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byline: Kate Andrews

Rolls-Royce North America names new CEO

Rolls Royce plc has named Adam Riddle as the new chairman and CEO of its Reston-based North American branch, as well as president of its defense division, effective immediately. He succeeds Thomas Bell, who recently was hired to lead Leidos.

Riddle, a former Army officer and Boeing Co. executive, has been with Rolls-Royce’s defense branch for nearly a decade, the British company said in its announcement Friday. He was most recently the head of its global services operations, which accounts for more than half of Defense Rolls-Royce plc’s annual revenues, and previously he was director of strategy and future programs, which included winning contracts for the Air Force’s B-52 aircraft’s replacement engines, a deal that could reach $2.6 billion, and providing the propulsion system for the V-280 Valor for the Army’s Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft program.

Riddle’s promotion came amid major changes in Rolls-Royce’s global leadership under CEO Tufan Erginbilgic, who took office in January and is based in London. Helen McCabe, senior vice president of finance for BP’s customer and products division, was named chief financial officer and is set to start later this year, and Rob Watson, who has been with Rolls-Royce for 13 years, is now president of the civil aerospace division. Previous civil aerospace head Chris Cholerton is now group president.

“I would like to congratulate both Rob and Adam as they take up their new roles,” Erginbilgic said in a statement. “Both are highly experienced leaders and will bring renewed energy and a determination to succeed to civil aerospace and defense. Their appointments are also evidence of the pipeline of senior talent which exists within Rolls-Royce. With the leadership changes announced today, we are acting at pace and gaining the momentum we need to transform Rolls-Royce. Together, my leadership team has a winning mindset, strong strategic alignment and a shared ambition to make Rolls-Royce a company that delivers for all stakeholders.”

Bell, who led Rolls-Royce North America since 2018, is set to join Reston-based Fortune 500 contractor Leidos on May 4, replacing Chairman and CEO Roger Krone, who will retire in July after nine years as Leidos’ chief executive.

Chesapeake Walmart to reopen after deadly shootings

Walmart Inc. announced Monday that the Chesapeake store where a night manager killed six workers in November 2022 will reopen April 19, following a 9 a.m. ceremony. The store has been remodeled over the past five months, and it will include an outdoor memorial space, according to Walmart.

On Nov. 22, 2022, 31-year-old Andre Bing, an overnight supervisor who worked at the 1521 Sam’s Circle store since 2010, shot and killed six employees, including a 16-year-old boy, before killing himself. There were about 50 shoppers in the store at the time of the attack.

The estate of one victim, Randy Blevins, has sued the Bentonville, Arkansas-based mega-retailer for $45 million in a wrongful death lawsuit, and three surviving employees filed three $50 million lawsuits against the company, claiming that Walmart was negligent in continuing to employ Bing after the three employees reported “bizarre and threatening behavior” by the manager.

The memorial space will include six seating structures in honor of the victims, and the indoor remodel will include more shopping options, displays and interactive features, according to Walmart’s announcement.

“We are deeply touched by the community’s compassion and support as we continue to heal from last year’s tragedy,” Alycia Mixon, manager of the Chesapeake store, said in a statement Monday. “As we move forward with our reopening, we do so in a way that honors the victims and provides continued support to our associates.”

Liberty University appoints new president, chancellor

Liberty University’s board has appointed retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Dondi E. Costin as its next president and Pastor Jonathan Falwell as chancellor, with both men starting in those posts before the 2023-24 school year, the Lynchburg-based private Christian university announced Friday.

Costin, who earned two master’s degrees from Liberty, is currently president of Charleston Southern University in South Carolina, which he has led since 2018, and also president of the Big South Conference. He served in the Air Force for 32 years, ending his career as the military branch’s chief of chaplains while stationed at the Pentagon. Costin replaces Liberty’s interim president and former board chairman, Jerry Prevo, who will transition to president emeritus, according to Liberty’s announcement.

“As one whose life and ministry have been profoundly shaped by Liberty University, I can think of no educational institution with more global impact than my two-time alma mater. I am beyond grateful to the board for entrusting me with this extraordinary opportunity,” Costin said in a statement. “Vickey and I look forward to locking arms with the Liberty family as we honor the university’s past and drive toward its future. With God’s help and for his glory, the very best days of our great university are still ahead of us.”

