Lavish Conferences
The group is known for hosting a lavish annual meeting that has returned to Las Vegas after moving to less glitzy locations after the 2008 financial crisis. It took place in January at the Aria Hotel and Convention Center, home to Cirque du Soleil’s show “Zarkana.” Attendance totaled more than 5,300, Deutsch said at the time.
The ASF makes much of its money through conferences, said the people familiar with the matter. In Las Vegas this year, members paid as much as $1,810 to attend when registering on site, while costs for non-members were up to $2,560, according to the ASF website.
Sifma Split
The association was founded in 2002 as part of Sifma, Wall Street’s biggest lobbying group. In 2010, it split off from Sifma -- a contentious divorce, during which Deutsch was allowed to set up the ASF as a separate entity with himself as the sole member and director of the new organization, one of the people said.
That governing structure was supposed to be temporary though it persists, and a committee established to negotiate with Deutsch has made little headway on a new arrangement, the person said.
Deutsch faced an earlier round of defections last year over governance complaints highlighted in a letter of resignation to the board from Vernon Wright, its first chairman. Directors weren’t permitted to review some financial information, including staff pay, and had no legal control over the group, wrote Wright, an ASF founder who was chief financial officer of credit-card issuer MBNA Corp.
The “corporate-governance concerns lead me to the conclusion that the executive director is not being properly supervised,” he wrote.