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FASTOW NEARS PLEA BARGAIN, ENDORSEMENT DEAL WITH SLAZENGER
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HOUSTON, TX – With prosecutors still working to finalize a plea agreement with former Enron chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow, sources report that tennis racquet and apparel maker, Slazenger, is also close to inking an endorsement deal with Fastow.
Terms of the proposed deal have not been disclosed, but company officials said Fastow would be lending his name to a new line of Slazenger tennis and athletic products targeted toward imprisoned executives and other white-collar criminals.
Slazenger’s new product line will be tailored to meet the unique demands of playing country club sports in the prison environment. Tennis shorts, for example, will have lightweight-alloy combination locks instead of zippers to protect players from the unwelcome advances of other inmates, and tennis racquets will have padding to protect white-collar criminals from the prospect of being beaten to death with their own racquets.
Apparel in the new Slazenger line will be available in traditional tennis whites, with horizontal black stripes, and in “prison jumpsuit orange,” which is expected to be a top seller among convicts who may not have time after tennis matches to change clothes before leaving to pick up roadside trash with prison work crews.
Slazenger CEO, Phil Parnell, has hailed the prospect of signing Fastow, saying that, even if Fastow decides to “squeal” on other former Enron executives as a condition of his plea agreement, Fastow’s youthful, greedily ambitious image will be perfect for hawking his company’s tennis racquets and athletic apparel to the growing white-collar criminal market.
For his part, Fastow has reportedly insisted in plea negotiations with prosecutors that a new tennis facility, with clay courts, be constructed at the prison where Fastow is to serve his sentence. Given its recent, tougher stance on white-collar crime, the Bush Administration is expected to approve construction of the new tennis facility, but to install only hard courts, not the clay courts Fastow requested.
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