Feel free to exchange exultations, insults and sour-grape rationalizations below. Read more »
awards
When people think of Jonathan Alexander Thain, as people surely often do, lots of thinks come to mind. High school wrestling. Competitive bee-keeping. Masterful stewardship of Wall Street firms. $68,179 19th Century Credenzas. $35,000 commodes. $28,091 curtains. $87,784 area rugs. $1,405 garbage cans. A keen eye for interior design and fabulous taste in general. Though we knew the current CIT Group chief executive officer was a father, we probably wouldn’t have included his parenting skills on a list of his noted attributes and accomplishments, only because there are so many to mention and we didn’t know if he excelled as a dad like he did as a decorator. Apparently this represents a gross oversight because John Thain? Is a phenomenal dad. Award-winning, in fact. Read more »
If you’ve checked out Bloomberg‘s “richest hedge funds” story today, you may have noticed a sidebar of the “top emerging-market hedge funds.” Number one on that list? Mr. Ping Jiang, founder of Ping Capital Management. Dealbreaker readers will not be surprised; we’ve been exclusively tracking the performance of Jiang all year and the returns have been consistently of the kick-ass variety. Still, it’s nice to see Jiang’s efforts recognized. Having said that, it’s not enough. That’s why today we want to present Ping with an award that reflects what he’s had to do to get to this place. Read more »
HSBC Employee Would Like To Congratulate Management For “Coming Up With A New Way To Screw Employees”
By Bess LevinIn 10,000 words:
A bank that really takes pleasure in proudly advertising any award it gets, howsoever ludicrous the honour, is HSBC. One honour it’d loath to advertise, but unarguably deserves the most is the bank that most royally screws its employees. It is no secret that HSBC’s senior management gets paid ridiculous amount of compensation. What however is not well known is how shoddily the junior and middle level staff is paid. One rather remarkable fact is that on parameters like average employee salary and percentage of profits paid as staff compensation, HSBC is in line with the best paying investment banks. However, the salaries of its junior-middle level staff are right there at the bottom of the industry. Their loss is “senior management’s” gain, the bureaucrats who spend most of their time strategising and talking vision.
What’s this joyous news you hear? Read more »
A Suggestion For Anyone Looking To Recognize Vikram Pandit For Doing Okay To Fairly Decent Job With Citi
By Bess Levin
Money talks, bull shit walks.
Running Citi for the last two and half years has been, let’s just call it, something of a thankless job for Vikram Pandit. He’s been cut down by fellow CEO’s, on several occasions one analyst in particular has left him bound and gagged on the floor of his office, and the board shit all over his horticulture ideas. Plus, there’s been the matter of the US government coming in and thinking it’s running the place. All in all, Uncle V’s tenure has been no picnic, especially considering the fact that 1) this was not the gig he signed up for (that one being $1 billion to sit around and tell Zoe Cruz jokes) and 2) no one’s even thought to maybe pat him on the back for the place not going out of business, which it almost shockingly did not. So it was nice to see Euromoney name him Banker of The Year, an award they bestowed upon him for doing “a pretty good job” with Citi. You know what would’ve been even nicer? Read more »
Tonight, Jim Chanos is being named the Hellenic American Bankers Association 2010 Executive of the Year. Baby steps!
Steve Cohen is a master trader. Steve Cohen is a lover of art. Steve Cohen has revolutionized the way we look at fleece. Steve Cohen is the victim of a terrorist attack. Steve Cohen is (obviously) a golfer. Steve Cohen is a king. Steve Cohen is this. Steve Cohen is that. People say a lot of things about the grand high poobah of Stamford but you know what factoid about SC never gets mentioned? Read more »
Congratulations Alan Greenspan! The former fed chair, who people are hoping will die soon, has won the Dynamite Prize in Economics, which is basically what the Razzie Awards are to the Oscars. Greenspan was awarded the honor as the economist most responsible for blowing up the global economy.
American Banker has named Jamie Dimon the Banker of the Year, for obvious reasons. They include: running a bank that didn’t have its ass handed to it, being Obama’s favorite, allowing employees to celebrate the birth of Christ/awkwardly grope each other, general hotness, and not being the guy running the firm where they fertilize eggs in the basement for the sole purpose of destroying the embryos* (ixnay on the aldybay). Normally, we would be happy about any honor bestowed on the boy-toy CEO this one we cannot get behind, given that last year’s recipient was Ken Lewis, who put a curse on the thing. So thank you, AB, but no thanks. We’re good here. You can have this one back.
*One of the lesser known secrets to their success.
- Use the Bloomberg command
NH BLG_DEALBREAKER <GO>
to access Dealbreaker
