DealBook: Top Federal Prosecutor of Corporate Crime Will Resign

Lanny A. Breuer, the federal prosecutor who led the Justice Department’s response to corporate crime in the wake of the financial crisis, will announce on Wednesday that he is stepping down after nearly four years in the post.

As head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, one of the most senior roles at the agency, Mr. Breuer tackled corporate bribery and public corruption. But it was his focus on Wall Street that received the most attention, from supporters and critics alike.

While he has come under fire for a dearth of prosecutions on Wall Street in response to the crisis, Mr. Breuer also oversaw an aggressive crackdown on money-laundering and interest-rate manipulation at some of the world’s biggest banks. In two weekslast month, he joined a nearly $2 billion case against HSBC for money-laundering and a $1.5 billion settlement with UBS for rate-rigging. Next week, he is expected to take a similar rate-rigging action against the Royal Bank of Scotland.

“I think the criminal division is a fundamentally different place than it was four years ago,” Mr. Breuer said in an interview. “It’s the highlight of my professional career.”

His departure, effective March 1, was widely expected. Mr. Breuer had told friends for weeks that he was ready to leave the public sector. While he has not announced his next step, it is expected that he will return to private practice. He was previously a partner at Covington & Burling, a white-shoe law firm.

By virtue of his perch at the Justice Department in Washington, Mr. Breuer became the face of Wall Street prosecutions in the aftermath of the financial crisis. But when few such cases materialized, critics like the Occupy Wall Street protesters turned on him, portraying him as an apologist for banks at the center of the mortgage mess.

In contrast, he drew praise for the sweeping crackdown on rate-rigging in the banking industry, which has largely involved international benchmark rates.

In a rate manipulation case last month, Mr. Breuer’s team secured a major payout from UBS and a guilty plea from the bank’s Japanese unit, making UBS the first big global bank in more than two decades to have a subsidiary plead guilty to fraud. Mr. Breuer, who announced the action after rejecting a last-minute plea from the bank’s chairman, also filed criminal charges against two former employees at the bank.

The deal sent a strong signal that the authorities wanted to hold banks responsible for their wrongdoing.

Following the UBS model, the Justice Department is now pursuing a guilty plea from a Royal Bank of Scotland subsidiary in Asia over its role in the interest rate manipulation scandal, people briefed on the matter said. That settlement, which could come as soon as next week, is likely to include more than $650 million in fines imposed by American and British authorities, two other people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

In an interview, Mr. Breuer said the rate-rigging case amounted to “egregious criminal conduct.” He struck a similar tone about two other major financial cases — the convictions of executives from Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, a now-defunct mortgage lender, and the 110-year prison term imposed on R. Allen Stanford for his Ponzi scheme.

Mr. Breuer has also focused on money-laundering, creating a task force in 2010 that has levied more than $3 billion in fines from banks, including the record fine against HSBC. He stopped short of indicting HSBC after some regulators warned that doing so could destabilize the global financial system.

Mr. Breuer argued that the charges he did not bring — for example, against Goldman Sachs and other banks suspected of fraud after selling toxic mortgage securities to investors — could not have been proved. It was not for a lack of trying, he said, noting that United States attorneys across the country, after reviewing the same evidence he did, also declined to act.

“It’s important for me to hold the financial institutions accountable,” he said. “There’s never been a time that a prosecutor said we should bring a securitization case and I said no.”

Under Mr. Breuer, the division has also increasingly used a 1977 law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, to prosecute corporate bribery.

He also helped run the Justice Department’s investigation of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in the company paying $4.5 billion in fines and other penalties and pleading guilty to 14 criminal charges related to the rig explosion in 2010.

In a statement, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. praised Mr. Breuer. “Lanny has led one of the most successful and aggressive criminal divisions in the history of the Department of Justice,” he said.

Mr. Holder stood behind Mr. Breuer when questions arose about his involvement in the botched gun-trafficking case known as Operation Fast and Furious. The pair, who were both largely cleared after an inspector general investigation, worked together at Covington.

For years, Mr. Breuer moved in and out of government. The son of Holocaust survivors who fled Europe and settled in Queens, he landed at the Manhattan district attorney’s office after graduating from Columbia Law School. In between stints at Covington, he worked as a White House special counsel, defending President Bill Clinton amid federal investigations and impeachment proceedings.

