As you may have heard, several weeks ago a fed up Harvard Crimson staff ran an impassioned editorial urging Occupy Wall Street protesters on campus to leave Goldman Sachs, and those hoping to gain employment with the firm, alone. The last straw had been a group of Occupy Harvard supporters who “attempted to disrupt a Goldman Sachs recruiting event,” which represented a step too far. The newspaper took occupiers to task for “presenting a facile and trivializing interpretation of the root causes of the economic catastrophe and debases our national conversation on the issue,” for failing to comprehend that Goldman Sachs is going to hire employees regardless– and, god damn, it, they ought to be Harvard students–, and for just generally embarrassing themselves by “pitching a simplistic conception of the financial crisis and targeting fellow students [which] is not the way to have a successful movement.” Moving forward, the Crimsonians cautioned, “Occupy ought to refrain from such ill-conceived protests in the future.”
But it was already too late. Goldman canceled an event in Cambridge, supposedly due to the proximity to reading period, though more likely to send a message– that it would entertain the idea of hiring Harvard graduates when it was made to feel welcome. At the time, we urged those dreaming of a job with Lloyd and Co to woo them and woo them hard. Compliments, flowers, red carpet, the works. An editorial extolling, say, the virtues of Abacus and their rippling abs. Stuff like that. Maybe not stuff like this: Continue reading »
Oh, did someone say 10,000? That’s embarrassing. Number is actually more like 40,000. Continue reading »
Yesterday we discussed George Soros’ love life. Specifically his dealings with 28 year-old Brazilian soap star Adriana Ferreyr. After 5 years of what she describes as a “serious and meaningful relationship” (while Soros’ lawyer characterized it as “on-again, off-again and non-exclusive”), Soros promised to buy her an apartment on East 85th Street. He broke things off with Ferreyr a couple days after signing the papers on the pad and then, during pillow talk during one night of “reconciliation,” he allegedly whispered to her that he’d let other woman named Tamikoa Bolton move into her “dream home.” Bad idea! Ferreyr let him know she was pissed, feelings she claims he responded to by attempting to choke her and flinging a lamp at her foot. Now she wants $50 million from Soros and would probably also like the bitch who stole her man to find a new place to live because quite awkwardly, Ferreyr and Bolton are now both living in the building, Bolton in 7C, Ferreyr a few floors down (if Soros, who lives two blocks away and was apparently “furious that Ferreyr found a lease in the building,” thought he was going to be able to get rid of her so quickly, he was sorely mistaken). This has proven slightly awkward.
Things became so testy between the rival women at 30 E. 85th St. — when the scorned Ferreyr managed to rent another apartment there — that each accused the other of harassment, according to court papers. The passive-aggressive catfight between the sultry actress and the sexy licensed pharmacist escalated to the point that Bolton began “slandering her to the board of the building, the management company, doormen and lawyers,” Ferreyr charges in her lawsuit.
While you’d think that a grown-up soap star and sexy licensed pharmacist could put their feelings for the Hungarian hunk of man meat aside, we fear that this is only the beginning and the beginning of the end of their residency in the building. It starts with talking shit to the doorman and you know where it goes from there? Continue reading »
On May 11, 1979, commodities trader and “family man” Arthur Gerald Jones went missing. His wife told investigators that six months prior, he’d lost his job, and due to the fact that despite selling his CBOT seat and forging her name on an application for a second mortgage, Jones still had a bunch of gambling debt to pay off, possibly to the mob, foul play was suspected, and he was eventually declared dead in 1986. This would be sad if not for the fact that AGJ has actually been living and working (as a bookie, natch, and apparently also on his tan) in Las Vegas for the last 23 years. Continue reading »
Remember Craig Drimal? To recap, Drimal was working at a gym called Vertical way back in the day when he met a guy named David Slaine, with whom he “quickly formed a friendship based on a shared passion for weight lifting and their mutual ability to bench-press 400 pounds.” Drimal and Slaine became so close that later, when Slaine got a job at this hedge fund called Galleon, he convinced the boss to hire his buddy Craig- then working as a bouncer at the Roxy– as an assistant at the firm. Something must have happened to damage the bond, though (perhaps something at the gym involving spotting) because in 2007, when Slaine was approached by the FBI who told him they’d cut a deal if he helped them build their case, he jumped at the chance to rat out Craig. (Slaine– who once got into an argument about inside info with his Galleon boss while the two were taking a steam, and proceeded to slap him in the face– told prosecutors his friend was part of an “insider-trading conspiracy involving a wide ring of other hedge-fund managers and lawyers.”)
