MIKIPEDIA ECONOMICS BLOG

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

ADVENT INTERNATIONAL

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Advent International

Type	Private Ownership
Industry	Private Equity
Founded	1984
Headquarters	Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Products	Private equity funds, buyouts
Total assets	$26 billion
Employees	300+
Website	www.adventinternational.com

Advent International is an American global private equity firm focused on buyouts of companies in Western and Central Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia. The firm focuses on international buyouts, growth and strategic restructuring in five core sectors.
Since its inception in 1984, Advent has raised $26 billion (€19.4 billion) in private equity capital and, through its buyout programs, has completed more than 250 transactions in 35 countries.
Advent operates from offices in 16 countries, with affiliates in a further eight countries and employs over 170 investment professionals.

History

Advent was originally founded in Boston, Massachusetts as a spin-out from TA Associates by Peter Brooke. Brooke had founded TA Associates in 1968 after having expanded the venture capital operations of TA's parent Tucker Anthony & R.L. Day. In 1985, Advent raised its first fund a $14m corporate venture capital program for Nabisco. In 1987, the firm raised the $225 million International Network Fund, its first institutional private equity fund. The firm raised its first European fund in 1989, the $231 million European Special Situations Fund and opened its London office.
Advent continued its expansion in the 1990s, opening offices in Frankfurt and Milan and merging with UK-based Trinity Capital Partners. In 1994, Advent completed fundraising for the first of its flagship series of funds Advent Global Private Equity (GPE) II with $415 million. In 1996, Advent expanded into Latin America raising a dedicated Advent Latin American Private Equity Fund and opening offices in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Sao Paulo.
Advent crossed the billion dollar mark in 1997, with the raising of the $1.2 billion Advent Global Private Equity (GPE) III and in the last few years of the 1990s, Advent raised additional sector funds focused on media and communications as well as healthcare & life sciences. Advent's founder, Peter Brooke, stepped down as the firm's CEO in 1996.
Through the 2000s, Advent's expansion accelerated as the firm raised additional funds for its various fund families and opening new offices in Europe and Asia. Advent's sixth Global Private Equity fund, raised in 2008 closed with €6.6 billion of investor commitments and the firm raised an additiona €1 billion for investments in central Europe.^[1]^[2]

Investments

Advent acquired the British variety store chain Poundland in 2002 and has investments in the Fat Face clothing brand and extended warranty firm Domestic & General.^[3]
In 2004 Advent-owned fund Viva Ventures bought the Bulgarian state-owned telecoms monopoly Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (now Vivacom). The company was sold to AIG in 2007.
Advent bought a majority ownership of Bradco Supply, a leading distributor of building products in 2008.^[4]
Advent has acquired a number of companies in Central and Eastern Europe through its dedicated regional funds. These include Romanian Ceramica IASI, one of Romania’s leading ceramic bricks and clay roof tiles producers, Bolix, a leading Polish producer of building chemistry, Dufa Deutek, Romania’s largest decorative paints producer, and LaborMed Pharma, which manufactures and distributes generic pharmaceuticals primarily for cardiovascular and central nervous system aliments.^[5]
In 2007 Advent's Asia affiliate led the restructuring of Yangzijiang Shipbuilding, one of China's largest privately owned shipbuilders, and successfully listed the company on the Singapore Stock Exchange; making it one of the largest IPO by a foreign company in Singapore.^[6]
In March 2009 Advent announced the acquisition of a controlling interest in Fifth Third Processing Solutions, the payment processing business of Fifth Third Bank in a $2.35 billion transaction. The transaction represented one of the largest private equity transactions completed in 2009 amidst the Financial crisis of 2007–2010.^[7] The deal was completed in June 2009. For information on Advent International's additional investments visit >Advent International's Investments. In August 2010 Advent International was credited with spawning the takeover of Mexicana Airlines by an outside investor group. Advent International has no equity investment stakes in the takeover according to published sources.[2]
In 2011 Advent acquired Mondo Minerals Holding B.V., the second largest global talc producer^[8] and British mental heathcare provider, Priory Group,^[9] best known for providing mental health treatments to celebrities^[10] such as Eric Clapton^[11] and Johnny Depp.^[12]
In August, 2011 Advent International acquired Bojangles. Bojangles is a regional chain of quick service restaurants based in Charlotte, North Carolina

