connections – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

Hometown deli, Paulsboro, NJ

Mike Calia | CNBC

The mutual funds of two US universities, Duke and Vanderbilt, own significant stocks in the mysterious company, valued at $ 100 million on the stock exchange, despite only owning a tiny delicatessen in New Jersey.

Duke and Vanderbilt’s stake in Hometown International was acquired by their Hong Kong-based arms under the direction of Maso Capital Partners, a Hong Kong company that is investing in the deli.

Duke and Vanderbilt’s stakes, which are among the largest stakes in Hometown International, were acquired last year as part of financial reports that found Hometown International – as well as a Shell company called E-Waste – to be used as vehicles for Hometown International to be used Private companies are to be publicly traded on the US stock markets either through reverse mergers or similar maneuvers.

It’s not clear whether Duke and Vanderbilt are among the potential buyers of shares in E-Waste, who announced last week they were selling shares for $ 2.5 million. E-waste, which is tied to people connected to Hometown and borrowed money from the deli owner, has no ongoing business but still has a market cap of more than $ 100 million.

Manoj Jain, co-chief investment officer of Maso Capital, has sole voting and investment authority over Hometown International shares held by the two universities, according to financial reports. Jain previously worked as a managing director at the asset management company Och-Ziff, now known as Sculptor Capital Management.

The roles of Duke and Vanderbilt as shareholders of Hometown International were first reported in the Financial Times.

Financial reports show that the same Duke and Vanderbilt investment vehicles that are shareholders in the deli owner were previously listed as significant shareholders with Maso Capital in Paladin Energy, an Australian uranium mining company in Africa.

They also reveal that Duke and Vanderbilt hold shares in a so-called special purpose vehicle, Duddell Street Acquisition Corp., which Maso Capital founded last year and which began trading on NASDAQ.

A third American university, Rutgers, is paying $ 1,100 monthly rent for office space on Mantua Avenue next to the deli in Paulsboro, New Jersey, CNBC, CNBC has learned.

Paul Morina, CEO of the deli company, is one of the partners in the rental company Mantua Creek Group LLC.

The three universities’ involvement in Hometown International and the delicatessen landlord adds further questions to the mystery surrounding Hometown, whose $ 100 million market cap in no way reflects the underlying value of the delicatessen it owns. This delicatessen store had combined sales of just $ 35,000 for 2019 and 2020.

Rutgers rent

Rutgers’ space is being used by the university’s School of Public Health for a study of Paulsboro drinking water carried out with the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Agency for the Register of Toxic Substances and Diseases.

Rutgers, a public university based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, is paying the rent of the Mantua Creek Group under a 24-month lease that began last September. The Rutgers Study office is located at 541 B Mantua Ave., while the Hometown Deli is located at 541 A Mantua Ave. is located.

Hometown International itself pays Mantua Creek Group $ 500 per month for the deli area.

The Paulsboro Wrestling Club and the Monster Factory professional wrestling school are located at 541 C Mantua Ave., in a separate building.

Morina, the CEO of Hometown International, is also the director of Paulsboro High School and the head coach of the renowned wrestling team.

A Rutgers spokeswoman said she had no information on how the university selected the location for their Paulsboro office.

Office space rented from Rutgers adjacent to Your Hometown Deli in Paulsboro, NJ

Mike Calia | CNBC

The leases with Rutgers and Hometown were signed by a man named James Patten, who works as an analyst for Tryon Capital, a North Carolina company controlled by Peter Coker Sr., father of chairman of deli company Peter Coker Jr. becomes.

Patten, who wrestled with Morina in high school, was banned from acting as a stockbroker after a series of disciplinary measures, according to FINRA, the company that regulates broker-dealers.

Duke and Vanderbilt shares

Hometown International’s most recent annual report, filed last month, shows that Duke, Blackwell Partners LLC – Series A, holds 1.38 million common shares of Hometown International. Duke holds warrants to purchase an additional 27.6 million shares.

Vanderbilt’s company, Star V Partners LLC, holds 663,750 common shares of the company with warrants to purchase an additional 13.275 million shares.

