While the financial crisis has wreaked havoc on the lives, careers and bank accounts of many, it’s actually been pretty sweet for former Goldman executive Peter Kraus. After leaving Goldman in March 2008 he collected $25 million for a few months of work at Merrill Lynch and then took his current job as chairman and CEO of AllianceBernstein. He also bought a five-bedroom apartment at 720 Park Avenue for $37 million and by all accounts seems to be having a pretty good time. Still though, there’s one thing that likely plagues him. Not the public flogging he took for an eight-figure paycheck around the time the economy was having its ass torn out but something so much worse. His rejection by 2008 Banker Of The Year, Ken Lewis.
In FT reporter Greg Farrell’s new book, Crash Of The Titans, he writes that “one thing was clear to Lewis”– that “the ‘Goldman Guys’– Thain, Kraus and Montag– had been in the process of taking over Merrill Lynch when he struck the deal to buy the Wall Street bank [and] that Peter Kraus would not fit into the organization.” Why didn’t K-L like Pedro? Specifically, in one particular meeting, Kraus “turned himself into the center of attention in the conference room, talking nonstop and continually flashing his bright green BlackBerry,” and in general? Ken Lewis hated Peter Kraus because he’s fabulous. Continue reading »
Oden
On Wednesday nights, money manager John Oden leaves his tailored suit and Hermes tie in the locker room at the New York Athletic Club and climbs into the boxing ring in red Everlast gloves and white high-top sneakers. The dignified principal at AllianceBernstein LP turns into 6-foot-4-inch, 210-pound, sweating, jabbing pugilist for five 3- minute rounds…Scores of bankers, lawyers and industrialists turn to boxing to boost adrenalin, build muscle and battle middle-age blues. At Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn, the 650 white-collar boxers make up more than half the clientele. The proportion in 1982 was 3 out of 400, according to Bruce Silverglade, Gleason’s president. Silverglade coined the term “white-collar boxing” in 1991 to create a niche for people who were too old to become amateur boxers and not talented enough to be professional boxers, he says. [Bloomberg]
You like that, bitches?
Perhaps you thought Peter Kraus, he of former Goldman employment, and $25 million for two weeks of work at Merrill would tone things down in his new gig running Alliance Bernstein? That he’d take a page from Lloyd and Jamie’s playabook re comp this year? That go with the John Thain hair-shirt approach to decorating his new office, change nothing and work off a card table no matter how hard that million dollar antique piece of ass beckons? That he’d fail to ba-ring it on the color coordination? Wrong-o , ladies! Not only is Pedro putting shit all over the walls of his executive suite, not only is he taking home a few mill more than LB and JD for last year, not only is he wearing his hair slightly longer than is conventional but he is working it with the shirt and tie combo, the Post breathlessly reports. Continue reading »
