Yesterday we all learned a valuable lesson about what happens when you address Steven A. Cohen as “Stevie” in the presence of his outside counsel, Martin Klotz, as evidenced by a recently unsealed deposition (you get one warning and then you end up in the trunk of a 1987 Cadillac Sedan De Ville, is what). Unfortunately, crucial dialogue between Klotz and Michael Bowe, the Fairfax Financial lawyer who was questioning Cohen, was cut off. And that part was just as important. You see, just because you can’t call him Stevie, doesn’t mean you can just call him anything you want, unless you’re okay with getting Sonny Corleone’d the next time you drive through a toll plaza without EZ Pass. Continue reading »
Archive for December 2011
As some of you may recall, last year in an interview with the Finanacial Times, Bob Diamond revealed the secret to Barclays success: “a no-jerks policy on hiring, taken seriously from the top executive suites on down.” Unfortunately, despite a rigorous interview process, some pricks still slip through. Deadly serious about not having time for these types, Diamond said last week that he does not hesitate to can their asses, in some cases boxing up their belongings himself. And yet. The numbers quoted by The Enforcer seem suspiciously high. Continue reading »
Good news and less good news. The good news: junior mistmakers needn’t worry much about the new rule stating that one’s bonus will be taken back should he/she leave the firm for greener pastures less than a year after the money hits the bank. The less good news: Continue reading »
$$$ Former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine Aware of Money Transfer, Says Senate Witness [ABC]
$$$ Fed Takes No Action; Outlook a Bit Better [WSJ]
$$$ If you thought realtors were too optimistic on home sales, it’s because they were counting them wrong [Reuters]
$$$ Jim Simons gave $150 million to Stony Brook University [NYT]
$$$ Occupy Wall Street’s alternative banking working group is led by a former British diplomant and a former D.E. Shaw quant [Mother Jones]
Continue reading »
I was a little tickled to read this morning that Ben Bernanke had refinanced his mortgage at around the same time the Fed announced Operation Twist in September. There are a couple of ways to read this story. One is that a hard-working and heavily mortgaged civil servant, savvy about the macroeconomy and the rates markets, decided that long-term fixed rates were as low as they are likely to be for a while and so September was a good time to refinance. The other is, as Simone Foxman tongue-in-cheek puts it, “Bernanke Personally Cashed In On Operation Twist.” Conspiracy theories abound with Bernanke, and I’m sure somebody somewhere really thinks that Ben Bernanke intentionally put the U.S. on a path to the Weimar-style hyperinflation that is coming any day now just to save a hundred bucks a month on his mortgage payments, but…I’m with her that it’s an amusing coincidence.
If you like a slightly different flavor of conspiracy, though, you might ask: why wasn’t Bernanke refinancing in, say, July or August? Sure, maybe he was busy with the whole stewardship of the economy and/or after-dinner Kindle reading. Or maybe he knew that the Fed was going to move to lower long-term rates and so abstained from trading based on that. Maybe he was taking advantage of his insider knowledge to make a personal profit, or at least avoid a loss.
Or not, whatever, what a stupid thing to think. But I thought of it again when I read Mr. Steven A. Cohen’s cogent argument that insider trading rules are somewhat more ambiguous than the proper form of address for him: Continue reading »
December 13, 2011
Board of Directors
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Attention: Mr. Roy Bostock, ChairmanDear Directors:
Third Point LLC, as the beneficial owner of 5.2% of Yahoo! Inc.’s (“Yahoo”) outstanding shares, remains extremely troubled by news reports regarding the dysfunction and inequity being exhibited in the process of maximizing stockholder value that the Board is allegedly “managing”. We are disturbed but not surprised by this mismanagement given the history of strategic bungling by Yahoo Board Chairman Roy Bostock and Founder Jerry Yang, which has been chronicled in our previous letters and in numerous critical media and analyst reports. As significant shareholders with our own fiduciary duties to investors to uphold, we cannot stand by silently if such reports are accurate and Yahoo, a company in no need of cash, plans to engage in a sweetheart PIPE deal which will serve only to entrench Mr. Yang and the current board while massively disenfranchising public shareholders and permanently robbing us of the opportunity to obtain a control premium.
