Publisher Pulls a 2nd Book by Lehrer, ‘How We Decide’

Troubles for Jonah Lehrer, journalist wunderkind turned plagiarist and disgraced author, will not abate.

On Friday night, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which published all three of Mr. Lehrer’s books, confirmed that after an internal fact-checking review of his second book, “How We Decide,” it would no longer offer it for sale.

The publisher stopped selling his third book, “Imagine,” last summer after an investigation revealed that it contained fabricated quotes from Bob Dylan.

That investigation began after it was revealed that Mr. Lehrer had copied passages from his earlier work for his New Yorker articles.

“After completing our fact-check process for Jonah Lehrer’s work, we have decided to take ‘How We Decide’ off sale,” Lori Glazer, Harcourt’s executive director of publicity, wrote in a terse e-mail. “We have no plans to reissue it. We do plan to continue to sell ‘Proust Was a Neuroscientist.’ ”

When Harcourt pulled the best-selling “Imagine,” it offered refunds to readers who could provide receipts. Ms. Glazer said the same policy would be followed for the second book.

Ms. Glazer offered no details on what was discovered to cause the publisher to discontinue sales. However, Michael Moynihan, who broke the news for The Daily Beast after apparently obtaining an e-mail from a Harcourt senior vice president, Bruce Nichols, said he had warned the publisher of errors in the book.

“I privately provided them with a handful of problematic passages, gleaned from a cursory look at ‘How We Decide,’ ” wrote Mr. Moyhihan, who also uncovered the fabricated Dylan quotes. The example from “How We Decide” he cites is a quote from a pilot whom Mr. Lehrer said he had interviewed but who made an almost identical statement 20 years earlier in a lecture to NASA.

Vermont Resort Pulls in Big Foreign Investments

He is expanding the Jay Peak ski resort, which he co-owns, but he is also building a biomedical research firm and a window manufacturing plant, extending the runway at the local airport and rehabilitating much of the nearby town of Newport, where he lives. There, he is developing the waterfront, adding the town’s first hotel and a conference center and rebuilding an entire downtown block. He is also creating what he says is the largest indoor mountain bike park in the world and a state-of-the art tennis center.

The price tag for the entire project, which Mr. Stenger says will create 10,000 direct and indirect jobs over several years, is $865 million.

But even more unusual than the size of the undertaking is the method by which Mr. Stenger and his business partner, Ariel Quiros, are financing it. They have tapped into a federal program that gives green cards, or permanent residency, to foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in an American business — the reward for the investment is a chance at United States citizenship.

Mr. Stenger has already attracted 550 foreign investors from 60 countries to put up $275 million for the first phase: a hotel here at the Jay Peak ski complex, an indoor water park the size of a football field, an ice hockey arena, condominiums, restaurants and stores.

The second and third phases, now under way, require 1,000 additional foreign investors to put up $500 million to overhaul Newport and to develop the nearby Burke Mountain ski area.

Mr. Stenger and Mr. Quiros are putting up $90 million themselves. But even at $785 million, this is one of the single biggest projects in the country financed under the investor program.

Congress created the visa program in 1990 to help stimulate the economy. Because of a cumbersome process and complaints of fraud and corruption, it was long underused.

But a confluence of events in recent years has led to its rather sudden revival: the program was improved; the financial crisis of 2008 made it hard for developers to get loans from commercial banks; and foreign nationals, especially in China, were accumulating vast wealth and were eager for their children to study and live in the United States.

In 2006, the government issued just 802 of these EB-5 visas to investors and their families; this year, it granted 7,818.

The program is now growing so rapidly that in the next year or two the number issued will probably reach the annual limit of 10,000. For the first time in the program’s history, applicants may be turned away.

Mr. Stenger, 64, who began his career as a ski instructor, and Mr. Quiros, 56, who spent years in the import-export business and already owned thousands of acres here, began leveraging the visa program five years ago, in the early stages of its revival. Along with state officials, who monitor and audit their projects, and Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Democrat who has championed the program in Washington, the two men have sought to make Jay Peak a national showcase for the investor program.

