$$$Gay Banker crunches numbers. [Things I Can't Tell Boyfriend Number 1]
$$$Married Wall Street’r seeks similarly attached for a relationship “without BS.” [Craigslist]
$$$Trump on drugs . [The Trump Blog]
Archive for September 2006
CNBC is reporting that talks between Citigroup and Amaranth have fallen apart. It had been reported that Citigroup was considering a large stake in the fund. The collapse of these negotiations—and the possibility that they collapsed because Amaranth is in even worse condition than its managers have let on—is likely to prompt even more redemption notices from investors.
Amaranth continues to claim that it plans to stay in business but many employees are reportedly not even showing up to work. One friend of ours at a prominent Wall Street firm tells us he’s already had two Amaranth resumes cross his desk.
A couple of our readers complained that they were being deprived of the Merrill banker getty down and dirty on the beach with Daniella Cicarelli video because their firm blocks the website hosting it. So we’re embedding it right here for even easier access. We apologize in advance for the terrible soundtrack.
One thing we noticed on our second viewing is that Daniella seems to be wearing the same bathing suit bottom in the video as she is in the picture we linked to below. Shouldn’t her investment banker boyfriend spring for a second suit?
We deplore this kind of privacy invasion. What is happening to the world when a super hot brazillian MTV personality cannot have sex with her boyfriend on a public beach in privacy?
The hottest topic on many Brazilian voters’ minds isn’t this weekend’s presidential election. It’s the video of a Merrill Lynch & Co. banker having a sexual encounter on a Spanish beach with an ex-girlfriend of Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo.
The video showing MTV host The hottest topic on many Brazilian voters’ minds isn’t this weekend’s presidential election. It’s the video of a Merrill Lynch & Co. banker having a sexual encounter on a Spanish beach with an ex-girlfriend of Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo.
The video showing MTV host Daniella Cicarelli, 27, a triathlete and model, with Renato Malzoni Filho, 33, a private banker at Merrill in Sao Paulo, has crashed computers on trading floors in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The topic dominates office and party chat more than the future of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is forecast to win a new term, said Brazilian gossip columnist Ricardo Boechat.
“This has become a sensation, and it’s much more exciting than the election,” Boechat said. “In Brazil, people find it hard to resist anything with a rich, handsome young man and a gorgeous young woman.”
The video, shot by a paparazzo, appears in many versions, including some with soundtracks or subtitles. It begins with the couple kissing on a beach in the resort town of Tarifa on Spain’s southern coast, then slowly moving away from sunbathers and surfers toward a more secluded spot. There the couple — he in a green, tight Speedo-style swimming brief and she in a string bikini — stand by the water’s edge and engage in a range of sexual acts as they enter the ocean.
Just kidding. Here’s a link to the video.
Sex Video of Merrill Banker, MTV Host Eclipses Brazil Election [Bloomberg]
DealBook this afternoon provides a good guide to who blamed whom for the excesses of Hewlett-Packard’s leak investigation. You get a good picture of why lawmakers seemed so frustrated yesterday by just comparing what Pattie Dunn said to what the executives at the company are saying.
Patricia Dunn
Position: Chairwoman
Still at the firm? No
What she says: Said she did not supervise the investigation and that, until six months ago, she believed that private phone records could be obtained legally by simply calling the phone company and asking for them. Suggested that she relied on Hewlett-Packard chief financial officer Bob Wayman for his “recommendations as to how the security issues at the board level […] could best be handled.” (See Bob Wayman, below.)
Bob Wayman
Position: Chief financial officer
Still with the firm? Yes
What he says: An H.P. spokesman told Reuters that “to the best of our knowledge, Bob Wayman had no involvement whatsoever in this leak investigation.”
He Said, She Said, and They Won’t Say [DealBook]
Opening Bell this morning mentioned that Hewlett-Packard somehow managed to get a deal done amidst all the leak investigation hoopla. In case you missed it, they bought the luxury gaming pc company Voodoo. This morning, Voodoo’s founder put up an item on his blog describing how the deal got done.
