Love tangle for power broker: Citigroup's Richard Parsons has love child with model MacDella Cooper

It's no secret that Citigroup board Chairman Richard Parsons has been working for months to repair the financial giant. But, until now, even his closest associates didn't know he also was wrestling with a personal crisis - how to tell his wife and three children he has fathered a child with another woman.

Parsons and model-philanthropist MacDella Cooper are the parents of a baby girl named Ella. The 61-year-old former Time Warner chairman said only: "This is a private matter, and I prefer not to talk about it at this time." Cooper, 32, also declined to discuss the circumstances of her daughter's birth."My private life is private," the striking beauty said. "I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions."

Cooper gave birth last August, according to a source, who said Parsons will support the child and has set up a trust fund for her education. The widely admired executive is said to have become close to the former model - who says she has worked for Ralph Lauren and appeared in Glamour magazine - through his support of her MacDella Cooper Foundation, which she founded in 2004 to help orphans and abandoned children in her homeland of Liberia.

Besides making donations, Parsons was the keynote speaker at her foundation's gala in October 2007.A press release for the foundation said it was "proud to have earned the devotion of such esteemed individuals as ... Richard Parsons." Having attended benefits for the foundation, Parsons was regularly seen going into Cooper's midtown apartment building, where she lives and works, a source said.

Parsons is due to mark his 31st wedding anniversary with his wife, the former Laura Ann Bush, in August. They have three grown children: Gregory, Leslie and Rebecca. Parsons met Laura, a community activist with a doctorate in child psychology, at the University of Hawaii, and he has frequently credited her with his success. "I'm certain I would not have followed the career track that I ended up following if it hadn't been for my wife," he told Megan Basham, author of "Beside Every Successful Man."

"I can expose her to problems and issues, and she will ask very sound baseline questions that cause me to think about it in a different light. ... I very much need Laura's input." His wife has said that she encouraged him to go to law school because he enjoyed arguing.

His career, which has made him one of the most prominent African-American businessmen in the world, has been an incredible journey of success. He worked as a part-time janitor to pay his tuition at Albany Law School and scored the highest marks out of the nearly 4,000 lawyers who took the New York State bar exam in 1971.

Parsons appears well-equipped to support his latest offspring. In 2008, he received a total compensation package from Time Warner of $10,399,000. He receives no cash from federally subsidized Citigroup, but did get 240,000 shares of stock and 6,512 options. He enjoys the fruits of his success, with a home in Manhattan's fashionable Tribeca and a vineyard in Italy.


Read more: "Love tangle for power broker: Citigroup's Richard Parsons has love child with model MacDella Cooper" - http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/05/21/2009-05-21_love_tangle_for_power_broker.