HARTFORD — With a financial career of more than 30 years, Republican Bob Stefanowski cites his business accomplishments as his calling card to become the next governor of Connecticut.
But Democrats have been hammering away at Stefanowski’s record for more than six weeks as they directly target his top asset in a rematch of a race he lost four years ago to Democrat Ned Lamont by only three percentage points.
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While touting his own business career with major corporations such as UBS and General Electric Co., Stefanowski is simultaneously questioning Lamont’s experience in creating a company that bore his name and specialized in installing cable television at more than 220 colleges and universities in about 40 states before the firm was sold in 2015.
Standing Thursday near the State Pier in New London where major renovations have generated cost overruns of nearly $150 million, Stefanowski said the spending problem would never have happened if he had been governor. Private companies involved in the deal, he said, would have paid the cost overruns, rather than having the state pay the bill as is being done under Lamont.
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“He doesn’t have the experience. He ran a small cable company,” Stefanowski said. “He’s never done multibillion-dollar deals. I have. … That’s the difference between a business leader and a guy who ran a small cable company who could care less about the taxpayers of Connecticut.”
The money from the cost overruns, he said, could have been spent for better purposes.
“You know what that $150 million could have been used for? To improve education,” Stefanowski said, surrounded by Republican state legislators. “We’re down 400 state troopers. You know what that $150 million could have been used for? To refill the trooper ranks and keep people safe. Absolutely disgusting.”
The Democratic Governors Association, through a super PAC, has been broadcasting commercials to remind voters about Stefanowski’s years as the chief executive officer for a payday loan company that was known for making high-interest loans to working-class borrowers.
“What do you really know about Bob Stefanowski?” a narrator asks ominously in a commercial. “He made millions running a payday loan company that charged working people up to 450% interest. His economic plans are so extreme they would create a massive budget deficit.”
Before heading the loan company, Stefanowski held key positions for 13 years at GE, which was based in Fairfield in its heyday before moving to Boston and essentially collapsing; GE will break up key parts of the company over the next two years.
Stefanowski also worked for three years in London as chief financial officer of the UBS Investment Bank — one of the giants in the investment world.
While the Democratic governors have focused sharply on Stefanowski’s business background, Lamont said he did not have any immediate plans to target Stefanowski’s business background in the same way as the Democratic governors.
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“Me? I don’t think so,” Lamont told The Courant. “The DGA does their thing. I am apart from that. I’m sticking to what we’ve got going right for the state over the next four years. His business is his business.”
But Lamont brought up Stefanowski’s tenure at GE, which was once routinely among the most valuable and most iconic companies in the nation. The company was worth more than $500 billion in its heyday in 2000, but the value of company has since fallen to about $82.5 billion.
“If his argument is ‘I’m going to do for Connecticut what I did for GE,’ that’s not a great story,” Lamont said. “Look what happened to GE. … It’s broken up, sold off to China and other places.”
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During his long career, Stefanowski, now 60, also worked for three years at 3i Group, a venture capital and investment firm based in London. He served as chairman and managing partner for the Americas and Asia as he oversaw $1.5 billion in investments.
One of the companies owned by 3i during Stefanowski’s tenure was called “Buy As You View.”
In an interview, Stefanowski conceded the retailing firm was unusual in that it would make loans for television sets, furniture and home appliances — and actually collected money by installing a meter on the borrower’s television set. Low-income customers would pay off high-interest loans by placing coins into the meter, and the television set could be turned off if the borrower failed to pay. The item could also be repossessed.
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While the concept might sound strange in the United States, it became common in low-income neighborhoods in Great Britain.
But customers complained bitterly about sky-high interest rates, leading to an investigation by the financial services regulator known as the Financial Conduct Authority. Buy As You View eventually settled in 2016 to pay the equivalent of about $1 million to nearly 60,000 customers that covered the period from 2001 through 2015.
Stefanowski served as chairman from 2008 to 2011, but he noted that he had left 3i before the settlement in 2016. Buy As You View had been purchased by 3i in 2004.
