The SEC is finding new and creative ways to tarnish its image. After estimating that it would recover close to $1 billion in assets in the Stanford fraud case, the SEC now finds itself shoulder to shoulder with the guy they intend to prosecute. The receiver in the Stanford case, Ralph Janvey, has petitioned the court to approve $20 million in fees and expenses for work performed on the case since February. However, when the SEC discovered its recovery estimate was about $650 million too high, it petitioned the court to reduce the amount due to the receiver. Team SEC/Stanford have an uphill battle on their hands.
“None of the professionals was retained with the understanding that they would be subjected to deep discounts if the recoverable estate assets were less than the SEC expected,” the court filing said.
SEC opposition to Stanford fees unjustified-filing [Reuters]
Wells Fargo will fine you $100 for looking at your Blackberry during a meeting. At Goldman Sachs it’s frowned upon unless you’re obtaining info with which to front run prime brokerage clients. Bank of America doesn’t care what you do as long as you blow less than 0.3% on your daily breathalyzer test (and even there, there’s wiggle room). With very few exceptions, however, most firms don’t have policies on ‘berry or iPhone use during meetings, according to the Times, which devoted resources to an investigation on the matter this weekend. The tricky thing, you see, is that the reason you shouldn’t tappity tap tap tap while people are talking (it’s douchey and rude), is the same reason you might want to (i.e. douchey and rude, you may have noticed, equal important in this biz).
Mr. Brotherton, the consultant, wrote in an e-mail message that it was customary now for professionals to lay BlackBerrys or iPhones on a conference table before a meeting — like gunfighters placing their Colt revolvers on the card tables in a saloon. “It’s a not-so-subtle way of signaling ‘I’m connected. I’m busy. I’m important. And if this meeting doesn’t hold my interest, I’ve got 10 other things I can do instead.’”
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Discuss. (If one of the more enterprising Dealbreaker readers in the audience would care to slap together some sort of clip show to the contrary, that’d be top notch.)
No, he’s not talking about himself (you think Uncle Jim would survive a day in the big house? They don’t teach you how to escape the wrath of Bubba at Goldman Sachs, where he once worked, in case you didn’t know). He’s talking about journalists. Also, if you didn’t catch it, the whole First Amendment thing? Jim’s “never been for it.”
In the latest issue of Crain’s Aaron Elstein examines the massive package of Mario Gabelli. Last year’s paycheck ($46 million) was bigger than that of Lloyd Blankfein and John Mack combined and more than twice the size of Larry Fink’s take-home. We’d advise you to not even entertain the thought of making comparisons, though, which Big G says are baseless crap (or bringing up the fact that the firm only took in $25 million in 2009). Plus, he’s got an explanation for it all that will just make you look like an idiot and him look like a guy on ‘roids.
Mr. Gabelli makes no apologies. The Bronx native says comparing his pay to Mr. Fink’s is “bull,” because while other CEOs dedicate their time to strategic and administrative matters, Mr. Gabelli still gets his hands dirty researching stocks and wooing clients to the firm he started in 1977.
“If A-Rod was managing the Yankees, he’d get $2 million a year,” Mr. Gabelli argues. “But he’s a player, so he gets more.”
He adds that 98% of shareholder votes were cast in approval when his compensation package was last voted on two years ago. What Mr. Gabelli doesn’t say is the outcome was never in doubt: He controls 95% of his company’s voting stock.
Other things you should consider not bringing up are pay cuts some of Gabs’ staff was forced to take, or the layoffs wherein a gaggle of Gamco-ers apparently only got two weeks severance. Probably safe to mention (like in an interview or something) is son (and employee) Matt, who’s been seeing a stripper from Beamers, Stamford’s premier topless bar, and recently escorted her to his brother’s wedding. Could be a source of fatherly pride or some such. I don’t know, I’m just trying to get you a little career advancement.
Citigroup Property Investors CEO Roger Orf has clearly not read the toxic asset playbook. If he had, he’d know that the game plan for dealing with toxic real estate assets is to create a series of proposals designed to distract people for a couple months while waiting for your deity of choice to deliver a property valuation miracle that makes parting the Red Sea look like a cereal box magic trick. Instead, Orf wants governments to force bailed out banks to sell toxic real estate assets through a hallmark Citi strategy.
“I personally feel the best way to do that is through creative destruction as opposed to a malaise where you let the air out of the tire over a number of few years”
Citi urges governments to pull bank foreclosure trigger [Retuers]
The Journal reports the SEC has filed fraud charges against the co-owners of Cohmad, an investment firm that has described its relationship with Ponzi Nation as “blurry.” Cohmad’s vice-president is Robert “Madoff point man” Jaffe who, on more than one occasion, told Massachusetts regulators to go fuck themselves, after requesting he show up to talk Bernie. That doesn’t necessarily mean they/he are guilty, but it definitely adds some much appreciated class to the situation.
Update: The charges, according to Jaffe’s attorney are “unfair, baseless, and inaccurate,” and demonstrate “impulsiveness and self-justification” on the part of the SEC. Which, re: self-justification, is probably true, but doesn’t necessarily make Bobby innocent.
Not saying, just saying, it definitely sounds like Team Financial Services Hacks was well represented what with the public drunkenness (Bank of America, Morgan Stanley), you sucks (CNBC), and fat shaming (Citi).
Beer-sodden fans and rain combined for an ugly finish to a long day of golf yesterday, with Tiger Woods and other golfers subjected to drunken heckling as the action at Bethpage Black came to a close.
At 6:42 p.m., dozens of drunken spectators at Hole 10 taunted Woods as he prepared to start his third round in the rain.
“We’re on Long Island, baby, where men are men!” one fan yelled. “Put that umbrella down!”
A little earlier, drunken fans at the seventh hole shouted at golfers, “This Bud’s for you!” On the ninth fairway, drunks called out “you suck” to players while spectators on the other side booed the hecklers.
*Or what the disgraced and unemployed CEO’s in the audience would just call a “day.” The LI quote certainly sounds like it could’ve come from Jimmy C, hammered or not.
Former commercial bank CEOs are getting a new lease on life by becoming the Billy Mays of the PE world. Firms are having success appeasing government concerns over PE ownership of failed banks by hiring retired bank CEOs to spearhead takeover efforts. Evidently those individuals that can sell their hybrid bank revival strategy of Oxi Clean, Mighty MendIt and Mighty Putty to the government now have special place at PE firms.
Ex-Bank CEOs Become Buyout Pitchmen [WSJ]
The latest issue of the New Yorker has a lengthy piece on the Tan Man (more on hue in a sec), who apparently is not doing so well of late. He has very few friends left (Big Al is of course still pulling for the guy and vice versa, along with Stan O’Neal and Jimmy Cayne AKA the Circle Jerk of Doom, which meets monthly to fuck the corpse of Ayn Rand). He’s received “numerous” death threats. He’s been forced to cut off the New York Times, the LA Times, and the Wall Street Journal, on account of what he believes is unfair coverage. (In what must be the greatest rousing endorsement of all time, Mozilo continues to read the Financial Times, which we’re thinking the Brits should incorporate into their tagline.) Most heartbreakingly, one former employee notes that Moz-y-boy rarely “flashes that $10,000 watt smile” anymore. Basically, all he really does these days is amble around his “large Spanish-style house in a guarded gated community at the Sherwood Country Club,” where he reflects on the past. Like being mistaken for a black man.
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For those of you who care about Hartford Financial (there have to be at least two of you with insurance fetishes), names being floated to take over for chief exec Ramani Ayer, who intends to retire by the end of the year, include AXA head Christopher “Kip” Condron and Bank of New York CEO Robert Kelly.