The universities’ shares, which include common stocks and warrants, were acquired for a total of approximately $ 2 million.

On paper, those common stocks alone are worth more than $ 26 million, given Hometown International’s most recent closing price of $ 13 per share.

But Hometown’s stock trades thinly at best. For this reason, and in the absence of any valuable asset other than its existence as a publicly traded company, it is likely impossible for anyone, including Duke and Vanderbilt, to sell their stock in large blocks for anywhere near the current trading price.

It’s not clear whether Vanderbilt and Duke are among the youngest buyers.

A spokeswoman for Duke in Durham, North Carolina declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for Maso Capital.

Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee, had no immediate comment when contacted by CNBC.

Anders Hall, Vice Chancellor, Investments and Chief Financial Officer at Vanderbilt, was previously responsible for investments at Duke.

People connected to Hometown have refused to return calls and emails for weeks to get comment from CNBC.

The strange case of Hometown International

CNBC has been conducting detailed criminal proceedings, civil suits and government sanctions for the past two weeks against anyone related to Hometown International who was removed from an over-the-counter market last week due to irregularities in its financial records.

These records indicate that one of the largest shareholders in Hometown International’s shares is a group of opaque companies in Macau, China, which are located on the same floor in the same office building.

Earlier this week, Hometown International and E-Waste terminated advisory agreements based on articles on CNBC that paid Tryon Capital by Peter Coker Sr. to pay $ 15,000 per month in the case of the deli owner and $ 2,500 per month in the case of E-Waste.

Another company affiliated with Coker Sr., TM Medical Properties LLC, on its website, states that it leases space to several healthcare-related companies, including Vanderbilt Medical Center Clinics.

Hong Kong-based son of Coker Sr., Peter Coker Jr., has a seat on the board of directors of Duddell Street Acquisition Corp., the Maso Capital-affiliated SPAC company whose shares were traded on the Nasdaq last fall.

Duddell Street Acquisition, the name of which reflects Maso Capital’s Hong Kong office address, states on its website that it is a “newly formed blank check company incorporated as a Cayman Islands exempt company, a merger, conduct an exchange or acquisition of assets. Share purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more companies that we will refer to as our first business combination in this Prospectus. “

The lobbyist brother of one of President-elect Joe Biden’s top advisors has made a name for himself for his deep connections in DC and for decades of experience serving corporate clients.

Some of Jeff Ricchetti’s former employees and clients also said he had turned down requests to lobby his brother, longtime Biden aide and new White House advisor Steve Ricchetti.

CNBC spoke to several people who worked with Jeff Ricchetti for insights into how he could go into the new year to influence lawmakers.

These discussions also provide insight into how Jeff Ricchetti could handle and potentially avoid potential conflicts of interest during in-depth administration.

CNBC reached out to Ricchetti on Wednesday. He did not return a request for comment on this story. A spokesman for the Biden transition team also did not return a request for comment.

In 2020, Jeff Ricchetti had its largest client base since 2014, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. The surge in clients came when Biden won the Democratic primary and eventually defeated President Donald Trump in the general election.

Biden later named Steve Ricchetti, who also presided over the former Vice President’s election campaign, as his adviser to the White House. Jeff Ricchetti has signed nearly a dozen contracts this year and received lobbying fees of at least $ 635,000. Amazon is one of its newest customers, as CNBC first reported. Others are Horizon Therapeutics, Evofem Biosciences, Finseca, GlaxoSmithKline, and Applied Materials.

People who know Jeff Ricchetti say he pushes back customers seeking access to his brother. However, his staff also noted that customers will likely still get in touch with the Biden team.

“That doesn’t mean potential customers won’t come back to see him partly because of his brother,” said a lobbyist who has known Jeff Ricchetti for nearly a decade. “But he’s a professional and knows how to work properly.” This person declined to be named in order to speak freely.

A person familiar with the brothers’ relationship previously told CNBC that Jeff Ricchetti would never lobby Steve Ricchetti and that the two would keep their professional lives separate.

Before opening his company Ricchetti Inc., Jeff Ricchetti worked with Tony Podesta in the late 1990s. Steve and Jeff Ricchetti founded their company of the same name in the early 2000s.