References

^ Advent closes €6.6bn upper mid-market buy-out fund. AltAssets, Apr 7, 2008.
^ Advent closes fourth CEE fund on €1bn hard cap. AltAssets, Apr 17, 2008
^ Julia Finch, 'How one-price-fits-all is making this man Britain's most cheerful retailer' (6.12.2008) The Guardian
^ Venture Capital Firm Buys Bradco Supply. PROSALES Information Service Publication date: July 15, 2008
^ "Advent International investments in Central and Eastern Europe". Investment Intelligence s.r.o. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
^ Yangzijiang shares soar up to 45 pct in S'pore debut. Reuters News, April 17, 2007
^ Fifth Third to Sell 51% Stake in Its Payment Unit to Advent. Wall Street Journal, March 30, 2009
^ [1].Reuters News, July 6, 2011
^ "Advent buys The Priory for £925m". The Daily Telegraph. 18 Jan 2011. Retrieved 27 May 2012.
^ "The Priory offers counselling to pupils". The Daily Telegraph. 11 September 2009. Retrieved 26 May 2012.
^ "The Priory: facts and figures". The Observer. 15 April 2007. Retrieved 27 May 2012.
^ "The celebrity guide to detox: Pass out, check in, and dry out". The Independent. 6 January 2007. Retrieved 26 May 2012.

Advent International closes €2.5bn buy-out fund. AltAssets, April 25, 2005

External links

Advent International (company website)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent_International

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RBS SELLS WORLDPAY TO ADVENT, BAIN FOR $2.7 BILLION

By Anne-Sylvaine Chassany & Andrew MacAskill - Aug 7, 2010

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, the U.K.’s biggest government-owned bank, agreed to sell its credit- card payment processing unit to Advent International Corp. and Bain Capital LLC for 1.7 billion pounds ($2.7 billion).
RBS may receive a further 200 million pounds if the buyers’ returns hit certain targets, the Edinburgh-based bank said in a statement today. RBS will keep a 20 percent stake. It will also book a gain from the sale of about 850 million pounds after goodwill, separation and transaction costs, the bank said.

An employee walks into a Royal Bank of Scotland branch in London. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Richard Stovin-Bradford of the Financial Times' Lex commentary team discusses Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc's first-half profit reported today. The U.K.'s biggest government-owned lender posted net income of 9 million pounds ($14 million), its first profit since 2007. Stovin-Bradford talks with Deirdre Bolton on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack." (Source: Bloomberg)

RBS is being forced to dispose of the unit to comply with European Union state-aid rules after taking 45.5 billion pounds in a taxpayer-funded rescue during the financial crisis. The bank announced this week the sale of 318 branches to Banco Santander SA to comply with the ruling, and must also dispose of its insurance division.
Today’s sale “is another significant milestone in the Group’s restructuring program,” finance director Bruce Van Saun said in the statement. The sale values the unit, Global Merchant Services, at about 2.03 billion pounds, including debt.
Private equity firms such as Advent and Bain are seeking to invest more than $500 billion of cash they’ve raised from investors as the world economy emerges from recession, according to London-based research firm Preqin Ltd.
Tomkins Buyout
The purchase is the second-largest leveraged buyout announced in Europe this year after Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Onex Corp.’s purchase of Britain’s Tomkins Plc for 2.89 billion pounds last month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In all, private equity firms have announced $78 billion of takeovers this year, double the amount in the year-earlier period, Bloomberg data show.
The division, also known as RBS WorldPay, generated operating profit of 249 million pounds in 2009 and employs about 2,560 people, RBS said. It’s Europe’s largest payment processor and the fourth largest in the U.S., the bank said.
“Advent and Bain will be making a very significant investment in the company to enhance its technology and expand the range of products and services offered to merchants,” James Brocklebank, managing director at Advent in London, said in the statement.
Advent, the manager of a 6.6 billion-euro ($8.8 billion) leveraged buyout fund, has no intention of combining WorldPay with U.S. payment processor Fifth Third Processing Solutions, Brocklebank said in an interview today. The Boston-based private equity firm acquired a 51 percent stake in the company last year from Fifth Third Bancorp, Ohio’s largest lender.
The two firms, which will each own about 40 percent of WorldPay, are financing the purchase with loans from RBS, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., UBS AG, Barclays Plc and Morgan Stanley, according to Robin Marshall, a managing director at Bain Capital.
The firms are using about 1 billion pounds of loans to fund the purchase, according to three people familiar with the talks, who declined to be identified because the terms are private.
To contact the reporters on this story: Anne-Sylvaine Chassany in Paris at achassany@bloomberg.net; Andrew MacAskill in London at amacaskill@bloomberg.net.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-06/rbs-will-sell-80-stake-in-worldpay-unit-to-advent-bain-for-2-7-billion.html

COULD THIS BE THE END OF CASH-IN-HAND? NEW CHIP AND PIN DEVICE FOR TRADESMEN IS LAUNCHED (BUT WILL ANYONE ACTUALLY BUY IT?)

