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In a lengthy article on the cover of its business section, The New York Times profiles the billionaire who "owns significant chunks of central Detroit," as reporter Julie Creswell puts it.
Her 2,600-word feature about Dan Gilbert and Quicken Loans presents a generally balanced view of his impact on Detroit and the mortgage industry. Positive assessments ("visionary leader") mix with a past embarrassment ("punching a former colleague").
Dan Gilbert "often strikes a pugnacious stance," The Times says.
The main peg for this in-depth report Sunday on Quicken and "its feisty CEO" is a federal false-claims lawsuit filed in 2015:
The Department of Justice charged that, among other things, the company misrepresented borrowers’ income or credit scores, or inflated appraisals, in order to qualify for Federal Housing Administration insurance. As a result, when those loans soured, the government says that taxpayers — not Quicken loans — suffered millions of dollars in losses. . . .
Mr. Gilbert said that his company has been unfairly targeted. “You want to know what this case is about?” he said. “Somebody probably put up a whiteboard and said, ‘Here are the 10 largest F.H.A. lenders, now go and collect settlements from them, regardless of whether they did anything wrong.’”
In court documents, Quicken argues it has the lowest default rates in the F.H.A. program. It projects the government will reap $5.7 billion in net profits from the insurance premiums for loans made from 2007 to 2013, after paying out any claims.
Gilbert's "aggressive move" to file a counter-suit (later dismissed) "reflects the in-your-face style of Quicken Loans' chief executive," writes Creswell, a Times writer since 2005.
These are among other strokes in her portrait:
- "Considered by many to be a visionary leader, Mr. Gilbert often strikes a pugnacious stance."
- "These days, Mr. Gilbert appears to be itching for a fight with the Justice Department."
- "Through his commercial real estate properties, Mr. Gilbert can decide which tenants fit into his vision for downtown Detroit, and which don’t."
- In 2009, "Mr. Gilbert got into an altercation at a bar mitzvah, punching a former colleague, David Hall, in the head before he was escorted out by security, according to interviews conducted by the Birmingham Police Department." (He wasn't charged.)
Sunday's section-front article.
Anecdotes also include a misunderstanding by Gilbert during the reporting process:
After sending text messages about this article to a reporter at The New York Times but not receiving a response — Mr. Gilbert was texting her landline number by accident — he followed up with an email accusing the reporter of disconnecting her mobile phone to avoid him. The phone “likely is one of your temporary numbers that you deploy for the surreptitious work that you do,” he wrote.
When alerted to the misunderstanding, Mr. Gilbert apologized “for any of it that was caused on my end.”
On the positive side, The Times notes that the Detroit mogul "has built a game-changing company in the once-staid mortgage lending industry."
Mr. Gilbert founded [Quicken] in 1985, sold it to Intuit in 1999 and then bought it back with other investors in 2002.
Creswell, who interviewed her profile subject here in late November, describes downtown Detroit as "a sort of Quickenville" and characterizes "the whimsical, irreverent atmosphere" of Quicken headquarters as "a place where 'Glengarry Glen Ross' meets Seussville." She even mentions his use of the Comic Sans font in documents, a target of online ridicule.
The back-and-forth includes pushback from his corporate communications department:
When Mr. Gilbert was asked in an email if he “often strikes a ‘combative stance’ or ‘frequently attacks his critics,’” a Quicken Loans spokesman responded in an email:
“It’s interesting that when someone with as long and successful career as Mr. Gilbert is forced to defend his integrity and honor from old and/or insignificant already rehashed incidents and accusations from a media source as credible as The NY Times, you would imply that doing such is ‘frequently attacking’ his critics.”
Welcome to Quickenville, Julie Creswell.
