Page Six sightings included Blackstone Group CEO Steve Schwarzman "eyeing a Van Gogh, "cheap" at $9.5 million, at the Boys Club of NY
preview party for the Westchester Enterprises Antiques & Art show
at the Park Avenue Armory, amid the likes Karen LeFrak and Geoffrey
Bradfield and co-chairs Jamee Gregory and Mario Buatta". No idea if he bought it. But to put it into other terms, the "cheap" price boils down to 23,750 of his beloved $400 stone crabs… Sightings – NY Post
Tags: Blackstone
Fatima Monaghan, who had filed a salacious $24 million lawsuit last spring against her former boss, fund manager Frederick Iseman, CEO of Caxton-Iseman Capital, was indicted for allegedly running up over $43,000 in bogus charges on his American Express card and mis-using his Mercedes while in his employ. According to the New York Post:
A personal assistant who accused her bigwig
boss of making her his sexual gofer was indicted yesterday on charges that she
used his credit card for herself to buy everything from shoes to sheet sets.Seven months ago, Fatima Monahan, 36, had
Wall Street buzzing after she hit a respected financial-firm chairman with a
lawsuit that included a laundry list of lustful duties she was asked to perform
outside her job duties.Monahan said Caxton-Iseman Capital Chairman
Frederick Iseman assigned her to set up dates for him, line up accommodations
that would fit the sexual activities he liked, buy him lubricant and edible
underwear and organize his dirty pictures.
Tags: Lawsuit
The Wall Street Journal has a great piece dissecting how the E*Trade deal got done starting from Citadel losing money on their equity position as it was collapsing. …
Tags: Citadel, Credit Crunch
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Tags: Citadel, Credit Crunch
Here’s the Morgan Stanley press release detailing the shake-up, including the ‘resignation’ of co-president Zoe Cruz:
Tags: Credit Crunch, John Mack, Morgan Stanley, Revolving Door
Some had been calling Morgan Stanley Co-President Zoe Cruz John Mack’s heir apparent. But instead, the woman dubbed the "Cruz Missile" who was paid $30 million in 2006, is the latest high profile banking executive to fall under the sub-prime ax in another big Wall Street shake up. Bob Scully, the other Co-President, will join a new office of the chairman. Walid A. Chammah and James P. Gorman were named as Co-Presidents of the firm succeeding Cruz and Scully. According to the Wall Street Journal:
Apparently, Ms. Cruz suffered not only from
the mortgage losses but from criticism of her leadership style, which many
colleagues said could be difficult, and from lingering wounds from a bruising
2005 battle for control of the firm. During that struggle, she played a
polarizing role, remaining loyal to Philip Purcell, an unpopular chief executive
who later was ousted. John Mack, who succeeded Mr. Purcell, stood by Ms. Cruz,
but the trading losses gave him a reason to question her leadership.Some bankers and traders at Morgan Stanley have long resented Ms. Cruz’s rise within the firm. Her ascent after Mr. Mack was installed as CEO was remarkable, given the polarizing role she played in 2005, when Mr. Purcell was pressured to resign by investors and Morgan Stanley alumni.
She was so unpopular with a number of high-profile Morgan exiles that they refused to return after Mr. Mack became CEO if she remained co-president. They included Vikram Pandit, now a candidate to lead Citigroup Inc., and star banker Joseph Perella.
Tags: Credit Crunch, John Mack, Morgan Stanley, Revolving Door
They’ve honored him with the ‘Citizen of the Carolinas Award’, Here’s the full text of his speech which he made after the close beginning at 6:53PM
Tags: Ben Bernanke, Credit Crunch, Economy, Fed
The bitter bickering between billionaire and Revlon CEO Ron Perelman and his ex wife, Ellen Barkin, continues: Page Six says that he’s countersuing his ex after she sued him last summer.
RON Perelman says the only thing ex-wife
Ellen Barkin’s movie company is producing are different ways to spend his money.