Mr. Quiros said these projects would have been impossible without it.

“It’s too hard to get money of this magnitude,” he said, “especially with the economic situation that exists today.”

The immigrant investors do not have to get involved in the business, though it must create or save at least 10 jobs, and they can live anywhere they want.

One potential investor in Jay Peak is Steve Green, 49, an Englishman who has had a successful career in banking and reinsurance and has lived in Bermuda for 25 years.

“The reason to explore this and potentially to do it — and I’m more than 50-50 inclined to do it — is that it would give me an opportunity to relocate in the United States, keep a small home in Bermuda, spend the majority of my retirement in the United States and confer those rights on my children,” he said in a telephone interview from Bermuda.

Mr. Green said his hesitation about investing here stemmed from uncertainty over what kind of financial return he would get. “There is a substantial risk that you don’t get anything back,” he said.

Investors must put up $1 million for a visa, but if they invest in a rural area or one with high unemployment, that is reduced to $500,000.

Santander Pulls Out of $2.7 Billion R.B.S. Deal

More than two years after the deal was struck, it collapsed because the process of carving out the business proved more complex and difficult than had been expected. Santander said it was unwilling to again extend the deadline when it became clear that it would not be completed this year.

RBS, 83 percent owned by the British taxpayer, said it would restart the sale process, which had been ordered by European authorities as a cost for Britain's rescue of RBS in 2008.

RBS could ask for an extension of the deadline. It may struggle to find a new buyer, however, and may have to accept a lower price or consider a flotation.

Santander UK agreed to buy the branches and the business of 1.8 million customers in August 2010, but technology and separation issues pushed back the original December 2011 completion date.

Santander UK Chief Executive Ana Botin said on Friday that she had wanted to take the business in "a steady state" and added: "We have concluded that given delays it is not possible to complete this within a reasonable timeframe."

A report by consultancy Accenture estimated that the transfer of retail customers would not be completed until 2014, and the transfer of corporate customers would not be completed until 2015, Santander said.

The bank said the deal had no chance of being completed by a February 2013 deadline, allowing it to walk away with no break fee.

Santander saw off competition from National Australia Bank, start-up bank NBNK and Richard Branson's Virgin Money to buy the branches, as it was particularly keen to have the 244,000 business customers among the bank's clients.

The Spanish bank was keen to bulk up ahead of a planned flotation of its UK arm. It still wants to separate and list the business, but that is seen as being unlikely in the near future due to depressed UK bank valuations.

Virgin bought nationalized bank Northern Rock and may be the keenest to return for another look if it wants to bulk up.

RBS Chief Executive Stephen Hester faces more bad news as his bank is expected to be next in line to be hit with a big fine for the alleged manipulation of Libor global interest rates.

That and the collapse of the branches deal could overshadow two milestones this month that Hester had hoped would show his bank as being well on the road to recovery. It completed the initial public offering of its insurance arm Direct Line this week and later this month could exit a costly government insurance scheme.

The setback could further push back the timeframe for taxpayers to see a return on the 45 billion pound RBS bailout.

A Treasury spokesperson said the deal's collapse was a commercial matter for RBS and Santander, and said the government remained "determined to promote greater competition in the banking sector".

Hester said the work separating the branches would not be wasted.

"Much of the heavy lifting associated with a transfer has already been completed, including separating data for 1.8 million customers and putting in place a standalone management team," Hester said. He added that it was "disappointing" that Santander had pulled out, especially for customers and staff.

The affected business made an operating profit of 186 million pounds in the first six months of this year and has 21.7 billion in customer deposits and loans representing 86 percent of deposits.

Santander's purchase price when the deal was struck represented a 350 million pound premium to net asset value of 1.3 billion at the end of 2009. The price of the deal could have risen to 2 billion pounds or dropped to about 1.3 billion upon completion, depending on certain criteria.

(Reporting by Steve Slater; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Theodore d'Afflisio)