New York Magazine has a very good article about Zoe Cruz, the Morgan Stanley co-president who involuntarily resigned last November because (pick one) a. (In some people’s estimation) she was to blame for the company losing a few billion dollars b. A lot of people disliked her and told Mack they would leave if he made Cruz CEO c. Mack had to blame either himself or Cruz for some losses and he chose her. d. She was, you know, a girl, and the boys didn’t like that. But it’s extremely long so we’re going to highlight the takeaways in several installments.
Take away #1:
At one time or another, Morgan Stanley employed at least a handful of tools who found this funny:
During a year-end management meeting in 2004, one mid-level executive interrupted Cruz’s speech to ask, “Are you high? Because I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“High?” Cruz asked. “You mean stoned?”
“Yeah, exactly,” he said. “Smoking it.”
Everyone in the room laughed--except Cruz..
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 3:30PM
Lou Pai at Enron was the same way.
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 3:35PM
Where is EP?! Bring her back!
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 3:35PM
It has been my experience that when management wants "tough" people under them it is because management itself doesn't want to be "tough". So, you walk out on the plank of idiocy developing a bad mofo reputation and instilling fear into everyone under you without realizing you have been "set up" for failure when the "BIG ONE" comes along in a Kondratiev (aka Konratieff) way.
Oldest trick in the book. Surprised she fell for it.
Posted by my2cents , Apr 28, 2008 3:36PM
Why is this funny? It would have been funny if someone had garotted the man on the spot. 6 months later not so much.
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 3:37PM
I think her holding a grudge for six months and then pouncing on the poor unsuspecting victim is hilarious, actually.
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 3:41PM
I don't remember any Zoe Cruz stories on DB until now. That makes me think ....well......it makes me think, you know. Hey, just sayin'....
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 3:43PM
Seems like a genuinely puzzled comment to me. I can remember many briefings by senior IBD management in my career when I was certain I would get more out of it by coming to the meeting stoned myself.
TED
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 3:46PM
why are we talking about this skank who got fired months ago (cause nymag has a story bess?!) and not trying talking about why brady dougan still has a job?! when the eff did a daily blog become the freaking history channel....
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 3:49PM
More threads about Zoe, please. These threads will, I predict, rapidly degenerate into a cesspool of misogyny and immaturity, thus confirming everything that you've ever suspected about Wall Street.
Posted by miami , Apr 28, 2008 3:54PM
I find it amusing that the unnamed female MSer thinks it unfair that 'Cruz missile' got pushed out in 2007 after losing several $billion, but doesn't remark on "Mack the Knife" getting pushed out in 2001 after making $Billions for the firm.
What's good for the goose is...evidently not allowed for the gander. Perhaps we should just keep every egomaniacal, mediocre, paranoiac, under-producer who bets the Firm/Division and bets wrong - O'Neal, Prince, Jimmy Cayne, come on down!
[Also funny how Erin Callan doesn't even get a mention. Or Dina Dublon. Or Barbara Yastine.]
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 3:56PM
Nice guys, bastards and bitches all seem to "finish last" it would seem. And we are surprised?
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 4:01PM
All I said was: "I'm pretending to whisper a big secret in your ear so that Jake here thinks I'm telling you a secret, which will cause him to break into a hysterical confession where he actually reveals a big secret. Thus confirming everything I just whispered in your ear."
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 4:03PM
There's nothing funny about illicit drug use.
Posted by girl , Apr 28, 2008 4:11PM
@ Miami: To each his own opinion on the firing but I think the most pertinent detail to this situation is that she did indeed give orders to unwind MS' position long before action was taken due to her colleagues innate disrespect for her orders.
Regardless, my favourite part of the article was this:
"When she was in labor with her daughter in 1988, she fielded a call from the trading desk to discuss positions in a particularly volatile market."
That is an effing feat of superwoman proportions.
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 4:21PM
@4:11 Girl: there's labor and there's labor. Reality is that it involves a lot of waiting around, which can actually be made more pleasant (and ego boosting) when interspersed with a call from the office. I therefore disagree with your characterization of the difficulty of what she did.
Posted by Anal_yst , Apr 28, 2008 4:43PM
Clearly I have no basis for making this statement (thus calling the statement itself into question in the first place...), but I imagine doing anything besides being in labor, while in labor, is a feat...having the resolve to (depending on the complexity of the trading situation of course) focus on work at a time like that is impressive no matter how you slice it, and at the very least, shows her dedication to the job, and to the firm.
Posted by girl , Apr 28, 2008 4:51PM
Hear Hear anal_yst!
@ 4:21, talk to me when you're passing a kidney stone the size of a cantaloupe. On second though...talk to the office! It might be just the pleasure enhancing ego bosting ticket at such a time.
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 4:58PM
The labor process often involves many heavy drugs administered directly into the spine, which is a fantastic way to make decisions about trading subprime bonds.
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 4:59PM
You don't have to convince me that there's sexism on Wall Street. Just reading db is enough to do that. I'm surprised that there are women who do seem to last.
That said, I played two games of chess with my husband during labor. However, nobody does anything but be in labor the last hour of labor.