In the interview on Tuesday, Mr. Breuer reflected on his unusual path to the Justice Department.

“The fact that I got to go from Elmhurst, Queens, to the criminal division is remarkable,” he said.

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Doctor fatally shot near Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach

A doctor was shot and killed Monday in a building near Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, police said.

Multiple people have identified the victim as a doctor at Orange Coast Urology, but police have not released the victim's name pending notification of relatives. An outgoing phone message said the office had to close Monday because of an emergency.

Workers in the building said the shooting occurred in the doctor's exam room.

Newport Beach Police Department Deputy Chief David McGill confirmed that the slain man was a doctor but had no other details about him or a suspect who was taken into custody without incident at the scene, which was on the second floor of an office building at 520 Superior Ave.

"I sit right at the front desk. I would have caught the first bullet," said Becky Calderwood, who works two doors down from the office where the shooting occurred. "This is nuts. People are just shooting everyone all the time."

Calderwood said the gunman was a 70-year-old patient. Shortly after the shooting, police led a handcuffed older man wearing a baseball cap out of the building.

Authorities received a call about 2:45 p.m. that six or seven shots had been fired, according to police spokeswoman Kathy Lowe.

"We won't know a motive until our detectives have a chance to interview the suspect later" Monday night, Lowe said.

A source with knowledge of the shooting said the building was a medical office affiliated with Hoag. The shooting occurred in an office portion of the building, Lowe said.

Kristin Crotty works directly above the office. She said she heard gunshots but "blew it off as construction."

She said what she heard sounded like a nail gun and she didn't know what was going on until she called building services and was told to lock her door.

A sign outside says the three-story medical building houses Hoag outpatient services and lists the Allen Diabetes Center, physicians' offices and a CHOC diabetes center as occupants.

lauren.williams@latimes.com

jeremiah.dobruck@latimes.com

jill.cowan@latimes.com

Times staff writers Rick Rojas and Sam Quinones contributed to this report.

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Supernova Remnants: Dazzling Entrails of Violent Stellar Death

Even in death, there can be great beauty. Consider supernova remnants, the results of massive stars dying in great explosions, creating some of the most spectacular cosmic objects around.

Every 50 years or so, a star in our galaxy with more than 10 times the mass of our sun will expire. When such stars die, they go supernova, one of the most violent events in our universe. These explosions shoot off tons of material from the central star at up to 10 percent the speed of light.

Though the area surrounding stars seems empty, it is usually home to vast amounts of interstellar gas and dust. The supernova’s outburst runs into this surrounding material, creating a shockwave and heating it to temperatures greater than 10,000 Celsius. Over thousands of years, the local structure of the gas and dust shapes the stellar outpouring into shells, filaments, and other diffuse forms. Astronomers call these objects supernova remnants.

Supernova explosions and the remnants they leave behind have wide-ranging effects. They heat up the interstellar medium, creating complex chemistry out in space, and are responsible for accelerating protons and other atomic nuclei, which go zipping around the universe as cosmic rays. Perhaps most importantly, supernova explosions generate and liberate heavy elements, such as oxygen, carbon, and all metals, distributing them out into the wider cosmos. These elements eventually find their way into planetary systems, making life possible on at least one world that we know of.

Here, we take a look at some of the most famous and beautiful supernova remnants, giving you a chance to contemplate life, death, and cycles of renewal in the universe.

Above:

The supernova remnant N186 D appears as a bright pink spot at the top of this new image released by NASA on Jan. 28, spewing off tremendous amounts of X-rays. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud about 160,000 light-years away, the remnant is blowing a huge bubble (the giant structure below the bright spot) as hot wind carves out a shock wave in the surrounding material.

Image: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Michigan/A.E.Jaskot, Optical: NOAO/CTIO/MCELS

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IFC Films acquires David Lowery’s “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – IFC Films has acquired domestic distribution rights to David Lowery‘s “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” which premiered Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival.

The film stars Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck as married bandits in 1970s Texas who set their sights on a local sheriff, played by Ben Foster.

IFC paid in the low seven figures for the rights, an individual with knowledge of the deal told TheWrap.

“Coming into Sundance, this was one of the biggest titles on our list and probably on many buyers lists, and so we ecstatic about this acquisition for our company,” Jonathan Sehring, president of Sundance Selects/IFC Films, said in a statement. “This is a beautiful and exquisitely crafted romantic American drama, with superlative performances across the board. We are honored to now be able to say we get to work with David Lowery, a remarkable new voice in filmmaking, as we take this film to audiences.”

