The list includes the director of a Dallas bank, the owner of a multi-million dollar shooting range, the founder of a well-known hedge fund, a former vice president of the world’s largest corporation, numerous Texas billionaires and politicians, Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton and Jeb Bush, the son and brother of two U.S. presidents who recently ended his own bid for the White House.
These rich and powerful people, along with some less-well-known names, were listed on a single-page document that was attached to a 2013 confidentiality agreement signed by Mark Ryan, the director of business development for Ranger Scientific — the new company that proposed building a $50 million ammunition manufacturing plant in Eastern Kanawha County at the end of May.
Ryan did not return calls or emails about the document, which was drafted in 2013 when he and his colleagues were trying to create another multi-million ammunition plant in Mineral Wells, Texas, under the name Ultra Precision Ammunition. It is not clear what the high-profile list was used for.
But the legal document defines the people on the list as “sources, contacts or their affiliates” that Ryan and Ultra Precision Ammunition were introducing to the other business executive involved in the contract. The legal agreement, which became invalid in December 2015, says the other business executive “shall not solicit any business” from those people.
The document was obtained by the Gazette-Mail under the condition that the other party in the agreement would not be named, for fear of association.
Many of the names on the 34-person list could headline a who’s who for the Dallas-Fort Worth area. More than a few can be found on Forbes’ list of the country’s richest people.
There is David Bonderman, the billionaire founder of TPG Capital, one of the largest private-equity investment firms in the world; members of the Howard Walsh family, one of Fort Worth’s most well-known names and philanthropic sources; Robert, Sid and Edward Bass, three of four brothers who inherited billions of dollars made in the oil and gas industry; Bo French, the former business partner of U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, who was featured in the 2014 film “American Sniper”; and George P. Bush, Jeb Bush’s son, who holds a statewide elected office of his own in Texas.
While not all of the people on the list could be reached for this report, some of the more prominent people included on Ryan’s “initial sources” document said they have never met him, had no idea what Ultra Precision Ammunition was and never gave him permission to use their names.
“I have never heard of this company or these people,” said Kyle Bass, [no relation to the four Bass brothers] the founder of Hayman Capital Management, a well-known Dallas-based hedge fund that made millions by betting against the sub-prime mortgage market in 2007.
His hedge fund, which only takes investments of $5 million or more, receives business pitches all the time, but Kyle Bass and Hayman Capital’s attorney said they had no recollection of ever meeting with or communicating with Ryan or any of his associates. They went back and reviewed the hedge fund’s email accounts and found nothing related to Ryan or Ultra Precision Ammunition.
Others who were included in the document were just as confused by their name showing up on the previously undisclosed list.
“I have no idea who those guys are,” said Dean Sanders, the former executive vice president of Wal-Mart and later president of Sam’s Club. “I’ve never heard of them. I have never invested any money with them. I don’t invest in ammunition plants.”
Sanders, who now lives in Texas, also was confused as to why the document listed his place of residence as Bentonville, Arkansas, where Wal-Mart is headquartered. Sanders has not been an executive of Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club for more than 20 years.
The document seems to include other mistakes, as well. Perry Bass, the father of the four billionaire brothers, is listed in the 2013 document but died in 2006. Howard Walsh, the patriarch of his well-known family, also is listed, but he died in 1998.
“It’s a strange list of people, I will say that much,” Sanders said.
Spokespeople for Walton and Bonderman — two of the richest people on the list — said neither had any connection to Ryan or Ultra Precision Ammunition. French, the Bass family, the Walsh family and both members of the Bush family were unable to be reached for this report.
Steve Butcher, director of the economic development authority in the Mineral Wells, Texas, area, whose name also is on the list, declined to comment, as did Scott Allen, an accountant in Fort Worth, who was listed on the document as Ultra Precision Ammunition’s chief financial officer.
Several of the other less-recognized people on the list did respond, and while several had met Ryan in passing and were told about the proposal to build an ammunition plant in Mineral Wells, they had no idea that Ryan was distributing their names in any type of legal document or “source” list.
Susan Foster, who is now a real estate agent in Fort Worth, said she’d casually met Ryan a couple years ago and that he had pitched her the plan to build the multi-million dollar bullet factory in Texas.
At the time, Foster said, she was working on fundraising private money for a wildlife center and that Ryan had asked her to push his company’s idea to some of the private donors she was already courting.
“They just wanted into my network,” she said.
Foster has connections with people involved in the military, she said, and thought the bullet plant was a good idea. But she never found anyone interested in Ryan’s proposal.
“I never made any worthwhile introductions,” Foster said. “I never could get anybody to meet with them.”
Now, more than two years later, she is surprised to find that her name was distributed to other people.
“I sure didn’t know they were putting my name on that list,” she said.
Jonathan Morris, director of Titan Bank, a national loan company with an office in Dallas, said he spoke with Ryan once, when a mutual acquaintance asked him to meet with the Ultra Precision Ammunition executive.
According to Morris, Ryan pitched him the plan for the Texas factory and then asked if the company could get a loan from his bank.
Morris said he asked Ryan if he had any experience in producing ammunition or if he planned to put any of his own money into the proposed project. When Ryan answered no to both questions, Morris told him there was no way his bank could extend a loan to his proposed ammo company.
At no time, Morris said, did he ever give Ryan permission to share his name with other people.
Van Hipp Jr., chairman of American Defense International, a business development and marketing company that works in the defense industry, said he remembers receiving an email about Ultra Precision Ammunition from Daniel Pearlson, who is now Ranger Scientific’s CEO, but never heard anything after he received a follow-up message informing him that the Texas project wasn’t happening.
Hipp, who served as principal deputy general counsel of the Navy in the early 1990s, laughed when the list was provided to him. He had no idea that his name was being disseminated on a document with members of the Bush family and a bunch of Texas billionaires.
“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “Well, I am in good company with the Waltons.”
Andrew Brown: A journalist's notebook 