Several months ago Bear Stearns blocked employees in its headquarters from reading DealBreaker. They offered us lots of technical excuses for this, including a few that almost made sense, but all of them were lies. Bear Stearns blocked us because we had ticked off the upper levels of its management. They’d probably still deny this if we bothered to ask, but how many times do you need to let someone lie to you before you simply quit asking questions.
At the time we warned that there was something wrong with management that was concerned enough about how a sarcastic, gossipy website that they’d lash out against it. We regularly mock the higher ups at places like Goldman Sachs but they know they’ve got better things to worry about. We also pointed out that we actually break news around here, and offer serious commentary on news breaking elsewhere. A bank that wants to cut its traders and bankers off from sources of information seems to be making bad choices. What’s more, cutting us off hardly stopped us from writing about Bear Stearns. It just stopped Bear Stearns from getting to know what we were saying about them.
Look. We’re not saying that Bear Stearns collapsed because they decided to block DealBreaker. We’re saying that a Wall Streets firm whose management focuses on crushing dissenting journalists who report embarrassing stories probably doesn’t have it’s priorities straight.
So who else is blocking DealBreaker? Oh, that’s right. Merrill Lynch. They've had a $24 billion in write-downs, and currently have a market cap of $42 billion.
Posted by guest, Mar 14, 2008 4:25PM
Ummm... I'm reading this from inside 383 Madison. As I have done regularly for months and months and months.
Of course, I'm an admin - so perhaps it's only the traders and analysts and delicate, delicate executives who are being protected from your merciless snark.