-
Posted in:
Nicknames
SAC Capital Lawyer Martin Klotz Showed Enormous Restraint In Not Dealing With This Guy By Driving Him Out To The Pine Barrens
By Bess Levin
Quick story or not so much a story but a pet peeve I’ve never gotten off my chest: I hate when people use the nickname “Stevie” when referring to hedge fund manager Steve Cohen. It’s like nails on a chalkboard when anyone says it but particularly when deployed by total strangers creating false intimacy with the guy, as though they’re boys and/or they just finished sucking Cohen off. For her part, Mrs. Cohen is also said to be irked by the moniker, as she finds it childish. Having said all that, I’ve never taken someone to task for the offense* and, presumably, the Missus hasn’t either or at least not in the spectacular form demonstrated by Cohen’s lawyer. Earlier this year, the SAC Capital manger sat for two days of deposition, which was recently unsealed, as part of a lawsuit filed in 2006 by Canadian insurer Fairfax Financial against a group of hedge funds that included SAC. At one point, Fairfax’s lawyer Michael Bowe addresses Cohen as “Stevie,” and in response, Martin Klotz, the attorney representing Steve and SAC, goes absolutely ape shit. Continue reading »
-
Posted in:
bonuses
Bonus Watch ’11: Jefferies Employees Might Not Want To Make Any Sudden Movements
By Bess Levin
Maybe you’re a Jefferies employee who thinks the light at the end of the tunnel is near. Bonus time’s a’ comin’ and once you get yours, you’re out of this place, you’ve told family and close friends. Just a couple more months and you can bust out. Break free. Live again. Just gotta wait for the money for last year’s work to hit your account and bye-bye Jefferies, hello the first day of the rest of you life, right? WRONG! Jefferies is trying out something new this year and it’s called you’re not going anywhere. Continue reading »
-
Posted in:
M&A
Maybe Their Offer Wouldn’t Be So Hostile If You’d Called Them Back When You Said You Would, Ever Think Of That?
By Matt Levine
You should probably go read Steven Davidoff’s column in DealBook today about yesterday’s hostile bid by Martin Marietta to take over Vulcan Materials. It’s an amazing list of all the reasons that this will not end up actually being done as a hostile deal, including:
(1) a New Jersey “constituency statute” designed to, essentially, keep the Mitt Romneys out of New Jersey, that might also work to prevent an all-stock merger of equals with a US public company;
(2) a nondisclosure agreement that Martin Marietta signed which, though it doesn’t actually prevent MLM from launching a hostile bid for VMC, does cleverly prevent it from making the disclosures required by the SEC to do so (though it apparently made them anyway); and
(3) a typo, really, in the VMC charter that may prevent MLM from doing even a fully priced deal if it’s not approved by current directors.
But you should even more read MLM’s exchange offer document, particularly the “Background of the Offer,” which is a weirdly human story about two rich dudes who each ran a company and harbored a deep desire to be each other’s boss. Vulcan CEO Donald James had met with Martin Marietta CEO Ward Nye and his predecessor to discussing merging off and on since 2002. Here’s an account of their last conversation: Continue reading »
Nothing official yet but apparently various people’s contributions to the firm (or lack thereof) are being weighed. Continue reading »
As some of you may recall, back in June we informally crowned Raj Rajaratnam’s attorney John Dowd lawyer of the year. Dowd responded to what he deemed an unfair article in the Wall Street Journal by telling the reporter “This is the worst piece of whoring journalism I have read in a long time,” asking “How long are you going to suck [U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York] Preet’s teat?” and concluding thusly “Preet is scared shitless he is going to lose this case so he feeds his whores at the WSJ. What a disgrace for an otherwise great paper.” He told CNBC “Get the fuck out of here. That’s what I’ve got for CNBC” when asked if he wanted to give a comment. And on the steps of the courthouse, he declared the Raj guilty verdict a “23-14″ victory for the defense. If anyone was to find themselves in some kind of legal trouble, be it of the insider trading variety or otherwise, he was the guy you wanted in your corner. Unfortunately, according to Dowd, the Galleon case was his last. And he’s truly not to be coaxed out of retirement, we’d like to suggest an alternative for your go-to legal counsel. He may not be versed in securities laws, but he’s got the fire inside him. Continue reading »
