Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Obama crony alert: No media at Hyatt Hotels Corp. annual meeting

Among the items on the table for Hyatt Hotels Corporation's first annual meeting as a public company is the reelection of Penny Pritzker to its board of directors. That event will take tomorrow place on Chicago's Near South Side--just a short cab ride from where most of the city's media works. But reporters should save their cash--the media will be banned, which is a rarity for annual stockholder meetings.

Pritzker was the national finance chair for Barack Obama's presidential campaign and she is serving on his Economic Recovery Advisory Board. More government transparency was a theme of Obama's campaign, although he has fallen short of providing it while president.

Just a mile from Hyatt's Chicago Loop headquarters, workers at the Hyatt Regency on Wacker Drive organized an impromptu strike for a few hours last month; a three day strike occurred at its Union Square property in San Francisco last fall.

These events might be a point of discussion at the annual meeting, but of course we won't hear about it. Not exactly transparent. Yes, Hyatt is not part of the government, but since the Chosen One isn't transparent, perhaps his top people could pick up the slack...

Before becoming Obama's cash queen of the transparency machine, Pritzker was the CEO of Superior Bank, which later failed because it made too many subprime loans. Yes, she left that position seven years before its collapse, but then she moved on to the board of the bank's holding company. Shortly before the bank failed, the Chicago Sun-Times reported in 2008, "Pritzker appeared to be taking a leadership role in trying to revive the bank."

There's more for Pritzker not to be transparent about, as you'll read below.

Related posts:

Union film spanks Obama pal Penny Pritzker

California Collision: San Francisco's Union Square

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