Posted by Anal_yst , Apr 28, 2008 5:00PM
@ 4:58
And, seeing how things worked out this time around, are you suggesting we'd have all been better off getting spinal taps and IV morphine?
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 5:28PM
4:21 is dead on, labor can last a long time, and is frequently uneventful until the end. Walks, calls, reading, TV fill the downtime. Unless Zoe was 5cm dilated at the time of the call the worship is unwarranted.
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 5:34PM
Gotta love that VP that asked, r u High?
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 6:14PM
@ Anal_yst and Girl
I agree with 4:21 on this. During the birth of my daughter, once my wife got the drugs cranking, she was sitting for 6 hours watching football, text messaging her friends, and working on her laptop.
Before the drugs and during home stretch pushing, that is f'ing brutal. Except for the inability to walk or to control bowel moevements, the time in between no drugs and pushing is a cake walk.
Regarding the "are you high" question: If you are interrupting a speech for a funny question or something especially poignant, I understand. "Are you high?" is just retarded and would elicit a quick "shut the fuck up" from me.
-Nom me
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 7:09PM
I don't know that I'm getting all the information here. Did the "mid level executive" who made the comment out-rank Cruz? If so, he was being a boor and someone senior to him should have squelched him. If she out-ranked the interruptor, she or one of her colleagues should have said something immediately, preferably a witty put-down. Did no one do anything at the time, and she later took vengeance on the guy who made the remark when she could? That will get one a reputation of viciousness, but you have to conclude that the guy who made the remark went out of his way to be offensive.
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 7:42PM
I read the full Zoe Cruz story. It's impossible to judge whether she was the victim of discrimination without having been there.
However, the fact that so many women have so much trouble and that none have reached the top speaks for itself.
Although there is a lot of discrimination in the practice of law, it's helpful to women that there are either mandatory or prestigious voluntary bar associations who do note the progress of each graduating class.
There are notable top bar association leaders who are very supportive of women moving up in the law.
There doesn't seem to be any professional organization of equal importance for Wall Street professionals. People do have support from their various professional schools -- but are the schools speaking up enough about the male dominance of the top jobs in Wall Street?
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 9:32PM
The whole thing about being stoned was just a setup for "smoking it" which seems like a blowjob joke. MS pigs.
Posted by guest , Apr 28, 2008 10:03PM
She was head of Fixed Income or higher.
He was a VP or Pricipal
Some guys pop big fish for street cred...its happened and worked before
She got snippy....
Posted by StupidEquityGuy , Apr 28, 2008 11:06PM
Why my wife is a Trophy Wife...
She did not take drugs during her two births... She did them natural. She is a very focused person... Intense even... She proudly says she does not play well with others...
During birth... She had her own people... I had people, the baby had people, my oldest daughter and my sister ... had people... we had like 17 people in the damned room...
over 10 were staff... watching a natural child birth... afterwards they told us, they don't have those anymore... people don't do it natural.
Says something about society probably...
Best,
~SEG
Posted by guest , Apr 29, 2008 12:49AM
StupidEquityGuy -- did you finally get the kids to sleep?
I think plenty of women still opt for natural childbirth, and I say good for them!
However, judging one person by another's pain tolerance is not fair and not consistent with good medicine. One person's tolerable pain is another person's unbearable pain.
I went through 21 hours of totally unmedicated labor before, at the very last moment, having an emergency C-section. I had the best of both worlds! Drug-free labor and unconsciousness at the moment of birth! In the last five minutes before anesthesia, I would have done just about anything to have the pain go away.
For expectant mothers, just rejoice if you give birth to a healthy baby. The birthing process has about a thousand uncontrollable factors, but if the outcome is good, you've done your job. Now comes the rest of your life.
Posted by StupidEquityGuy , Apr 29, 2008 1:03AM
@ 12:49,
I congratulate your endurance... My wife was "also" very lucky... total time each cycle was 4-5 hours... Start to Finish.
My wife was eating a huge meal @ 6 hours into labor with a wolf's grin... She left the hospital @ 18 and 26 hours... or so... She went shopping for dinner. and out to eat at a restaurant a brother of mine owned the other time. Our children never left our sight while at the hospital.
It was not until I founded the firm while changing diapers and calling CEO's and yelling at BOD's on CC's (While changing a diaper) on a public CC... that I out earned the Trophy Wife.
She and I have both retired and returned to work twice during our decade together...
~SEG
Posted by guest , Apr 29, 2008 8:18AM
If Zoe wants some props for telling her traders to unwind their mortgage spread, why didn't she follow up on seeing them execute the order? If it was that urgent, she would have made herself a new home right beside that trader and seen first hand that the position was scaled way back.The retelling of this tale doesn't bode well for the oversight and management process over at MS, and perhaps there's a whole lotta hindsight bias going on as Zoe Speaks gets a sympathetic airing on a puff piece article.
Posted by guest , Apr 29, 2008 8:46AM
I told my trader to unwind all our subprime mezz CDOs 10 months ago. Unfortunately we only got around to it this month.
I blame sexism and John Mack.
