Rajat Gupta was arrested today for maybe telling Raj Rajaratnam some stuff that he wasn’t supposed to tell him, and thus putting in motion a complex chain of events that has ruined the lives of many a man, woman, and dog. You can have two broad categories of theory about why Rajat Gupta went around telling Raj Rajaratnam inside stuff about Goldman and P&G board meetings:*
1. He expected Raj to trade on that information and make money, and he was cool with that because (1) they were some sort of sinister South Asian cabal intent on bringing down the WASP financial system, (2) he was going to make money off of it, or (3) they were friends, and friends want to see their friends succeed in business/crime. Or
2. He did not expect Raj to trade on that information and just thought neat stuff was happening and wanted to share it with his friend. “Whee, Raj, we’re getting money from Buffett! Bet you’ve never done that.” Or, as his lawyer put it, “There were legitimate reasons for any communications between Mr. Gupta and Mr. Rajaratnam – not the least of which was Mr. Gupta’s attempt to obtain information regarding his $10 million investment in the GB Voyager fund managed by Mr. Rajaratnam.”
What matters is that #1 is probably a crime and #2 is probably not, because the crime of insider trading depends not only on what you did but on what was in your heart when you did it. If you did it for gain – even the vague gain of winning your friend’s gratitude – then it’s a crime. If not, not. :robably. It’s hard to get direct access to a man’s heart, particularly if he was trained by McKinsey. And Raj isn’t about to sell out friends to these choots in the US Attorney’s office.
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On December 17, 2009, Ken Lewis introduced to the company the guy who would be taking over his job, Brian Moynihan, by telling the audience that one of his successor’s “unique characteristics” was that he “actually wanted the job,” a reference to the fact that no one else, literally, did. While Moynihan was undoubtedly aware that the new gig would not carry the same prestige or money as running Goldman, or the groupies that come with running JPMorgan, or the pony rides that come with running Citi, one thing that apparently came as a surprise to him– but that those who turned down the position could foresee– was that this job? Really, really sucks.
In the beginning, if indeed Bri-O reached that conclusion as well, he kept it to himself, maintaining a stiff upper lip. But as the fruits of Countrywide founder Angelo Mozilo’s labor really began to blossom and Moynihan? Started to lose it. Continue reading »
$$$ I.B.M. Names Virginia Rometty as New Chief Executive (NYT)
$$$ Amazon’s Spending Habit: Profit Plunges as Costs Rise (WSJ)
$$$ How to make ETFs less risky (Felix Salmon)
$$$ The income of the wealthiest 1 per cent increased by 275 per cent over the past three decades, versus 62 per cent for all Americans, according to the CBO (FT)
$$$ “I hate conforming to stereotypes, and pole dancing [at Ecole de Pole] offered something completely different from mainstream dance” and also from collateral management (eFN)
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In his most recent Wall Street tome, Money And Power: How Goldman Sachs Came To Rule The World, William Cohan wrote of a GS partner who several years back, sought to teach a group of new employees the values of stick-to-itiveness and having “the right attitude.” To do so, he “summoned a group of i-banking greenhorns to a conference room at 5PM on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend,” showed up at 10PM and fired those who’d left early. Lessons were learned.
Obviously, this little exercise would still hold up as an effective behavioral tool today. Having said that, 1) it’s been done, so people will see it come a mile away and act accordingly and 2) if you’re an employer who’d like to really crank up the heat on your staff, consider the following scenario: Continue reading »
Disappointed by MF Global’s dismal results today, its outsize European exposure, and its CEO’s politics, the Fox Business correspondent tweeted:
Maybe! Other possibilities include:
1. The Volcker Rule doesn’t go into effect until 2012, and
2. When it does go into effect, it will apply only to FDIC insured banks, not creepy quasi-bank things like MF Global.
But the Volcker Rule does matter for creepy quasi-banks. Continue reading »
“If you go back and read our original Netflix piece, we pretty well nailed it,” Tilson told Forbes today. “But we were quite early – we were almost a year early. So we got clobbered to the point that we couldn’t take the pain, and we just said, ‘You know what? There are better shorts out here.’ And later, to the Journal: “It’s been frustrating to see our original investment thesis validated, yet not profit from it. It certainly highlights the importance of getting the timing right and maintaining your conviction even when the market moves against you. The core of our short thesis was always Netflix’s high valuation. In light of the stock’s collapse, we now think it’s cheap and today established a small long position. We hope it gets cheaper so we can add to it.” [Forbes, WSJ]
Poor Sergio Ermotti was having a pretty good day today, with UBS’s stock up and clients more or less happy with the new business plan of “make 180% of your income on DVA and spend 140% of it on comp.” And then this went and happened:
UBS agreed to pay $12 million on Tuesday to settle accusations that it failed to oversee millions of short-sale trades over the last five years.
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, accused the embattled Swiss bank of a “systemic supervisory failure.” The fine is among the stiffer penalties recently paid to Finra, Wall Street’s self regulator.
“The fine reflected broad gaps in their compliance system,” J. Bradley Bennett, Finra’s enforcement chief, said in an interview. “I think it’s very significant.”
Ordinarily it would be hard to get all that worked up about violations of Regulation SHO, the U.S.’s semi-prohibition on naked short selling. And that’s all this is, Reg SHO violations: UBS basically did a lot of shorting without properly locating borrowable stock, leaving them with naked shorts and settlement fails. Not great, but relatively benign for this week (or last week!).
Except, this (from the FINRA press release) sounds somehow familiar:
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Time was, everyone occupying Zucotti Park in protest of the financial services industry got along (some extremely well). Now, times have changed and battle lines have been drawn. On one side you have those who are pro drum banging. On the other, you have those who want people to cool it with the drums, out of fear that the neighbors who previously supported the movement will go anti-OWS, over the racket. Continue reading »
The Germans said this morning that 1) employees will face the ax if the “environment” doesn’t improve a-SAP 2) these cuts would be on top of those previously announced and 3) have you ever wondered why DB hasn’t had to announce that it’s letting go of 20 or 30 or 40,000 people? According to Stefan Krause it’s because the bank has been “proactive” about cutting staff, doing a little bit each day so it’s not overwhelming. Continue reading »
So far, the trading scandal doesn’t appear to have significantly hurt the confidence of UBS’s wealthy clients, who had pulled hundreds of millions of francs from the bank in 2008 and 2009 after Swiss authorities had to bail out UBS following about $50 billion in securities write-downs. A bruising tax evasion battle with the U.S. also drove clients away. UBS only managed to stem the exodus of clients late last year. [WSJ]
