By JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 39 minutes ago
Hospital operator HCA Inc. said Friday that federal prosecutors have issued a subpoena for documents the company believes may be related to the sale of its stock by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
A release from the Nashville-based company said the subpoena came from the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
The Securities and Exchange Commission also contacted Frist this week about the sales, said Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson.
"Not surprisingly, the Securities and Exchange Commission contacted Senator Frist's office after the story appeared in the press about the sale of his Hospital Corporation of America stock," Stevenson said. "The majority leader will provide the SEC any information that it needs with respect to this matter."
Frist traded using only public information, and only to eliminate the appearance of a conflict of interest, his spokesman added.
Stevenson couldn't immediately be reached for further comment. An HCA spokesman also wasn't immediately available for comment.
HCA, the nation's largest for-profit hospital company, was founded by Frist's father and his brother was formerly its CEO and chairman and remains on the board of directors.
Frist asked a trustee to sell all his HCA stock in June, near a 52-week stock price peak of $58.40 and at the same time HCA insiders were selling off shares. Reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission showed insiders sold about 2.3 million shares, worth about $112 million, from January through June, said Mark LoPresti of Thomson Financial.
The sale came about two weeks before the company issued a disappointing earnings forecast that drove its stock price down almost 16 percent by mid-July. They still have not recovered, closing Thursday at $45.90.
The value of Frist's stock at the time of the sale was not disclosed. Earlier this year, he reported holding blind trusts valued at $7 million to $35 million.
The sale of stock was first reported Monday by Congressional Quarterly. On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that the stock was sold at or near its peak between June 13, when Frist asked the shares to be sold, and July 1, when he was told the sale was complete. On July 8 he was informed that his wife and children's shares had also been sold as per his request, his spokeswoman Amy Call said.
For years, Frist was criticized for holding HCA stock while directing legislation on Medicare reform and patient issues. His office has consistently deflected criticism by noting that his assets were in a blind trust and not under his active control.
Frist, a Tennessee Republican, is widely considered a potential presidential candidate in 2008.
HCA said the subpoena seeks the "production of documents," and said it plans to fully cooperate with the district attorney's investigation.
On Thursday, SEC spokesman John Nester would neither confirm nor deny that Frist or any officer or director of HCA is the subject of an investigation, citing the agency's policy.
Shares of HCA fell 20 cents to $45.70 in premarket trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A congressman involved in insider trading?! I'm shocked!
_________________ Deep below the dunes I roved Past the rows, past the rows Beside the acacias freshly in bloom I sent men to their doom
Post subject: Frist Knew About Blind Trust Investments
Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2005 5:54 pm
Supersonic
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 3:02 pm Posts: 10690 Location: Lost in Twilight's Blue
Quote:
By JONATHAN M. KATZ and LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writers 2 hours, 10 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., was updated several times about his investments in blind trusts during 2002, the last time two weeks before he publicly denied any knowledge of what was in the accounts, documents show.
The updates included stock transactions involving HCA Inc., the hospital operating company founded by Frist's family.
Frist's sale of HCA stock is under scrutiny by the federal government. Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA said Friday it had received a subpoena from prosecutors for the Southern District of New York, asking for documents the company believes are related to Frist's sale of company stock this past summer.
Prosecutors also have contacted the senator's office, Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson said Friday. He said neither the senator nor his office had received a subpoena.
Frist's office confirmed the Securities and Exchange Commission was looking into the sale.
"Senator Frist had no information about the company or its performance that was not available to the public when he directed the trustees to sell the HCA stock," Stevenson said in a statement.
Frist sold his HCA stock from several blind trusts this summer, at a time when insiders in the company also were selling off shares worth $112 million from January through June. Frist aides say he sold his stock to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.
Frist, asked in a television interview in January 2003 whether he should sell his HCA stock, responded: "Well, I think really for our viewers it should be understood that I put this into a blind trust. So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock"
Frist, referring to his trust and those of his family, also said in the interview, "I have no control. It is illegal right now for me to know what the composition of those trusts are. So I have no idea."
