Earlier today, Forbes writer Jeff Bercovici reported that last night at the Time magazine Person of the Year debate, restaurateur Mario Batali likened the banking industry to “Stalin or Hitler,” Joe and Adolf, respectively. The collective members of the banking industry did not take this well. They banned expensed lunches at all of Batali’s eateries, took to Bloomberg’s restaurant review pages to express their outrage and vowed not to line his pockets with another dime, while also taking shots at Mario’s signature and beloved orange Crocs. Moments ago, Batali choose to take to the airwaves with a response to the backlash. While he would have received credit for kicking things up a notch with an ice cold “You won’t be missed” or “Apologies…for failing to mention another luminary you remind me of, the late, great Benito Mussolini,” he choose to go with this: Continue reading »
apologies
UBS trader Kweku Adoboli, accused over the Swiss banking giant’s $2.3 billion losses from unauthorized trades, was “sorry beyond words,” his attorney said Thursday. [NYP]
ironically fake john paulson buys real trees
With half of Europe having banned short-selling and anything that might loosely resemble it, if you think that French banks are undercapitalized then you may be seeking less traditional ways to monetize that view. One approach that you might have considered is writing a fictional account of a near-future Eurozone meltdown with real names of banks and individuals and selling it pseudonymously to a major French newspaper to publish in a twelve-part serial. If you live in the U.S. that may not sound like such a great idea, since we don’t consume a lot of based-loosely-on-real-events financial fiction unless it stars Shia LeBoeuf.
But in France, where after all mime is considered a form of entertainment, there seems to be a big appetite for fictionalized financial markets, as Le Monde found out when they puplished “Terminus pour l’euro” this summer. But Le Monde’s success may just have ruined it for the rest of you:
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Last month it was reported that in 2007, executives with Munich Re subsidiary Ergo Versicherungsgruppe came up with the idea to throw a party for top performing sales executives at a bathhouse, featuring a bunch of prostitutes for their consumption. Because such events have the potential to devolve into mass chaos, with buyers and sellers running amok and no one knowing who’s down for what, the Germans had the bright idea to keep order via color-coding. Each hooker would wear an armband, with yellow indicating “available for sexual favors,” red indicating that she was a hostess and white indicating that she was “reserved for executives and top agents.” Additionally, the girls also received a “stamp” following each visit to one of the curtained canopied beds, so party-goers could know how many times she’d been “frequented.” When the story came out, a spokesman for the company said in a statement that incentive trips for successful salespeople “definitely don’t usually proceed the way it’s described.” Since then, current and former employees have countered that that’s actually exactly how they usually proceed and were going to keep proceeding, until Ergo ruined everyone’s good time by banning them indefinitely. On top of that, the company has now gone and taken out a full-page ad that includes an apology for the “mistakes” made by both the firm and the participants. Continue reading »
Seriously, won’t happen again. Continue reading »
“During my tenure I abused the position of trust I enjoyed,” said Charles Antonucci, who admitted to accepting ‘what amounted to bribes from clients and faking a $6.5 million investment into the bank,’ and used the money to fund, among other things, trips to the Superbowl. “Sometimes I did it to enrich myself, other times in a misguided attempt to keep the bank healthy.” [WSJ]
Animal Welfare Society Not Buying RBS Employee’s Story About Why She Threw A Cat In The Trash
By Bess Levin
“I cannot explain why I did this, it is completely out of character and I certainly did not intend to cause any distress to Lola or her owners,” Mary Bale, the woman who threw a Tabby cat in the trash last week, said. “It was a split second of misjudgment that has got completely out of control.” Miss Bale said she was just walking home on Saturday when she saw the cat and decided to play with it. But she told the Sun that she “suddenly thought it would be funny” to put it in the bin. “I did it as a joke because I thought it would be funny. I never thought it would be trapped, I expected it to wriggle out,” she said. A spokesman for the RSPCA said: “This is now an RSPCA case. Mary Bale has been interviewed by an RSPCA inspector and a full file is being compiled and will be sent for review by the prosecutions department.” While Miss Bale admitted she should not have done it, she said she did not deserve to be ‘hated’ by everyone and assumed the cat would find its own way out of the bin. Her mother also insisted the unmarried bank clerk “loved cats”- and had even kept them as pets as a child. [DM via BI]
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