Archive for August 2010

Back in February, Macquarie employee David Kiely got in a little hot water with his employer for looking at some topless shots of Miranda Kerr on his computer. It should’ve been no big deal but unfortunately his floor was being filmed on live TV at the time and as the Aussies couldn’t be perceived as condoning that sort of thing, they put him on a time-out. He was ultimately allowed to keep his job but management has taken extreme precautions to ensure something like this won’t happen again, namely equipping everyone’s computers with a child-lock. What’s a horny Aussie to do? Consider taking lunch at this establishment, where you can get you fix.

A WOMAN has stripped off naked in front of dozens of people having breakfast at a popular Darwin restaurant. Witnesses said the woman took off all her clothes after she and another woman had a full-on fist fight over a man yesterday. “That was just a shocker,” eyewitness Fernando Dentes, 34, said. “People were trying to eat.”

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Since 2008, Millennium Management’s assets have fallen from $13 billion to $7 billion. Given the shrinkage, one might attribute the departures of a whole bunch of portfolio managers to a cost-cutting initiative on the fund’s part. Such is not the case says people “familiar with” the firm’s thinking. Everything is just peachy over there, none of this has anything to do with a shrinking asset base, and if you must know, despite the fact that several of the former employees’ exits appear to be voluntary in nature (Matthew Karchmer, for instance, “left last month for a job as a portfolio manager at D.E. Shaw”), Millennium will have you know the so-called cuts were apparently founder Izzy Englander taking a hard line with some bum staffers.

The decision to cut a portfolio manager is based only upon his or her performance, said a person familiar with Englander’s thinking. “If you’re not performing, you’re gone,” he said. “You perform, you stay.”

Englander Brushes Aside Millennium Exits [HFA]

Dear Owl Creek Investors

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As I’m sure you don’t need to be told, times are pretty tough right now for those seeking new jobs (or a job, period) on Wall Street. Some have taken the all out begging, stand on a street corner holding wearing a sandwich board approach. Others are going with the traditional route (networking, sending out resumes, hitting up any who’s ever given them a business card). Neither are yielding much in the way of results. And while it might seem counterintuitive, for a person with zero prospects to initiate talks with a potential employer by straight up demanding a job and refusing to even interview for it, maybe it’s something you ought to consider, in addition to taking various other pages from this chick‘s playabook. Continue reading »

  • 19 Aug 2010 at 9:40 AM

Opening Bell: 08.19.10

UBS To Launch Ad Campaign (WSJ)
“We have restored our earnings power and are excellently positioned to deliver on our strategy. At the same time, we know that it will take more time and even more effort on our part before we fully regain the trust of our clients,” UBS’s top management said in the memo distributed to the bank’s employees. The ad campaign, using the slogan “We will not rest”, is the most extensive in several years and is designed to mend relations with clients, in particular at UBS’s flagship private bank, which is still leaking assets.

Duquesne managers to start their own firm (MarketWatch)
After Duquesne returns money to outside investors, the other Duquesne portfolio managers are planning on spinning out their own firm. Stanley Druckenmiller will be an investor in their new fund, but he won’t be part of the new firm.

Goldman Sachs Sues French Bank Over Credit Default Swaps (Reuters)
The dispute centers around whether French investment bank Natixis can cancel a deal on three credit default swaps with Goldman, which is claiming damages for breach of contract. “We are preparing our defense. We are surprised that Goldman is suing us,” a spokesman said.

Facebook Unveils Service To Announce Locations (NYT)
Know where Vikram is at all times.

Columbia Biz Grad Demands Website Heckler’s ID (NYP)
In a Manhattan Supreme Court suit, Carla Franklin says she has “suffered damages in the form of disress and mental anguish” from a mean-spirited posting in a comment calling her a “whore” attached to a video posting of her — and she wants a judge to give her a court order to force Google and YouTube to turn over the poster’s identity.

Home Aquariums As Decorating Elements (NYT)
KARIN WILZIG has a hard time choosing a favorite color from among the 64 that she and her husband can use to illuminate the 14 1/2- foot, 450-gallon aquarium in their TriBeCa town house. The default is fuchsia, which turns the dozen koi a deep pink. “Not pink,” said Mrs. Wilzig, 40, an artist and a mother of two small children. “Alan, go to the turquoise.” Her husband, Alan Wilzig, 45, a former banker who collects motorcycles and prides himself on the orange tanning bed in his basement, goes to the James Bond-like control panel in the kitchen, where a touch of a button turns the fish — which are specially bred to be colorless — a vivid blue. “I think they like that,” he said, walking down the steps to the sunken living room to admire the fish from another angle. Continue reading »

  • 18 Aug 2010 at 6:44 PM

Write-Offs: 08.18.10

$$$ London bankers can dress for more than success [Dealbook]

$$$ GM files for landmark IPO to repay bailout money [Reuters]

$$$ Why success is so much harder for hedge funds now [cnbc]

$$$ AIG sets stage for first bond sale since bailout [WSJ]

As a Japanese equity and equity warrants sales broker for Merrill Lynch in London, Mark Jeffries usually skipped the group drinking binges where co-workers would regularly booze themselves into incoherence. “I didn’t like at the end of the day getting absolutely drunk. It just wasn’t my way,” said Jeffries. When the bottom fell out of the Japanese market, his job vaporized in the mass layoffs that followed. Jeffries went on to a career in British television and now is a communications consultant in New York, giving keynote speeches around the world. His book, “The Art of Business Seduction,” is a how-to with tips on building emotional bonds with people for business and career success. “I was definitely naive as a stock broker,” Jeffries said. “Getting drunk was the point. That was the emotional connection. I missed that. And so I missed creating a really strong emotional connection.” [FINS via DI]

For years and years before she was charged with insider trading in the Galleon case, people were aware of Danielle Chiesi’s schtick. Chieisi, often wearing some sort of get-up that involved fishnet stockings would show up to conferences, parties or other gatherings, seduce some well-informed men with her moves on the dance floor, maybe massage their thighs while they ate, perhaps sleep with them or maybe just engage in sexual banter over the phone for a period of months. Naturally she didn’t do any of this because she wanted to date or mate with these guys but because she was using them for hot tips and other things of that nature. Most people understood this. Bob Moffat did not. He thought there was something there, something real, so real that he’s twice cried in public over this woman, over what they had and over what he lost. Now though, he’s done. This chick is not worth his tears. (Also, he shouldn’t have to go to jail for that long because he did what he did out of love.)

The former IBM executive who pleaded guilty in the fed’s widespread insider trading case centering on hedge fund Galleon Group says his alleged accomplice and former mistress Danielle Chiesi “played” him.

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The aforementioned good-bye letter.

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There is no fishing trip. Continue reading »

Last November, Matthew Tannin and Ralph Cioffi’s days were made when, in a in a flash of prosecutorial incompetence, the dream team who ran the two ridiculously named Bear Stearns funds– High Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund and High Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund– were acquitted on charges of conspiracy, securities and wire fraud, and dodged 20 years each in the big house. There was no problem whatsoever with the fact that they’d painted a rosy picture to their investors as the bottom fell out of the credit market and they moved their own money out of the time bomb which ultimately cost clients $1.6 billion and, in fact, the jury was so impressed with how the team conducted their business that many indicated 12 ready and willing investors await. Before he was proven innocent, however, Cioffi had to do a little unloading of assets, the most valuable ones being a house in Southampton, one in New Jersey (he and his wife are now in a rental) and his prized Ferraris. Now he tools around in his wife’s Honda and if you thought that’d be a source of depression, you thought wrong. Cioffi says it’s a great little car. Continue reading »