In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, the billionaire Revlon head says
Applehead I, the production company he started with Barkin and her brother,
George, now serves as their personal piggy bank. The suit, which seeks
unspecified money damages, charges the Barkins "covertly established"
their own production company called Applehead II earlier this year, and have
been using Applehead I’s cash to help run it. In the meantime, George Barkin is
still pulling in his $250,000 annual salary from Applehead I, even though he’s
allegedly not qualified for the job and has "rendered no or few services of
value." Ellen and oft-married Perelman ended their six-year marriage last
year, with the star getting a $40 million settlement. A spokeswoman for Perelman
expressed his disappointment at Ellen’s "attempts to further enrich
herself" plus "her family and her friends . . . We intend to pursue
our remedy in the courts." A rep for Barkin did not return a call for
comment.
Ron Sues Ellen & Brother - New York Post Page Six
Tags: Lawsuit, Ron Perelman
What the fuck are those boneheads at the SEC thinking with this totally misguided move???? Chris Cox is gonna have some legacy to look back on and to be proud of — one of trashing shareholder rights and helping to increase corporate fraud. Everyone should be sending the SEC nastygrams in protest….
Companies will be able to scuttle investor
attempts to nominate board members under a plan adopted by a bitterly divided
Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday.The move drew an outcry from key lawmakers, unions and major retirement funds,
which criticized SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, a Republican, for pushing the
plan at a time when the agency is short one Democrat and another is on her way
out the door.The 3 to 1 vote, in which the SEC’s lone remaining Democrat dissented, marked
the most controversial action in the two-year tenure of the agency’s chairman.
It was the latest development in a debate over investor rights that has been
boiling for decades, pitting chief executives against pension funds and union
groups.
Page Six is Just Asking:
WHICH senior Citigroup executive, who’s
still with the financial giant despite being involved in loss-making decisions
this year, was able to promote his cute chief-of-staff and then replace her with
an equally cute hire despite the bank’s unofficial hiring freeze?
Tags: Citigroup, Eye Candy, Revolving Door
Looks like no deal for E*Trade by Charles Schwab or Ameritrade is in the cards, at least for now. Citadel has ridden to the rescue along with funds managed by Blackrock; they’re injecting $2.55 billion into the beleagered firm. According to the Wall Street Journal, around 30 firms kicked the firms tires, of which eight were deemed to be serious. In the end a deal with Schwab and Ameritrade couldn’t be reached because they only wanted the brokerage assets.
In a plan overseen by the federal Office of
Thrift Supervision, Citadel will make a two-part investment in E*Trade, which is
based in New York. The first component is the purchase of E*Trade’s entire $3
billion portfolio of asset-backed securities for a value of around $800 million.
The second component is the purchase of $1.75 billion worth of 10-year notes,
paying an annual interest rate of about 12.5%.After regulatory approvals, Citadel is
expected to own almost 20% of E*Trade, including the approximately 3% of the
broker it already holds, and gain a seat on the company’s board.The deal also signals the end of the tenure
for E*Trade Chief Executive Officer Mitch Caplan, who has led the firm since
2003. President Jarrett Lilien will serve as acting chief executive until a new
CEO is found. Donald H. Layton, a former vice chairman of J.P. Morgan Chase
& Co., will replace the firm’s current nonexecutive chairman. Mr Caplan will
retain a seat on the board.
Tags: Citadel, Credit Crunch, Hedge funds
Taking advantage of a hot market for just about everything commodities related, Fortress is jumping on the bandwagon and opening its own commodities hedge fund.
The Drawbridge Commodities Fund will be
managed by William Callanan, according to the fund’s marketing documents.
Fortress and its employees will invest a “significant” amount of capital in
the fund, the documents said.“Commodities are getting more and more mainstream,” said Omar Kodmani, a
London-based portfolio manager at Permal Group, which invests $35 billion in
funds. “Investors are still interested in the asset class; we’re not just in a
short-term bull market.”