This is just the second film directed by Lowery, a Texan with numerous editing credits to his name, including another film that premiered at Sundance – Shane Carruth’s “Upstream Color.” Toby Sailor Bear’s Toby Halbrooks and James M. Johnston produced the movie with Parts & Labor’s Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen and Primary Productions’ Amy Kaufman and Cassian Elwes.

Elwes and WME made the deal with IFC.

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Rescuer Appears for New York Downtown Hospital

Manhattan’s only remaining hospital south of 14th Street, New York Downtown, has found a white knight willing to take over its debt and return it to good health, hospital officials said Monday.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, one of New York City’s largest academic medical centers, has proposed to take over New York Downtown in a “certificate of need” filed with the State Health Department. The three-page proposal argues that though New York Downtown is projected to have a significant operating loss in 2013, it is vital to Lower Manhattan, including Wall Street, Chinatown and the Lower East Side, especially since the closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital after it declared bankruptcy in 2010.

The rescue proposal, which would need the Health Department’s approval, comes at a precarious time for hospitals in the city. Long Island College Hospital, just across the river in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, has been threatened with closing after a failed merger with SUNY Downstate Medical Center, and several other Brooklyn hospitals are considering mergers to stem losses.

New York Downtown has been affiliated with the NewYork-Presbyterian health care system while maintaining separate operations.

“We are looking forward to having them become a sixth campus so the people in that community can continue to have a community hospital that continues to serve them,” Myrna Manners, a spokeswoman for NewYork-Presbyterian, said.

Fred Winters, a spokesman for New York Downtown, declined to comment.

Presbyterian’s proposal emphasized that it would acquire New York Downtown’s debt at no cost to the state, a critical point at a time when the state has shown little interest in bailing out failing hospitals.

The proposal said that if New York Downtown were to close, it would leave more than 300,000 residents of Lower Manhattan, including the financial district, Greenwich Village, SoHo, the Lower East Side and Chinatown, without a community hospital. In addition, it said, 750,000 people work and visit in the area every day, a number that is expected to grow with the construction of 1 World Trade Center and related buildings.

The proposal argues that New York Downtown is essential partly because of its long history of responding to disasters in the city. One of its predecessors was founded as a direct result of the 1920 terrorist bombing outside the J. P. Morgan Building, and the hospital has responded to the 1975 bombing of Fraunces Tavern, the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and, this month, the crash of a commuter ferry from New Jersey.

Like other fragile hospitals in the city, New York Downtown has shrunk, going to 180 beds, down from the 254 beds it was certified for in 2006, partly because the more affluent residents of Lower Manhattan often go to bigger hospitals for elective care.

The proposal says that half of the emergency department patients at New York Downtown either are on Medicaid, the program for the poor, or are uninsured.

NewYork-Presbyterian would absorb the cost of the hospital’s maternity and neonatal intensive care units, which have been expanding because of demand, but have been operating at a deficit of more than $1 million a year, the proposal said.

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DealBook Column: Mary Jo White, Nominee for S.E.C.'s 'New Sherrif,' Has Worn Banks' Hat

“You don’t want to mess with Mary Jo.”

That’s what President Obama said about his pick to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Jo White. The nomination of Ms. White, a former prosecutor who took on the terrorists behind the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Mafia boss John Gotti, was meant to signal that the S.E.C. would be getting tough on Wall Street. CBS called her “Wall Street’s new sheriff.” The Wall Street Journal said she would be “putting a tougher face on an agency still tainted by embarrassing enforcement missteps in the run-up to the financial crisis.” The New York Times said her appointment represented a “renewed resolve to hold Wall Street accountable.”

Hold on.

While Ms. White is a decorated prosecutor, she has spent the last decade vigorously defending — and billing by the hour — Wall Street’s biggest banks, as a rainmaking partner at the white-shoe law firm Debevoise & Plimpton. The average partner at the firm was paid $2.1 million a year, according to American Lawyer; but she was no average partner, very likely being paid at least double that. Her husband, John W. White, is a corporate partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He counts JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse and UBS as clients. The average partner at Cravath makes $3.1 million. He, too, was a former official at the S.E.C. — he left Cravath to run the corporate division of the S.E.C. starting in 2006 just in time for the run-up to the financial crisis. He left in November 2008, a month after the bank bailouts, to return to Cravath.

