Lazard said in a statement yesterday that Bruce Wasserstein is “stable and recovering” after checking into the hospital with an irregular heartbeat, and gave no indication the CEO would step down from the firm or cut back on his responsibilities, necessitating the need for someone else to take over. But what do you say we come up with some names, just for kicks? Wass will likely make a full recovery, so it’s not as morbid as it seems, and Ken Lewis is mulling putting his plans to retire on ice* so we needn’t waste our time coming up with a successor for him.
Last Tycoons author William Cohan thinks Vice Chairman Steven Golub would be a likely candidate to take over cause he’s “old-time Lazard guy who has a done a very good job of continuity in terms of bridging the old Lazard and the Bruce Lazard.” Charlie Gasparino is working the phones and will have some wild card names for you to place odds on shortly. Hopefully all of this talk will be for naught, however, because Dick Bové cannot say good-bye to another CEO (she’s holding it together for now but could blow at any second):
Archive for October 2009
Bruce Wasserstein Not Stepping Down But Here Are A Few People Who Could Take His Job In The Event Things Take A Turn For The Worst
By Bess Levin
As you’re aware, John Mack is retiring at the end of this year and come January 1, James Gorman, who currently runs the firm’s brokerage unit, will take over as CEO. This has a gaggle of employees supposedly all nervous about what the change at the top might mean. Namely they’re worried about whether or not Big G will have it in him to take on enough risk to “regain lost ground against Goldman” (and if he’ll get everyone hopped up on sweets like Mack). Apparently Gorman’s been meeting with traders and has assured them “risk taking is going to be a part of [Morgan's] business” but some people are not yet convinced. Enter, an unnamed Gorman loyalist to offer a confidence inspiring quote. How does this guy know Gorman won’t dial down big bets? That he won’t give Lloyd Blankfein yet another opportunity to ask “how’s my ass taste”? That’ll he’ll do right by Morgan Stanley? Here’s how: letters.
For those at AIG who don’t enjoy late August at their Croatian villa, the pay czar will be getting back to you soon about how much closer you’ll be to that measuring stick. Threatening Andrew Cuomo may be enough to make the guy at the top the ten million dollar man, but the company is currently fighting tooth and nail to make sure less senior pugilists get their fair share as well. The stakes are high here and Ken Feinberg better get it right.
Don’t think that $180 billion in bailout funds gives KF the right to short change the worker bees in the AIG hive. We’re not in that dire economic state where rising unemployment is only mildly slowed down by trillions in economic stimulus. No, we’re way past that. Larry Summers said so, and if you think people at AIG won’t hit one of those many bids away on the job front, you’re living in a different reality.
“It’s counterproductive,” one AIG insider said. “To have their pay curtailed below market levels is going to prompt some of them to leave.”
So be careful Mr. Feinberg. You run the risk of chasing people concerned with short-term compensation issues out of AIG. You wouldn’t want to do that now, would you?
US pay tsar gets tough over AIG packages [FT]
Citigroup has never been bashful about going big. Between the bank’s losses, Andrew Hall’s bonus, and the new $50 million corporate jet that almost was, modesty is not exactly in abundance in Vikula’s empire. So it should come as no surprise that when Citi needed a lobbyist to advance its efforts to get Sandy Weill back on the Top 400 list, it went all out and enlisted the services of Richard Hohlt, who some blame for single-handedly exacerbating the S&L crisis. Having reneged on promises to regulators about supporting legislation to recapitalize the S&L industry in his younger days, Dick Parsons thought Hohlt would be a perfect fit for Citi. Others have a slightly different take.
Lloyd Blankfein: Goldman Sachs Was Never At Risk To Fail Except For When It Was, Which Would Explain The Screaming And Crying Coming From My Office
By Bess Levin
The Journal ran an interview with Holman Jenkins and Lloyd Blankfein over the weekend on a variety of topics including whether or not the bank will pay out huge bonuses this year despite populist bitching (yes), if Goldman got any special treatment during the crisis (no) and whether or not GS was at risk to fail. According to Blankfein, on the one hand, yes. HELL FUCK YES. Goldman was in the same posish as everyone else and everyone else was going down and going down hard. Save for the night he accidentally walked into then-Goldman chief Hank Paulson’s office and saw things he’ll never be able to un-see, involving thrusting and the mask from Scream, it was the absolute scariest time in LB’s life. You have no idea. Why do think he nearly started crying during a phone call with Tim Geithner? Because he thought it was all over.
