By far, our favorite part of yesterday's New York Times story on the battle of nitwits at Bear Stearns was the news that chairman Jimmy Cayne was recently required to pay a commission of $77,000 for selling his stake in the bank. The maximum fee charged to Bear Stearns employees is usually $2,500.
Who charged Cayne that fee? Alan "Ace" Greenberg, the fabled trader who ran Bear Stearns before Cayne took over. Greenberg told the Times that Cayne was ineligible for the $2,500 fee cap because, after being forced out of the chief executive's job in the wake of subprime losses, Cayne was no longer an employee.
"I don't understand why he comes in," Greenberg says. "He is not employed here anymore."
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 10:21AM
2 day old article
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 10:30AM
Ace is a dbag himself. I have to admit the guy is friendly but like other people at Bear, he's a moron too. The guy has no idea of risk,quant analytics, etc and believes in trading with gut instinct (very few people have good gut trading skills). And, he is a execution trader anyways. He is the one who hired Jimmy Cayne to start with! He is the one who opposed Jimmy's idea of buying NYC muni bonds (bear made tons of money on that) when Ford told NYC to drop dead !
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 10:31AM
2 day old article, that was in fact in the international harold tribune, not the new york times.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 10:39AM
Don't hate on him, BS probably needed that $77K more than Cayne did.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 10:39AM
No, it wasn't in Harold's Tribune, it was in the Times. And, yes, Ace is a really nice guy.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 10:40AM
Wish you would write or start some shit about GLG's supertrader, Mr. Coffey, quitting to start his own firm and in so doing leaving "several hundred million dollars" on the table.
Posted by atauber , May 08, 2008 10:42AM
i wonder who was is in charge in 1998 when BSC didnt want to help the FED in the LTCM fiasco, whice i think was the real reason the fed didnt want to help them now......
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 10:42AM
I mentioned this fact yesterday, way to catch on 36 hours later...
Ace is a greedy d-bag, he has alot of balls pointing fingers at anybody. Ive said it a million times, that pace was the Kmart of wall st, and thats an insult to Kmart. Filled with Joeys and Vinnies from the Rock
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 10:47AM
The Herald Tribune was a JV organ of the Times and the Washington Post, now just the Times. It publishes the same articles as the Times, so you are both right.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 10:47AM
@10:40-- THEY DID. they've written several items about glg.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 10:54AM
@10:42 - The Fed didn't help BS? Bernanke and Paulson practically brokered the deal themselves. What was the alternative?
Posted by Anal_yst , May 08, 2008 10:55AM
I'm getting a bit tired of this guido Tony/Bear angle that keeps coming up. All of the handful or so of people I knew @ BSC were jews, asians, wasps and other non-tony's. Perhaps the guido sect is focused in one or two particular groups of which I'm not aware, but not pervasive throughout the rest of the firm?
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 11:06AM
@10:55, Im a former BSC employee, BELIEVE ME it was rampant. Bunch of back office retards that were promoted to trader from Brooklyn ops office
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 11:21AM
BSC had a guido T-bill trader named Rick. Probably the biggest asshole I have ever had to deal with in my career. It was as if you were asking him to do you a favor to actually do a trade. A FUCKING BILL TRADER! They had an odd lot corporate bond trader that also was an ass. That being said, the EM fixed income group was great. The agency guys were good.
Overall, not a bad group but it was clear that certain people were acting like assholes because that attitude was fostered by management.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 11:24AM
what's a "guido"?
Posted by mrpink , May 08, 2008 11:26AM
I think I remember that asshole on the Corp bond desk... Corporates were on 4, next to us in derivatives.....
Most of the MM's on 5 were... "old school"... to put it P/C..
-mrp
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 11:26AM
@11:21 If they were such assholes, how did they earn?
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 11:31AM
@11:24 Check out this link to learn what a Guido is...
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=guido
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 11:32AM
A "guido" is a wop, guinea, dago, goombah, etc., term of affection for a person with Italian ancestry.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 11:33AM
You guys are like old ladies. WTF cares if they were guidos, or whatever. Do they deliver for you? Early in my career I dealt with a guy at Salomon who had the worst voice in the world. The lowest Brooklyn accent you can imagine, but he delivered like mad. Not steak dinners, but better: great prices, execution, inventory. He would throw himself in front of a train for a customer. The whole game got more refined and automated now and less personality is involved. But still, yr focusing on the wrong things if youre counting guidos.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 11:37AM
Italians don't lose money, they print it!!
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 11:38AM
@11:33 our point is that these guys helped drag down the firm, they were their own worst enemy. Very little talent over there, I stopped dealing with them a long time ago
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 11:42AM
Excellent analysis of the situation here: http://www.totallycrap.com/galleries/galleries_bianca_deacy/
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 11:42AM
Where is Thaddeus to give us an update on talent ?