Posted by guest , Apr 29, 2008 9:33AM
You know, I was so naive that I didn't realize (until a db commenter clued me in) that the "high" joke was also a "blowjob" joke. So this lower ranking guy baits a woman speaker for not making a clear presentation, openly questions whether her mental processes are distorted by drugs, and then makes a sexually humiliating joke about her, all before a large audience? One of the commenters mentioned garroting the man as a possible reaction. It is just another proof that thoughts can't kill, because if they could, Mr. Sensitivity's eyes would have shriveled in their sockets, his tongue would have caught on flame, and his penis would have dropped off. Fired six months later? He's lucky his backyard in Greenwich wasn't spiked with punji sticks in the meantime.
I worry that the people who were there (and perhaps some who are reading this blog) couldn't see that the behavior was not only incredibly wrong on a human level, but dead wrong on a legal level. Life must be full of headaches for the managers of MS, hard for the MS HR Department, but incredibly sweet for the lawyers who bill MS on employment discrimination issues.
Posted by guest , Apr 29, 2008 9:38AM
Stupid Equity Guy -- I hope you and your dear Trophy have many more good decades together. The hands-on love you give your children will be repaid many times over.
Posted by guest , Apr 29, 2008 10:46AM
Stupid Equity Guy makes his wife a public spectacle, parades kids into a delivery room - risking them being exposed to a tragedy - and y'all think hes great? Hes an idiot.
Leaving a hospital after birth in the time frame he describes, is lambasted by medical folks and only encouraged if you have no insurance or some cheapo policy.
Then he regales us with his earnings? My bet is hes some professor's helper at a third tier college and has some delusions about being a big time player.
Posted by diablo , Apr 29, 2008 8:47PM
Where I live a "trophy wife" is a trophy because of her looks. She could be highly educated, or not, but certainly at home taking care of the kids, and most certainly photogenic. She could be the first, second or third wife of the Wall Street alpha male who constantly worries that she doesn't become another depreciating asset while married to him.
Posted by guest , Apr 30, 2008 8:07AM
First of all, women are not heros for having babies, we do not need any more, second of all, the drug comment should have been laughed off....it has nothing to do with her being a woman, she was a cunt, plain and simple.
A no class, barren, thick ankled CUNT !!!
Posted by guest , Apr 30, 2008 9:16AM
Your comment that "we do not need any more" babies can't be refuted in a few logical sentences. Simply put, there is a biological need to reproduce. Females of our species play a different role in reproduction than do males; and that role causes females long-term discomfort, physical pain, and enormous exertion. I assume you were born, and your mother went through what all women went through.
The drug comment could have been laughed off. The double entendre could have been laughed off. But it's hard to laugh off feelings of humiliation if you're the target of open ridicule, whether you're male or female.
I don't know what the "no class" descriptor refers to; as to "barren," Ms. Cruz was the biological mother of two children; the thickness or slenderness of her ankles seems way beside any reasonable point; and I don't know what you're trying to express with the expletive "cunt," other than you recognize that she was a female and you really didn't like her.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 10:14PM
You know, this whole discussion makes me sick...I am a contemporary of Zoe Cruz, a female from a blue-collar household where I put myself through junior college,BA degree, MA degree, and ended up working for nonprofit assns. for over 30 years. I am now 55, have about $300,000 in my retirement, am single so the only one who takes care of me is me. I read the NY Mag article yesterday and have to say, "Jesus Christ, this woman put in a great 25 years at MS and now has enough money to not worry for the rest of her life." I worry every day that my career will go belly-up, and that my chance to retire is put off another 10 years. It's hard for me to commiserate for someone who basically made $30 million a year for the last 5 years, has a vacation home in Aspen...Hey, everybody, it's not the Reagan '80's, let's keep our eye on the ball.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 11:27PM
@10:14 What you say is all true. The point of the article though is that the fact that the great Zoe was nailed proves that Wall Street is a boys club. My reaction is a little different than yours. I've worked long enough to see that promotions, goodies, etc. do not necessarily go to the most deserving. So all of these articles about glass ceilings, racial prejudice, etc. ring false. There are more people qualified for big positions than there are positions. Result is a lot of politics and personality issues come into play. Once you understand that, the healthy way to look at career disappointment is as you suggest: count your money and your blessings and just go home.
Posted by guest , May 09, 2008 12:08AM
@10:14pm. I respect your life experience and hope that everything works out well for you. I don't agree with you about women in Wall Street careers and I don't agree with @11:27pm about articles about racial prejudice "ringing false."
I've seen enough prejudice against women and racial minorities to last a life-time and I don't think we've been moving forward on these issues.
I don't know if Zoe Cruz experienced discrimination because I wasn't there, and there are at least two sides to every story. But it's obvious that there are problems for women in Wall Street employment because there are so few women in the top tier, let alone at the top. Greater advances for women have come in practically every other field, why not in finance?
Posted by guest , May 09, 2008 7:45AM
@10.14--so, basically, you've failed based on what other woman have done. Therefore, your opinion, life work etc doesnt count either. Be grateful the tax code allows rich people to fund clowns like you. Now, back to your cheap, bug infested life. shoo, shoo....