Costin has two doctorates from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and five master’s degrees, including one in counseling from Liberty and one in religion from Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also a decorated combat veteran and as president of CSU, Costin oversaw construction of several new buildings and expansion of its academic offerings, including South Carolina’s only four-year aviation program, multiple doctoral programs and an engineering program in the university’s College of Science and Mathematics, according to Liberty’s announcement.

Falwell, who will remain as senior pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church, is the brother of former Liberty President Jerry Falwell Jr., who became Liberty’s president and chancellor in 2007 and resigned in 2020 amid a highly publicized personal scandal. Both are the sons of the late Jerry Falwell Sr., who founded Liberty in 1971 as Lynchburg Baptist College and was the university’s first president and chancellor, as well as the founder of Thomas Road Baptist. A two-time Liberty alumnus, Jonathan Falwell is currently Liberty’s executive vice president for spiritual affairs and campus pastor, and previously held the title of vice chancellor for spiritual affairs.

According to a 2022 Vanity Fair feature, the Falwell brothers were divided politically over Falwell Jr.’s endorsement of Donald Trump’s presidential bid in 2016, with Jonathan Falwell supporting U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, as well as having very different personalities and temperaments. Earlier this month, Falwell Jr. filed a federal lawsuit against Liberty over $8.5 million in retirement benefits he alleges he is owed.

Both Falwell and Costin will report independently to the university’s board of trustees. Executive recruiting firm CarterBaldwin led an eight-month national search on behalf of the presidential and chancellor search committee, which was chaired by the late Gilbert “Bud” Tinney Jr., a board member who died at the age of 85 in February.

“With CarterBaldwin’s objective help, we looked near and far, and we believe we have found the right leaders at the right time for the future of Liberty University,” Board Chairman Tim Lee said Friday. “The combination of President Costin and Chancellor Falwell not only bring the gravitas and experience necessary to lead the university exceptionally well, but with perfect cultural alignment.”

Prevo, a former pastor of Alaska’s Anchorage Baptist Temple, stepped in as interim president in August 2020, when Jerry Falwell Jr. resigned as president and chancellor after media reports of controversies, including allegations that he had knowledge of an affair between his wife and a young man who also was their business partner briefly. Falwell has denied that allegation, but the university sued him for $10 million for breach of contract. He also has countersued, seeking the return of some legal documents, a revolver he kept in his desk and other personal items he says the university has not allowed him to collect since banning him from Liberty property. Those lawsuits are still underway in Lynchburg Circuit Court. The university also launched a third-party investigation of the university’s finances and real estate dealings during Falwell’s tenure in late 2020, but no report has been publicly released.

In addition to the Falwell Jr. scandals, Liberty was sued by 22 anonymous women — both former students and staff members — who alleged that Liberty “intentionally created a campus environment where sexual assaults and rapes are foreseeably more likely” and discouraged victims from reporting their assaults. In May 2022, 20 of the plaintiffs settled their lawsuits against Liberty, and the U.S. Department of Education announced the same month that it is investigating the university over claims of Title IX misconduct.

Despite the controversies, Liberty has remained financially healthy, with an endowment of $2.169 billion in fiscal year 2022, and the university is set to pay off more than $189 million in taxable bonds in April, according to paperwork filed March 1 by the Bank of New York Mellon Trust Co. NA.

Virginia’s largest university by enrollment, Liberty has grown into an online-learning juggernaut, with 95,148 students enrolled in 2021, most of whom study remotely, according to the university.

 

Wheels rolling on Henrico arena

Plans for a 17,000-seat arena in Henrico County are rolling forward, now with an international operator, ASM Global, on board. The centerpiece of the $2.3 billion GreenCity development, the venue is expected to be delivered in the third quarter of 2026.

Although the project’s design is being finalized, developers say it will be the nation’s greenest arena. With net-zero energy impact, the arena will capture rainwater for future use and process organic waste on-site.

Primary developer Michael Hallmark, a GreenCity Partners LLC principal, says he expects many environmentally minded music artists will be interested in performing there. Rock band Coldplay played the debut concert at Seattle’s redeveloped Climate Pledge Arena to support its green mission, and performers such as Dave Matthews, Billie Eilish and Pink have made donations to climate organizations to offset the environmental impact of their tours.

“Sustainability is without a doubt a high priority” for performers, Hallmark adds. “I think it’s more and more getting to be that way.” As a result, the arena will likely attract more big concerts, and Hallmark also expects the venue to host first- and second-round NCAA men’s basketball tournament games and possibly a local minor league hockey team.

