Most people, Dick Fuld/Erin Callan/LEH shareholders notwithstanding, agree that porn star and Greenlight Capital founder David Einhorn is a very nice guy and an extremely decent human being. New York magazine’s profile of the man of the hour corroborates the story, with anecdotes from Bill Ackman, who says he’s “a super-high-quality human being,” Greenlight employees who note that the firm is “run in a humane way,” and those with whom Einhorny plays tennis, competing in “goofy, good-natured game[s] in which every halfway decent shot is loudly praised.” So obviously he wasn’t going to make things as easy for us, pull-quote-wise, when discussing Bear Stearns and the management team run by drug-using, card-sharking, responsibility-shirking Jimmy Cayne, as say, Bill Chapman or Daniel Loeb. It took some digging (that’s biz speak for “reading the article”), but finally, on Page 4, we found it.
The credit basket went from 25 firms to six. The process wasn’t perfect. Greenlight covered its short on Citigroup just before the stock took a major hit. But before long, the basket was down to two, Lehman and Bear Stearns. And though Bear was the one to go down, Einhorn believes Lehman barely escaped the same fate. “Other than the charismatic value of the leadership and maybe the popularity of the company,” he says, “Lehman’s exposures are worse than Bear’s on an apples-to-apples basis.”
We take this as tacit suggestion that Einhorn believes Bear could’ve been saved, or spared a while longer, if Jimmy Cayne hadn’t been such an uncouth dick. (We’ll be stalking him during his weekly court time at Grand Central to get the official word on whether or not our interpretation is correct.)
Other stuff that probably didn’t help were excuses like this:
Dear Shareholders,
Because of what happened, I’m not going to make it in to work. You might think I’m just enjoying a summer day off in my backyard BBQing, but I’m really not.
I’m not sure if you saw my story on the local news so I’ve enclosed it below.
Jim
The Confidence Man [NYM]
Can you include a link to the New York magazine article?
You should give credit to the person who posted this on one of the threads this morning.
they should give credit to a poster for putting up a nymag story? you don’t think everyone’s seen this thing, 5:13?
I’ve felt for a long time that if Jimmy Cayne had stepped down at anything like a normal retirement age and allowed his position to be filled by a more proactive person who may have had some goodwill left, Bear Stearns could have survived. Does anyone really think Cayne’s bizarre behavior from June 2007 to March 2008 didn’t help destroy confidence in the firm?
The guy who screwed the pooch has to be Warren Spector.
nice opened bottle of blue label behind einy
Since when did this guy become god?
As I recall, he was long New Century Financial and on their board of directors to boot. How someone with his level of financial acumen, could fall into that sewer is beyond me.
What’s with all the teddy bears in his office? Looks more like a girls freshman dorm room than an office.