G100: The Ultimate Insider Group

You just never know who you are going to run into at the Milken Institute Global Conference.
We had a good conversation with Daniel Casse there. Casse is president of G100.

Talk about under the radar, prior to meeting Casse we had never heard of the G100, and except for its web site, a google search of G100 brings up zero information on the group.

But, the group is probably the most powerful, most exclusive, regularly-meeting group in the world. The Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission? Forget about it. These groups are too big and unwieldy. The G100 is where you want to be, and if you aren't one of a very select few, this post is about as much as you will ever know about them.

According to Casse and its web site, the G100 is a private group of chairmen and chief executive officers of the world’s most significant companies. Capped at 100, membership is by invitation only. Among all the CEO organizations, the G100 is unique. Established in 2000, the group meets twice a year at the Pratt Mansion in New York City for a Thursday night dinner, followed by a half day of "robust, off-the-record discussion" on Friday. Jack Welch regularly chairs the sessions, which he has called “the best meeting out there for CEOs.”

Casse told us, the press is not allowed at meetings. The assistants and aides of the CEO's are not allowed. It is just the CEO's. No one records anything. "The CEO's can let their hair down," he told us.

Casse said the meetings are fascinating and gave us an example of how Chuck Prince, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Citi (formerly CitiGroup) came in and gave a detailed explanation of how he dealt with Citi's regulatory crisis in Japan when in September 2004, Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) , the banking and financial services regulatory body of Japan, announced that it had revoked the licenses of the four Citigroup offices in Japan.

Aside from the CEO's, only "top representatives" of certain advisory firms are allowed to come in and make presentations. They include Accenture, Deloitte, Evercore Partners, McKinsey & Co., Merrill Lynch, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Six Sigma Academy ,Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Spencer Stuart, The Parthenon Group and Vedder Price.

'Father' of Securitized Mortgage Market: First Time in History Median Home Price is Likely to Decline

Lewis Ranieri, generally regarded as the "father" of the securitized mortgage market, told an audience at the Milken Institute Global Conference that, in 2007, for the first time in history the median home price in the United States is likely to decline.

He also added that there will be many technical problems in working out problem mortgages, He said the vast majority of problem loans are securitized and that, in the past, problem loans were in individual portfolios. This time around, because of securitization, there are many, many holders of the securities with an interest in a mortgage. This will mean there will be many more parties that will have to agree to everything. In addition, he added, there are more lawyers and accountants in the picture to complicate matters.

He used as an example from the past: when he restructured mortgages with homeowners, he would never send out a 1099 tax form. In current situations, he said, lawyers and accountants want him to send out 1099 tax forms to homeowners who have restructured their mortgages. He asked rhetorically, "You have just restructured a mortgage for people who haven't been able to make their former payments and now you want to send them a tax bill for restructuring?"

He further stated there will be a "political reaction" and he feared that bad legislation could create problems for the entire mortgage sector that are now just limited to the sub-prime area. He fears, for example, that any legislation creating a moratorium on foreclosures would have a chilling effect on the issuance of home mortgages throughout the industry.