Bill Ackman has finally persuaded his fellow hedgie Eddie Lampert to buy him out of Sears Canada for nearly double what he last offered. Bill has been calling Eddie a cheap SOB for over four years.
In 2006, Ackman successfully blocked Lampert’s attempt to buy his stake in Sears Canada on the cheap. At the time, Lampert, who controls the larger Sears Holdings, offered the measly sum of $18 a share (Canadian Dollars.)
Now, Lampert’s shelling out $30 a share (still in loonies,) or $560 million, for Ackman’s 17.3 percent stake.
Galleon Probe Turns To Goldman Buffett Deal (WSJ)
Rajat Gupta, the Goldman director who will not be seeking reelection told Raj Rajaratnam about Warren Buffett’s $5 billion investment before a public announcement was made. Was that wrong? Should he not have done that?
Greece Seeks Aid (Reuters)
Prime Minister George Papandreou requested the 45 billion euro ($60.5 billion) package after a months-long selloff by investors pushed borrowing costs to record levels and undermined Athens’ efforts to cut its 300 billion euro debt pile. “This is the moment. The time that was not granted to us by the markets will be given to us by the support of the euro zone,” Papandreou said in a statement broadcast live from island of Kastellorizo. “It is a national and imperative need to officially ask our partners in the EU for the activation of the support mechanism we jointly created.”
Goldman Gambles as Lawyers Say Bank Should Cut Its Losses, Settle With SEC (Bloomberg)
“There’s a very low probability that Goldman could get the case dismissed,” said Thomas Hazen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, whose books include a two-volume treatise on broker-dealer law. “Every pretrial motion the SEC wins, Goldman gets one step closer to losing.”
Goldman Roles In Spotlight (FT)
Goldman Sachs was both an underwriter and an investor in Lloyds Banking Group’s vast refinancing deal late last year, the FT has learnt, highlighting the potential conflicts of interest at the heart of the investment bank’s business model. According to four people involved in the capital raising, Goldman – a dealer manager on the debt portion of the £23.5bn transaction – demanded last-minute changes to the structure of a deal it was underwriting. This had the effect of benefiting its position as a bond investor.
Husband-and-wife bankers save kids from UES house fire (NYP)
Sally Bednar, a chief operating officer at Morgan Stanley and David Bednar, a JP Morgan exec: good to have around in a crisis. Continue reading »
$$$ Goldman’s Dirty Customers [TDB]
$$$ Dear Mr. President: Think Like A Trader [WSJ]
$$$ Orszag Weighing Obama’s Appeal to Stay On as Budget Director [Bloomberg]
$$$ Years ago, the investment world and its professionals believed in long-term relationships. That meant nurturing the economy and the companies and people in it. Two decades of cheap money, though, helped turn the Street over to the traders. That led to a very different way of doing business. “With a trader, the goal of every minute of every day is to make money,” says Philipp Meyer, who worked for UBS as a trader in the late 1990s and early 2000s before going on to write about his time there. “So if running the economy off the cliff makes you money, you will do it, and you will do it every day of every week.” [TIME]
$$$ Madoff’s old office nears foreclosure [NYP]
When Lloyd Blankfein agreed to attend Obama’s speech this morning, only because he absolutely had to and not because he just has buckets of free time to mosey up to Astor Place, he knew there’d be some people there he didn’t want to see. Bob Diamond. Shmuck reporters. Obama’s favorite banker who can do no wrong (who actually turned out to be a no show, which rankled LB even more that his presence would have, because Fabio can do whatever he wants and nobody gives him shit for it).
Lloyd did not anticipate coming face to face with the guy who supported Matt Taibbi’s little attempts at fiction writing, because really, who the fuck invited the publisher of Rolling Stone? And yet, there he was. Jann Wenner. The guy who gave Taibbi-cat the green light to sit at his typewriter trying to come up with theories for how Goldman Sachs has been able to take over the world, pausing only to periodically make sure the Thermos of horse semen in the fridge hadn’t congealed.
In truth, when Blankfein first spied the guy across the room, he was stunned. Not because it was Taibbi’s boss but because, as he whispered to Gary Cohn, “Damn, Kurt Russel has put on weight.” After the GS president corrected him and yanked his arm back anticipating what was about to happen (reader poll: would it really have been that big a deal for LB to do a crotch grab in Wenner’s direction?), it was decided that Blanks would walk over and say hey. Continue reading »
Here’s The Guardian’s Andrew Clark on a peculiar encounter with Lloyd Blankfein at Obama’s speech today. Gary Cohn was more forthcoming.
From The Guardian:
“Mr Blankfein, I’m Andrew Clark from The Guardian,” I said. “What did you think of the speech?”
Without a flicker of acknowledgement, Blankfein, 55, stared ahead and continued walking.
Continue reading »
Here’s a list of notable attendees, released by the White House via The Washington Post, among the 700 who were invited to President Obama’s speech this afternoon. Curiously absent was John Mack who, in a moment of candor, famously said “We cannot control ourselves. You have to step in and control the Street.”
To be fair, it’s worth mentioning that Vikram Pandit, Brian Moynihan, Jamie Dimon, John Stumpf and other big bank CEO’s also skipped out.
Also, here’s Floyd Norris’ quick take on the speech.
Continue reading »
Thoughts? Opening reaction– disappointed in the lack of Blankfein shout-outs (especially since Gary Cohn canceled a lunch to make this thing) and not enough jokes.
In a fun little exercise today, the Wall Street Journal got in touch with a few of the people who John Paulson correctly bet couldn’t pay their mortgages, which resulted in him making $1 billion, and them having their homes foreclosed on. If you assumed that some of them wouldn’t be in the mood to offer kudos to Paulson and his team for coming up with such a sweet trade and killing it for their clients, betting on their demise, you assumed wrong! Jack Booket gives it up for JP this morning. Continue reading »
Don't take this away from them.
Listen up. Something serious is going on. I’m not talking about Goldman v. the SEC and I’m not talking about Obama’s scheduled hate speech. I’m talking about the one thing that makes the lives of those of you slogging back to Connecticut each day after what was probably a miserable twelve hours on the job worth living– I’m talking about the right to get smashed during the commute. You fought the proposed ban on Happy Hour on Wheels a few years back and you won. And now, due to the “recession,” officials are saying that new trains may not included a place to booze it up, claiming that more seats are a bigger priority than the bar car, or something like that (I stopped paying attention because I was so seething mad, for you). I know it’s wrong, you know it’s wrong, and eventually it’s gonna kill a few people, either due a stress-related heart attack, or by sucking out their will to live. Continue reading »
A British Reporter Gets Nada from Lloyd
By Zachery KouweFrom The Guardian:
Continue reading »
Tags: Andrew Clark, blankfein, no comments, pesky british reporters, The guardian