As some of you may have observed, we’ve given Bank of America and Ken Lewis a lot of shit over the past year, most of it well-deserved. Since sometimes it’s hard to detect when we’re actually being sincere in our praise, let us just say that when we say Bank of America and its commander in chief are awesome right now, we absolutely mean it because holy case of Strawberry Hill have they outdone themselves. Here’s the response they elicited from Congressmen Edolphus Towns, after he subpoenaed their emails in an attempt to gain clarity re: why and how the Merrill Lynch deal went down. The best thing about Lewis and Co’s decision to send a fuck you message to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform by deluging the team with everything that passed through their servers is that they, of all people, can most convincingly play the dumb card. “What? You said you wanted our emails, didn’t you?”
In addition, many of the documents produced so far are clearly irrelevant to the committee’s investigation. My August 6 letter requested records “created between September 1, 2008 and January 16, 2009 that relate to the financial losses at Merrill Lynch or to Bank of America’s receipt of financial assistance from the United States Government.” You responded to this request by providing hundreds of pages of unrelated, extraneous information.
For example, you sent copies of numerous emails you received from your own employees expressing admiration for your “awesome” performance on 60 Minutes. You also included copies of emails alerting Bank of America employees to discounts at Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco; an announcement of the “Annual Pecan sale,” featuring “This Year’s Crop of Mammoth Pecan Halves”; and an invitation to attend a conference on investment in East Asia, written in Chinese. There were numerous other pages of obviously irrelevant material.
Pretty incredible dinner news from the House of JPMorgan today. None of you will be dining by candlelight while gazing into the eyes of five o’clock shadow over here (you wish) but: that heartless cost-cutting initiative from back in May, that decreed Seamless web orders “shall not exceed $20″? Repealed! Oh, that’s right my little Dimonettes– for those of you eating at your desk tonight, feel free to go crazy ’cause your meal allowance has been bumped back up to $25. You should count yourselves really, really lucky regardless, but especially compared to your counterparts elsewhere on the Street, such as Goldman, which we’re pretty sure has yet to throw an extra fiver at its employees after this insult last fall, and Citi, where employees who believe themselves too good to eat cat food go hungry. Update: A Citi dweller takes issue with the above and would like me to pass on the following: “We are still at $25 and despite multiple inflows from the gov never cut back on food. Can we print in color? No. Can we get a cab at a reasonable hour? No. But damn it no cat food for us!” Update II: Okay, this isn’t even funny. Guys, fuck the cat food jokes, they wish they were eating the wet stuff at RBS. The Queen’s biatches apparently had their allowance dropped to $8 including tax and tip after the UK gov took an active interest in business. Supposedly there was a recent unofficial announcement that the policy was changing to $20 but so far nothing in writing. Fingers crossed.
It may be becoming a lot clearer to both Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne and the US taxpayer exactly how Chrysler wound up turning into a black hole for cash. You don’t have to go far from the top to get a taste of the conventional wisdom that helped turned the auto maker into the crown jewel of the Cerberus collection. Chrysler’s deputy CEO, James Press, is learning the hard way that living bonus check to bonus check has its potential pitfalls when your business model of making cars worthy of their own zip codes and writing loans to anybody demonstrating the ability to walk upright proves unwise.
Faced with the unfamiliar reality of life without a 7-figure bonus last year, Press is now being sued by Western Federal Credit Union in Michigan after missing two loan payments totaling around $200k. When not dodging calls from credit unions, he is likely trying to come up with a game plan to address the near $1 million lien the IRS has placed on his house in light of some missing tax payments. But help may be on the way for this member of the Chrysler elite who apparently sees either a recovery in the auto industry or the resumption of non-performance based bonuses.
“Due to the turmoil in the automobile industry and uncertainty surrounding our ownership, my request for bonus payment was denied,” Mr. Press said, after informing the Western Federal Credit Union that he would be unable to make two pending loan payments for $203,000, according to the lawsuit, portions of which were posted by The Detroit News on its Web page. “I am attempting to arrange for a loan against my future bonus with my employer, which would allow me to pay this loan off.”
