Lobbyist Built a Career On Unconventional Wisdom

Bankers Join Merger Trend

---

It's incredible how thinly industries can slice themselves into trade associations. For example, for years there's been the venerable American Bankers Association (ABA) and the more homespun America's Community Bankers.

But not for long. Yesterday, the $80 million ABA agreed to combine with the nearly $20 million community bankers group to form a new organization that will retain the American Bankers Association name. The community bankers group is mostly made up of savings-and-loan and mutual savings institutions, which these days are largely indistinguishable from other banks.

That's a big reason the two almost merged eight years ago and finally will get around to it in November. The combined organization will be headed by Edward L. Yingling of the ABA. The community bankers' Diane Casey-Landry will be chief operating officer.

Trade groups have been merging a lot lately, but nowhere more conspicuously than in financial services, where the industry itself has seen a major merger mania. Infamously, the lobby groups for stock and bond sellers recently merged into the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, and for a brief, unhappy time had two chief executives -- one from each predecessor group.

Yingling said the bankers groups are getting together to cut down on duplication (eliminating separate annual conventions, for instance) and to use the savings to invest in training for executives about ever-changing banking regulations.

Although the groups fought pitched battles in the 1980s, lately they have been allies on policy, another reason staying apart did not make sense. Besides, the groups' state-based affiliates had already merged in 23 states, including California, Texas and Florida.

Typical. Washington is always the last to act.

Private Equity's Public Push

---

The four-month-old Private Equity Council, the lobby for the private equity industry, has barely had enough time to set up its offices. In fact, it's still in a temporary space and has only four employees.

But it has already reaped the whirlwind. Lawmakers, angered by the industry's multibillion-dollar payouts, are proposing to get rid of a key tax break that allows the beneficiaries of these huge pools of cash to pay income taxes at low capital gains rates.

To combat this threat, the council has retained veteran Democratic tax lobbyists Robert J. Leonard of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Jon Talisman of Capitol Tax Partners. Also hired for their Democratic connections are Norman Brownstein of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and Jeffrey Peck of Johnson, Madigan, Peck, Boland & Stewart. More expert help is on the way. They'll need it.

Moonlighter of the Week

---

Congressman-turned-lobbyist Gerald E. Sikorski (D-Minn.) spends his weekdays advocating for the likes of Thomson Corp. and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. On weekends, he sculpts.

He has painstakingly crafted hawks, owls and other animals out of marble, all with the idea of creating beauty as well as some inner peace -- neither of which he gets much of on K Street.

"You put your hand on a piece of stone, and you can feel something," the 59-year-old Holland & Knight partner said. "If you carve it, it becomes something; there's a spirit of the matter there."

If that sounds Zen-like, it is. Sikorski has been offered many thousands of dollars for his artwork, but he has refused to sell. "If it changes over into that dynamic, what happens is you calculate all the hours and effort you put into it and it cheapens the thing," he said. Instead, he gives his sculptures away, mostly to relatives, and revels in the process of creation free of deadlines and mercenary concerns.

Working outdoors for 10 hours at a stretch, he is able to concentrate on something besides his day job. "It gives you a chance to clear your head," he said. "The hamster stops spinning in a circle."

Please send e-mail to kstreet@washpost.com.