Anyway, the Feds have been recording Drimal’s conversations for a while now, and as wiretaps seem to be an increasingly effective tool in suggesting one’s participation in insider trading (particularly when the individual in question says stuff like “thanks for the non-public material information you gave me that I traded on”), prosecutors would like to use them in Drimal’s upcoming trial. His defense team would prefer a jury not hear the wiretaps, and while Judge Richard J. Sullivan denied the request for a dismissal, he did note that the authorities went a bit too far when they listened in on heated convos between Craig and the Mrs. that one can only assume covered topics such as whose turn it was to take out the trash and ED. Continue reading »
Earlier this morning, legendary hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt popped by the CNBC studios for a little chat with the Squawk Box crew. Things started off friendly enough, with some conversation about the petting-zoo Steinhardt keeps at his home in Westchester (which includes zebras, camels, albino wallabies and a llama named Angel Mike has been known to french kiss), his rare-plant collection that inspires envy in Martha Stewart, the economy and the Fed. Steinhardt noted that, compared to the rest of what’s going on in the world, “we live in an inland sea of calm waters while surrounding us are turbulent, horrible places,” to which everyone nodded soberly in agreement, unaware of what was coming next. “America seems almost as insular as it has in times past,” Mike continued. “Look at the rest of the world compared to America, look what’s happening all over and then here the biggest thing we have to worry about is how long it will take Buffett to come down to earth…how long until people like you begin to realize his reality and get off some…cloud.”
Oh, he went there. Continue reading »
That was one of the conversations played by the prosecution in court today, Day 3 of the Rajaratnam trial. Here was another:
“We know because one of our guys is on the board,” Rajaratnam told his friend, Rajiv Goel, during an Oct. 7, 2008, call. The two men are discussing the acquisition of PeopleSupport Inc. and Rajaratnam is telling Goel that he bought 30,000 shares for Goel’s account, according to the tape.
Incriminating or completely harmless? The government is hoping the jury’s reaction will lean toward the former, but according to the Rajaratnam defense team, the exchange was completely “harmless.” Nothing to see here. Continue reading »
Unless producers have a new rule in which they encourage guests to measure female hosts’ waists and read the number aloud, especially when it’s higher than the one you just told people was the most she could be for that height. Continue reading »
This didn’t go over so well. Continue reading »
Bloomberg reports the firm “told traders who bet on commodities for the firm’s account that their unit will be closed as the company begins to shut down all its proprietary trading” and will “eventually end all proprietary trading to comply with new curbs on investment banks.” In July JPM axed about 40 prop traders and earlier this month, Blythe Masters told the commodities unit to calm the fuck down, assuring them that “no one’s going to get screwed. We’re not going to do crazy things on compensation at the end of the year.”
To be sure, Robert Karofsky did not have sexual intercourse with the cleaning lady on his desk at 60 Wall Street (…that we know of), but you’re getting warmer. In this case, the firm’s co-head of equities, known for his “magnetic personality,” allegedly used his pole to attract a senior trader, subordinate and close friend’s wife, which apparently no one told him when he first started at DB is something that’s not done. Maybe in other offices– Morgan Stanely, where he previously worked– but not DB. Continue reading »