Liam Thornton, ASM Global’s executive vice president for strategy and development, said in early February that the company “believe[s] this is an optimal location for a new arena,” as it’s right off Interstate 95 and convenient for touring shows.

Construction costs for the arena are expected to range between $350 million and $400 million, says Hallmark, who expects a “pretty substantial core” of hotels, parking areas, office and retail space to open simultaneously as part of the mixed-use development.

GreenCity’s plans include two hotels with 600 rooms, about 2.2 million square feet of office space, 280,000 square feet of retail space, 2,100 residential units and green space and plazas. The entire development is expected to be finished by 2033 or 2034.

In January, Henrico supervisors established the GreenCity Community Development Authority to issue bonds and finance public infrastructure at the 204-acre property, the site of the former Best Products corporate headquarters campus.

ASM Global manages more than 350 stadiums, arenas and other venues around the world, including Charlottesville’s John Paul Jones Arena and Richmond’s Altria Theater and Dominion Energy Center. Hallmark says while ASM’s regional presence is nice, its international reach is “even more important.”

Avian flu outbreaks strike Va. farms

For almost a year, Virginia poultry farms managed to avoid the nation’s worst-ever avian flu outbreak, but in January, the virus struck a commercial turkey operation in Rockingham County, prompting the killings of 25,300 birds.

Five days later, 10,700 more turkeys were euthanized in Rockingham, and in February, 800 birds at an Alexandria live market were killed to stop the flu’s spread.

These numbers are small, considering that 58.6 million birds nationwide have died from the flu as of mid-March. But even a small outbreak is a big deal in Rockingham, where federal mandates required the 150 to 200 poultry facilities within 10 kilometers of the infected flock to quarantine and test their birds.

In 2021, Virginia poultry farmers produced 14.5 million turkeys. The state produced 284.5 million broiler chickens that year, too. So, avian flu “is definitely very significant to the business,” says Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services spokesman Michael Wallace.

A 2002 flu bout led to the culling of more than 4.7 million birds in Virginia, costing the poultry industry $130 million. Egg and turkey prices have escalated in the past year, partly due to the flu.

The illness can be brought into poultry farms when wild birds like waterfowl or bald eagles mix with a domesticated flock, or by poultry workers stepping in wild bird droppings, Wallace notes.

Dr. Charles Broaddus, the state veterinarian, says the number of migratory birds flying through Virginia is causing the disease’s spread here — although the flu makes chickens and domestic turkeys visibly sick quickly, vultures and eagles can carry the virus with few, if any, symptoms. The good news is that migration is expected to taper off in mid-April, Broaddus says, and this avian flu strain hasn’t affected humans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that as long as poultry or eggs are cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees, they’re safe to eat.

Once a farm has a confirmed infection, it can take several months to disinfect all areas so it’s safe to bring birds back, Broaddus notes, although the smaller live market in Alexandria was back in business in three days after cleaning and disinfecting.

“With biosecurity, there’s always room for improvement, and farmers are doing a good job at that,” he says, although with the virus thriving among wild birds, it is hard to combat.   

ESPN: Snyders receive two $6B bids for Commanders

Updated 2 p.m. March 28

ESPN reporter Adam Schefter reported Tuesday that a group of investors led by Josh Harris and Mitchell Rales and including NBA legend Magic Johnson has submitted a $6 billion bid for the Washington Commanders, meeting the asking price of team owner Dan Snyder. Later in the day, Schefter tweeted that Canadian billionaire Steve Apostolopoulos made a competing $6 billion bid for the team.

If successful, either $6 billion bid for the Commanders would set a record price for any sports franchise. Co-founder of Apollo Global Management and a Bethesda, Maryland, native, Harris owns the Philadelphia 76ers NBA team and the NHL’s New Jersey Devils. Rales, who lives in Potomac, Maryland, is a co-founder of Danaher Corp. and is worth an estimated $5.6 billion. The same group of investors last year made a bid to purchase the Denver Broncos, which instead sold for $4.65 billion to Walmart heir Rob Walton.

Apostolopoulos founded Six Ventures Inc., a private equity fund, and is managing partner of the Toronto-based real estate firm Triple Group of Cos. Last week, The Washington Post reported that he has toured the Commanders’ facilities. Apostolopoulos was interested in buying the Charlotte Hornets NBA team owned by Michael Jordan, according to ESPN.

Several names previously came up as potential buyers of the Commanders in recent months, including Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos and music mogul Jay-Z. Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta was reported as a possible buyer too, according to The Washington Post.

