According to Crains NY Business, there will be a bunch of celebrity impersonators, including Mr Client 9, advertising a new celebrity gossip website called Celebrifantasy.com just in time to wish you Happy April Fool’s Day….
Tags: Eliot Spitzer, Hookers
Fucked on Saint Paddy’s day: They say that Matthew MacIsaac, a 32 year old hot shot Toronto hedge fund manager with MM Asset Management, who reportedly pulls down $3 million plus, tried to buy some cocaine for a woman late Saint Paddy’s day night at an after hours club called the "Comfort Zone". The trouble was, said woman was an under cover cop. So he was busted and charged with conspiracy to traffic cocaine. He had $600 in his pocket and when the cops questioned him about why so much (although really, by NY hedge fund standards that’s not that much of a bank roll), he gave, perhaps unintentionally, what’s become the classic bar brag — by even those who aren’t in the business– "I’m a hedge fund manager".
We understand that Matt has a birthday coming up on April 12. So might we suggest the gift at the left? A "Fuck Me, I’m a Hedge Fund Manager" T-Shirt….
Hedge fund manager faces cocaine charge – Globe and Mail
Tags: Culture, Drugs, Hedge funds, Legal
For days and days CNBC watchers have been bombarded with teasers on an in depth tv expose on the bizarre /salacious life and death of hedge fund manager Seth Tobias. The show finally airs tonight at 9PM Eastern time. And again at midnight. (And no doubt will air over and over and over after that if you don’t catch it / Tivo it in one of the first showings)
Tags: Hedge funds, Hookers
Is UBS looking to raise more cash? Sounds like that’s in the cards according to Swiss newspaper
Sonntag’s sources. They may ask shareholders to approve raising as much as
$16 billion. Meanwhile, Merrill Lynch has lowered earnings estimates and
is saying that they may have another $11 billion in write downs. (Merrill also lowered estimates for
Credit Suisse) ….
Tags: Credit Crunch
Embarrassingly bad due diligence by a supposedly sophisticated investment banking firm?: As if Lehman Brothers isn’t already up to its eyeballs in problems, now they’re claiming that they were scammed out of $350 million in an elaborately staged swindle. They thought they were ultimately lending cash to a partnership backed by Japanese trading house Marubeni Corp, but instead found that they had lent money to a big fat fraud created by a few Marubeni employees using a series of forged internal documents. Marubeni says they knew nothing about the transaction. Major oopsie. Now Lehman is suing Marubeni, which claims that the company isn’t responsible for the losses "accordingly, we have no obligation to pay any of these demands"….
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has gone to
court in Tokyo in an effort to recover $350 million it says it was bilked out of
through an elaborate scheme in which employees of a big Japanese trading company
allegedly used forged documents and an imposter to raise cash.The purported swindle, which involved the establishment of a partnership to fund
the refurbishment of hospitals, allegedly involved two employees of Marubeni
Corp., a 150-year-old trading house, according to people familiar with the
situation.
Tags: Lawsuit, Lehman Brothers
This is who the Clear Channel bank group, trying to walk away from the deal, will be up against. It’s tough talking, potty mouthed Joe Jamail, taking a deposition in Texas. You don’t see him, as the camera is focused on the man being deposed. The exchange gets more and more heated, peppered with profanities, and they almost come to blows…..
Prepare yourself for a great laugh!
Tags: Banks, Citigroup, Clear Channel, Legal
Today in Clear Channel: The company is finally acknowledging that the deal to take it private
might collapse owing to the banks’ refusal to honor the terms of their original commitment. The banks, led by Citigroup, with an adverse ruling against them in the lawsuit filed by the sponsors in Texas, are trying to have the lawsuit moved out of that state because they don’t want to face that famous ‘Texas justice’. If you
read the text of the lawsuits that the sponsors have filed, if their allegations
are true, we think that a good
dose of ‘Texas justice’ served up by pit bull lawyer Joe Jamail is just what they deserve. We hope that the banks
get their nuts really squeezed; the banks can’t just decide to move the deal goal posts when
they feel like it, as they’re trying to do here.
Some are questioning TH
Lee / Bain’s motives in filing suit, suggesting that they really want to also walk and may be after
the banks to pick up the $600 million deal break up fee.
Tags: Bain Capital, Citigroup, Clear Channel, Private equity
Jane Mendillo, Wellesley College’s CIO, will take over at the helm of the nation’s largest collenge endowment ($34.9B) on July 1. Her predecessor, Mohamed El-Erian, left Harvard to return to a very fat job at Pimco.