Tags: Commodities, Fortress, Hedge funds
Bring on the ring girls! In what’s now become a hugely public grudge fight, Pershing Square’s activist hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has upped the ante against the bond insurers, which he’s been shorting since 2002. Today at the Value Investing Congress he made the challenge that bond insurers MBIA and Ambac Financial would implode as soon as next year and if they do, he’ll donate the hundreds of millions in fees that he knows he’ll reap to charity.
Ackman said he personally stands to gain
about $500 million if MBIA’s holding company failed and that amount would be
donated to charity. The fund itself stands to make “multiple billions of
dollars” if the holding companies of MBIA and Ambac were to fail, he said.“The hedge fund business is profitable.
I’ve made more than I need,” Ackman said. “I also think it’s the right thing
to do.”
Tags: Activist Investing, Bill Ackman, Credit Crunch, Hedge funds, Philanthropy
Fortune Magazine’s has come out with their ‘25 most powerful people in business’ list. Goldman Sachs CEO Llloyd Blankfein registered at number 3. Rupert Murdoch just beat him out, coming in at number 2. And coming in at number 1 — drumroll please — is Steve Jobs. Rounding out the top five, behind Blankfein: the Google guys are number 4, and the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, taking the #5 spot. Also notable: JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon is number 15, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman is number 19, Cerberus CEO Steve Feinberg is number 21.
Here’s what Fortune says about the Wall Street CEO likely to get the largest pay package this year:
Wall Street firms are taking
multibillion-dollar write-offs. Titans of finance are losing their jobs. But
through it all, Goldman Sachs keeps making money. The i-bank reported stellar
third-quarter results: Earnings per share almost doubled from the prior year,
and return on equity was 36.6%.CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who took over last spring, gets credit for helping steer
Goldman away from the most damaging investments. And Goldman, which says it has
limited exposure to the subprime mess, stands confirmed – for now, anyway – as
the smartest bank on the Street.
Here’s what they say about the Oracle:
Tags: Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein
Bear Stearns is sending out pink slips to around 650 more employees in New York and London
It was not immediately known what parts of
the company the reductions would come from. However, a person familiar with the
layoffs who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter said cuts would
likely come from the operations side of the business — including information
technology and legal and compliance departments.The memorandum, which came from Bear
Stearns’ management and compensation committee, said those who lose their jobs
would be given severance, benefits and outplacement services.
Bear Stearns Cuts 4 Percent of Staff – AP via MSN Money
Bear Stearns Plans More Job Cuts in Europe, U.S. – Bloomberg
Tags: Bear Stearns, Credit Crunch, Revolving Door
Absolute Capital the latest credit crunch victim to go into bankruptcy….
Australian hedge fund Absolute Capital has
been put into administration, making it the country’s latest victim of the
credit squeeze, The Sydney Morning Herald reported Wednesday citing the
administrator McGrath Nicol.The hedge fund provider, which is 50 percent owned by ABN Amro (NYSE:ABN) ,
manages about 410 million Australian dollars for investors.McGrath Nicol was appointed after income was cut following Absolute’s major fee
generator, the Absolute Capital Yield Strategies Fund, being suspended after
suffering losses in structured credit markets, the newspaper said.Australian hedge fund Absolute Capital placed in administration – report – CNNMoney.com
Tags: Bankruptcy, Credit Crunch, Hedge funds, Toe Tags
Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius is predicting that the Fed is gonna have to cut interest rates even more — down to 3% — to head off a recession next year. At the same time, Charles Plosser, at the helm of the Philly Fed, said yesterday that they may even move rates in the other direction to control inflation:
The bank’s chief economist, Jan Hatzius,
said US house prices were likely to fall 15pc from peak to trough, leaving a
fifth of the country’s homeowners with $3,000bn in negative equity.“The US housing market is mired in a
full-blown vicious cycle. The ultimate downturn will be considerably worse than
we originally anticipated.The Wall Street bank had previously
forecast that the Fed would cut rates a half point to 4pc by mid-2008. It said
the recession risk had risen to 40pc-45pc, even if the pace of the rate cuts
quickens. “Although Fed officials have given no signs that they plan to ease
significantly further, we expect them to change their minds as the
housing-related damage becomes more visible,” said Mr Hatzius.