Documents filed with the Senate showed that just two weeks before those comments, the trustee of the senator's trust, M. Kirk Scobey Jr., wrote to Frist that HCA stock was contributed to the trust. It was valued at $15,000 and $50,000.
The documents filed by the trustees of Frist's blind trusts were obtained by The Associated Press on Friday.
On Nov. 20, 2002, Scobey wrote Frist that 14,781 shares of HCA were sold, along with three other investments. The same day, Scobey wrote that four other investments were sold, none of them HCA stock.
On May 16, 2002, Scobey advised Frist that four investments were contributed to a Frist blind trust, including HCA stock valued at $500,000 to $1 million. A second letter the same day mentions the same four investments going into a different trust, but with different valuations, including HCA stock valued at $250,000 to $500,000.
On Jan. 14, 2002, a trustee for Frist's children notified the secretary of the Senate that two investments were added to the blind trusts of Frist's sons Jonathan and Bryan — including HCA stock valued at $5,000 to $10,000. It was not clear whether Frist received a copy of the letter.
Stevenson, the Frist spokesman, said he could not comment on the updates received by the senator. He added that Frist properly notified the Senate Ethics Committee this summer that he was initiating the sale of all remaining HCA shares, a requirement under Senate rules. All the stock was sold by July 1, including shares owned by his wife and children.
"As with the SEC, the majority leader will provide the U.S. attorney's office with any information that it needs with respect to this matter," Stevenson said.
The SEC also contacted HCA on Friday to informally request copies of the subpoenaed documents, said company spokesman Jeff Prescott. "We of course will comply with that request," he said.
Herb Haddad, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, said the office had no comment on the matter. SEC spokesman John Nester declined to say whether the agency had contacted Frist's office.
David Becker, who was general counsel at the SEC from 2000 to 2002, noted that both Frist and HCA were being put under scrutiny.
In insider trading cases, "you connect the dots not by simply going from one dot to another but by starting at both dots and working toward the middle," Becker said. "The facts that are public don't come close to demonstrating wrongdoing. It's way too premature to have any judgment."
HCA, the nation's largest for-profit hospital company, was founded by Frist's father, the late Thomas Frist Sr. His brother, Thomas Jr., was formerly its CEO and chairman and remains on the board of directors. Frist is a heart surgeon by training.
Frist asked a trustee to sell all his HCA stock in June, near a 52-week price peak of $58.40 a share. Reports to the SEC showed HCA insiders sold about 2.3 million shares.
Frist's sale came about two weeks before the company issued a disappointing earnings forecast that drove its stock price down almost 16 percent by mid-July and still have not recovered. HCA rose $1.70 Friday, closing at $47.60.
The value of Frist's stock at the time of the sale was not disclosed. Earlier this year, he reported blind trusts with all holdings valued at $7 million to $35 million.
Is it a requirement that to even be a presidential contender you have to first be one of the biggest criminals in the country?
_________________ Scared to say what is your passion, So slag it all, Bitter's in fashion, Fear of failure's all you've started, The jury is in, verdict: Retarded
Post subject: Re: Frist Knew About Blind Trust Investments
Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2005 6:36 pm
Got Some
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 3:58 am Posts: 2105 Location: Austin
Mercury wrote:
Quote:
By JONATHAN M. KATZ and LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writers 2 hours, 10 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., was updated several times about his investments in blind trusts during 2002, the last time two weeks before he publicly denied any knowledge of what was in the accounts, documents show.
The updates included stock transactions involving HCA Inc., the hospital operating company founded by Frist's family.
Frist's sale of HCA stock is under scrutiny by the federal government. Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA said Friday it had received a subpoena from prosecutors for the Southern District of New York, asking for documents the company believes are related to Frist's sale of company stock this past summer.
Prosecutors also have contacted the senator's office, Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson said Friday. He said neither the senator nor his office had received a subpoena.
Frist's office confirmed the Securities and Exchange Commission was looking into the sale.
"Senator Frist had no information about the company or its performance that was not available to the public when he directed the trustees to sell the HCA stock," Stevenson said in a statement.
Frist sold his HCA stock from several blind trusts this summer, at a time when insiders in the company also were selling off shares worth $112 million from January through June. Frist aides say he sold his stock to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.