During her five years at Wellesley, the
school’s endowment had an average annualized return of 13.5%, and grew to $1.7
billion from $1 billion. Prior to Wellesley, Ms. Mendillo worked for 15 years at
Harvard Management, where she held a number of positions, including vice
president of external management."Jane Mendillo has an excellent record
as one of the most able and accomplished investment managers in the endowment
world, as well as an extensive knowledge of the Harvard endowment and a deep
commitment to higher education," said James F. Rothenberg, treasurer of
Harvard University and chairman of the HMC board of directors.
Harvard Taps Mendillo To Oversee Endowment – Wall Street Journal
Tags: Endowments, Harvard
Because he sold his entire stake. (Well maybe not all since he still probably owns restricted stock). He sold 5.61 million shares of his unrestricted stock and another 45K of his wife’s. His sale price $10.84 with his total proceeds $61.4 million. At its high last year his stake would have been worth $901 million. Ouch.
(Click picture to enlarge)
Tags: Bear Stearns, Jim Cayne, JPM Chase
Goldman Sachs was able to cash out of 90% of its ‘this-is-not-a-rescue’ loan made to its Global Equity Opportunity fund last August. It has $200 million more to go. Others who participated in the rescue financing also have made witdrawals:
Goldman withdrew $1.8bn from its Global
Equity Opportunities fund at the end of February, its first opportunity under a
lock-up agreement made when it invested in August, according to people familiar
with the quantitative, or computer-driven, fund. It wrote to investors last week
to explain its decision but declined to comment on Wednesday.Eli Broad, the US billionaire, has also withdrawn the money he invested in
August to help bail out the fund.Mr Broad joined hedge fund Perry Capital
and others in putting in $1bn to help rescue the fund.
Goldman reclaims most of $2bn in rescue funds – Financial Times
Tags: Goldman Sachs, Hedge funds
Local purveyors of services to the well heeled and free spending Wall Street types are feeling the pinch, especially since the cratering of Bear Stearns. Restaurants, clubs, and luxury stores are getting hit. Also, one interior designer tells of how contracts are being canceled by wives of Bear Stearns execs.
Less than 48 hours after news broke
that Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. would be bought for a fire-sale price, the
wives of two of the firm’s senior investment bankers called their high-end
interior designer to cancel their contracts."We only had about $50,000 worth of final touches [to go], and the wife
called me last week and said stop," said interior designer Darren Henault,
whose work has been featured in Vanity Fair and Elle Decor."She said they’re not poor, and are never going to be poor," Henault
said, "but their capacity for discretionary income for things like window
valances just went out the window."
Tags: Bear Stearns, Credit Crunch, JPM Chase, Revolving Door
This is hilarious: Via Valleywag, a reader emails us of an offer to soon to be former Bear Stearns employees that some might find fascinating from the blog of self proclaimed NYC dominatrix Miss Victoria X. Lehman Brothers employees might soon have their own offer…
Inspired by the example of the generous
Hamptons-based design firm which is now offering its stagings service at a discounted price to current/former/soon to be former Bear Stearns employees (staging is cleaning and prepping a house to be shown for sale), I have decided to offer a discount on sessions to all current/former/soon to be former Bear Stearns employees. The discount is equivalent to the current value of a share of Bear Stearns stock. That is to say, $2.The terms are not for reproduction here but made us convulse with laughter, so be sure to read the entire offer detailing her listed services. However, with the now higher bid she’s updated her terms:
UPDATE: JP Morgan has increased their bid
to $10/share, and so I must increase my session discount to $10/hour. You’re
welcome.
Tags: Bear Stearns, Credit Crunch, JPM Chase
Another high priced hooker ring was busted on Tuesday afternoon, with a 32 year old bleached blond "former hedge fund worker" (whatever that means) at its center. Kristen (or Kristin) "Billie" Davis (not the Sex and the City actress) is being held on $2 million bail. Today’s NY Post has her linked to high-priced-hooker frequenter ex-Governor Eliot Spitzer. His rep issued a denial saying he wasn’t ever a client.:
The ex-governor regularly patronized Wicked
Models, the Manhattan-based operation taken down Tuesday, according to financial
documents and other evidence unearthed in a yearlong prostitution in vestigation,
law-enforcement sources said.
"She personally interfaced with
Spitzer a number of times" since 2003 before she became a madam, a source
close to Davis said.
When asked about the allegation, Davis told The Post, "I can’t talk about
it." Spitzer’s spokeswoman, Anna Cordasco, countered that "Mr. Spitzer
was not ever a client of Ms. Davis."
