Monday, August 16, 2010

Joint Ocean Commission's Co-Chair


The Joint Ocean Commission Initiative announced a new leadership council in July. John Podesta, the man who gave President Obama crisis management advice on the BP oil spew, is a member. He joined the Commission in July.

Co-chairs are Norman Mineta, former Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of Transportation, and William Ruckelshaus.

Mr. Mineta is Vice Chairman of Hill & Knowlton, a premier worldwide communications consultant. Mineta sits on the board of shipper Horizon Lines and AECOM Technology. Mineta's 2009 board pay is as follows:

Horizon Lines LLC- $115,487
AECOM Technology- $109,750
Many citizens would love to have Mineta's part time board pay of $225,000, but there's more. He holds 22,630 shares of Horizon Lines. At $4 per share Mineta's holding are valued at $90,000 .

Horizon Lines
Horizon Lines is a Jones Act shipper. The Carlyle Group purchased Horizon Lines in 2003 from John Snow's CSX. Carlyle flipped Horizon within 18 months, selling Horizon to CastleHarlan. CastleHarlan took the company public, cashing in through several iterations. Mineta joined the board in December 2006. Horizon recently signed a deal for Chinese shipping.


Mineta has 30,000 vested stock options, 4,956 unvested options and 8,199 restricted stock units of AECOM. At $24 per share Norman holds $200,000 in shares, options not included.

AECOM
AECOM gets 71% of its revenue from governments, 48% within the continental U.S. Their work touches the commission via marine transportation, environmental management services and energy/power segments. AECOM's environment services "support global energy infrastructure development for a number of large petroleum companies," as well as "development of protected groundwater resources for companies in the bottled water industry."
Consider this a partial declaration of Mr. Mineta's financial conflicts of interest, just in case he doesn't cite them in Joint Ocean Commission meetings.