Frist, asked in a television interview in January 2003 whether he should sell his HCA stock, responded: "Well, I think really for our viewers it should be understood that I put this into a blind trust. So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock"
Frist, referring to his trust and those of his family, also said in the interview, "I have no control. It is illegal right now for me to know what the composition of those trusts are. So I have no idea."
Documents filed with the Senate showed that just two weeks before those comments, the trustee of the senator's trust, M. Kirk Scobey Jr., wrote to Frist that HCA stock was contributed to the trust. It was valued at $15,000 and $50,000.
The documents filed by the trustees of Frist's blind trusts were obtained by The Associated Press on Friday.
On Nov. 20, 2002, Scobey wrote Frist that 14,781 shares of HCA were sold, along with three other investments. The same day, Scobey wrote that four other investments were sold, none of them HCA stock.
On May 16, 2002, Scobey advised Frist that four investments were contributed to a Frist blind trust, including HCA stock valued at $500,000 to $1 million. A second letter the same day mentions the same four investments going into a different trust, but with different valuations, including HCA stock valued at $250,000 to $500,000.
On Jan. 14, 2002, a trustee for Frist's children notified the secretary of the Senate that two investments were added to the blind trusts of Frist's sons Jonathan and Bryan — including HCA stock valued at $5,000 to $10,000. It was not clear whether Frist received a copy of the letter.
Stevenson, the Frist spokesman, said he could not comment on the updates received by the senator. He added that Frist properly notified the Senate Ethics Committee this summer that he was initiating the sale of all remaining HCA shares, a requirement under Senate rules. All the stock was sold by July 1, including shares owned by his wife and children.
"As with the SEC, the majority leader will provide the U.S. attorney's office with any information that it needs with respect to this matter," Stevenson said.
The SEC also contacted HCA on Friday to informally request copies of the subpoenaed documents, said company spokesman Jeff Prescott. "We of course will comply with that request," he said.
Herb Haddad, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, said the office had no comment on the matter. SEC spokesman John Nester declined to say whether the agency had contacted Frist's office.
David Becker, who was general counsel at the SEC from 2000 to 2002, noted that both Frist and HCA were being put under scrutiny.
In insider trading cases, "you connect the dots not by simply going from one dot to another but by starting at both dots and working toward the middle," Becker said. "The facts that are public don't come close to demonstrating wrongdoing. It's way too premature to have any judgment."
HCA, the nation's largest for-profit hospital company, was founded by Frist's father, the late Thomas Frist Sr. His brother, Thomas Jr., was formerly its CEO and chairman and remains on the board of directors. Frist is a heart surgeon by training.
Frist asked a trustee to sell all his HCA stock in June, near a 52-week price peak of $58.40 a share. Reports to the SEC showed HCA insiders sold about 2.3 million shares.
Frist's sale came about two weeks before the company issued a disappointing earnings forecast that drove its stock price down almost 16 percent by mid-July and still have not recovered. HCA rose $1.70 Friday, closing at $47.60.
The value of Frist's stock at the time of the sale was not disclosed. Earlier this year, he reported blind trusts with all holdings valued at $7 million to $35 million.
Is it a requirement that to even be a presidential contender you have to first be one of the biggest criminals in the country?
As the article states, it is way to early to judge that. Brokers often can recieve insider information, and reccomend that their clients sell, without informing the client about the insider info. It actually makes sense to do that from the financial advisors perspective, because there is no other witness to the crime. Also selling stock at a high is what you are supposed to do, of course suspicion is always cast when a negative earnings report comes out two weeks later.
As for the blind trusts, I don't know anything about the legality or recieving information about where that money is actually going. Really there isn't enough info here one way or the other, as of now to prove wrongdoing.
Sorry about that, I tried to look for another thread about it but didn't see this one.
_________________ Scared to say what is your passion, So slag it all, Bitter's in fashion, Fear of failure's all you've started, The jury is in, verdict: Retarded
By JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 50 minutes ago
The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating HCA Inc., the hospital chain founded by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's family, the company said Thursday.