Congress Presses For Details From Bank of America On Talks (NYT)
Bank of America has tried to keep legal conversations regarding what happened last year when it acquired a toxic dump hush hush through the excuse of attorney-client privilege. Representative Edolphus Towns told them Friday to fuck that noise: “In a sternly worded letter, Mr. Towns said the bank must divulge when it became aware of the enormous losses at Merrill last year, when it received a commitment from the federal government for a second round of bailout money and what legal advice its management received about whether it had to disclose those developments to the bank’s shareholders.
Mr. Towns gave the bank until noon on Monday to provide answers and relevant legal documents. He said it seemed that the bank was “hiding information.” The bank replied to Mr. Towns’s committee late on Saturday, asking him to delay that request until after Tuesday, when Mr. Towns meets with Anne Finucane, the bank’s chief strategy and marketing officer, who oversees public policy at the bank. But a spokesman for Mr. Towns said on Sunday that he was sticking to the deadline.” Firms Back Plans To Change Pay Policies (WSJ)
A bunch of companies are going to voluntarily promise to be good re: compensation and hope the government will ixnay egulationray. Recession Drives Women Back To Workforce (NYT)
Citi? Anna Bresnahan of Spokane, Wash., says she would not have returned to work if she and her husband had not started worrying that the bank where he worked might fail. “I decided I could start looking. He said, ‘That would be nice.’ ” Royal Bank of Scotland eyes share issue to limit London’s stake (FT)
RBS would really appreciate it if someone would stop the Queen from moving anymore of her stuff in, or if she could at least clean up the shit the Corgis leave in the lobby: the bank is considering a £3bn-£4bn share issue to reduce the stake it will hand to the government for joining its toxic assets insurance scheme. Plans are “tentative” and Stephen Hester, RBS chief executive, is still “putting out feelers” about a “modest-sized” issue, a person familiar with the situation said. IRS Extends Amnesty Deadline (WSJ)
You now have until October 15 to come forward and tell the IRS you’re a tax cheat. After that there’s going to be serious hell to pay. Limit EU Bank Bonuses Even if US Doesn’t (Reuters)
“It would be interesting, important, useful to have if possible the same rules in the world (…) to have the Americans at our side,” European Commission president Jose-Manuel Barroso said on Sunday. “But in this case of the bonuses, I am absolutely clear — it is such a scandal what is happening, it is really an ethical problem and I believe that, if necessary, we have to do it on our own,” he said.
$$$ Sandy Weill finally admits firing Jamie Dimon was the biggest mistake of his life. [Fortune] $$$ “According to the person familiar with the deal, the suggestion that Lehman executives lined their own pockets at the expense of their former firm is “a joke” and “brutally offensive” to those who cobbled together the deal just days after the investment bank collapsed last September.” [WSJ] $$$ The state of Melissa Francis’s uterus. [MF] $$$Wall Street’s $25,000 Matchmaker [CNN Money] $$$Job of the Week: Macquarie needs a media research associate. You. [DB Career Center] $$$ From Wall Street Trader To Ice Cream Man [WSJ]
In theory, the road to redemption for the SEC was supposed to include making sure its foot soldiers were properly trained, supervised, and disciplined. They were going to install Full Metal Jacket caliber training to avoid having another one of their Private Pyles allow a second Bernie incident. There were hints the agency was at least heading the right way. They went out and found some compliance software to cut down on the frequency of insider trading investigators moonlighting as insider traders. Congress seems to have no problem making sure the money is there to provide every employee with a state of the art Commodore 64. Things were going well. Until this.
