Catastrophe - Dick Morris [95]
Amen.
So now that his firm has been officially forced out of the public lobbying business, what does Ted Kennedy, Jr., do now?
It’s hard to tell exactly, since Marwood doesn’t have to disclose its clients or its business.
The Marwood Group goes out of its way to suggest that it has little to do with government relations. The company’s current Web site—which is blocked to outsiders except for a very simple home page—describes it as a “healthcare advisory and financial services firm headquartered in New York City with offices in Washington, DC and London.”334 That wording seems designed to leave the impression that Marwood is merely an investment firm that happens to do business with New York, D.C., and London locals.
But Business Week described the firm in a slightly different way in an entry updated as of 2008:
The Marwood Group LLC is a business development and government relations consulting firm. The firm offers strategic marketing, joint-venture assistance, and government relations advisory services to healthcare service providers, pharmaceutical, bio-technology, medical devices, and financial service institutions and organizations.335
What’s the difference? Well, according to Business Week, Marwood is an organization with a professional interest in what is happening in Washington.
Once it stopped registering as a lobbying firm, Marwood—and later Waypoint—had no obligation to disclose their clients. So we don’t have any idea whom the firm now represents.
We do know that Marwood (and Waypoint) still maintains a Washington, D.C., office. The company’s sparse Web site description suggests that the firm provides “asset management,” “healthcare research,” and health-care sales.” But a series of news reports provided some insight into what Ted Kennedy, Jr., has been doing since his days helping out BMS.
Since Ted Jr.’s firm focuses on health care and private investments, most of his clients are still extremely interested in access to credible intelligence on new legislation that might affect the health care industry and the private equity field. And the younger Kennedy can still be helpful in this regard—because information is what it’s all about.
As Jeff Young of The Hill noted in writing about the Marwood Group:
If the currency of Washington is information, investment firms and lobby shops use the same coinage. Employees of investment firms and lobbying operations both seek to gain advance knowledge of legislation or federal regulations that could have a big impact on business.
Though Marwood and Health Policy Source serve different markets—investors versus lobbying clients—and have different motives—targeting investment dollars versus influencing public policy—they each perform similar services in the political intelligence realm and provide specialized, inside information to clients that pay dearly for it.336
For all practical purposes, the fact that Ted Kennedy, Jr.’s, firm is no longer a registered lobbying organization may not be what matters. He has unique access to the only person besides President Obama who will decide which provisions will be in the health care reform package that will come before Congress. This is the number one concern of the universe of pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, doctors, nurses, insurance companies, nursing homes, hedge funds, investors, and labor unions—all of whom want to know what’s going on behind the scenes in the great battle for health care reform.
Whether or not he’s a lobbyist, Ted Jr. is still a player in the Washington information game.
HITTING UP THE LABOR UNION PENSION FUNDS
In 2004, Forbes reported that Kennedy was soliciting labor union pension funds from pals of his father to invest in a private fund he was marketing:
Edward M. Kennedy Jr. is quite the rainmaker. In less than two years the scion of the stalwart U.S. senator from Massachusetts has raised $100 million for the $325 million