Mayor Rahm Emanuel is wrapping up a trade trip to China and Japan during which he met with a company that plans to build the newest version of Chicago’s “L” cars, made a pair of jobs announcements and signed an official partnership agreement with the Japanese government.
However, Emanuel also did plenty of business behind the scenes in corporate boardrooms and at formal dinners, holding talks with executives of several Chinese and Japanese companies and top government officials.
Along for the ride with the mayor: A 44-member delegation made up mostly of Chicago business heavyweights, including donors with ties to nearly $2 million in contributions to Emanuel’s campaign, top City Hall lobbyists and representatives of developers looking to build on some of the city’s highest-profile available real estate.
In response to Tribune requests, Emanuel’s office released an itinerary detailing many of the meetings he held in Asia, but it declined to detail which members of the delegation participated in the mayor’s talks with foreign government officials and business executives. His office also did not disclose several of the meetings altogether because doing so could jeopardize efforts to recruit companies to Chicago, Emanuel spokesman Grant Klinzman said.
When the mayor’s plane touches down at O’Hare International Airport this weekend, he will return with two of his public objectives met: He stirred up media coverage both here and abroad by presenting his job recruitment efforts in spite of President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war with China, and he demonstrated his latest efforts to drive foreign investment into Chicago.
What happened privately may carry just as much weight, though. The re-election-seeking mayor can remind the business leaders who joined him on the 14,000-mile trip how he helped open doors to top Chinese and Japanese government and business officials.
In China, for example, members of the delegation participated in a daylong investment forum. They were paired with representatives from more than 300 Chinese businesses recruited as part of a 2013 agreement Chicago signed with eight major Chinese cities to improve trade and expand business. In Tokyo, the Chicago business leaders took part in a similar forum, according to Emanuel’s schedule.
“Chicago is a global market and there are a number of business leaders from the city who are part of our effort to drive new investment into it from across the world,” Klinzman said. “Foreign investment in Chicago creates jobs in Chicago.”
Joining Emanuel in Asia were executives from major companies JPMorgan Chase, SAP, Abbott, KPMG and financial firms Loop Capital and Mesirow Financial, as well as several real estate developers and top officials with the world’s two largest commercial real estate services firms — Chicago-based JLL and CBRE, according to a delegation list provided by the mayor’s office in response to a Tribune request.
World Business Chicago, the quasi-governmental agency that is funded in part by taxpayer money, paid the way for Emanuel and an unspecified number of other government and nonprofit officials. Business leaders paid for themselves, Klinzman said. World Business Chicago did not respond to repeated requests to disclose whose travel it paid for. It is run by Emanuel and close confidant and top campaign donor Michael Sacks, the CEO of investment firm GCM Grosvenor, who did not attend.
Ten people who did travel to Asia with the mayor have ties to $1.85 million in campaign contributions to Emanuel, a Tribune analysis of campaign finance records shows. When the mayor traveled to the Vatican in 2016 for the elevation ceremony of Cardinal Blase Cupich, he took 24 top political backers with ties to $5.5 million in campaign contributions, the Tribune previously reported.
On this trip, one of the mayor’s most reliable campaign donors joined him in Asia: Rajiv Fernando, who founded the high-speed trading firm Chopper Trading and has since started the software company Workstorm. Fernando was a major bundler for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, and he has held a fundraiser for Emanuel at his Bucktown home and personally has contributed $135,900 to the mayor’s campaign funds. His onetime employees at Chopper chipped in another $37,500, state campaign finance records show.
Chopper was one of several high-speed trading firms that benefited from avoiding stricter federal regulations after Emanuel joined Chicago trading executives at a 2011 meeting in Washington with federal regulators as the Obama administration drafted new Dodd-Frank financial regulation rules, the Tribune has reported. Fernando last contributed $4,100 to Emanuel’s campaign in 2017, before the state contribution limits in the February 2019 mayor’s race were lifted after millionaire businessman Willie Wilson decided to self-fund his campaign.
Fernando drew national headlines and criticism from Trump during the 2016 presidential race. Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails showed her top aides had rushed a security clearance so Fernando could be appointed to the International Security Advisory Board, a panel that advises the secretary of state on national security and nuclear weapons. Critics questioned Fernando’s qualifications, but his allies countered that he had become a cybersecurity expert.
Emanuel’s office did not respond to questions about why Fernando was on the trip. Workstorm spokeswoman Katherine Huded did not offer a specific reason, other than to say he was “participating in investment forums to support business efforts.”
Another Emanuel donor on the trip was Albert Friedman, often referred to as the unofficial mayor of River North for his integral role in redeveloping the downtown neighborhood filled with offices, condos and restaurants. The CEO of Friedman Properties has contributed $55,300 to Emanuel’s campaign, records show.
Top City Hall lobbyist William Singer also went. Friedman pays Singer $5,000 per month to serve as his City Hall lobbyist, records show. An attorney who served as alderman for the 43rd Ward during the 1970s, Singer was fined $25,000 last year by the Chicago Board of Ethics after a Tribune report detailed possible lobbying violations found in Emanuel’s personal emails.
The report noted how Singer failed to register as a lobbyist after emailing Emanuel on behalf of his lobbying client United Airlines about a deal at O’Hare. Singer contributed $7,500 to Emanuel’s campaign before the mayor was elected and stopped accepting contributions from registered lobbyists.
A representative for Illinois’ wealthiest man, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, also went to Asia with Emanuel. The hedge fund founder who also is a key ally and financial backer of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner personally has contributed $1.29 million to Emanuel-aligned campaign funds. His ex-wife, Ann Dias Griffin, contributed an additional $125,300 to the mayor while the two were still married, records show. Citadel Securities’ global head of business development, Jamil Nazarali, made the trip. He has given $2,500 to the mayor’s campaign.
