An excerpt from:

Influence and bailouts a business tradition in Bush family

By ROBERT TRIGAUX

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 29, 2000

Brother Neil

Silverado failure: In the mid-1980s, Neil served as a director of Denver's Silverado Savings & Loan. The bank loaned more than $100-million to Neil's two partners in JNB Exploration, their unsuccessful oil company. Silverado later failed, in part because Neil's two partners did not repay $132-million in loans. After years of regulatory hand-wringing, Neil was fined $50,000 for ethical lapses. He did not appeal the fine.

Oil deals: Like brother Dubya, Neil went into the oil business with poor results. In 1989, he bailed out of JNB Exploration, the company where he became president with a personal investment of a few hundred dollars. His next company, Apex Energy, was formed with a personal investment of $3,000, plus a $2.3-million loan from the federal government's SBA program. Like JNB, Apex went belly-up with few assets to repay the SBA. Afterward, Bill Daniels, a cable-TV magnate and prominent contributor to President Bush, offered Neil a job.