It seems Mr. and Ms. White have made a fine art of the revolving door between government and private practice.

So how conflicted is Ms. White? Let’s count the ways.

They are well documented: she was JPMorgan Chase’s go-to lawyer for many of the cases brought against it relating to the financial crisis. She was arm-in-arm with Kenneth D. Lewis, Bank of America’s former chief executive, keeping him out of trouble when the New York attorney general accused Mr. Lewis of defrauding investors by not disclosing the losses at Merrill Lynch before completing Bank of America’s acquisition of the firm. (And empirically, Mr. Lewis did keep crucial information about the deal from investors.)

This is what she had to say about Mr. Lewis, in a court filing submitted on his behalf: “Some have looked to assign blame for every aspect of the financial crisis, even where there is no evidence of misconduct. This case is a product of that dynamic and does not withstand either legal or factual scrutiny.” It was a refrain she often made about her clients related to the financial crisis.

And then there was Senator Bill Frist, the Republican from Tennessee, whom she successfully represented when the S.E.C. and the Justice Department started an investigation into whether he was involved in insider trading in shares of HCA, the hospital chain. She persuaded them to shut down the investigation.

She also worked with Siemens, the German industrial giant, when it pleaded guilty to charges of bribery, paying a record $1.6 billion penalty.

And then, of course, there was John Mack. She worked for the board of Morgan Stanley during a now well-publicized 2005 investigation into insider trading that ended soon after she made a phone call to the S.E.C. Using her connections at the top of the agency, she dialed up Linda Thomsen, then the commission’s head of enforcement, to find out whether Mr. Mack, who was being considered for Morgan Stanley’s chief executive position, was being implicated. He ultimately wasn’t. As the Huffington Post pointed out in a recent article about Ms. White, Robert Hanson, an S.E.C. supervisor, later testified, “It is a little out of the ordinary for Mary Jo White to contact Linda Thomsen directly, but that White is very prestigious and it isn’t uncommon for someone prominent to have someone intervene on their behalf.”

All of Ms. White’s previous engagements create not only an “optics” problem, but a practical, on-the-job problem. She will most likely need to recuse herself from just about anything related to her previous work.

“I will not for a period of two years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts,” is the language in an ethics pledge that she will have to agree to follow.

Some appointees, including Mary L. Schapiro, the former chairwoman of the S.E.C., recused themselves from any involvement in work that was related to a previous employer even after the two-year moratorium. Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, recused himself from the investigation into MF Global because of his previous employment at Goldman Sachs, where Jon Corzine was the firm’s head, even though it had been years since the two had worked together.

And then there is the issue of Mr. White’s husband, who will have a continuing role at Cravath, one of the most pre-eminent firms in the country, whose clients include some of the nation’s largest corporations.

“This president has adopted the toughest ethics rules of any administration in history,” said Amy Brundage, a White House spokeswoman, “and this nominee is no exception. As S.E.C. chair, Mary Jo White will be in complete compliance with all ethics rules.”

None of these conflicts gets at another potential problem for Ms. White. The job of chairwoman of S.E.C. isn’t simply about enforcement; she has a deputy for that. The biggest challenge anyone who takes the job will have to confront over the next several years will be executing and enforcing provisions of Dodd-Frank and working to regulate electronic trading — something that even the most sophisticated financial professionals, let alone a lawyer, often have a tough time understanding. She has zero experience in this area.

Of course, there can always be a value to inviting a onetime rival onto the team.

“I believe she is one of those people who will understand that her public role will be very, very different than her role as a defense lawyer,” Dennis M. Kelleher of Better Markets, a watchdog group, told me. “I don’t think she’s going to be like so many others who don’t get that they have a very different role when they hold high public office.

“No question, she’s said some things that are controversial and questionable,” Mr. Kelleher said. “Moreover, I hope and expect that she will be asked publicly about them in the confirmation process and that she will have convincing answers.”

Of course, if she is confirmed, we must all hope that she can put her previous client relationships behind her and work for her new client — us.

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Live updates: 'Argo' wins top SAG Award; Day-Lewis, Lawrence win

Ben Affleck's “Argo” seems to be unstoppable. The film about a CIA plot to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980 won the 19th Screen Actors Guild Award on Sunday night for ensemble in a motion picture.