Had the financial system collapsed, Mr. Blankfein unhesitatingly acknowledges, “We would have been in that snowball tumbling down the hill with everybody else. It would be ludicrous to say otherwise. As a member of the system, we were all at risk. I will tell you I was more scared than you, because I was closer to it and I knew more. If you had known as much I did, you would have been as scared as I was.”
Sounds like some pretty harrowing shit, right? Yeah, if you were working for some dump like AIG it probably was! Luckily Blankfein was working for a bank where the biggest thing they have to worry about is setting off the metal detectors with their gold plated scrots. That thing I just said two seconds ago about GS being in the same position as everyone else? Just messing with you, for sport. Being the “overachievers” we are at Goldman Sachs sometimes we do that, after we’re done making it rain.
People seriously need to calm down about this whole financial crisis thing. That was part of the message Goldman chief economist, Jim O’Neill, delivered as part of a panel with economists and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Why the need for the collective deep breath? Let’s start with the fact people have gotten a bit carried away with the size of the bill going to taxpayers.
“The fiscal costs of this crisis around the world, including the U.K., in my judgment are not as severe as people keep talking about,” he said
OK, so he came to a different number. There are a lot of assumptions built into those figures. Isn’t the real point that we need to address the fiscal nightmare lurking?
Huge Profits Put Goldman On Track For Bonus Bonanza (Telegraph)
GS is expected to dole out $6 billion or $700,000 per employee this year, though nothing is set in stone and if people don’t quit their bitching about “obscene bonuses at Goldman” maybe they’ll give out nada.
Elinor Ostrom, Oliver Williamson Win Nobel Prize for Economics (WSJ)
Ms. Ostrom “challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized,” the Nobel judges said. Mr. Williamson, who is at the University of California at Berkeley, was cited for “for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm.”
Citi fined amid tax crackdown (FT)
$600,000 “over derivatives transactions that were partly designed to help foreign clients avoid taxes on dividends in a move that could herald a wider crackdown against Wall Street banks that used similar strategies.”
Bruce Wasserstein Hospitalized After Irregular Heartbeat (WSJ)
Lazard said last night Wasserstein’s condition “is serious, but he is stable and recovering
Barclays to sell £4bn assets (FT)
The Brits are hoping the spin off will please shareholders. There will be a ‘codename’ involved.
Wesley Gets ‘Sniped’ (NYP)
Wes may have been the victim of a Ponzi scheme during the same time he was choosing not to pay taxes.
$$$ Top U.S. Prosecutor Forced off Madoff Case Over Conflict [ABC]
$$$ Big Hedge Funds Post September Gains [Dealbook]
$$$ Reprogram the Reaganites [Master of None]
$$$ Job of the Week: Unicorn Investment Bank needs a CEO. You. [DC Career Center]
$$$ Hermitage Capital Says Firm Shaken Down By Russians [FINalternatives]
It’s a bit of a shame the most recent Nobel laureate would like nothing more than to see New York Governor David Patterson not run for reelection in 2010. Admittedly the big guy did win the award for peace and not economics, but it’s not like he doesn’t have access to some serious economic brainpower. So exactly what sort of off-the-wall, backwards thinking has Patterson been spewing that ‘s led to this stand off? New York is clearly an economically important state. Maybe there is a problem with his stance there.
“You heard the mantra, ‘Tax the rich, tax the rich,’” Paterson opines. “We’ve done that. We’ve probably lost jobs and driven people out of the state.”
The state legislature passed a budget for this year with $6.1 billion in projected new taxes and fees. The budget deal was sealed with steeper rates for folks earning more than $200,000 a year, but curiously called a “millionaire’s tax.”
Queried as to whether the budget was wise during the downturn, Paterson said: “None of this makes sense.”
Yes indeed. Time to get this guy out in case he does something really drastic. Assuming Patterson does go and is replaced with somebody with a different take on taxing high income earners, there is definitely a risk people will continue to be driven out of the state. At which point BO may have to put his newly recognized skills to work, and make peace with himself.
It’s tough to say which is worse, having to sit through The Wicker Man, Lord of War and the most recent National Treasure sequel or the fact that after all those cinematic masterpieces, the IRS is still waiting for a check for over $6 million from Nicolas Cage. Back in 2007, the never monotone Cage was basking in the glow of starring or appearing in four movies that robbed millions of people of several hours of their life they’ll never get back again. But people could take at least some comfort that, in the end, the IRS would make NC pay for what he had done. Or so they thought.
