Todd J Christie

Todd Christie was a senior managing director of Spear Leeds and Kellogg. He and Robert Luckow were in charge of Spear Leeds and Kellogg Specialists, the largest specialist firm at the New York Stock Exchange. When Goldman Sachs bought the company in 2000 for more than $6 billion, Todd Christie’s piece of the deal amounted to about $60 million. Christie became a senior managing director of Goldman Sachs and remained as co-President of SLK Specialists. Todd Christie resigned in March 2003, although he says that his departure was not related to the inquiry and that he did not find out until months later that he was among the traders being investigated. When the United States attorney in Manhattan, David N. Kelley, secured criminal indictments against 15 traders at the firm in 2005, Todd Christie was spared, and faced only civil fraud charges along with four other traders. Todd Christie began giving tens of thousands of dollars to New Jersey’s Republican county chairmen in 2001, at a time when they were deciding whom to recommend that the Bush administration nominate as the state’s United States attorney. Three months after his brother was sworn in at that job, Todd Christie wrote a $225,000 check to the Republican National Committee. He went on to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to party leaders in New Jersey and across the country who ultimately rallied behind his brother’s bid for governor. He said he would limit his involvement in government affairs to ensure that he and his current investment firm, Big Blue Trading L.L.C., did not become a political issue.