Some of the other Emanuel campaign donors who went along: Howard Tullman, the former CEO of tech incubator 1871 who is now executive director of the Kaplan Institute at the Illinois Institute of Technology; Michelle Shang, president of the Asian American Advisory Council; and Meredith O’Connor, executive managing director of JLL.
Dave Sylvester, the organizing leader with Sheet Metal Workers Local 73, also traveled with the mayor. The union’s political funds have contributed $166,400 to Emanuel’s campaign, records show.
According to the mayor’s office, Sylvester joined Emanuel when he met in Beijing with executives from CRRC Sifang, which has planned to replace half of the city’s train fleet with “L” cars manufactured at new Southeast Side facility. Emanuel’s official Twitter account tweeted that he was “on a mission to save jobs threatened by a trade war” alongside a photo of the meeting. In an interview with the Tribune before the trip, however, Emanuel acknowledged there was no specific threat to the deal, but he noted uncertainty surrounded trade between the two countries.
“I’m not taking any chances,” another Emanuel tweet about the meeting stated. Sylvester participated in the talks because his union represents the Chicago workers who would build the train cars for the company, Klinzman said.
In addition to Friedman, another developer with a representative on the trip was Farpoint Development. It’s working to redevelop the old Michael Reese Hospital site, which Emanuel’s administration decided to sell to Farpoint for more than $140 million. The company’s CEO, Scott Goldman, previously co-founded real estate giant Sterling Bay and contributed $5,000 to the mayor’s campaign when he worked for that firm.
Another member of the delegation with development ties is Baker & McKenzie partner Michael Morkin, who represented and lobbied on behalf of Emerald Living, an Irish developer who planned to build as many as 20,000 homes on the 440-acre former site of the U.S. Steel South Works plant on the south lakefront. The developer walked away from the deal in May after it couldn’t reach a final agreement with U.S. Steel, which has started to market the large parcel again.
In another strong signal that real estate discussions were a major component of the trip, city planning commissioner David Reifman attended, as did Plan Commission Chairman Martin Cabrera. His Cabrera Capital Markets also has received city bond business. Plan Commission Vice Chair Smita Shah, CEO of SPANN Tech Inc., also traveled with Emanuel.
So did top City Hall lobbyist Mike Alvarez, who has close ties to the mayor. Among the companies on Alvarez’s long client list: Motorola, Comcast, Ford, Uber, American Airlines, United HealthCare, ComEd, Verizon and several real estate developers, including Sterling Bay and Related Midwest.
While it’s unclear exactly what meetings some of the delegation members joined Emanuel in, the mayor’s office did release a list of some of the companies and government officials he met with.
In China, they included HNA Group Co., a wide-ranging company that owns a major stake in Hilton hotels and several international airline carriers; auto parts manufacturer Wanxiang; China Railway Signal & Communication Co.; Bank of China; Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan; Chinese Commerce Minister Zhong Shan; and Beijing Mayor Jining Chen.
In Japan, Emanuel met with Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike, Japan State Minister of Foreign Affairs Kazuyuki Nakane, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasutoshi Nishimura and Takeshi Niinami, the CEO of Japanese brewing and distilling company Suntory Ltd. Emanuel also participated in an investment forum and a dinner and reception with a number of Japanese companies, according to the mayor’s office, which did not identify some of his meetings in Japan.
While abroad, the mayor announced that the Bank of China was doubling the size of its Chicago office to 65 employees. He also reiterated a 3-month-old announcement that Komatsu, one of the world’s largest equipment manufacturers, was moving its U.S. headquarters from Rolling Meadows to Chicago. And Emanuel signed a partnership agreement with Nakane to collaborate on a range of issues from climate change to manufacturing — the first such agreement the Japanese government has signed with any city, the mayor’s office said.
Others who attended as part of Emanuel’s delegation:
— Mesirow Financial’s senior managing directors Ali Muj and Steve SwierczewskI
— Jeffrey Amsel, vice president at HERE Technologies
— Serhat Cicekoglu, founder of Sente Advisory Services
— Robert Clary, principal for international tax at KPMG
— James Otto, senior vice president CBRE Group
— Loop Capital CEO Jim Reynolds and managing director Rita Ho
— Lam Kingsley, assistant vice president JPMorgan Chase
— Alex Meyer, vice president of global business development at SAP
— Marie Kissel, senior advisor at Abbott
— Mark Lawrence, SpotHero CEO
— Steve Hugh, Chicago leader for AT International
— Pubin Liang, Hainan Airlines North America general manager
— Daniel McLaughlin, executive director of Chicagoland Associate General Contractors
— Rumi Morales, partner at Outlier Ventures
— Jon Samuels, partner at Vistria Group
— Lu Wang, managing partner of China Innovation Venture Partners
— Jeffrey Wright, Gold Leaf Capital Partners
— Kefei Xu, Chicago senior vice president and general manager for Bank of China
— Andrea Zopp, CEO of World Business Chicago
— Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson, 11th
— Ald. Michelle Harris, 8th
— Ald. Margaret Laurino, 39th
— Rebecca Shi, executive director the Illinois Business Immigration Coalition
— Bart Moy, director of the advisory council on Asian affairs for the Chicago Commission on Human Relations
— Dennis Mondero, executive director of the Chinese Mutual Aid Association
— Jason Lesniewicz, director of cultural tourism for Choose Chicago
— Tarrah Cooper, former Emanuel press secretary and partner at Rise Strategy Group
bruthhart@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @BillRuthhart
