MBAs are making even more money. [Business Week]
There aren’t many (any?) male personal assistants in UK investment banks. [The Devil's Personal Assistant via WallStFolly]
Why does the new KKR fund have a Luxembourg subsidiary? No withholding or capital gains taxes! [Going Private]
Jon Corzine was so beat-up by Hank Paulson during the 1998 struggle to control Goldman that he wouldn’t even enter the building and conducted his business from a limo outside. [New York Post]
Archive for May 2006
We suppose you can read the reporting on today’s Google conference call from Reuters or CNNMoney. They are good enough as far as they go. But the most complete treatment comes from John C. Ogg on the 24/7 Wall Street blog. It’s little more than a hastily written transcript but its got the goods on who asked what, which is always one of the best parts of these calls.
Google’s Investor and Analyst Conference Call [24/7 Wall Street]
Update: Seeking Alpha has the complete transcript.
Today seems to be Hank Paulson day here at DealBreaker. The Observer ran a good profile on the incoming Treasury Secretary today, with details on his fly-fishing habits (catch and release). Meanwhile, over on Slate, Timothy Noah provides the details on Paulson’s political contributions (heavily Republican).
In light of what we’ve heard about Paulson leaving a sappy voicemail for Goldman’s employees yesterday, this older story from Fortune is particularly telling.
I’ve never used e-mail, but I’m a huge voicemail user. I do a couple hundred voicemails a day. And I return every call right away, whether it’s a client or someone in the firm. There are positives and negatives to this. I don’t have a lot of time for small talk.
Occasionally there are wing nuts who call, and I pass them on to Julie, my assistant. But Julie doesn’t screen my voicemails. The people at Goldman Sachs have to be able to get to me. Clients have to be able to get to me.
I’ve always spent a lot of time on the phone. Even when cell phones were a novelty in the 1980s when I lived in Chicago, I was using one of those huge Motorola phones as I walked from the train station to the office. This past Christmas, my wife, Wendy, and my daughter, Amanda, and her husband and I spent ten days hiking in Chile, and my daughter took so many pictures of me with this big satellite phone attached to my ear.
If anyone has yesterday’s voicemail and wants to send it our way, that would be like super. Actually, if you’ve got any Paulson voicemail you should send it to TIPS at DealBreaker.com.
Secrets of greatness: How I work [Fortune via CNN Money]
Eric Savitz has launched a blog over at Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily. From the initial post.
Well, here it is, the first-ever post of Barron’s first-ever blog. It’s been a long time coming: Barron’s has been online for a decade now, but our approach until this point has focused largely on writing stories for the Web that look a lot like the ones we write in the magazine: in-depth company stories with an investment angle. And the site will continue to do a lot of that. With Tech Trader Daily, however, I’ll try to apply some of the same Barron’s logic to daily coverage of the tech sector. Like other bloggers, I’ll be linking off to interesting stuff around the Web, from both other print publications and various places in the blogosphere.
Today he’s more or less live-blogging from the Wall Street Journal’s”D Confernce” and provides this quote from Sony CEO Howard Stringer: “Microsoft whips out patches like hot meals.”
Tech Trader Daily [Barron's Online via Random Roger's Big Picture]
Not everyone is happy with the appointment of Goldman CEO Hank Paulson to takeover from John Snow as Treasury Secretary. Here is what the free-marketeers at the Competitive Enterprise Institute* had to say.
“No conservative administration should consider appointing anyone who works for the Nature Conservancy to any position and certainly not to one carrying the high responsibilities of Treasury Secretary. The financial scandals at the Nature Conservancy uncovered by the Washington Post are only the tip of the iceberg. The Nature Conservancy has served as the agent for turning millions of acres of productive private land into federally-owned land and has made huge profits doing so,” said CEI’s Director of Energy & Global Warming Myron Ebell. “The question that needs to be asked is, what will Mr. Paulson be able to do as Treasury Secretary to benefit the Nature Conservancy and its big corporate partners?”
Translation: Treehugger!
Trouble at Treasury: Paulson Wrong Choice for Secretary [CEI]
* Disclosure: John Carney’s brother Timothy P. Carney is the Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow at CEI. He did not contribute to the article discussed here.
It seems some people find this very funny. To be honest, though, we don’t really get it.
Actress and blogger Helen Green (pictured left) is upset that the financial services community isn’t paying enough attention to the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes situation.
There are about 10 IBs about 5 feet away from me and one of them is explaining the “Tom Cruise is gay and Katie Holmes is contracted to play his wife” theory. They are all acting SHOCKED. Just shocked!