Commanders owners Dan and Tanya Snyder hired Bank of America Securities to consider potential sales, the Ashburn-based NFL team announced in November 2022. The NFL owners’ annual league meeting is taking place this week in Phoenix, and Tuesday’s schedule includes an off-the-record session among team owners. Any sale would require approval of three-fourths of the 32 team owners.

Snyder, the team’s owner since 1999, and the team’s head office have come under investigations by the NFL and Congress for alleged sexual harassment and fostering a hostile work environment. His wife, Tanya, took over as co-CEO of the team in 2021, after the NFL’s $10 million fine of the team for an “improper” and “highly unprofessional” workplace culture. At the time, there seemed to be little appetite among team owners to force the Snyders to sell. According to NFL bylaws, it would take the agreement of 24 team owners to oust another owner.

In December 2022, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform released a report finding that “sexual harassment, bullying and other toxic conduct” took place in the franchise’s operations, and that Dan Snyder attempted to intimidate witnesses in the congressional investigation.

The NFL also launched a second probe of the team in February 2022, led by Mary Jo White, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to the Post, Dan Snyder has so far declined to be interviewed by White.

The Washington, D.C., attorney general also sued the Commanders and Snyder in November 2022, the Post reported.

U.Va. commerce alum donates $10M for scholarships

A University of Virginia alumnus, John Connaughton, and his wife, Stephanie, have donated $10 million to fund need-based undergraduate scholarships for McIntire School of Commerce students, the university announced Thursday.

U.Va. will match the couple’s gift, which establishes the Connaughton Bicentennial Scholars Fund. Portions of the Connaughtons’ gift will go toward the launch of “Commerce for the Common Good,” a strategic initiative for the McIntire School, and establish a speakers series named for the couple. John Connaughton will be the first speaker in the series in April.

A 1987 McIntire graduate, John Connaughton is co-managing partner of global private investment firm Bain Capital, and Stephanie Connaughton is an angel investor and senior adviser to several consumer startups. The couple is based in Boston.

“John and Stephanie’s generous gift supports expanded access to the school through need-based scholarships for historically underrepresented students while also providing funding for transformative educational experiences throughout the school,” McIntire School of Commerce Dean Nicole Thorne Jenkins said in a statement. “This extraordinary commitment will facilitate an array of essential, inventive programming in connection with Commerce for the Common Good.”

According to the university’s announcement, the Connaughtons’ gift is the first major contribution toward the commerce school’s initiative, which will turn the school’s focus to global business and its impact on society, expand its course offerings and research opportunities, and provide more finance-related curriculum opportunities to U.Va.’s full community.

The Connaughtons previously donated $5 million to the McIntire School in 2019 to create a professorship fund.

“We’re at an interesting crossroads right now. The role of business in society is being questioned,” John Connaughton said. “Businesses are being challenged to define how their work impacts all stakeholders, not just shareholders. U.Va. and the McIntire School are developing and inspiring the next generation to create more well-rounded businesspeople who are ready to have a substantial impact as leaders in our communities.”

Graham to be chair emeritus of Graham Holdings

Donald E. Graham, majority owner of Arlington County-based Graham Holdings Co. and former publisher of The Washington Post, announced Thursday he would step down as chairman of Graham Holdings, although he plans to remain on the board as chair emeritus starting in May. Longtime board member Anne Mulcahy, former chair and CEO of Xerox Corp., will become the board’s new chair.

Graham Holdings is a conglomerate holding company that owns educational services company Kaplan, the online magazine Slate, seven television stations and other properties. It previously was known as The Washington Post Co., when the Graham family owned Newsweek and the Post, which was sold to Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos in 2013 for $250 million. Before becoming publisher, Graham was a Post reporter and held several other news and business positions at the newspaper and at Newsweek, which was sold in 2010. Graham’s mother, Katharine Graham, was publisher of the Post from 1963 to 1991, leading the paper during its Watergate coverage; she became publisher following the death of her husband, Phil Graham, who had been publisher since 1946.

Mulcahy, who has served on Graham Holdings’ board for 15 years, was chair and CEO of Xerox from 2001 to 2010, after having joined the company in 1976 as a field sales representative and climbing the ranks.

“Anne has been on the board of Graham Holdings since 2008,” said Graham President and CEO Timothy J. O’Shaughnessy, Graham’s son-in-law. “She knows the businesses and the culture hands down, and we are fortunate to have her acumen and expertise. With Anne as chair and Don as chairman emeritus, the company and its shareholders are in an enviable position.”