Project Vampire is about to Fly… [Rahul Sood's Blog]
If yesterday’s non-stop DealBreaker coverage of the Hewlett-Packard hearings didn’t quite satisfy your needs, you can hop on over to C-Span’s web presence for these two videos. Here’s the first clip. And here’s the second.
We were so busy with Hewlett-Packard and Pirate Capital updates yesterday that we completely overlooked the USA Today story on ethics at Harvard Business School. Time was that teachers were held accountable for the ethics of their students. Think Socrates.
There’s a serious question, however, about whether these ethics classes do any good. Lawyers have to pass a nation-wide ethics test. And look how much good that does.
Bad Harvard grads are poster boys for ethics classes [USA Today]
The Pirate Capital saga continues. Earlier this week, at least seven staffers jumped ship for comfortable ports.
Today Bloomberg is reporting that at least some of the departed are not happy with the letter from fund founder Thomas Hudson explaining the losses.
Hudson disclosed yesterday that analysts Zachary George and David Lorber resigned on Sept. 26, and Carl Klein, the firm’s fixed-income portfolio manager, quit the next day. Hudson then fired analysts David Muccia and Matthew Goldfarb, according to his letter.
The letter didn’t give a reason for the staff departures and Hudson declined to comment. Stephanie Tran, Peter Desloge, Glenn Haberfield and Chadd Kirk are still at Pirate Capital working with Hudson.
“What Hudson wrote in the letter to investors is a blatant mischaracterization of the circumstances of our departure,” Goldfarb and Muccia said yesterday in a telephone interview. “We are currently exploring appropriate legal remedies.
Brock Fantasia is the only remaining person in the JPMorgan analyst class of 2002 to still work at JPMorgan, which is in no way testament to the work environment at JPMorgan. In fact, Brock likes to think of himself as the Highlander of his analyst class, wielding an indestructible claymore of corporate finance.
After “totally wrecking” (in his own words) the Analyst-to-Associate program in the M&A group, Brock was briefly moved to the Natural Resources group, due to increased deal flow in the M&A group. Brock graduated from the prestigious University of Pennsylvania Wharton with a degree in Finance and is working in investment banking until he can find a buy-side job. Brock has been interviewing for buy-side jobs throughout the past 3 years and has not been a “good fit” anywhere, despite his ever-burgeoning skill-set.
[Editor's P.S.,- Some of this is true. But only some of it. Previous Ask Brocks are here. Send your questions to : brock AT dealbreaker DOT com]
Shalom! Brock here, so let’s Brock out with your stock out.
You may have noticed last Friday that several of your Jewish, semi-Jewish, or born-again Jewish colleagues at the bank left early, or were even absent, without even pretending to be orthodox. No, the Jews on Friday weren’t rushing off to see the matinee of All the King(David)’s Men, The (Broken) Covenant or even Jet Li’s Fearless, they were rushing off to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. Friday afternoon was one of those rare periods in which one comes to appreciate the vast cultural diversity of investment banking, through countless hours of offloaded work. As I sat there Friday night toiling away on an extremely meaningful profile of the B2B Publishing industry, I questioned the dwindling of my deal team. Funny, I always thought my associate Saul Goldblumenthalenfeldberg was a goy. Maybe he was faking, which takes me to my advice for this week: if you work for an investment bank, pretend that you are Jewish.
Rosh Hashanah literally translates to “Head of the Year,” which is why Jamie Dimon celebrates it wearing a yarmulke emblazoned with a golden dollar-sign. Dimon, in another bold stroke of cost-cutting genius, removed all means of leavening bread from JPMorgan dining facilities, including 18-minute stoppers on all ovens, serendipitously ensuring that all JPMorgan starches are pro-Israel. Sans leavening agents, Dimon mistakenly believes that this will cut down on company medical expenses incurred by yeast infections, rampant among middle management, especially VPs and staffers, who are known to pee a little bit every time a managing director says something. On a side note, Dimon is considered an official member of the tribe by many New York Talmudic scholars in his inspired rabbinical attempts to actually circumcise JPMorgan. For Dimon, the removal of the corporate foreskin is the only way to reduce over-head.