Federal prosecutors and the agency also are probing Frist's sale of stock in HCA, the Nashville, Tenn.-based company that grew into the nation's largest for-profit health care chain.
HCA, founded by Frist's father and brother, said it is cooperating.
SEC spokesmen have declined comment on the investigation.
Documents show that while HCA insiders were selling millions of dollars of their own stock this year, they were also painting an upbeat picture of the company's outlook for investors.
On June 14, the day after Frist, R-Tenn., ordered his shares sold, HCA officers at a Goldman Sachs health care conference in Laguna Niguel, Calif., spoke optimistically about the company's prospects.
Victor Campbell, HCA's senior vice president of corporate communications and government relations, soothed investor concerns about unpaid patient debts and worries about patient volumes.
He advocated for a still-pending Senate bill that would limit the establishment of physician-owned specialty hospitals.
In the month before the speech, Campbell sold about $12 million worth of stock. It was part of a massive insider sell-off at HCA that totaled some $112 million between this January and June.
Those sales were disclosed publicly through filings with the SEC.
HCA shares peaked about a week later, closing at $58.40 on June 22. On July 13, they tumbled 9 percent following the company's announcement that it would not meet earnings expectations.
In his remarks, Campbell did not speculate about the company's earnings, but spoke of a number of positive trends for the company. The only expense line the company didn't like, he told investors, was the issue of money lost from treating uninsured patients who never paid. But he said that was improving.
The speech helped feed optimism surrounding HCA stock, said Oksanna Butler, a senior health care industry analyst with Citigroup Investment Research.
Campbell did not respond to requests for comment. HCA spokesman Jeff Prescott said, "I'll let what he said at the conference speak for itself."
Frist's staff discussed selling all remaining HCA stock in April, as well as that of his wife and children, Frist said. The sales, ordered on June 13, were completed by July 1.
Frist said he sold the shares to eliminate the appearance of a conflict of interest, using only information that was publicly available. His office has said he had gotten notice of a formal investigation, which grants subpoena powers to investigators to obtain information and documents.
HCA shares closed up 32 cents to $48.26 Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.
By LARRY MARGASAK and JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Writers 22 minutes ago
Outside the blind trusts he created to avoid a conflict of interest, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist earned tens of thousands of dollars from stock in a family-founded hospital chain largely controlled by his brother, documents show.
The Tennessee Republican, whose sale this summer of HCA Inc. stock is under federal investigation, has long maintained he could own HCA shares and still vote on health care legislation without a conflict because he had placed the stock in blind trusts approved by the Senate.
However, ethics experts say a partnership arrangement shown in documents obtained by The Associated Press raises serious doubts about whether the senator truly avoided a conflict.
In that case, the HCA stock was accumulated by a family investment partnership started by the senator's late parents and later overseen by his brother, Thomas Frist. The brother served as president of the partnership's management company and as a top officer of HCA. Sen. Frist holds no position with the company.
The senator's share of the partnership was placed in a Tennessee blind trust between 1998 and 2002 that was separate from those governed by Senate ethics rules. Frist reported Bowling Avenue Partners, made up mostly of non-public HCA stock, earned him $265,495 in dividends and other income over the four years.
Edmond M. Ianni, a former Wilmington, Del., bank executive who established blind trusts for corporate executives, questioned why the senator's brother was able to manage assets "when the whole purpose of a blind trust is to ensure lack of not only conflict of interest — but appearance of conflict of interest?"
Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, said she doesn't believe the Senate trusts or the Tennessee trust insulated Frist from a conflict because the senator or his brother were advised of transactions and could influence decisions.
"What I find most appalling is the Senate calls it a qualified blind trust when it's not blind," Clark said. "Since the Senate says it's OK, the Senate has made it a political question. It's up to the voter. But there's no doubt it's a conflict of interest."
Frist's interest in Bowling Avenue Partners and the Tennessee blind trust were listed on the annual disclosure reports he filed with the Senate. Thomas Frist's ability to influence HCA stock decisions in the partnership was detailed in separate trust and partnership documents obtained by the AP.
Those documents show Thomas Frist was listed as the "general partner" and "registered agent" of Bowling Avenue Partners. He also was listed as president of the partnership's management company.
