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$$$ Bank of America Gives Moynihan $9.05 Million 2010 Stock Bonus [Bloomberg]
$$$ Hedge Funds Seek Clarity on ‘Expert Networks‘ [WSJ]
$$$ For Fund Managers, A Class In Raising Money [Dealbook]
$$$ Is Detroit the Next Retirement Hot Spot? [Reuters] Read more »
Last week we reported that hedge fund STG Capital had abruptly closed its doors, though the reason was unclear. Today Reuters’ Matthew Goldstein and Emily Chasan have a bit more color: Read more »
As we’ve discussed at length, each firm has its own unique process for interviewing applicants to determine if they’re the right fit for the firm. At Goldman Sachs, potential hires are asked to come in 97 times before a decision can be made; often they’re asked out of the box questions like “If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?” and those applying for senior roles can typically expect to get down on all fours at some point. What does one have to look forward to should he/she attempt to gain employment at Houlihan Lokey and make it to the final round? A 3-part process called “Super Saturday,” which actually takes all weekend.
Part 1: Friday night involves a dinner “to see how the candidates interact in a social environment with alcohol.”
Part 2: Over bagels and lox the next day, applicants are asked questions like, “Which historical ruler presided over the largest span of the earth by area?” “Who is the all-time Major League RBI single-season leader?” and “What rock album holds the record for longest consecutive time in the top 100 bestselling list?”
Part 3: You go on a date with CEO Jeffrey Werbalowsky. Read more »
Sharon Sinaswee, the 42-year-old founder of Armada Building Services, a small janitorial company in East Harlem, was a member of the first class of an entrepreneurship program sponsored by Goldman called 10,000 Small Businesses. It was time for execs from the investment bank to read participants’ business plans. She’d been paired with Blankfein. They spent an hour together as the Wall Street titan grilled her about her business. Among his tips: Sinaswee should cultivate a large pool of freelance handymen to tap at peak times. “He said I was on the right track,” said Sinaswee, who recently added two employees to her four-person staff and scored a contract from the city’s Department of Education. [NYDN]
CNBC reports that Lenny Dykstra’s Sherwood mansion, which he bought from Wayne Gretzky in 2007 and was thrown out of 2008, has been sold to an unnamed buyer for an undisclosed amount (it was sold by Index Investors, the second lienholder, which bought the place out of foreclosure last fall). At this time we’d like to take a walk down memory lane, stopping to remember the high points of Lenny’s history with the manse, which will hopefully be preserved when whoever bought the place does the right thing and turns it into a Dykstra museum. Read more »
The staff was informed of the (involuntary) departures Thursday afternoon. Read more »
Morgan Stanley employees should feel free to interpret this as they see fit. Read more »
What has Bill and Hil Clinton’s son-in-law been up to lately? Fresh off his summer nuptials to their daughter, Marc Mezvinsky has been apparently maxing and relaxing in Jackson Hole. According to the Post, the former Goldman Sachs investment banker has taken a li’l sabbatical from his gig at 3G Capital to “hit the slopes for a few months.” Read more »
Last night, a “60 Minutes” interview with Julian Assange, the man behind WikiLeaks, tackled the question of whether the anti-secrecy organization is turning its Klieg light to Wall Street. Assange was asked about the speculation that WikiLeaks has a cache of internal Bank of America documents. “I won’t make any comment in relation to that upcoming publication,” Assange said. There would be a “process of elimination” if we “denied some [banks] and admitted others,” he said. “I think it’s great to have all these banks squirming thinking maybe it’s them,” Assange said. [Deal Journal] Read more »
Over the weekend, the NYT magazine ran a Q&A with Abby Joseph Cohen, president of the Global Markets group and senior investment strategist at Goldman Sachs. In the last two years, Goldman brass has been subject to more than its fair-share of grilling by the press. Some of the interviews have been reasonable- for instance, it’s not entirely out of bounds to ask for a high-ranking bank executive’s thoughts on the 2008 crisis- others the stuff of misinformed hacks who see it as their duty to wage a vendetta for the bloodthirsty public who want to blame everything on the financial community without taking any blame themselves. None have been as uncomfortable, hostile or delightfully awkward as Deborah Solomon’s “Questions” with AJC. From Solomon’s typically antagonistic and I don’t want to call them kind of bitchy but okay, kind of bitchy questions to Cohen seemingly, amazingly, being entirely caught off-guard by the fact that someone from the NYT would ask her, a GS employee, about the crisis, and her almost complete inability to adapt to a more adversarial line of questioning than she was expecting despite having unquestionably been through some media training, this thing was so delightfully car-wreck you can’t look away from-esque that few things could top it, except maybe seeing Lloyd Blankfein and his wife having a drawn out argument in front of Williams Sonoma about whether or not he’s allowed to go to his nephew’s bachelor party.
Everything starts off fine, with business about a lack of women in the senior ranks on Wall Street. JoCo answers the question as anyone probably would, by not really answering it at all because having a vagina does not necessarily make you an authority on why it’s harder for women to obtain/maintain senior roles, or mean you know how to solve the problem, or mean you even care because some people don’t. Remembering what she was there for- detonating a bomb that explodes not once but multiple times- and probably realizing she had a limited amount of time, Solomon gets right into the good stuff.
Do you have a Facebook page?
No, I don’t. I don’t think we should talk about this. No one here is supposed to be talking about Facebook.
Do you mean the fact that Goldman Sachs basically committed securities fraud, Solomon wonders?
You’re referring to the fact that Goldman Sachs just withdrew its offer to American clients to sell shares of Facebook, which could violate all kinds of rules.
I can’t comment.
Fair enough, Solomon figures, and moves onto a new topic on which she has not yet formed an opinion– is it unethical and likely even criminal that your boss makes millions and if yes how do you justify his paycheck when he provides little to nothing to society? Read more »
“I read his St. Joe short analysis, which is quite extensive. And he makes some very good points. And I’ve taken them all into account.” [Bloomberg]
