From Financial Advisor:
Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano’s move into government couldn’t have been better timed, helping the former Fiserv Inc. chief avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in losses from the company’s plunging stock price.
After the former Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive was tapped by President Donald Trump this year to lead the SSA, he agreed to resign from Fiserv and divest his stake, including common stock, options, restricted stock units and performance equity grants. Bisignano, 66, was also named CEO of the Internal Revenue Service earlier this month.
Following his resignation, the restricted stock and a portion of the performance grants vested, giving him more than 3.2 million Fiserv shares worth roughly $594 million when he was confirmed to his role in May.
Bisignano sold Fiserv stock between May 16 and July 1, according to ethics filings. Based on the average share price during the period, the shares would have fetched roughly $530 million. He later confirmed in a filing that he had completed the divestment.
The same shares today are worth just $229 million—meaning that selling earlier in the year avoided losses of about $300 million.
Accepting the government role gave Bisignano another valuable perk. In May, he was granted a certificate of divestiture, deferring capital gains tax on the Fiserv sales provided he invested the proceeds in approved assets such as Treasury bills or broadly-based mutual funds.
Bisignano didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
More than half of Bisignano’s potential losses would have come Wednesday, when the payment company’s shares suffered a record plunge of more than 40% after it slashed its full-year earnings outlook and delivered third-quarter results well short of analysts’ estimates.
Did the serious problems at Fiserv only begin AFTER Bisignano left? That seems unlikely on the face of it. Was Bisignano aware of the problems BEFORE he left? That seems likely. If he knew of major problems, why hadn’t he told investors? If he knew, why was he selling stock based upon inside information?
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would ordinarily investigate this sort of thing but this is the Trump Administration. Nobody in the Trump Administration gets investigated. However, they can’t stop shareholder litigation and I would expect that soon. Bisignano will have to answer questions under oath.
By the way, Bisignano needs two lawyers, one for the possible securities litigation and the other for possible criminal charges. Trump won’t be in office forever. Unless he gets a pardon, Bisignano could face criminal charges later.
This seems like it could be a serious distraction to a man with two jobs.
Update: The litigation has already begun.
Further Update: Here’s an explanation of what is being alleged:
… Fiserv faces a federal securities class-action lawsuit in the Southern District of New York that accuses the company of inflating growth figures for its Clover payments platform. The complaint alleges Fiserv forced merchants on its older and more affordable Payeezy system to move to Clover while claiming that growth came from new customers. Those migrations allegedly artificially boosted short-term revenue and transaction volumes forecasts which in turn hid slowing organic expansion. When many merchants decided to switch to lower-cost rivals such as Square and Toast, Clover’s performance faltered. According to the lawsuit, former CEO Frank Bisignano told investors in 2023 that 90% of Clover’s revenue growth would come from new merchants and just 10% from existing clients, even as the company moved roughly 200,000 Payeezy merchants to Clover through mid-2024. That shift helped lift Clover’s 2024 revenue to $2.7 billion on $310 billion in gross payment volume, but by early 2025, gross payment volume growth slowed to 8%, down from 14%-17% the year before. …
15 comments:
Crook and fraud. Trump should be worried this man will bankrupt ssa
Is anybody surprised? The individual who hired him had SIX bankruptcies. 💰
Frank still owned and held around 3.1 million shares of Fiserv stock at least as of October 22nd of this year.
As a result, he took an absolute bath today on what he still owns (if he didn't dump it based on insider information over the last week or so).
I wish Fiserv shareholders and investors well in their lawsuits against him, Fiserv, and its board of directors.
Charles, surely you jest.
This former CEO, who was once an average citizen billionaire, is not at any risk.
You know as well as I do that he is now a living extension of the Unitary Executive.
He does not need to fear any civic or criminal action.
Even now, the list of those who will be granted the Universal Pardon* is being readied by Steven Miller and Russell Vought.