The win came hours after the film, which also stars Affleck, took the Producers Guild Award on Saturday night — an honor that is one of the leading indicators of Oscar gold. Two weeks ago, “Argo” won the Golden Globe for best dramatic motion picture, one of the many honors it has recently picked up this season.

 “Argo” heads into next month's Academy Awards with momentum — and seven nominations, including best picture, supporting actor for Alan Arkin, and adapted screenplay. (Shockingly, Affleck was not nominated for a directing Oscar, even though he received a Directors Guild of America nomination and won the Golden Globe for director.)

PHOTOS: SAG Awards red carpet

The outlook seems equally golden for Daniel Day-Lewis, Jennifer Lawrence and Anne Hathaway, whose Golden Globe awards two weeks ago were followed Sunday night with SAG awards.

Day-Lewis won the trophy — and a standing ovation — for lead actor as the nation’s 16th president in “Lincoln.” Lawrence won her award for female actor playing a young widow in the quirky romantic comedy “Silver Linings Playbook.” Hathaway took the SAG award for female actor in a supporting role as the tragic Fantine in “Les Miserables.”

Tommy Lee Jones won his first major award of the season for male supporting actor for “Lincoln.” Jones is also nominated for an Academy Award for supporting actor.

SAG 2013: Winners | Show highlights | Complete list | Red carpet

The SAG movie wins offered a rare moment of clarity as the highly unpredictable awards season enters its final stretch, culminating with the Academy Awards on Feb. 24. 

A SAG win does not guarantee Oscar gold, but history suggests it's nearly impossible to win an Academy Award in the acting categories without a SAG nomination.

 On the television side of the awards ceremony, it was a three-peat night for Claire Danes, Julianne Moore, Kevin Costner and the ABC sitcom “Modern Family.”

FULL COVERAGE: SAG Awards 2013 

The performers made it a clean sweep by winning the Emmy, the Golden Globe and the SAG award.

Danes won for female actor in a drama series for Showtime’s political thriller “Homeland.” Moore’s uncanny performance as 2008 Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin in HBO’s “Game Change” earned her female actor in a television movie or miniseries. And Costner nabbed male actor in a television movie or miniseries for History’s “Hatfields & McCoys.”

“Modern Family,” meanwhile, earned its third consecutive SAG award for ensemble in a comedy series.

PHOTOS: Best & Worst moments

 Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey earned a great parting gift when they won for their lead roles in a comedy series for NBC's “30 Rock.” Fey used the win to ask people to tune in at 8 Thursday night for the series’ one-hour finale, opposite the highly rated CBS sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.”

“Just tape ‘The Big Bang Theory’ for once, for crying out loud!” Fey pleaded.

Bryan Cranston won for male actor in a drama series for “Breaking Bad.” “It is so good to be bad,” purred Cranston as he picked up the honor. And PBS’ “Downton Abbey” won for ensemble in a drama series.

SAG 2013: Winners | Quotes | Photo Booth | Red carpet | Backstage | Best & Worst

One highlight was a spry and chipper 87-year-old Dick Van Dyke, honored for a career that has spanned nearly seven decades.

Van Dyke was met with a standing ovation and cheers. “That does an old man a lot of good,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. He was supposed to receive the life achievement honor from Carl Reiner, who created the seminal 1961-66 CBS series “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” the show that turned Van Dyke into a TV legend. Because Reiner was sick with the flu, Baldwin did the honors.

“I've knocked around this business for 70 years, but I still haven’t figured out what exactly I do,” Van Dyke cracked during his acceptance speech. He noted that it was great to pick a career “full of surprises and a lot of fun” and one that does “not require growing up.”

The awards were telecast live on TBS and TNT from the Shrine Exposition Hall in downtown Los Angeles.

ALSO:

Follow the SAG Awards live on Twitter

Red carpet fashion at the SAG Awards

SAG: The complete list of nominees and winners

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Dick Van Dyke honored for lifetime achievement

LOS ANGELES (AP) — He’s acted, danced and sang his way through movies, television and the stage, making Dick Van Dyke an entertainment triple-threat long before Hollywood used such hyphenates.