Thomas Frist founded HCA, the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain, with his and the senator's father. He currently is the company's chairman emeritus.
Frist advisers confirmed the senator's brother could influence investment decisions in the Bowling Avenue partnership and said the partnership was placed in a Tennessee trust because Senate ethics rules didn't allow the non-public HCA shares to be included in Senate-approved trusts.
"His interests in the family partnership were not held by his Senate blind trusts because Senate rules did not permit it. Senator Frist did not control the assets in this partnership and he annually disclosed his interests to the public as required," Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson said.
Thomas Frist did not return repeated phone calls to his office at HCA seeking comment.
Bowling Avenue Partners' HCA shares became marketable securities when the estate of Frist's mother was settled in probate. Frist then began transferring those shares in stages from the Tennessee blind trust to the Senate-approved trusts in 2001 and 2002.
The value of all the transferred shares, calculated on the dates they went into the Senate trusts, was between $775,000 and $1.57 million, according to letters the trustees sent to Frist and the Senate. That stock was on top of millions of dollars in various investments Frist already owned in the Senate blind trusts.
With his background as a heart surgeon as well as majority leader, Frist has been at the forefront of legislation that would affect the hospital chain. Among the issues: a Medicare prescription drug benefit and limits on medical malpractice lawsuits.
Frist kept HCA stock in Bowling Avenue Partners and the Tennessee blind trust — but outside the Senate-approved trusts — between 1998 and 2002.
His investments in Nashville-based HCA are being investigated by federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission after an AP report that the senator had asked administrators of his Senate blind trusts to sell his HCA holdings.
Frist ordered the stock sold June 13 and all sales were completed by July 1. HCA stock peaked on June 22 and then gradually declined. On July 13, it dropped 9 percent.
Reports to the SEC showed insiders sold about 2.3 million shares of HCA stock worth at least $112 million from January through June 2005.
Frist has denied having insider company information when he ordered the stock sold in June. The profit the senator made from the sales is not known.
The Bowling Avenue name came from the street of the Frist family home in Nashville.
_________________ Deep below the dunes I roved Past the rows, past the rows Beside the acacias freshly in bloom I sent men to their doom
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 7:19 pm Posts: 39068 Location: Chapel Hill, NC, USA Gender: Male
Apparently, this doesn't necessarily make him a criminal, but it means he was lying when he said he had no conflict of interests in healthcare votes because his stocks were in a blind trust. He knew all along that he had HCA stock.
Quote:
Letters Show Frist Notified Of Stocks in 'Blind' Trusts Documents Contradict Comments on Holdings
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, October 24, 2005; Page A01
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) was given considerable information about his stake in his family's hospital company, according to records that are at odds with his past statements that he did not know what was in his stock holdings.
Managers of the trusts that Frist once described as "totally blind," regularly informed him when they added new shares of HCA Inc. or other assets to his holdings, according to the documents.
Hospital Corporation of America in Nashville was founded by Frist's father and brother. (By Rusty Russell -- Getty Images)
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Since 2001, the trustees have written to Frist and the Senate 15 times detailing the sale of assets from or the contribution of assets to trusts of Frist and his family. The letters included notice of the addition of HCA shares worth $500,000 to $1 million in 2001 and HCA stock worth $750,000 to $1.5 million in 2002. The trust agreements require the trustees to inform Frist and the Senate whenever assets are added or sold.
The letters seem to undermine one of the major arguments the senator has used throughout his political career to rebut criticism of his ownership in HCA: that the stock was held in blind trusts beyond his control and that he had little idea of the extent of those holdings.
The extent of Frist's knowledge of the inner workings of his trusts and his family's health care company is related to a recently launched federal investigation of possible insider trading involving the liquidation this summer of Frist's HCA stock. Within weeks of Frist's decision to sell his holdings in June, HCA shares fell sharply because of a weak earnings report. Frist has said he possessed only publicly available and not "insider" information about the company when he directed the sale and, therefore, did nothing wrong.