Posted by blndebnker , May 08, 2008 11:50AM
Speaking of printing, did anyone ever go and start up that cafepress business for those t-shirts? I think the "I don't lose money, I print it" t-shirt should say "Now go back to clearing tradesr" on the back. I'd like to place my order.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 11:55AM
@11:33. Hell no the guys didn't deliver. I took the business away and the firm quit bealing with BSC on almost every category of business. I would avoing BCS simply because I didn't want to deal with the attitude, I was running global fixed income for a good sized regional B/D and at the end of the day we even moved our clearing away from BSC.
Posted by Anal_yst , May 08, 2008 11:56AM
@11:33
I think the guido comment isn't necessarily saying everyone was an italian - nothing wrong with that in-and-of itself. Guido usually refers to a specific type of italian-american, the type usually exhibiting a cocky, arrogant, bravado unbefitting a front-office employee. It just so happens "guidos" exemplify this type of behavior moreso than any other particular stereotypical ethnotype, that is, assholes come in every variety.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 12:02PM
Start up the IROC!
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 12:19PM
Jimmy Cayne is the biggest GUIDO out there! Except he is a rabbi on the side and an a-hole full time.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 12:22PM
Umm it's an IROC-**Z**.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 12:48PM
How did a guy with the last name of Cayne get to be Jewish, let alone Italian-American? Judging by his picture and his name, I would have thought he was Irish-American.
I too am sick of the "guido" comments. I think it's a pretty obvious ethnic slur.
Greenberg and Cayne made it obvious that the door was open to bright people who wanted to work hard, so I'm sure they were happy to see people promoted from the back office. They both came up the hard way. Unfortunately, as another commenter pointed out, the world of Wall Street was getting a bit more sophisticated and wasn't as ready to accept and reward an ambitious hustler.
It's pretty obvious that Cayne was completely full of himself, horribly obnoxious, and insensitive to others for at least the last few years of his tenure. Historically, I believe it was Cayne who refused to cooperate with the rest of Wall Street to help out Long Term Capital Management. I wonder, in those last few years, who he could call on Wall Street as a friend? Unfortunately, some of the other people at Bear probably emulated Cayne's brash style, thinking it made them winners.
I think the Fed didn't consider a long-term loan directly to Bear Stearns because the numbers looked awful in view of the amount of leverage. I also think the Fed didn't have confidence in the management. Nothing against Alan Schwartz, who had a short three months to turn things around, but look at who was on the board at that point! What was the median age? Richard Bove called the management "atherosclerotic at best" and he was right.
I think there were plenty of bright, talented people from varied backgrounds scattered through Bear, being productive in their areas. Unfortunately, the ineptitude of the management and the volatility of the market destroyed their jobs.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 1:30PM
@12:48,
What some of us doing is reinforcing the cautionary tale that many experienced industry professionals learned long ago - It doesn't pay to be an asshole in this business because things change quickly and people have long memories.
You can play aggressively, you can push hard and you can make other feel the pain of their own stupidity, but at the end of the day, the business is about relationships. Be an asshole if you want (as did a certain number of people at BSC) but there is a price to be paid for being an asshole. And don't kid yourself that the asshole next to you can't cost you your job.
The industry is shrinking right now and those without friends are getting Darwined out of the Wall Street gene pool. Jimmy Cayne forgot that this business is about relationships and as a result, a lot of people paid with their careers.
People can be bright, talented, cuddly and wonderful, but if they don't have friends in this business, its just a matter of time before they get squashed. At the end of the day, the only winners are the ones with relationships that they can depend on when the shit hits the fan.
Posted by mrpink , May 08, 2008 1:47PM
The ass you kick today, may be the ass you kiss tomorrow.
-mrp
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 2:10PM
My grandmother is Caynes age, and she also plays Bridge. We dont even let her hold the remote control, who let this guy run an IB?? Ace and his magic tricks, Im sure people want him to drop dead. For my next trick, Im gonna make your kids college fund disappear......
Posted by blndebnker , May 08, 2008 2:11PM
mrpink - that is brilliant
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 2:17PM
He is no doubt, still getting laid for buying lunch for the whore of Wall Street. Plus all the money that he can at least, let pass through his hands....power, baby.
Posted by guest , May 08, 2008 2:29PM
@2:10pm. It's not like Bear Stearns decided it would like to have a 73-year-old guy running the show; the board wasn't strong enough to stand up to Jimmy Cayne as the years went by. Cayne came in to the position of CEO as a much younger man, became entrenched, and over-stayed his welcome. In the years up to 2007, Bear was making money hand over fist, so there was no great desire to shake things up.
With Greenberg still working and serving as Chairman of the Board (until he finally gave that up, but kept his board seat), Jimmy didn't seem all that old.
Little by little, one man's weakness feeding on another's, Bear Stearns became a gerontocracy. I'm sure plenty of people chafed, but there was also a belief that the top managers were talented and colorful "characters" that embodied the unique nature of Bear Stearns. Plus people were paid very, very well and believed that their futures were unlimited.
Posted by guest , May 29, 2008 11:18AM
Interesting note, Cayne is such an ASS his nephew, Richard Perry (X GoldmanSachs, now Perry Partners) will not even speak to him or make a call to other GS alums on his behalf