The small black device will allow people to pay for small jobs by card
The new system, known as Zinc, is being launched by WorldPay
The device links to a banking app that can be downloaded to smartphones

By Sean Poulter 27 June 2013

Job done: Tradesmen coming to do work in your house could soon be using a new chip and pin device to accept payment

Window cleaners, plumbers and other traders are to be armed with portable plastic card readers in a move that could do away with cash.
The small black devices allow people to pay for small jobs on the spot using a debit or credit card rather than raiding wallets, purses or piggy banks for cash.
The device links to a banking app that can be downloaded by the tradesman to their iPhone, iPad or Android smartphone.
The new system, known as Zinc, is being launched by the WorldPay organisation, which works alongside leading banks and card companies.
Hmmmm nothing strange about that ..... is there????
It is one of a number of companies, which also includes Payleven, that have developed similar devices to effectively replace cash for small value purchases.
It allows the likes of plumbers, electricians, window cleaners, market traders and mobile beauticians to accept card payments, removing the need to spend time chasing customers for payment and repeated trips to the bank to deposit cash.
The customer simply inserts the card, checks the total and taps in their four digit PIN to transfer the money.
Banks, retailers and traders are keen to get consumers to drop cash in favour of plastic because it is a much easier and cheaper way to handle and process payments.
However, the system is not free to use for traders, who will be charged a fee of 2.75 per cent of the value of the transaction to authorise each payment.

New tools: The new Zinc system is similar to the chip and pin system you find in shops (pictured) but is pocket sized

The small back devices can be bought by businesses and sole traders for £59.99 from John Lewis or ordered online.
Geraldine Wilson, the managing director of WorldPay Zinc, said: ‘We have been testing out the service for six months with over 3,000 small businesses, and the feedback has been very positive.

‘As consumers, we’ve all been in that awkward situation where you haven’t got enough cash on you to pay for something and card payment isn’t accepted. It’s embarrassing and frustrating.’
Interesting sales pitch.
Behavioural Psychologist, Donna Dawson, said consumers are more likely to spend more if they use a card rather than cash. While they might be good for the business, many shoppers will view that as a disadvantage.
She said: ‘As a society, we are beginning to demand the ease and convenience of being ‘cashless’, interesting presumption and those service providers who do not keep up will lose out.
‘The most important reason for service providers to take heed is that using a card changes our fundamental shopping behaviour.
'Eighty seven per cent of us spend more on a card and, freed from the constraints of cash, we transform from ‘careful’ shoppers to more ‘impulsive’ and ‘extravagant’ ones.’
For more information www.worldpayzinc.com.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2349270/Could-end-cash-hand-New-Chip-PIN-device-tradesmen-launched-actually-buy-it.html#ixzz2YhL5yZ00

Monday, July 1, 2013

FRANCE'S TRIUMPHANT 'JOAN OF ARC' VOWS TO BRING BACK FRANC AND DESTROY EURO

Marine Le Pen is spoiling for a fight. The leader of France's Front National vows to smash the existing order of Europe and force the break-up of monetary union, if she wins the next election. If she is not false opposition, this is indeed an interesting development.

Mrs Le Pen said her first order of business on setting foot in the Elysee Palace will be to announce a referendum on EU membership, "rendez vous" one year later. "I will negotiate over the points on which there can be no compromise. If the result is inadequate, I will call for withdrawal," she said. Photo: EPA

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 30 Jun 2013

It is no longer an implausible prospect. "We cannot be seduced," she said, brimming with confidence after her party secured 46pc of the vote in a by-election earthquake a week ago. Her candidate trounced the ruling Socialists in their own bastion of Villeneuve-sur-Lot.

"The euro ceases to exist the moment that France leaves, and that is our incredible strength. What are they going to do, send in tanks?" she told the Daily Telegraph at the Front National's headquarters, an unmarked building tucked away in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. Her office is small and workaday, almost austere.

