Friday, May 15, 2009

Former chairman of the Silverado where Neil Bush was a director committed suicide.

TAMPA — One of the leading figures of the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s jumped to his death from a parking garage at Tampa International Airport last week.

Michael Wise, 64, leaped from the ninth floor of the garage in the early afternoon of April 8. The Hillsborough County Medical Examiner's Office ruled the death an apparent suicide. It's unclear why Wise jumped.

Wise came to St. Petersburg earlier this decade to get a fresh start in the mortgage business.

Wise was a former Kansas clothing salesman who became best known as the chairman of Silverado Banking in Denver, where Neil Bush (brother of former President George W. Bush and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush) was one of the directors and former Tampa Palms developer Kenneth Good was a major borrower. The institution's collapse in 1988 cost taxpayers $1 billion.

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