Excerpts: “Former Interim Chief To Head KinderCare”
- KinderCare Learning Centers Inc., the child-care company that got into financial difficulties with investments in “junk bonds,” said yesterday that its president and chief executive had resigned and that Tull Gearreald, an investment banker, was returning to head the company.
- Mr. Gearreald, 45 years old, is leaving after two months as head of investment banking for UBS Securities Inc., a New York unit of the Union Bank of Switzerland. He recently left as a principal of The Lodestar Group, an investment firm that owns 63 percent of Kinder-Care.
- Mr. Gearreald, who said he was no longer connected with Lodestar, was a partner and founder of the firm, along with Ken Miller, who is Lodestar’s president and the chairman of KinderCare, and Robert Baldwin, a former chief executive of Morgan Stanley.
- With 1,250 centers, KinderCare is the largest child-care operation in the United States. But it has had its problems. A former president, Richard J. Grassgreen, pleaded guilty to felony charges in October involving investments and securities transactions. He cooperated in the Government’s case involving Michael R. Milken, the former junk bond chief at Drexel Burnham Lambert.
Source: New York Times