"Europe is just a great bluff. One side there is the immense power of sovereign peoples, and on the other side are a few technocrats," she said.

For the first time, the Front National is running level with the two governing parties of post-War France, Socialists and Gaullistes. All are near 21pc in national polls, though the Front alone has the wind in its sails.

Yet it is the detail in the Villeneuve vote that has shocked the political class. The Front scored highest in the most Socialist cantons, a sign that it may be breaking out of its Right-wing enclaves to become the mass movement of the white working class.

Commentators have begun to talk of "Left-LePenism" as she outflanks the Socialists with attacks on banks and cross-border capitalism. Anna Rosso-Roig, a candidate for the Communist Party in the 2012 elections, has just defected to the Le Pen camp. Political beliefs for hire.
The Socialists had thought the rising star of Marine Le Pen would work to their advantage, splitting the Right. Now they discern a deadly threat. Industry minister Arnaud Montebourg lashed out last week, blaming Brussels for playing into the hands of the Front National by running roughshod over democracies and pushing austerity a l'outrance.
Mrs Le Pen said her first order of business on setting foot in the Elysee Palace will be to announce a referendum on EU membership, "rendez vous" one year later. "I will negotiate over the points on which there can be no compromise. If the result is inadequate, I will call for withdrawal," she said.
The four sticking points are the currency, border control, the primacy of French law, and what she calls "economic patriotism", the power for France to pursue "intelligent protectionism" and safeguard it social model. "I cannot imagine running economic policy without full control over our own money," she said.
Asked if she intends to pull France of the euro immediately, she said: "Yes, because the euro blocks all economic decisions. France is not a country that can accept tutelage from Brussels," she said.
Officials will be told to draw up plans for the restoration of the franc. Eurozone leaders will face a stark choice: either work with France for a "sortie concertee" or coordinated EMU break-up: or await their fate.
Mrs Le Pen fears that other EMU states will resist and let "financial Armaggedon" run its course, but it is a risk that has be taken.
Her plan is based on a study by economists from l'École des Hautes Études in Paris led by Professor Jacques Sapir. It concludes that France, Italy, and Spain would all benefit greatly from EMU-exit, restoring lost labour competitiveness at a stroke without years of depression.
They say the eurozone's North-South imbalances have already gone beyond the point of no return. Attempts to reverse this by deflation and wage cuts must entail mass unemployment and loss of the industrial core. The current strategy of internal devaluation is self-defeating in any case, since recession causes debt ratios to climb faster.
Prof Sapir said the gains are greatest in a coordinated break-up with capital controls where central bank intervention steers the new currencies to target levels. The model assumes that the D-Mark and Guilder is held to a 15pc rise against the old euro, while the Franc falls 20pc.
The gains are less if EMU collapses in acrimony and currencies overshoot. This would inflict a violent deflation shock on Germany, but would still be strongly positive for the Latin bloc.
"A lot of politicians have been coming to see me, both Gaullistes and Socialists. They agree, but don't want to come out publicly. They want somebody else to take the lead. If Marine Le Pen wishes to use my work, I have no problem," he said.
Mrs Le Pen is a single mother of 44, more relaxed about gay rights and abortion than she lets on, closer in some ways to the assassinated Dutch populist Pim Fortuyn than to her cantankerous father Jean Le Pen, who stepped down as party leader two years ago. Mr Le Pen in turn deplores her eclectic modernism as an overlay of "petit bourgeois" views picked up in Paris schools.