According to yesterday’s NY Post:
Tags: Eliot Spitzer, Hedge funds, Hookers, Politics
Tags: Bear Stearns, Credit Crunch, Fed, JPM Chase, Legal, Liquidations / implosions, Real Estate, Revolving Door
Quite the spectacle: Over 200 demonstrators from the Neighborhood Assistance Corp of North America are currently picketing inside Bear Stearns headquarters according to CNBC. They’re protesting the Fed’s financial assistance package to JP Morgan / Bear, and want the Fed to provide mortgage holders assistance as well….
Update: CNBC has video of the demonstration here. Around 60 of the picketers made it into the Bear Stearns lobby…
Update: Reuters coverage: Protesters enter Bear Stearns building
Tags: Bear Stearns, JPM Chase
One of the winners in the demise of Bear Stearns would seem to be CNBC’s Charlie Gasparino. According to the NY Post, he got a book deal with an estimated $400K advance from publisher HarperCollins (owned by NY Post parent News Corp). That’ll buy at least a few lunches at his fave hang, San Pietro….
Gasparino’s book, "The Sellout,"
tells how Bear Stearns tossed out its tradition of hard-nosed, conservative
trading skills and plunged head first into risky debt that’s been drowning Wall
Street investment banks.Gasparino, the on-air editor at CNBC and a former Wall Street Journal reporter,
lamented that smart veterans who’d been running Wall Street banks were
"some of the most conservative traders in the world, so why did they sell
out these principles and begin to roll the dice so recklessly?""Greed," Gasparino reckoned.
$400G For Book On Bear’s Fall - NY Post
Tags: Bear Stearns, Books, CNBC
Citigroup settled litigation filed by Enron creditors for $1.66 billion without admitting any wrong doing; it had already set aside reserves so it sounds like good news, removing at least one uncertainty from their ugly balance sheet. Now they just have to clean up their other shit. (P.S. Meredith Whitney sharpened her pencil this morning and cut her Citigroup estimates again)
Citigroup Inc., the biggest U.S. bank by
assets, will pay $1.66 billion and give up an estimated $4.25 billion in claims
to settle a lawsuit by Enron Corp. creditors over the former energy trader’s
bankruptcy case.The creditors, represented by Houston-based
Enron Creditors Recovery Corp., were seeking as much as $20 billion from New
York-based Citigroup. The bank is the sole remaining defendant in the 2003
lawsuit seeking to hold lenders liable for the roles they allegedly played in
the fraud that destroyed the company. Enron filed for bankruptcy in December
2001.Citigroup, which didn’t admit or deny
wrongdoing, said funds for the settlement have already been set aside. As part
of the accord, Enron agreed not to challenge $2.4 billion in claims by holders
of credit-linked notes tied to Citigroup.
Citigroup Settles Enron Megaclaims for $1.66 Billion – Bloomberg
Tags: Citigroup, Credit Crunch, Enron
Selective reporting at the New York Times?: Pete Peterson, one of Blackstone Group’s founders, has a beef with the New York Times which profiled him last month in a not so flattering light….
"I’m allegedly the fat cat that
doesn’t pay much taxes or some such thing," Peterson, 81, complains to
Portfolio.com’s Lloyd Grove. "I made it clear to the New York Times that I
pay substantial taxes, but they chose not to print it." Peterson, who
claims he paid 38.7 percent in taxes on last year’s income of reportedly around
$200 million, blames the omission on the Times’ anti-wealth bias. "Somebody
gets a theme, and the theme is that fat cats don’t want to pay more taxes or
don’t care about income inequality, and we ignore some of these obvious facts
which are verifiable as far as my background is concerned."
Blackstone Pete Rips Times – NY Post Page Six
Tags: Blackstone, Private equity
That’s what the Wall Street Journal is suggesting. The $19 billion buyout has been waiting to close forever.
The mood around the deal has darkened in
recent days as the talks between the private equity firms — Thomas H. Lee and
Bain Capital Partners LLC — and the banks became mired in the details of the
credit agreement, the people said. The banks that agreed to finance the deal
include Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, RBS and
Wachovia…."The sponsors do not want to do this
deal," said one person involved, referring to the private equity firms.
"No one wants to do this deal except for the seller."….
Clear Channel Communications’ Privatization Deal Is Near Collapse – WSJ
Per Briefing:
17:04 CCU
Clear Channel: Additional commentary from Reuters.com on the CCU deal
(32.56 -1.89) -Update-Reuters.com reports talks over the $20 bln leveraged buyout
of CCU are in trouble, with the banks financing the deal unwilling to take a
mark-to-market loss, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday. But
the final resolution is unclear, with the buyers still wanting to do a deal, the
source said.
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