Last week, Frist told reporters that he is "absolutely confident in the outcome" of the inquiries by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission because he "acted properly at every point." He declined to address specifics about the investigations but said he is providing information as quickly and fully as possible.
Frist, a heart-surgeon-turned-politician, has been actively involved in shaping national health care legislation, including passage of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, while maintaining a major financial interest in his family-founded health care business.
Two watchdog organizations -- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights -- filed complaints with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics this yearcharging Frist with having a conflict of interest and questioning why he sold his shares after a decade of saying he did not need to.
Frist and his family have a dozen federal trust accounts, which are essentially piles of stock controlled by professional money managers. Under the terms of his "qualified" trust agreements set up in 2000, Frist is barred from contacting the managers except under specific circumstances. The managers, however, are required to contact him when the funds they control undergo certain changes -- an arrangement similar to those of several other senators.
In January 2003, after winning election as majority leader, Frist was asked on CNBC whether his HCA holdings made it difficult for him to push for changes in Medicare, a federal health program for seniors that added to the hospital company's revenue.
"I think really for our viewers it should be understood that I put this into a blind trust," Frist replied. "So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock." He added that the trust was "totally blind. I have no control."
Two weeks before that interview, M. Kirk Scobey Jr., a Frist trustee, informed the senator in writing that one of his trusts had received HCA stock valued at between $15,000 and $50,000.
"He [Frist] could have been more exact in his comments," said Bob Stevenson, spokesman for Frist. Stevenson added that Frist might better have said he did not know to what extent he owned HCA shares.
Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said she was surprised that Frist had ever claimed before this summer's liquidation that he might have owned no HCA stock. "Did he say that? What was he thinking of?" she asked. "How did he know to tell the trustee to sell it [his HCA stake] if he didn't know that he had it in the first place?"
Disclosures by the trustees to the Senate and to Frist indicate that Frist and his family probably owned a great deal of HCA stock at the time. When Frist's federal trusts were created in late 2000, the trustees disclosed that one trust alone contained between $5 million and $25 million in HCA shares and that each of seven other trusts held more than $1 million of the stock.
Frist was notified in November 2002 that 14,781 HCA shares had been sold from one of his trusts. But he was not told that all of his HCA shares had been disposed of until this summer -- after he had directed his trustees to sell them all, the documents show.
Questions about his HCA holdings have been a staple of Frist's public life. The Nashville-based company, the country's largest chain of for-profit hospitals, was founded in 1968 by Frist's father, Thomas F. Frist, his brother, Thomas F. Frist Jr., and Jack C. Massey, the former owner of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Its stock made up the majority of Frist's wealth and was used to help him secure some of the financing for his first Senate campaign.
During his first run for the Senate in 1994, Frist was accused of having a "mammoth conflict of interest" by his Democratic opponent, then-Sen. Jim Sasser. Frist promised to put his HCA stock in a blind trust to avoid the problem.
This year, as he contemplated a bid for the White House in 2008 and worried about the appearance of conflicts, Frist abruptly changed tactics, aides said. Rather than defend his stock held in trust, he asked his trustees to sell all his HCA shares.
Stevenson said Frist's concerns involved the perception of a conflict rather than any real conflict of interest. In 1997 and 1999, the ethics committee cleared Frist to participate in Senate debates involving Medicare and health maintenance organizations despite his "substantial" holdings in HCA. The committee did not take into account whether Frist's holdings were in blind trusts in reaching its decisions.
Frist said last week he was not required to set up a blind trust after he went to the Senate, but he wanted to "apply the highest ethical standards I possibly could. I thought, why not raise the bar, why not do a good deed . . . and avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest."
Senate rules prohibit any lawmaker with a blind trust from contacting his trustees unless the ownership of an asset poses a potential conflict of interest "due to the subsequent assumption of duties" by the lawmaker. The lawmaker can then ask the trustees to dispose of the asset.
Frist did not take on any new duties this year. But a Frist adviser said the senator had been thinking about selling his HCA stake from the time he was elected majority leader in 2002. Frist had not known that he could sell his shares until this spring, the adviser asserted, and so went ahead with the sale based on his nearly three-year-old wish.
Staff writer Charles Babington and research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
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