Lehman Brothers may be dead, but its earthly representatives are challenging the well-established legal precedent of “tap tap, no takebacks” in an effort to extract $10 billion from Barclays.
It seems the Barclays may have used some fancy contractual footwork to get more than Lehman bargained for when the British bank bought the dying bank’s North American assets. Alvarez and Marsal, hired by Lehman to figure out how Barclays wound up shacking up with its wife in addition to running its U.S. businesses, say Barclays pulled a fast one, getting a judge to give the OK to amendments to the preliminary sale contract that opened billion-dollar loopholes.
Archive for November 2009
Mark Lowe, the Nomos Capital founder accused by former employee Jordan Wimmer of, among other things, trying to kill her (several times), hiring hookers to work as investor relations girls, forcing Wimmer to be present while he received lap dances, having an Asian fetish, and making dumb blonde jokes took the stand today to tell his side of the story. First off, he says the prosties he took on business trips were his girlfriends. Regarding his preference for the Asian persuasion (don’t worry about how this is relevant), Lowe responded that he prefers “women to wear less and show more flesh.” And as for the jokes? Mark said that he didn’t come up with them but merely passed them on and while we’re on the subject? As an arbiter of comedy he wouldn’t necessarily give the j’s super high marks, but thought they were definitely pretty decent. Also, he’s never put one his lady-friends in the trunk of a car, though now that you’ve put the idea in his head it’s definitely under consideration.
A selection of the emails Mr Lowe sent to Miss Wimmer and other women staff were read to Central London Employment Tribunal. One email from May 7, 2008, titled ‘Who is your real friend?’ read: ‘Put your dog and your girlfriend in the boot of your car for an hour and then see who is happy to see you.’ When asked by Alisdair Simpson, for Miss Wimmer, if he thought the joke was demeaning to women, Mr Lowe disagreed and said he thought it was ‘funny, but not especially’. Mr Simpson replied: ‘You don’t think putting your girlfriend in the boot of your car is demeaning?’ Mr Lowe said he had never put a girlfriend in the boot of a car, adding the joke was ‘not especially demeaning’. Lowe [also] said: ‘I thought they were funny. They weren’t brilliantly funny, but they amused me.’
Furthmore, does he not get credit for demonstrating enormous restraint here?
Charlie Gasparino And Andrew Ross Sorkin Make Nice, Charlie And Lloyd Blankfein Not So Much
By Bess Levin
So Charlie Gasparino and Ken Feinberg had a 20 martini dinner last night, which came after Chaz’s keynote address at the Directorship 100. Gaspo told a captive audience that the Compensation Cop “has Wall Street by the stugats.” Before all that, though, Gasparino had a run in with Andrew Ross Sorkin, who you may have noticed the Jabroni Pony’s had some beef with of late. There’s the fact that the two have competing financial crisis books out, but the thing that’s mostly chapped CG’s hide is the section of Too Big To Fail wherein Sorkin claims Lloyd Blankfein was fed up with Gasparino’s alleged “rumor-mongering” last fall. Presumably trying to head off an awkward confrontation in the men’s room and/or a crowbar beatin’, ARS approached Chaz and told him, “I’m going to shake your hand.” The sensitive side of Chazpo came out and he asked Sorkin, “How would you feel if I wrote that?” Times-boy told CG he was sorry, and sufficiently pleased with the contrition, we’re told Gasparino, feeling particularly close to what he’s affectionately dubbed “my own personal Hymen Roth,” shared some thoughts on Blankfein: “A twerp with half a nut.” (We called Rego Park’s first son to confirm the description this morning– he told us “I’ll neither confirm nor deny” which CG will be the first to tell you is all the proof we need.) Anyway! Here’s a clip of Charlie demonstrating how to grab someone by what GE has required he refers to as their “you know whats.”
Last night we got a piece of devastating news. The Pirate that has stood in the lobby of Pirate Capital’s 800 Connecticut Avenue office in Norwalk has gone missing. That’s right– the mascot who’s been there through it all– through the cockminnow fights on the floor, the trips to PetSmart, the proxy battle tee-shirts, the (spawn of) Michael Bolton years, the (spawn of) Michael Bolton abandonment, the AUM shrinkage, and the Sugar Daddy Days– is no longer. And this got us worried. We hadn’t heard from Tom Hudson and the swashbucklers in quite some time, and despite what we figured were assets under management of about 15-large, and the news that Tommy Boy had literally dug his own grave, we just thought that things would be okay. And then this. Getting rid of a stupid Pirate mascot might not seem like a big deal to some other fund managers but for Tom Hudson and his well known eye-patch fetish, it does not bode well. And it gets worse.
A month after Bruce Wasserstein’s sudden death, Lazard has a new CEO. Kenneth Jacobs, the head of the legendary investment bank’s North American business, has been named to succeed Wasserstein.