“Changing cultures doesn’t happen overnight, but we have to take away some of the shackles that have been placed on staff over the years,” Schapiro said at an event hosted by Georgetown University
Stockholm syndrome has clearly not set in with Bob McCann. Faced with ongoing employment imprisonment courtesy of Bank of America, the former Merrill brokerage head is starting to bang his cup on the bars of his cell to get somebody to hear him out.
“I want to rejoin the industry,” McCann said today in an interview in Dublin with Bloomberg Television. “I am being kept from doing that in, I think, an unfair way.”
While a judge refused to rule on McCann’s petition to have his non-compete agreement lifted, his recommendation that the potential future head of wealth management for the Americas at UBS go back and talk it out with BAC pretty much sealed his fate. Ken Lewis’s prisoner said he had “good reason” to leave the firm when he did after receiving a “diminished role” in the new world order. Based on the fact the FBI and Justice Department have been investigating BAC for the past half year about the now infamous merger, it appears there was no shortage of good reasons to flee. McCann Calls Bank of America ‘Unfair’ in Blocking His New Job [Bloomberg]
The Journal today explores the phenomenon of financial services hacks going into new fields either because they got laid off or did some soul searching over the last year and decided making it rain wasn’t adequately feeding their souls, now that it’s “no longer so sexy” to work in the money business. A lot of them are finding gigs like teaching and farming and starting their own businesses quite rewarding but it’s still tough work. First off, there’s the long hours and reduced pay. Then you have the fucking assholes who are like, “if you don’t work in finance anymore you might as well call yourself a janitor.” Generally these are people with whom you share DNA.
Wall Street refugees often discover that new jobs lack both the social status and the fat paycheck of their old careers. Gil Schor was a portfolio manager for French investment bank Natixis SA until July 2008, when Natixis shut down his department. Now he owns and operates Green World Taxi in New Rochelle, N.Y. Using his savings, he bought three Nissan Altima hybrids, billed his taxi and limo service as environmentally friendly and dreamed of expanding it throughout the New York metropolitan area.
Mr. Schor’s new routine can be grueling. With just one hired driver, he often must get up at 4:30 a.m. to drive someone to the airport himself. He has no paid vacation, perks or support staff, and is responsible for everything from printing marketing materials to pumping gas. He says his income has shrunk to about a quarter of the $200,000, “plus or minus,” that he earned at the investment bank. He is skipping a vacation this year. Instead of buying books, he often goes to the library.
At age 44, and after 14 years in finance, Mr. Schor sometimes struggles to come to terms with his new identity. “My daughter said, ‘You used to be a banker and now you’re a cab driver,’ ” he says. “I said, ‘No. I’m the owner of a transportation service.’ “
I actually can’t decide whose side to take here. Like, on the one hand, “owner of a transportation service”? Get over yourself. Kid’s definitely 7 or 8. On the other, why she gotta cut him down like that??
In addition to getting his esteemed opinion on rugs and lampshades last night, the organizers of John Thain’s talk at Wharton hit on some other subjects, mainly what he thinks of his peers. Unfortunately, the lady of the hour refused to talk some smack about the guy he’s uniquely positioned to dish on, responding to the innocent query, “What do you think of Ken Lewis?” with “You know, it’s tempting to answer that question but I’m not going to.” Honestly? No. I don’t accept this.
As some of you may have observed, we’ve given Bank of America and Ken Lewis a lot of shit over the past year, most of it well-deserved. Since sometimes it’s hard to detect when we’re actually being sincere in our praise, let us just say that when we say Bank of America and its commander in chief are awesome right now, we absolutely mean it because holy case of Strawberry Hill have they outdone themselves. Here’s the response they elicited from Congressmen Edolphus Towns, after he subpoenaed their emails in an attempt to gain clarity re: why and how the Merrill Lynch deal went down. The best thing about Lewis and Co’s decision to send a fuck you message to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform by deluging the team with everything that passed through their servers is that they, of all people, can most convincingly play the dumb card. “What? You said you wanted our emails, didn’t you?”