She has carried out a quiet purge of the Front, pushing known anti-semites to the sidelines. Vichy nostalgia is out. While her father called the Holocaust an historical "detail", she calls it the "pinnacle of human barbarism". She courts Jewish favour, aiming her fire at Jihadists instead. "Political parties are like people. There is adolescence when you do do crazy things, and then maturity. We are now ready for power," she said.
This campaign of "dédiabolisation" or image detox seems to have worked. Only a minority of voters still thinks the Front is a "threat to democracy". Mrs Le Pen is winning over white working class women in droves. The feminized Front is no longer the party of the angry white male. The softer image is why finance minister Pierre Moscovici describes her as "more dangerous than her father".
It is her defence of the French welfare model and her critique of capitalism that gives her a Leftist hue -- some call it 1930s national socialism -- so far in outlook from Britain's UKIP. She sounds like Occupy activists in her attacks on high finance and the way corporations profit from labour arbitrage, playing off wages in the West against cheap labour in Asia. "It is the law of the jungle," she said.
Nor is she on the UKIP page with her broadsides against Washington and Nato, or her call for France to retake its place as "non-aligned" voice in a multipolar world. It is an anti-Atlanticist patriotism.
She claims to be the true heir of General Charles de Gaulle, accusing the Gaulliste UMP party of selling its soul to Europe and the Anglo-Saxon order. "There was a de Gaulle of the Left, and a de Gaulle of the Right. There were two de Gaulles. We stand for both," she said.
Mrs Le Pen said the Socialists are in melt-down, victim of their own subservience to EU economic doctrines, while their barrage of attacks on Germany's Angela Merkel smacks of a dependency syndrome. "They whine about Chancellor Merkel, the wicked enforcer who metes out punishment, but Merkel is merely defending the interests of Germany, which are not the same as ours."
She said the EMU crisis is structural. North and South need different exchange rates. "The D-Mark would be rising if it were not for the euro, and that means Germany has a chronically undervalued currency. The euro is far too strong for France, and it is eating away our competitiveness," she said.
It is hard know whether the French people would ever vote en masse for an all-out clash with Europe, let alone for her Jeanne d'Arc messianism. Yet the longer the economic slump goes on, the greater the risk for Brussels and Berlin that French patience will snap, setting off one of those eruptions that have punctuated French history through the ages.
A recent Pew Foundation survey said French support for the EU Project has collapsed from 60pc to 40pc over the last year, and 77pc think economic integration has been damaging.
President Francois Hollande says the EMU crisis is "finished" and recovery is at hand, though it is not clear what will break the vicious cycle as France carries out fiscal tightening of 1.8pc of GDP this year and the deepest cuts in half a century. Monetary policy remains contractionary for most of Latin Europe.
"If the government really tries to force the budget deficit down to 3pc of GDP, the economy will contract again next year by 0.5pc to 0.8pc," said Prof Sapir. "Unemployment will continue rising by 30,000 to 40,000 a month. There may be another 600,000 people without jobs by the end of 2014."
France endured the same slow torture in the early 1930s under the Gold Standard, stoically accepting the "500 deflation decrees" of premier Pierre Laval. The dam broke in 1936 with the election of spurned outsiders, then the Leftist Front Populaire, with Communist support. The Gold Standard collapsed.
The emergence of Marine Le Pen as a contender for office in Europe's pivotal power may prove the electric shock needed to force a radical shift in EMU crisis strategy, or at least to force France's Socialist Party to break with Germany and fight for a full reflation agenda, if only to avert its own ruin.
"We have succumbed to a spirit of slavery in France. We have forgotten how to lead, and our voice is not heard any more," she said. It will be heard now.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/10151286/Frances-triumphant-Joan-of-Arc-vows-to-bring-back-franc-and-destroy-euro.html

