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Spitzer to Study Minority Directors

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From Associated Press and Bloomberg News

New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer said Tuesday that his civil rights unit would study minority representation on corporate boards and whether state law governed how those boards were put together.

“We’re just going to take a look and see how the state laws might or might not apply,” Spitzer said at a breakfast in New York opening the 2005 Wall Street Project, a conference on economic equality organized by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow/PUSH civil rights organization.

Spitzer spokesman Darren Dopp later said the inquiry would not be a formal investigation. He said the look at minority representation on corporate boards would involve gathering information and assisting Jackson’s coalition, which is seeking to increase diversity in corporate boardrooms.

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The conference is aimed generally at increasing economic opportunity for minority communities.

Jackson presented data showing that minorities are only a small percentage of corporate board members, and manage only tiny fractions of the vast amounts of money flowing through the financial world.

Spitzer, who has gained national attention with investigations of alleged abusive practices among Wall Street brokerages and in the mutual fund and insurance industries, announced in December that he would seek the Democratic nomination for governor of New York.

Addressing the issue of so-called predatory lending to minority communities, Spitzer said there were effective laws against such practices, but he added that “there is a genuine effort underfoot right now to undercut the enforcement of those laws.”

He criticized federal efforts to have national banks exempted from state consumer protection laws.

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