The 87-year-old actor, best known for the 1960s hit comedy “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and Disney’s big-screen musical “Mary Poppins,” can now add lifetime achievement honoree. He picked up that honor at Sunday night’s 19th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards.

“I’ve knocked around in this business for 70 years and I still haven’t quite figured out exactly what it is I do,” Van Dyke said after accepting his trophy from presenter Alec Baldwin.

“The years have been full of surprises for me and a lot of fun. Aren’t we lucky to have found a line of work that doesn’t require growing up?”

Van Dyke‘s career has spanned eight decades, starting with work as a disc jockey and a standup comic in the late ’40s. He even worked as a national television morning-show host, with no less than Walter Cronkite serving as his news anchor.

But perhaps Van Dyke‘s most critical career break came in 1960, when director Gower Champion hired him as the male lead opposite Chita Rivera in the new Broadway-bound stage musical “Bye Bye Birdie.”

Van Dyke had no professional dance experience, and out-of-town tryouts did not go well. Nevertheless, Champion refused to fire the actor, who would go on to New York with Rivera and win a Tony award for his performance.

About a year later, Van Dyke was starring in his own sitcom, in the role of TV comedy writer Rob Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” Three prime-time Emmys for Van Dyke and more than 50 years later, the series remains revered by many critics as one of the earliest models of great workplace comedy.

“‘The ‘Dick Van Dyke Show’ was the most fun I ever had and the most creative period of my life,” he said on the red carpet.

During the series’ run, Van Dyke also enjoyed big-screen hits, including the 1963 “Birdie” movie and the 1964 all-star comedy, “What a Way to Go!” But biggest of all was “Mary Poppins,” in which he introduced the Oscar-winning song “Chim Chim Cher-ee.”

“I’m world-famous for my Cockney accent,” Van Dyke kidded in his acceptance speech. He has said his British-born co-star, Julie Andrews, told him he never got the accent right.

Van Dyke also saluted the room full of actors who gave him a standing ovation.

“I’m looking at the greatest generation of actors in the history of acting. You’ve all lifted the art to another place now,” he said. “Besides that you’re everywhere. You’re in Darfur, Somalia, Haiti. You’re all over the place trying to do what’s right.

“This very heavy object here means that I can refer to you as my peers. I’m a happy man, God bless.”

Last year, Van Dyke presented the same lifetime achievement honor to his former TV co-star, Mary Tyler Moore.

These days, Van Dyke sings with his vocal group, The Vantasix, and enjoys life with his wife of one year, makeup artist Arlene Silver. The couple met seven years ago at the SAG Awards.

“They tell me you never work again once you get this award,” Van Dyke said on the red carpet. “I’ll have to let them know I’m available.”

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Well: Keeping Blood Pressure in Check

Since the start of the 21st century, Americans have made great progress in controlling high blood pressure, though it remains a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.

Now 48 percent of the more than 76 million adults with hypertension have it under control, up from 29 percent in 2000.

But that means more than half, including many receiving treatment, have blood pressure that remains too high to be healthy. (A normal blood pressure is lower than 120 over 80.) With a plethora of drugs available to normalize blood pressure, why are so many people still at increased risk of disease, disability and premature death? Hypertension experts offer a few common, and correctable, reasons:

¶ About 20 percent of affected adults don’t know they have high blood pressure, perhaps because they never or rarely see a doctor who checks their pressure.

¶ Of the 80 percent who are aware of their condition, some don’t appreciate how serious it can be and fail to get treated, even when their doctors say they should.

¶ Some who have been treated develop bothersome side effects, causing them to abandon therapy or to use it haphazardly.

¶ Many others do little to change lifestyle factors, like obesity, lack of exercise and a high-salt diet, that can make hypertension harder to control.

Dr. Samuel J. Mann, a hypertension specialist and professor of clinical medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, adds another factor that may be the most important. Of the 71 percent of people with hypertension who are currently being treated, too many are taking the wrong drugs or the wrong dosages of the right ones.

Dr. Mann, author of “Hypertension and You: Old Drugs, New Drugs, and the Right Drugs for Your High Blood Pressure,” says that doctors should take into account the underlying causes of each patient’s blood pressure problem and the side effects that may prompt patients to abandon therapy. He has found that when treatment is tailored to the individual, nearly all cases of high blood pressure can be brought and kept under control with available drugs.

Plus, he said in an interview, it can be done with minimal, if any, side effects and at a reasonable cost.