Saturday, June 29, 2013

THE FALL OF AUSTRALIA - COMING CATASTROPHES IN THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY

Monday, June 24, 2013

NEW IRS CHIEF ADMITS MORE TARGETING CASES

By Dave Boyer The Washington Times Monday, June 24, 2013

In another damaging revelation, the new head of the Internal Revenue Service said Monday that an internal probe had uncovered more instances of agents using “inappropriate” political lists to single out tax-exempt applications for extra scrutiny, and he acknowledged that the practice went on far longer than previously reported.
While previous accounts of IRS targeting focused on tea party and conservative groups, the agency’s own investigation reportedly found that agents also were going after groups with terms such as “Israel,” “Progressive” and “Occupy” in their names.
The IRS screeners referred to the practice as its “be on the lookout” list, or BOLO, of potentially problematic applications.
IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel told reporters on a conference call Monday that IRS agents still were using inappropriate and politically loaded screening terms when he took over the troubled agency last month. He did not specify what terms were on the lists, but said he suspended the use of all such lists immediately.
“There were a series of these types of lists being used in this part of the IRS as part of their review of tax-exempt applications,” Mr. Werfel told reporters in a conference call. “We believe there continued to be inappropriate or questionable criteria on these BOLO lists.”
The IRS and the Obama administration are facing several congressional probes and a Justice Department criminal investigation into revelations that the agency gave extra scrutiny to conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status from early 2010 through early 2012. The scrutiny began in the Cincinnati office, where tax-exempt applications are reviewed, but Washington IRS officials provided early direction, according to congressional interviews of IRS employees.
Many tea party groups said they are waiting for the applications to be processed years after they first applied, and that many of the IRS questions were intrusive and inappropriate.
Mr. Werfel declined to describe the criteria for the additional red-flag lists, but The Associated Press obtained an internal IRS document stating that the lists used by screeners to pick groups for close examination also included the terms “Israel,” ”Progressive” and “Occupy.” The document said an investigation into why specific terms were included was still underway.
Though the agency’s internal investigation remains incomplete, Mr. Werfel said that he hadn’t found evidence that people outside the IRS Cincinnati office, such as the Obama campaign or senior IRS officials in Washington, had pressured the tax agency to target conservative groups. He briefed President Obama, who appointed him to the post in May after the scandal broke, and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on the report Monday.
“The fact that no evidence is surfacing as wrongdoing is an important conclusion to reach as long as it is qualified by the fact that more reviews are underway,” Mr. Werfel said. “And so, I’ll be as clear as I can right now. I’m not providing a definitive conclusion that no intentional wrongdoing occurred. But I’m suggesting that based on the ongoing reviews to date, no evidence has yet surfaced.”
Republican reaction
Top Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee said the IRS leadership needs to provide more answers about its practices.
“Who started this practice, why was it allowed to continue for so long and how widespread was it?” asked committee Chairman Dave Camp, Michigan Republican. “This culture of political discrimination and intimidation goes far beyond basic management failure, and personnel changes alone won’t fix a broken IRS. Congress will continue the investigation into the IRS’ actions and hold the agency accountable so we can ensure no American is targeted again.”
Rep. Charles W. Boustany Jr., a Louisiana Republican who heads the Ways and Means oversight subcommittee, called the agency’s actions, including a reported $70 million in planned bonuses for employees, “outrageous.”
“It is particularly galling that the report concludes that part of the solution to the IRS’s problems is that it receive $1 billion more in taxpayer dollars,” Mr. Boustany said in a statement.
House Government Reform and Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, the California Republican who has been among the most aggressive critics of recent administration scandals, said the IRS self-investigation “fails to meaningfully answer the largest outstanding questions about inappropriate inquiries and indefensible delays.”
Mr. Issa added: “As investigations by Congress and the Justice Department are still ongoing, Mr. Werfel’s assertion that he has found no evidence that anyone at IRS intentionally did anything wrong can only be called premature.”
Congressional Democrats said Monday that they have uncovered evidence for the first time showing that the IRS also targeted liberal groups, not just conservatives. They said the BOLO lists included the word “progressives” as a red flag.
Rep. Sander M. Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said the omission of this information from an initial inspector general’s report on the IRS scandal shows that the foundation of subsequent probes “is flawed in a fundamental way.”
Mr. Werfel’s remarks accompanied a 60-page internal IRS report concluding that “significant management and judgment failures occurred” at the agency.
The IRS is redacting certain personal data from documents relating to the BOLO lists so that information can be turned over to key congressional panels investigating the IRS scandal, Mr. Werfel said.
“I want to get to the bottom of this, and I want this information out … as quickly as possible so we can air these issues,” he said.
New procedures
The agency has created a voluntary process for groups that have been waiting more than 120 days for tax-exempt status to “self-certify” that they will abide by rules that restrict their political activities. Such groups must agree that they will not spend more than 40 percent of their time or money on political campaigns.
“We need to earn and maintain the trust of the American people in order to accomplish our mission,” Mr. Werfel said.
Mr. Obama has maintained that he knew nothing about political targeting at the IRS and condemned the practice. The White House on Monday called the interim review “an important step in ensuring accountability.”
“As the president has made clear, the misconduct identified in last month’s inspector general’s report is unacceptable,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said. “He will not tolerate inappropriate behavior in any agency, and the president believes that IRS personnel must operate with absolute integrity, fairness and neutrality.”
Mr. Lew said he has asked Mr. Werfel to “spend some time outside Washington in the coming weeks to meet with taxpayers, business leaders and community officials and to uncover new ways to make the IRS more efficient and consumer-friendly.”
There have been previous indications that some liberal or progressive groups might have been singled out for scrutiny along with politically conservative applicants. Former IRS executive Holly Paz told congressional investigators last month that the agency’s “be-on-the-lookout” list for employees had categories for liberal-sounding groups as well.
© Copyright 2013 The Washington Times, LLC.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/24/new-irs-chief-admits-more-targeting-cases/?page=all#pagebreak