New York taxi business is circling the drain, and it's easy to understand why, decades of greed raised the price of a medallion to 1.2 million each.

Evgeny Freidman, known as Gene, said in an interview Thursday that the taxi industry, like the financial industry, was too big to fail. He would like the city to guarantee taxi medallion loans, which would induce banks to extend more credit to fleet owners like him, and he compares this approach to the federal government’s actions to save large banks and insurers in 2008.

In New York, medallions, the license that is required to operate a yellow taxi, are fixed in number, and their price rose for decades because of increased demand and restricted supply.

And greed. The New York Times can't or won't say that, but seriously, $1.2 million dollars to get a permit to drive or own a taxi. That is stupid greed by the people that were in charge of selling them. What logic is there to making a taxi driver pay over a million for the permit to charge 2 bucks a mile? 

This means the guy who buys a medallion has to get a million dollar loan to buy a permit. Not many banks do loans on such a failing business model. 

Mr. Freidman is currently locked in litigation with Citibank, which is trying to seize 87 of his (900) medallions after certain loans matured. Ronn Torossian, Mr. Freidman’s spokesman, declined to say exactly how many New York medallions Mr. Freidman owns.

Entities related to Mr. Freidman control one-sixth of New York’s mini-fleet taxi medallions, which would mean approximately 1,000 of them. They would be worth around a billion dollars even after recent price declines.

Can anyone explain how it makes sense to think there are going to be a billion dollars in taxi fares in a decade in NYC? Two decades? I know it's gotta be pretty good money, operating a taxi, but the drivers got to get paid, the insurance company, the car, the gas, the tires, and occasional major repairs. Now figure how many people compete for fares. Uber, Lyft, etc

Around the year 2000, the price of a medallion was only about a 1/4 million.

Mr. Freidman contends medallion owners deserve a government backstop because of financial support they have provided New York City by buying medallions at auction.

“I have delivered, personally, in excess of $300 million to the city in these auctions,” he said. “Do I not have a little bit of standing to say there should be support from that institution that I delivered, personally, $300 million to? To do what the government does for every other industry? Am I not being logical?”

The Committee for Taxi Safety, a trade association that represents many New York City taxi medallion owners (but not Mr. Freidman), declined to comment on his letter. The Taxi and Limousine Commission did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/11/upshot/new-york-taxi-mogul-seeking-a-bailout-says-hes-too-big-to-fail.html?abt=0002&abg=1&_r=0

and you can be sure that nothing about his need for a government bailout has to do with his college age trophy wife divorcing him

you know she only loves him for his mind. It's not that he's worth 7 figures. 

Gene Freidman, one of the city’s top medallion owners, was hit with a divorce filing on Wednesday by his much younger wife — and she’s dumping him because he’s too old, according to a source.

Sandra Freidman, a stunning 24-year-old who was born in Moscow and grew up in Paris, split up with Gene six weeks ago. He moved out of their three-floor town house on the Upper East Side.

 The couple had been married for three years. Their split is based on their 20-year age difference, (and so was their marriage)  said a source close to Gene. “He’s a workaholic and she’s a 24-year-old who wants to go out a lot,” the source said. The matrimonial proceeding is expected to focus on money. Freidman owns about 900 medallions.

How much does she get in the divorce? The prenup is $5 million. Yeah, bride for hire. If you're rich enough, that is probably commonplace. And child support. They have a 1 1/2 year old daughter.

http://nypost.com/2015/04/08/taxi-kingpins-decades-younger-wife-files-for-divorce/

“Gene Friedman’s business model requires him to lease out hundreds of cars every day, and because he can’t find drivers because of Uber, [it] means he’s not making money,” an industry source told The Post.

The business accounts that Friedman used to repay his loans had no funds — and even negative balances — as of early December, the papers say.

Friedman — who buys his medallions through companies with such names as Vodka, Bourbon and Bombshell — made partial payments but failed to pay off the debt in full, the documents say.

His spokesman, Ronn Torossian, said that Citibank’s suit came only because Friedman was two days late on a payment and that the rest of his debt was wrongly accelerated.

http://nypost.com/2015/03/16/taxi-kingpin-in-debt-thanks-to-uber/

Born in the Soviet Union in 1970, Mr. Freidman emigrated from St. Petersburg to the United States as a political refugee in 1976. He attended local public schools in Queens before his admission to Bronx High School of Science, then went to graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting and Business from Skidmore College in 1992. He received his second degree from Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University in New York City and is admitted to practice Law in New York and New Jersey.

Mr. Freidman is the principal of Taxi Club Management, Inc. in NYC, a holding company for several companies specializing in the NYC yellow taxi industry. He manages the largest taxi fleet operation in the city (850 yellow taxis and over 3,000 drivers), in addition to an insurance brokerage, a medallion purchase/sale brokerage, repair facilities, meter and electrical shops, a finance company, a claim service, and advertising.

http://www.gnyta.org/evgeny-freidman.html

Freidman and some of his fellow taxi owners have controlled and profited from one of the most lucrative assets New York City has to offer: yellow taxi medallions. For just as long, they have wielded their considerable resources to curry favor with politicians, including New York City’s current mayor, Bill de Blasio.

They raised prodigious amounts of money for de Blasio’s mayoral campaign at a time when de Blasio, then the public advocate, was an underdog. De Blasio, a former political operative who knows how the game is played, responded by wrapping the taxi industry in his long-armed embrace.

Mayor de Blasio has named taxi fleet attorney Richard Emery chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board. He named another taxi fleet attorney, Fidel Del Valle, to head an administrative court that governs taxi disputes.

Freidman in 2013 reached an agreement with the city and the state attorney general to pay $750,000 in restitution to drivers his companies had overcharged, along with $500,000 in penalties.

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2015/02/8561086/powerful-taxi-boss-fears-uber-likes-de-blasio