“I had nothing to do with it,” Stefanowski told The Courant. “I’ve got to look at the dates, but I had nothing to do with it. The deal was closed before I was there. I was never on the account. I barely knew about it.”
The details about 3i never became public during the contentious 2018 gubernatorial campaign with Lamont — when Stefanowski was criticized for running a separate payday loan company.
“That sounds like Democratic opposition research,” Stefanowski said. “Tell them to keep digging. … These guys are unbelievable.”
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Stefanowski said that he expected more research into his business background during the final two months of the campaign.
“I got such a root canal the first time around, let ‘em dig,” he said.
Lauren Gray, a spokeswoman for Connecticut Democrats, said the problems at 3i were similar to problems at DFC Global, a payday lender where Stefanowski served as chief executive officer from 2014 to 2017.
“No matter what he says, all of this was going on while he was there,” Gray said of 3i. “He’s still responsible for what his company was doing. … He knows what kind of companies he was involved with. The reason he thinks he got a root canal last time was because he was the CEO of shady businesses.”
Concerning the business records of the candidates, Gray said, “He wants to take hits on Lamont for his businesses, but Lamont wasn’t taking money away from vulnerable people and vulnerable families. If he wants to criticize Lamont’s business experience, Bob is nothing but bad for business and bad for Connecticut.”
After the settlement in 2016, the chief executive officer of Buy As You View was quoted on a website as apologizing to consumers.
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“We have worked closely with the [financial regulator] in recent months to address these issues, and I am sorry to any of our customers who may have experienced difficulties as a result of us not achieving the high standards we set ourselves,” said Graham Clarke, the CEO. “We have gone further than the recommendations in the review by making additional changes to our operations. As we continue on our transformational journey, our aim is to be the most responsible lender in the sector.”
In a video that is still available on YouTube, Stefanowski spoke about why he switched to become the chief executive officer at the payday loan company after working at much larger companies.
“My prior role was CFO of UBS Investment Bank in London,” Stefanowski said in a panel discussion at a conference in 2016. “And when I took this role, everybody said, ‘What? Are you crazy? You’re going to go from that to being CEO of a pawn shop?’ There’s a bunch of reasons I did it. The one that I want to talk about today is that I truly believe there is a segment of the population that needs our product. The banks do not serve it right now. Most of our customers cannot get a bank account.”
He added, “The public sector has not found a solution to the problem. The issue with the industry is they got a little bit greedy, and they took advantage of people when they didn’t necessarily have to. … So what are some of the tangible things we’ve done? We introduced a term-loan product in California and up in Canada. It’s still a 60% annual percentage interest rate, but it’s not 1,000% like a payday loan is.”
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Noting the cost overruns in New London and other problems in state government, Stefanowski cited his corporate experience and said Lamont needs to solve problems by firing employees or going to their supervisors to force them out.
“That’s what I used to do in the corporate world,” Stefanowski told reporters. “It’s not a lot of fun.”
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Stefanowski held high-level positions at GE under then-CEO Jack Welch when the company was known for dismissing under-performing employees.
“There were two rules when I was in corporate,” Stefanowski said. “Either they didn’t know about it, and you should have — and you’re fired. Or you knew about it, and you didn’t say anything, and once again, you’re out.”
Stefanowski circled back to Lamont running a cable company with 100 employees, which he did before his current job running a massive state bureaucracy with about 50,000 employees and an annual budget of $24.2 billion.
“Number one, I think it’s pretty clear that Gov. Lamont is in over his head,” Stefanowski said. “I guess he’s a decent guy, but he’s not up to the job.”
But Lamont’s campaign spokesman, Jake Lewis, said Lamont immediately made changes and imposed oversight from the state budget office when problems surfaced at the state pier in New London.
“With his campaign in chaos, Bob Stefanowski is again stooping to desperate attacks that have no basis in reality,” Lewis said. “The facts speak for themselves. Within six months of taking office, Gov. Lamont installed new leadership and created strict controls to further improve accountability and transparency. … [The] sideshow from Stefanowski is just the latest attempt to distract from his own flailing campaign.”
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Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com.
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