“For most people, no new drugs need to be developed,” Dr. Mann said. “What we need, in terms of medication, is already out there. We just need to use it better.”

But many doctors who are generalists do not understand the “intricacies and nuances” of the dozens of available medications to determine which is appropriate to a certain patient.

“Prescribing the same medication to patient after patient just does not cut it,” Dr. Mann wrote in his book.

The trick to prescribing the best treatment for each patient is to first determine which of three mechanisms, or combination of mechanisms, is responsible for a patient’s hypertension, he said.

¶ Salt-sensitive hypertension, more common in older people and African-Americans, responds well to diuretics and calcium channel blockers.

¶ Hypertension driven by the kidney hormone renin responds best to ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, as well as direct renin inhibitors and beta-blockers.

¶ Neurogenic hypertension is a product of the sympathetic nervous system and is best treated with beta-blockers, alpha-blockers and drugs like clonidine.

According to Dr. Mann, neurogenic hypertension results from repressed emotions. He has found that many patients with it suffered trauma early in life or abuse. They seem calm and content on the surface but continually suppress their distress, he said.

One of Dr. Mann’s patients had had high blood pressure since her late 20s that remained well-controlled by the three drugs her family doctor prescribed. Then in her 40s, periodic checks showed it was often too high. When taking more of the prescribed medication did not result in lasting control, she sought Dr. Mann’s help.

After a thorough work-up, he said she had a textbook case of neurogenic hypertension, was taking too much medication and needed different drugs. Her condition soon became far better managed, with side effects she could easily tolerate, and she no longer feared she would die young of a heart attack or stroke.

But most patients should not have to consult a specialist. They can be well-treated by an internist or family physician who approaches the condition systematically, Dr. Mann said. Patients should be started on low doses of one or more drugs, including a diuretic; the dosage or number of drugs can be slowly increased as needed to achieve a normal pressure.

Specialists, he said, are most useful for treating the 10 percent to 15 percent of patients with so-called resistant hypertension that remains uncontrolled despite treatment with three drugs, including a diuretic, and for those whose treatment is effective but causing distressing side effects.

Hypertension sometimes fails to respond to routine care, he noted, because it results from an underlying medical problem that needs to be addressed.

“Some patients are on a lot of blood pressure drugs — four or five — who probably don’t need so many, and if they do, the question is why,” Dr. Mann said.

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DealBook: Beneath the Calm, SAC Works to Contain Fallout From an Inquiry

At last month’s Hurricane Sandy benefit concert, Steven A. Cohen sat near the Madison Square Garden stage, grooving to performances by Bon Jovi and Billy Joel.

Last week, he flew a private jet to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, rubbing shoulders with world leaders and Fortune 500 chieftains. And on Monday, he will show up at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Fla., for one of the year’s biggest hedge fund conferences and, if he can squeeze it in, a round of golf.

For a man who has emerged as the Justice Department’s great white whale in its insider trading investigation — a Wall Street version of Captain Ahab pursuing Moby-Dick — Mr. Cohen, the billionaire owner of the hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, does not appear concerned.

But inside the offices of SAC’s Stamford, Conn., headquarters, and at Midtown Manhattan law firms, Mr. Cohen’s employees and lawyers are working hard to contain the fallout from the investigation.

His executives have offered financial incentives to Mr. Cohen’s staff members to stay with SAC. Marketing officers are trying to persuade investors to keep their money at the fund. And defense lawyers are working furiously to persuade federal securities regulators not to file a civil fraud lawsuit against the firm.

“This has always been a stressful place to work,” said an SAC employee who requested anonymity because he was unauthorized to speak publicly about the fund. “Now it’s just more stressful.”

Neither SAC nor Mr. Cohen has been accused of any wrongdoing.

The main question now looming over the firm is whether its clients will stand by the fund, or its legal and regulatory problems will cause investors to head for the exits. Under the firm’s rules, SAC clients have until Feb. 15 to ask for their money back, and then cannot make another so-called redemption request for another three months.

Mr. Cohen’s fund was dealt a blow last week when a Citigroup unit that manages money for wealthy families disclosed that it was withdrawing its $187 million investment. The move by the bank was the most prominent client departure since November, when the multiyear investigation into SAC’s trading practices entered a more serious phase.

