Reply #14: Coleman Stipanovich, State Board of Administration chief, resigns

[seafan]

Florida Investment Chief Quits; Fund Rescue Approved

By David Evans and Darrell Preston
December 4, 2007

Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Coleman Stipanovich, the head of an agency managing a troubled $14 billion Florida investment pool for local governments, quit as officials approved a plan by BlackRock Inc. to salvage the fund.
BlackRock, which worked through the weekend on a proposal to save the pool whose assets tumbled 48 percent last month amid withdrawals, will take over management from the State Board of Administration while an outside firm is sought, officials led by Governor Charlie Crist decided.

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Stipanovich's resignation came after the meeting when he stood up and said it ``was time to do the right thing'' to ``instill the confidence of the'' administration.

``He had to do what he thinks is right,'' Crist said.

State board trustees halted withdrawals last week after governments from Orange County to Pompano Beach asked for their money back amid disclosures that the fund held $1.5 billion of downgraded and defaulted debt.
Florida's $138 billion retirement system, also managed by the state board, holds more than $1 billion of similar debt, documents show.

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Stipanovich, whose brother J.M. ``Mac'' Stipanovich is a Tallahassee lobbyist and Republican strategist who ran former Governor Jeb Bush's campaign for governor in 1994, was appointed executive director of the state board in 2002.
In the late 1990s, Coleman Stipanovich worked as a lobbyist for PaineWebber Inc. in Florida and was paid $7,500 per month to help the firm win municipal bond business.

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