Mulcahy is also lead director of Johnson & Johnson and serves on the board for LPL Financial, as well as sitting on the board for Save the Children. She is an executive in residence at Harvard University. “It has been a privilege to serve on the GHC board, which has so capably been led by Don as chair and Tim as CEO,” she said Thursday. “I am honored to serve as the next chair in support of a great management team and an esteemed board of directors.”

Va. bankers say they’re not worried by SVB collapse

Last weekend was pretty tense for bankers, even for those leading institutions quite distant and different from Silicon Valley Bank, which Friday became the second largest bank to fail in U.S. history. Federal regulators shut down SVB after a run on the bank. By Sunday, regulators also shut down New York’s Signature Bank, which became the third biggest bank ever to fail in the United States.

As word spread about SVB customers pulling out their money due to fears the FDIC would back only $250,000 per account, stocks dropped for banks everywhere, including in Virginia. “Friday, all banks got painted with the brush of fear,” Rex Smith, United Bank’s Central Virginia regional president, said Monday. “It was a lot of fear and misinformation and lack of information.”

United Bank’s stock rebounded a bit on Monday, as people learned more about what happened at SVB, which had $209 billion in total assets in December and was a major backer of venture capital-backed tech startups. According to NPR, 90% of SVB’s deposits were above the federal insurance cap of $250,000, and VC investor Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund members withdrew millions from the bank, leading to what Judy Gavant, chief financial officer of Blue Ridge Bankshares Inc., called “just one of those old-fashioned runs on the bank.” SVB investors and depositors attempted to remove $42 billion from the bank on Thursday alone, said a California state regulator.

On Sunday and Monday, the White House and federal regulators took emergency steps to ensure that SVB and Signature Bank customers will have access to their deposits, which helped calm fears among startup entrepreneurs and their funders. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and President Joe Biden both emphasized that taxpayers would not be on the hook for reimbursing SVB and Signature account holders, with the money coming from the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund, which banks pay into.

Biden also said that the bank executives responsible would be fired and that the banks’ investors would not be bailed out. “They knowingly took a risk and when the risk didn’t pay off, the investors lose their money. That’s how capitalism works,” Biden said during a Monday morning address from the White House.

Furthermore, in a move designed to prevent more bank runs, the federal government announced it had also initiated backstop measures to protect the entire nation’s banking deposits, safeguarding banks from $300 billion in securities losses.

Banks everywhere still suffered some financial fallout from the banking crisis, however, as investors sold off banking shares and sought safety in gold and Treasurys, kicking off the largest drop in regional bank stocks in three years.

And Virginia was no exception. Blue Ridge Bank, based in Charlottesville, saw its stock drop 8.97% Monday, and Fairfax-based FVCbank’s stock fell 11%. Share prices for Richmond’s Atlantic Union Bank, the largest regional bank headquartered in Virginia, with 2022 deposits of $15.7 billion, fell by 6.69% to $33.74 Monday.

However, the “unique risk factors” that affected SVB are not issues likely to impact the community and midsize banks here in Virginia, said Andy Farmer, spokesman for the Virginia State Corporation Commission, which regulates the commonwealth’s 47 state-chartered banks. “Virginia’s banking industry remains strong and well-capitalized.”

Atlantic Union CEO John Asbury noted the difference between his bank and the two that were shut down last week: “These are nontraditional banks engaged in nontraditional activities that grew rapidly. We are a full-service traditional banking facility.” Silicon Valley Bank, he said, was started to serve tech startups backed by venture capital firms. However, venture capital funding and loans for tech startups started to dry up in the past year, leading the startups to seek more withdrawals from the bank, Asbury said. SVB was invested heavily in long-term securities that weren’t liquid, though, and when the bank couldn’t find a buyer, SVB sold $21 billion in fixed-rate securities last week at a $1.8 billion loss in an unsuccessful attempt to hold off the bank run.

“All of this frightened their customers,” Asbury said. By contrast, his bank and others in Virginia have little to do with the tech startup industry, at least compared to SVB, and Atlantic Union has never had a losing financial quarter since its founding in 1902, Asbury added. Meanwhile, New York-based Signature Bank was a major lender to the cryptocurrency industry, which, Asbury said, is “very unstable” and largely unregulated.

The federal government’s actions are meant to “avoid a crisis in confidence in banks,” Asbury said, but he and others in the industry said Monday they haven’t fielded many calls from customers about the situation.