Tags: Economy, Fed, Goldman Sachs
The fund, overseen by former Deutsche Bank
AG executives Rick Goldsmith and Ralph Reynolds, fell 9.5 percent in October
after beginning the month with $690 million in assets, according to an investor
who declined to be named because returns are private. The managers were hurt by
bets on structured credit, which can include securities backed by repackaged
home loans.Blue Wave’s decline since March compared
with the 10 percent average gain by hedge funds globally and the 6.7 percent
return by multistrategy funds that bet on price differences between stocks,
bonds and other securities, according to Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc.
The fund’s losses made it vulnerable to client redemptions.
Tags: Carlyle, Credit Crunch, Hedge funds
Speaking at CBI’s annual conference Blackstone boss Stephen Schwarzman defended the private equity industry as "a force for good"….
Stephen Schwarzman, chairman and co-founder
of Blackstone, told the CBI’s annual conference that private equity was having a
rough ride – from the media and the credit crunch – but that its contribution to
the global economy would remain significant."I suspect private equity’s current
image among many people has been coloured by myths and fears that have more to
do with anxiety about changes in the global economy and their own lives than
with private equity itself," he said."We are not greedy speculators out to
make a quick buck. Private equity does great things that benefit a great number
of people," Mr Schwarzman said."We take the tough, unpopular decisions that other management teams
dodge."
Private equity a force for good – Daily Telegraph
Tags: Blackstone, Private equity
Cyber Monday sales go up in flames: So much for doing business on Cyber Monday for many merchants who host their web stores on Yahoo. According to a CNBC report on Monday, holiday shoppers on one of the internet’s busiest days were getting ’system unavailable’ messages when they tried to pay for their purchases. Major black eyes for Yahoo…
For a company that hosts three million
small and medium online businesses, this is a problem that could send sizeable
ripples through the online economy.I spoke with Yahoo just minutes ago, and the company confirms the outages,
telling me they are due to "heavy holiday traffic" and the company is
"investigating" the problem. I have noticed that the original warning
on the Yahoo Merchant website was updated at 11:54 am PST, saying the company is
continuing to investigate the problem. We do not have a clear idea just how wide
a problem this is since Yahoo is providing no details on the scope of the
outage.
Yahoo Can’t Cope with Cyber Monday – CNBC
Yahoo sees outages on heavy online shopping day - MarketWatch
Those folks in Abu Dhabi sure are busy. Just last week the government run Mubadala Development Corp announced they were buying an 8.1% stake in AMD (that Fox Business News famously first reported as an investment by Apple). Today it was announced that the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is injecting $7.5 billion into Citigroup. The deal was announced after the close today, where for the first time in 5 years, the stock broke $30. During the day CNBC reported that Citi was planning major job cuts, with possibly up to 45,000 getting the ax…..
As a result of the deal, the investment authority known as ADIA will become one of Citigroup’s largest shareholders, with a stake of no more than 4.9%. The stake will exceed that of Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin
Talal, long known as one of Citigroup’s largest shareholders, according to a person familiar with the situation."This investment, from one of the world’s leading and most sophisticated equity investors, provides further capital to allow Citi to pursue attractive opportunities to grow its business," said Sir Win Bischoff, the bank’s acting chief executive officer, in a statement.
In exchange for its investment, ADIA will receive convertible stock in Citigroup yielding 11% annually. The shares are required to be converted into common stock at a conversion price of between $31.83 and $37.24 a share over a period of time between March 2010 and September 2011. The investment, which came together in about a week, is expected to close within the next several days.
Abu Dhabi to Bolster Citigroup With $7.5 Billion Capital Infusion – Wall Street Journal
Tags: Charts, Citigroup, CNBC, Revolving Door
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