Thomas Crane
04-12-2007, 06:27 AM
Dear Friends,
In order to properly discuss the subject of auto emissions testing one should know something of the history of the Envirotest Company and how it came to be the primary company for testing auto emissions.
A reading of the enclosed articles which I have extracted from the web and given attribution will reveal that the Envirotest Company had its beginnings with a man by the name of Chester Davenport who has a rather interesting background.
You will also learn that the Envirotest Company was sold to an English firm called Alchemy Partners headed up by a man named Jon Moulton.Â*Â*The company was sold to the English for $580 million dollars which gave Chester Davenport a profit of approximately $450 million dollars.
Basically speaking, if you go to the web and type in Chester Davenport, you will find all kinds of interesting information.Â*Â*The same holds true for Alchemy Partners.Â*Â* Oh yes, and by the way, Alchemy Partners is one of the largest pub owners in England the last time that I checked.Â*Â*They own approximately 5,000 pubs!
The moral of the story is an old one and that is, "Follow the money."
Best wishes,
Tom Crane
The following was taken from the website, "NixGuy.com. (T. Crane)
Envirotest’s beginnings go back to 1990. That’s when Slivy C. Edmonds and Chester Davenport, a lawyer and a former assistant secretary of transportation under President Jimmy Carter, purchased an emissions testing firm. They were gambling that their business — Georgetown Partners of Bethesda, Md. — could profit from pending federal clean-air rules.
With backing from a European bank, Edmonds and Davenport paid $51 million for United Technology’s Hamilton Test Systems, an Arizona-based company that had emissions testing contracts in four states.
In 1992, they went after Hamilton’s biggest competitor, Systems Control Inc., which had emissions testing contracts in five states. They bought it for $83.5 million and in 1993 named the merged company Envirotest Systems Corp. Shortly after that, Edmonds left the company.
From the beginning, Envirotest had a reputation for being aggressive and flexing its political muscle when necessary. Big names surrounded the company in the 1990s.
Vernon Jordan, former President Bill Clinton’s lawyer and golfing buddy, was a general counsel. Its lobbyists included Gale Norton, who left the company to become U.S. secretary of the interior.
In 1998, Davenport sold the company for $580 million to the United Kingdom investment firm Newmall Ltd.
Leaving aside the obvious take that sleaziness and conflicts of interest are all over this thing. Mr. Davenport Invests about $130 million and 6 years later after the contracts are signed sells the whole thing for $580 million.
I’m 100% for free enterprise and market forces but using public laws and public financing to force every citizen in the state to use your product and making a profit off of that is not free markets, it is government coercion.
The next time you hear from someone that your $19.50 goes to “clean air”. Ask them how it works that Mr. Davenport clearing $450 million in profit helps clean our air.
Filed under: Politics by — Dave @ 4:59 pm
This paragraph was borrowed from the website, Hotwire - Car-tels and Car-Bolics.Â*Â* (T. Crane)
I have attempted to find contact details for the maverick and illusive Mr. Moulten - head of Alchemy Partners - so far without result.
In the meantime further research has produced some VERY interesting background and track-record info: in 1998 for example Alchemy acquired Envirotest Systems a US emissions-testing company in a 650 million dollar deal.
In order to properly discuss the subject of auto emissions testing one should know something of the history of the Envirotest Company and how it came to be the primary company for testing auto emissions.
A reading of the enclosed articles which I have extracted from the web and given attribution will reveal that the Envirotest Company had its beginnings with a man by the name of Chester Davenport who has a rather interesting background.
You will also learn that the Envirotest Company was sold to an English firm called Alchemy Partners headed up by a man named Jon Moulton.Â*Â*The company was sold to the English for $580 million dollars which gave Chester Davenport a profit of approximately $450 million dollars.
Basically speaking, if you go to the web and type in Chester Davenport, you will find all kinds of interesting information.Â*Â*The same holds true for Alchemy Partners.Â*Â* Oh yes, and by the way, Alchemy Partners is one of the largest pub owners in England the last time that I checked.Â*Â*They own approximately 5,000 pubs!
The moral of the story is an old one and that is, "Follow the money."
Best wishes,
Tom Crane
The following was taken from the website, "NixGuy.com. (T. Crane)
Envirotest’s beginnings go back to 1990. That’s when Slivy C. Edmonds and Chester Davenport, a lawyer and a former assistant secretary of transportation under President Jimmy Carter, purchased an emissions testing firm. They were gambling that their business — Georgetown Partners of Bethesda, Md. — could profit from pending federal clean-air rules.
With backing from a European bank, Edmonds and Davenport paid $51 million for United Technology’s Hamilton Test Systems, an Arizona-based company that had emissions testing contracts in four states.
In 1992, they went after Hamilton’s biggest competitor, Systems Control Inc., which had emissions testing contracts in five states. They bought it for $83.5 million and in 1993 named the merged company Envirotest Systems Corp. Shortly after that, Edmonds left the company.
From the beginning, Envirotest had a reputation for being aggressive and flexing its political muscle when necessary. Big names surrounded the company in the 1990s.
Vernon Jordan, former President Bill Clinton’s lawyer and golfing buddy, was a general counsel. Its lobbyists included Gale Norton, who left the company to become U.S. secretary of the interior.
In 1998, Davenport sold the company for $580 million to the United Kingdom investment firm Newmall Ltd.
Leaving aside the obvious take that sleaziness and conflicts of interest are all over this thing. Mr. Davenport Invests about $130 million and 6 years later after the contracts are signed sells the whole thing for $580 million.
I’m 100% for free enterprise and market forces but using public laws and public financing to force every citizen in the state to use your product and making a profit off of that is not free markets, it is government coercion.
The next time you hear from someone that your $19.50 goes to “clean air”. Ask them how it works that Mr. Davenport clearing $450 million in profit helps clean our air.
Filed under: Politics by — Dave @ 4:59 pm
This paragraph was borrowed from the website, Hotwire - Car-tels and Car-Bolics.Â*Â* (T. Crane)
I have attempted to find contact details for the maverick and illusive Mr. Moulten - head of Alchemy Partners - so far without result.
In the meantime further research has produced some VERY interesting background and track-record info: in 1998 for example Alchemy acquired Envirotest Systems a US emissions-testing company in a 650 million dollar deal.