Page 614 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
point, I was handed a case for the settlement of a huge litigation that pit- ted the RTC against a Wall Street house: Morgan Stanley, I believe. The case was handled through the Atlanta office’s SWAT team, with Wilburn acting as its “business member,” and was authored by Wilburn himself. He had essentially negotiated the transaction. I will spare you the details that led me to conclude that the settlement was far more favorable to our opposition than it had to be. Suffice it to say that I believed that, on the facts as I understood them, Morgan Stanley would have reasonably con- cluded that it was in its interest to settle for as much as 40 percent more than it had offered. I also believed that the RTC had the leverage and the tactical weapons at its disposal to force Morgan Stanley to do so. So I went to Wilburn in search of other factors that perhaps were not articu- lated in the reasoning but that supported the proposal that was set forth in his case, factors that would help me to be in a position to recommend his desired result. To my chagrin, there were none; Wilburn could not produce any reasons for the outcome that I hadn’t seen, and he told me that he would seek approval without my sign-off, something that he was clearly entitled to do. We politely agreed to disagree.
A week or so went by, and I found myself speaking against the Mor- gan Stanley settlement in front of the Executive Committee after Wilburn had spoken in its favor. The Committee rejected the proposal and essentially told Wilburn to get a lot more money to settle. Two more months or so went by, and Wilburn presented a revised case that sponsored a settlement at considerably more than the first case had. I signed off, as did the Executive Committee.
Many more months went by, and I received a polite call from a man who identified himself as being from the office of the Inspector General of the RTC, asking to visit with me in my office “at my convenience.” It seems that he had reviewed my travel records and requisitions and was troubled by what he had found.
He said that he was aware that I had been flying home to New York after out-of-town meetings. Was that so? Yes, that’s where I live. No mat- ter, said he. If I had taken the time to study and learn the three-volume set of travel regulations, which continued to gather dust in my office,
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