The Universal Pardon*, one of the greatest tools of the Unitary Executive, grants federal and state immunity from any and all civil liability and criminal penalties for any action taken before, during or after the Trump Presidency.
Frank Bisignano will be granted such a Universal Pardon.
*In addition, the Universal Pardon provides its recipients a one-year membership to the beautiful Trump Mar-A-Lago Resort, including a free monthly dinner featuring Trump Steaks. Recipients are also entered in a daily raffle to attend weekly fundraising and crypto events at the Trump White House Ballroom and Casino. Offer void where prohibited. See the official rules at https://www.whitehouse.gov.
MAGA, you surely jest with this word salad. The investors will want their pound of flesh.
Looks like he is more of a BS artist than a businessman, just like his boss.
So he perfected the art of fudging numbers before he ever got to SSA.
Frank’s old company is being investigated for securities fraud while under his tenure? It Why does that not surprise me? Put a cheater in charge of SSA and IRS who control our money cause Donny always hires the best (yes, sarcasm)!
Sure looks like his motivation for taking the job at Social Security was to provide cover to sell his stock before the flames fully consumed its value.
Are sick of all the bigly winning yet, sheeple?
This is the funniest thing I've seen all week. Kudos.
In a statement Thursday, Nancy Altman, president of progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, called for Bisignano’s resignation and investigation into his departure and divestiture from Fiserv, drawing parallels between the allegations of mismanagement at Fiserv and SSA’s deceptive customer service statistics.
“When Bisignano joined the Trump administration, he sold all of his Fiserv stock, getting a big tax break in the process,” she said. “That sale saved him $300 million (and counting) in stock value. Did Bisignano know that Fiserv’s stock was about to tank, and ask his friend Donald Trump for a life raft? . . . How can we trust any claims Bisignano makes about Social Security, such as his insistence that phone service is improving even as media reports show otherwise?”
Fiserv’s faltering stock price is not the only source of intrigue related to the SSA and day-to-day IRS leader. Last month, Fifth Third Bank announced it was partnering with Fiserv to administer Direct Express, the federal government’s debit card program used primarily to pay government beneficiaries who lack a traditional bank account.
Between May and July, Bisignano sold roughly $530 million in Fiserv shares, Bloomberg reported. If held until today, those shares would be worth just $229 million, making for $300 million in avoided losses. On top of that, when a government official divests from their private sector assets, they receive a Certificate of Divestiture, which allows them to offset some of the capital gains tax burden and reinvest their proceeds into government securities and other diversified investments.
The withdrawal of Bisignano’s Fiserv earnings outlook could also seemingly lend credence to a lawsuit filed by investors in the company, which alleged Bisignano and other executives misled stockholders about the growth of its point-of-sale system Clover, using forced migration of existing customers to mask a lack of new business.
A Top Trump Official Had to Sell His Stock. He May Have Saved Millions.
Frank Bisignano, who holds top jobs at the Social Security Administration and the I.R.S., sold his stake in Fiserv before the company’s stock cratered this week.
Demand for Trump’s Social Security Chief Bisignano to Resign After $30 Billion Implosion of Former Company
“Bisignano is in charge of the American people’s hard-earned Social Security benefits, as well as the collection of our taxes,” said one advocate. “If he engaged in wrongdoing, the people need to know.”
When nominating former Fiserv CEO Frank Bisignano as Social Security administrator earlier this year, President Donald Trump said the executive frequently “takes troubled entities and turns them around.”
With current Fiserv chief Mike Lyons warning on Wednesday that Bisignano had made major missteps as CEO, overinflating its sales projections and relying on short-term cost-cutting before selling his stock for $500 million, the advocacy group Social Security Works said beneficiaries of the government’s anti-poverty program for senior citizens should be alarmed that the former executive is now in charge of their crucial benefits.
“Fiserv lost 40% of its value because the former CEO, Frank Bisignano, is a liar,” said SSW. “But Bisignano is Trump’s buddy, so he can only fail up. He’s now in charge of your Social Security.”
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