Podesta told CNBC in an email that Jeff Ricchetti was recognized as a talented and strategic lobbyist while working there for a number of years. Podesta, the brother of former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, was once known as the kingmaker of the Democratic Party and a major corporate lobbyist. Steve Ricchetti also served in the Clinton administration and later with Biden during President Barack Obama’s tenure as President. Steve Ricchetti was signed off as a lobbyist in 2008.

“He does things,” said Podesta. “Very talented, hard-working, strategic, easy-going, content.” Records show that Ricchetti, as a lobbyist for Podesta’s company, represented companies like Dow Chemical, Eli Lilly, Novartis, eBay, and Roche Holdings.

Marc Cadin, CEO of the professional association Finseca, told CNBC that he has known Ricchetti for almost 20 years. One of the bills that Ricchetti and other members of Cadin’s team hired Congress to do was Trump’s 2017 tax reform bill.

“Most notable is a 199A deduction that we applied to life insurance companies to give our members a significant tax break there,” said Cadin, discussing Ricchetti’s recent efforts for Finseca, which has over 6,000 members.

The IRS calls this deduction a qualified business income deduction. “The deduction allows eligible taxpayers to deduct up to 20 percent of their qualifying business income as well as 20 percent of qualifying dividends from real estate mutual funds and income from qualifying publicly traded partnerships,” the IRS website states.

Cadin, who described Ricchetti as a lobbyist with extensive expertise in tax policy, expects him to lobby the new Congress and possibly the finance department for Finseca from 2021.

“We have some problems in and around the finance department. I can see how he is doing there,” said Cadin.

He also said that, in his experience, the Ricchetti Brothers always found a way not to address ethical issues. “These people know how to do it right and how not to push boundaries,” he said.

He was hired by some of Jeff Ricchetti’s recent clients to seek the support of moderate lawmakers for progressive tax policy proposals. Biden has proposed raising taxes for the rich and corporations.

Chuck Collins, a member of the Advisory Board of the Patriotic Millionaires Advocacy, told CNBC that his organization hired Ricchetti in 2020 to get support from moderate Democrats in both the House and Senate for what was on the group’s website referred to as the “Emergency Promotion Bill”.

In an open letter to Congress leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., And Senate Minority Chair Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., the group urged Congress to pass emergency relief legislation to be included in an aid package for coronaviruses. The letter said the legislation would “double the Foundation’s mandatory annual payout from five to ten percent over the next three years and require the same ten percent payout obligation for Donor Advised Funds (DAFs).”

The Charity Act campaign was run by the Patriotic Millionaires, Wallace Global Foundation, Voices for Progress, the Institute for Political Studies – Inequality Program, Solidaire Network, and Edge Funders Network.

Collins, great-grandson of meat packer Oscar Mayer, told CNBC he has known Ricchetti for over a decade. The group selected him for the project, Collins said, not because of his connections with his brother, but because of his deep insight into current and past policy makers in Washington.

“I think he has a good inner compass of what is working and what obstacles you are going to run into and whether to waste your time,” said Collins.

A Patriotic Millionaires spokesman did not return a request for comment.

Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, a project by a progressive nonprofit called New Venture Fund, said the organization hired Ricchetti in late 2019 to drive a “millionaire side tax”. Similar to his efforts on behalf of the patriotic millionaires, Clemente said Ricchetti had targeted moderate Democrats in the house.

“We just felt like he brought something we didn’t have. He brings connections,” said Clemente.

The Americans for Tax Fairness website is promoting the additional tax as “a 10% surcharge on income over $ 2 million could raise $ 635 billion over 10 years.” Senator Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., And MP Don Beyer, D-Va., Presented the proposal to Congress in November 2019. Democrats running for president, including billionaire Mike Bloomberg and Senator Elizabeth Warren D-Mass., Also endorsed similar concepts.

When Biden ran for president, Clemente said he tried to get Ricchetti to push the Biden campaign to support the surcharge, but the longtime lobbyist declined.

“I think I asked him, ‘Can you help me with your brother?’ but it was always very clear – this was never a place to go, “said Clemente.