“The banking system is safe, sound, well-capitalized, so this is very different from the fall of 2008,” when the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank, amid the Great Recession kicked off an international banking crisis, Virginia Bankers Association President and CEO Bruce Whitehurst remarked Monday. “That was a very different situation from the one we have today.”

Some Virginia banks have emailed or called their customers to reassure them that their funds are safe, and that the situation at the two shutdown banks was quite different from a typical community bank.

Reston-based John Marshall Bancorp Inc. put out a news release Monday affirming that the bank’s “financial condition remains strong.” The bank issued the release, it said, to “inform our shareholders as well as the customers and employees of the Bank that we are of sound financial condition, [and] our business model differs materially from that of SVB’s.”

For any individual or corporate customer who has less than $250,000 in savings at a bank, Whitehurst said, the current banking situation is not a big deal, but for any company “trying to make payroll, it is. If they have any questions or concerns, they should talk to their banks. It’s always a good idea for business owners to have an ongoing dialogue with their bankers.”

Steve Yeakel, president and CEO of the Virginia Association of Community Banks, dismissed the dips in bank stocks Friday and Monday as “nothing more than noise,” adding that he expects it all to be a footnote “in two or three weeks.”

One longer-lasting outcome of the situation, though, could be more banking regulations, though that could also include raising the federal insurance cap of $250,000 for business banking customers, which would be welcome news, Virginia bankers said. “I think it’s good that regulators are taking a second look at FDIC limits,” Smith said.

Liberty to pay off $189M in bonds early

Liberty University plans to pay off more than $189 million in taxable bonds next month, according to paperwork filed Wednesday by the Bank of New York Mellon Trust Co. NA. The prices will be set March 31, which will include accrued interest.

Liberty issued a $100 million bond in 2012 with a 5.1% interest rate, and in 2019, it issued two more bonds, with the principal amounts of $86 million and $3,745,000. All three bonds will be redeemed April 5, according to the documents, which were posted Wednesday on Liberty’s financial disclosure website. Davenport & Co. LLC, the Lynchburg-based private Christian university’s financial adviser, will determine the “make-whole” prices of the bonds, which is equal to 100% of the principal amounts, or the sum of the present values of remaining principal and interest payments on any bonds being paid off.

The 2012 bond, issued to fund construction projects, becomes mature on March 1, 2042. The 2019 bonds of $3.7 million and $86 million, which replaced an existing bond debt from 2010 at lower interest rates of 2.246% and 3.338%, are due March 1, 2024, and March 1, 2034, respectively. The BNY/Mellon Trust Co. is trustee of the three bonds, which were estimated at a worth of $193.41 million as of June 30, 2022, according to Liberty’s financial audit report for fiscal year 2022.

Liberty’s endowment was at $2.169 billion in fiscal year 2022, according to its 2022 financial report, and its total assets without donor restrictions were just below $3.5 billion. The University of Virginia, which reported a $9.8 billion endowment in fiscal year 2022, tops the state’s list of college endowment funds.

Founded by Jerry Falwell Sr. in 1971 as Lynchburg Baptist College, Liberty has grown into an online-learning juggernaut, with 95,148 students enrolled in 2021, most of whom study remotely, according to the university. However, the school has been subject to multiple controversies since 2020, including former chancellor and president Jerry Falwell Jr.’s fall from grace in August 2020. He was forced to resign after a series of personal scandals, including allegations that he had knowledge of an affair between his wife and a young man who also was their business partner briefly. Falwell has denied that allegation, but the university sued him for $10 million for breach of contract, a suit that is still active in Lynchburg Circuit Court.

Liberty also was sued by 22 anonymous women — both former students and staff members — who alleged that Liberty “intentionally created a campus environment where sexual assaults and rapes are foreseeably more likely” and discouraged victims from reporting their assaults. In May 2022, 20 of the plaintiffs settled their lawsuits against Liberty. The U.S. Department of Education announced in May 2022 it would investigate the university over claims of Title IX misconduct.

A former employee, John Markley, filed a $20 million lawsuit against Liberty in November 2022, claiming he was fired for being a whistleblower. Liberty also launched a third-party investigation of the university’s finances and real estate dealings during Falwell’s tenure in late 2020, but no report has been publicly released yet.

Interim President Jerry Prevo, the school’s former longtime board chair, plans to step down after this academic year; in August 2022, the university announced it was starting a search for his replacement.