Citigroup’s withdrawal represents a tiny percentage of SAC’s $14 billion in assets under management. The fund has said it expects total investor redemptions for the first quarter of up to $1 billion, a number that an SAC spokesman has said will not adversely affect its business.

SAC is largely insulated from the potentially devastating effects that client defections can have on a hedge fund in part because of Mr. Cohen’s extraordinary wealth. Unlike other hedge fund managers who rely almost entirely on outside investors, Mr. Cohen has the comfort of knowing that about $8 billion of SAC’s fund belongs to him and his employees.

Still, the Citigroup decision stung, say people close to SAC’s business, because of the longstanding and lucrative relationship between the bank and the fund. Another concern, said these people, is that the move could influence other large SAC investors currently weighing whether to keep their money at the fund.

For Citigroup, its withdrawal of money from SAC carries substantial business risk. The bank has a vast relationship with SAC, earning revenue by providing the fund with financing and trading services.

SAC could exact retribution on Citigroup by terminating, or at least scaling back, its broader relationship with the bank. An SAC spokesman declined to comment.

Citigroup’s move came two months after federal authorities arrested Mathew Martoma, a former SAC portfolio manager, in what they described as the most lucrative insider trading case ever uncovered. The Martoma indictment represented the first time that the government had brought charges stemming from a trade in which Mr. Cohen had been involved. The Securities and Exchange Commission has warned Mr. Cohen that it might file a civil fraud action against SAC related to the case.

In addition to Mr. Martoma, at least seven former SAC employees have been tied to insider trading while at the fund. Three have pleaded guilty to criminal charges.

Citigroup issued a statement that its decision “should not be construed as a statement on the merits of any outstanding legal proceedings or potential regulatory action.” But the bank specifically cited the Martoma case, explaining that “in the event these legal and regulatory matters are resolved favorably for Mr. Martoma and SAC, Citi Private Bank expects to reconsider admission of SAC’s funds to its hedge fund platform.”

Mr. Martoma has pleaded not guilty and rejected requests by federal agents to cooperate against his former boss. Mr. Cohen has told his employees and clients that he is confident that he has acted appropriately at all times.

Yet the heightened government scrutiny has caused skittishness among SAC’s top ranks, forcing the fund to lavish even richer financial incentives on a group of employees that is already among the most highly compensated in the hedge fund industry.

This month, SAC told its stable of portfolio managers that it would increase year-end bonuses by three percentage points. SAC portfolio managers — the fund’s most senior traders, given the authority to make their own investment decisions and also feed Mr. Cohen their best ideas — are paid, on average, 20 percent of the profits they generate for the fund.

“The program is intended to retain our most valuable resource, our investment professionals,” said Jonathan Gasthalter, the SAC spokesman.

Another valuable resource is SAC’s outside investors, which account for about $6 billion, or 40 percent, of the fund’s assets. That money accounts for hundreds of millions of dollars in fees, which SAC uses to finance one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated hedge fund operations, with more than 1,000 employees and 125 teams of traders and analysts. Its operation is also one of the most successful, posting average annualized returns of about 30 percent since 1992.

Those results have in the past kept SAC’s customers satisfied, but the government scrutiny has made many of them uneasy. The firm’s marketing team has reached out to the fund’s investors to address their concerns and reassure them that the insider trading inquiry will not affect its performance.

Despite those efforts, several investors in addition to Citigroup, including Titan Advisors and a unit of Société Générale, have notified SAC that they are withdrawing money. Other clients, like Chapwood Investments and SkyBridge Capital, have said they will continue to invest with the fund.

SAC executives continued the charm offensive with major clients on Sunday, holding an annual golf outing in Palm Beach on the eve of a hedge fund conference at the Breakers sponsored by Morgan Stanley. The conference — a matchmaking event that connects top managers with the world’s richest investors — is considered an important stop on the hedge fund money-raising circuit.

Since Morgan Stanley does not invite the news media to its conference, there is not expected to be the same paparazzi-like reports on Mr. Cohen that emerged last week from Davos. Bloomberg News filed a dispatch that Mr. Cohen sat in on a panel discussion on data security called “The Digital Infrastructure Context.” And Henry Blodget, the editor of the financial Web site Business Insider, wrote a Twitter post on a sighting of Mr. Cohen.

“Steve Cohen was hanging in Davos lounge yesterday,” he wrote. “Didn’t look worried.”

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