government agency that had recently awarded her husband’s real estate firm, CB Richard Ellis, what the Washington Times called “a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.” The United States Postal Service has entered into an exclusive contract with CB Richard Ellis to sell buildings that currently house post offices.

Richard C. Blum High Speed Rail

Several questions have been raised as to whether or not Richard Blum still owns a substantial or any interest in Tutor Perini. some published accounts, in addition to those cited, claim he does. This report indicates he sold 3 million shares in 2005. It is unclear what portion of his holding, if any, remains. – TL

Sen. Feinstein’s financial disclosure form contains no reference to Tutor-Perini, though it does indicate holdings in a number of Blum Capital Partners funds.

To the surprise of absolutely no one familiar with the ways of Corruptifornia, the one-party state completely in the hands of the Democrats, a consortium whose lead firm is controlled by Richard Blum, husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, was awarded a nearly billion-dollar contract for the construction of the first phase of the so-called high-speed rail line to link San Francisco and Los Angeles. Those paying attention to the project call it the “half-fast” rail line because it will share trackage with conventional commuter rail trains in the sprawling Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, lowering its average speed to levels achieved by American railways a century ago.

Crazifornia.com writes:

The Perini-Zachary-Parsons bid was the lowest received from the five consortia participating in the bidding process, but “low” is a relative term. The firms bid $985,142,530 to build the wildly anticipated first section of high speed rail track that will tie the megopolis of Madera to the global finance center of Fresno. Do the division, and you find that the low bid came in at a mere $35 million per mile.

And that doesn’t include the cost of rolling stock (that’s engines and cars to the normal among us). Nor does it include the cost of electrifying the route. Does it at least include the cost of land acquisition? No, it does not.

As this fiasco progress, remember that this $35 million per mile represents the best California can do on the section of track the High on Crack Speed Rail Authority selected to go first because it will be the cheapest.

Tutor-Perini, the lead contractor controlled by Di-Fi’s hubby, has an (ahem) interesting history. From The National Black Chamber of Commerce:

According to the New York US Attorney’s office: “Following a four-week trial, a federal jury in Brooklyn yesterday (March 9, 2011) found Zohrab B. Marashlian, the former president of Perini Corp.’s Civil Division, an international construction services corporation, guilty of fraud and conspiracy to launder money. The charges arose out of Marashlian’s false representation to New York government agencies that Disadvantaged Business Entities (DBE’s) were performing work in connection with major public works contracts, when, in reality, Marashlian had non-disadvantaged businesses favored by Perini Corp. do the work.” Tutor Perini paid Marashlian $14 million in salary while all this was going on. Two days before Marashlian was to receive a multi-year prison sentence he committed suicide. A fellow employee is currently doing a long prison term for the same case.

Perini has been caught doing such things over and over again. They are absolutely ridiculous in California projects. …  According to the Seattle News some of the Perini headlines read: “In February, Tutor-Saliba and Perini agreed to pay $19 million to settle racketeering and fraud allegations in a San Francisco airport project.” … “The companies are embroiled in an 11 – year legal battle over $16 million in extra costs on a Los Angeles subway job.”

Jerry Brown’s world of imaginary high-speed rail that is sure to cost at least twice what it is budgeted at (just south of a hundred billion dollars), take five hours for a journey that takes an hour or so by air, and which will have to charge much more than airlines do for the trip.

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