Jacobs was the unanimous selection of Lazard’s board.
In addition to Jacob’s appointment, Lazard added another potential CEO candidate, Gary Parr, to its board of directors and named him vice chairman. Ashish Bhutani was also tapped as a vice chair, while Steven Heyer was named to the new post of lead director.
Antonio Weiss was appointed global head of investment banking.
Jacobs Named Lazard CEO [WSJ]
Lazard Names Jacobs as Its New Chief [NYT]
Will the indignities heaped upon Bank of America never end?
It can’t find anybody who is willing to step into the considerable–if dirty–shoes of the inimitable Ken Lewis. Its former CFO just got canned for helping to run GMAC Financial Services into the ground. And now, hedge funds are running as fast as they can from the pride of the Queen City.
Word of Renaissance Technologies’ defection hurts, but it can be rationalized. What do computers know anyway? And did you know that the place is run (for another few weeks) by an old drunk who reeks of stale tobacco?
UBS Outlines Path To Profit (WSJ)
“We are on track, we have stabilized UBS’s financial condition but we still have some serious topics to address,” Mr. Grübel told investors. First order of business– we’re going to have to come up with some new and inventive tax evasion strategies. The IRS seems to be on to us.
It’s the Juggernaut, Bitch! (Bloomberg)
Origins of nicknames: “People who know [new head of the Citadel investment banking unit] Patrik Edsparr describe him as outspoken, with a forceful personality. He earned the nickname “juggernaut” during his first job at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., where one of his tasks in the research unit was to collect daily price data from senior traders, one of the people said. Most of his predecessors failed because they were too intimidated to interrupt the traders, who would shout at them. Edsparr would stand behind them, often for up to two hours, until they gave him the data.
Soros Fund Management Holdings Increase (Reuters)
$6.2 billion, up $2 billion, after taking a stake in Ford.
America’s Newest Land Baron: FDIC (WSJ)
The current backlog of property stuck on the agency’s books, with an appraised value of $1.8 billion, ranges from an $18,700 clapboard home with stained carpets in Birmingham, Ala., to a $1.7 million mountainside lodge with a heated driveway in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
Facebook Verb Named English Word of the Year (Reuters)
Don’t want to live in a world where ‘unfriend’ is recognized as a real verb? Then you’re gonna need to kill yourself now.
Paul Allen Diagnosed With Lymphoma (NYT)
“This is tough news for Paul and the family,” wrote Allen’s sister Jody. “Paul is feeling O.K. and remains upbeat. He continues to work and he has no plans to change his role at Vulcan. His health comes first, though, and we’ll be sure that nothing intrudes on that.”
Audit Faults New York Fed in A.I.G. Bailout (NYT)
The Fed “refused to use its considerable leverage,” Neil M. Barofsky wrote in a report to be officially released on Tuesday, examining the much-criticized decision to make A.I.G.’s trading partners whole when people and businesses were taking painful losses in the financial markets.
$$$ Ken Feinberg is sending you a coded message: “If I saw some mass exodus, which I do not anticipate, that would require me to rethink some of the basic assumptions that have entered into my determinations,” Feinberg told Reuters Insider as part of the Reuters Global Finance Summit in New York. [Reuters]
$$$ Want to donate to the Human Fund? Let JPMorgan know. [JPM]
$$$ BofA’s Moynihan Says Merrill Deal Aided U.S., Holders [Bloomberg]
$$$ Double Talk on the Dollar [The Atlantic]
The CEO of GMAC Financial Services (a joint-venture of the United States government) has been forced to resign on the eve of the company’s third recourse to taxpayer money.
Alvaro de Molina resigned at the request of GMAC Financial’s board of directors due to “mounting concerns in recent weeks about his leadership and his vision for the company,” The Wall Street Journal reports. It also notes that de Molina totally did not see it coming. The mutiny came at noon today.
Despite running the company for more than a year and a half, de Molina wasn’t exactly best friends with anyone on the board: It got an extreme makeover in May after GMAC Financial got a second round of federal money. Two of the company’s directors are Treasury appointees; he apparently had even lost the support of the guy who got him the job, Cerberus Capital Management chief Stephen Feinberg, whose private equity firm continues to own 22% of GMAC Financial. Feinberg was apparently none too pleased when de Molina moved to make the lender a bank-holding company, which resulted in a serious diminution of Cerberus’ control over GMAC Financial.
It took a year and billions in government bailout bucks, but the monster known as the mortgage-backed securities market is twitching.
Developers Diversified Realty Corp. sold its 2009-DDR1 (Frankenbond) today, $400 million worth of the very paper that helped sink the economy. The five-year bonds are backed by 28 malls in 19 states.
Will the world again be ravaged by MBS monsters stalking financial centers around the world? Not if they need federal financing. Frankenbond is the first CMBS deal eligible for TALF money, and the program expires tomorrow.