FOR REAL!?
“Where did you hear THAT?!”
“Oh this stuff is underground, it’s not even IN US Weekly.”
“What? NO!”
“Maybe that would make sense.”
“Well I guess ‘Pieces of April’ doesn’t pay the bills.”
This just isn’t acceptable. A year ago- MAYBE. Not 2006 though. No way
Actually Helen, you might want to reconsider the idea that you want to marry any man who knows too much about Tom Cruise.
Why I Can’t Marry An Investment Banker [And I'm Helen Green]
Boston blogger Kinjo complains that lunching bankers are destroying the peace of his park.
It’s like every investment banker in the Financial District has shown up and is sprawled out on the lawn waiting for Michael Buble to show up to torture their eardrums with some pop-crooner revivalist Sinatra-esque mediocrity while they loudly eat their overpriced sandwich-wraps from Così2 and talk on cellphones in front of the friend they invited to come out to lunch. Asshole Woodstock.
We’ve seen what happens when bankers swarm at our own lunch spot. It’s black pants and open-necked dress shirts everywhere. Salad lines wrapping around the back of Bazzini. The sad look of greed combined with resignation that, yes, this is all life has to offer.
Asshole Woodstock [Kinjo Vents His Spleen]
For all we know, Slate’s Dan Gross is a totally a nice guy. So we’re going to stop picking on him. But not yet.
Just now, while reviewing those Treasury Secretary articles on Slate’s Moneybox, we noticed that each article has a “Related in Slate” section. The Related section for Gross’s original “No Wall Street A-Lister to Treasury” article had a snarky little aside pointing out that Gross’s record predicting things wasn’t exactly sterling.
Last week, John Dickerson wondered whether Josh Bolten would change anything at the Bush White House; in November 2004, Daniel Gross dissected John Snow’s strong-dollar statements. Last fall, Gross inaccurately predicted that Bush would name Glenn Hubbard to succeed Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve. In March, Gross pointed out that Morgan Stanley’s John Mack is one of the CEOs who receives income tax gross-ups.
The “Related in Slate” section for Gross’s latest article is a kinder, gentler version.
In April, Daniel Gross wrote about John Snow’s potential successors, and John Dickerson wondered whether Goldman Sachs alumnus Josh Bolten would change anything at the White House. In November 2004, Gross critiqued Snow’s strong-dollar statements. In January 2002, Tim Noah took Robert Rubin to task for discussing Enron’s travails with a treasury department official.
Maybe the interns (who presumably write those things) just felt bad for Gross.
As it turns out, being married to an investment banker has its advantages. The Universal Critic blogger watches as his sterner half convinces a reluctant British National Health Service doctor to cough up the desired prescription:
At that point, a stare down ensued. Now Universal Wifey is not your average Notting Hill yummy mummy. For starters, she’s not a mummy. She is a hardcore investment banker, and you don’t get there without being able to stare someone down. She sat across from the doctor, wearing her smart work suit, and stared. Slowly the rustling from the waiting room became louder and louder. She stared. The clock ticked towards hometime. She stared. His phone rang with and enquiry from the desk to see if everything was OK. She stared. He picked up his men and doodled on her card. She stared. She clicked his pen a few times. She stared. He may even have perspired a little. She stared.
We were wondering how everyone was getting adderall prescriptions to fuel those all nighters.
London Life [Universal Critic]
Yesterday we poked fun at Daniel Gross, the Slate “Moneybox” writer who offered to eat the first chapter of Dow 36,000 if John Snow’s replacement was an “A-list Wall Street CEO.” You don’t get much more A-list than Hank Paulson, so we expect Gross to be digesting those pages soon.
Gross himself has now admitted his error, albeit while taking a weird swipe at the book he promised to devour.
In April, I said I’d eat the first chapter of Dow 36,000 if President Bush could convince a Wall Street big shot to succeed the flailing John Snow as treasury secretary. This morning, Bush nominated arguably the biggest of the big shots on Wall Street—Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (At least it’ll be a cheap meal. Dow 36,000 is going used on Amazon.com for as little as four cents a copy.)
Well, sure you can buy a used copy for four cents. But would you really want to eat a used book? We imagine that books aren’t exactly the cleanest thing you can shove down your gullet. Wouldn’t it at least be a good idea to start with a new copy? Look, Daniel, if it’s a money issue you can relax. Our offer to buy you a copy, a new copy, still stands.
Good as Goldman [Slate]
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