It’s not a hedge fund gig, per se, but you will be working directly for the Big Kahuna. Ackman and his wife Karen are looking for someone to run the Pershing Square Charitable Foundation, which has about $55 million in assets and through grants does lots of good stuff for humanity (PSCF has aided farmers in Africa, helped New York high school kids pass the AP exams, etc, etc). Interested? Here’s what they’re looking for in a CEO: Continue reading »
Energy
The House of Dimon has allegedly begun “swinging the ax on prop traders, starting with energy group” with “around 40 people gone so far.”
When Vikram Pandit first joined Citi, he was a happy, smiley Uncle Vik. And why shouldn’t he have been? The bank had just laid out hundreds of millions of dollars to land him and he was thisclose to buying Tony Randall’s apartment. Plus, he’s just always had a sunny disposition.
Despite the fact that that his hedge fund was eventually put out to pasture after its all-too-short two years of (mis)managing money, and a precipitously falling stock price, nothing could get him down. As time went on though, they started to break him. A certain analyst made a habit of hiding in his closet, waiting ’til he fell asleep and then popping out, tying him up and shoving a sock in his mouth. Jamie Dimon called him a “jerk” on a conference call. The government outfitted him with an ankle monitoring bracelet and a boot up the ass. Citi was removed from the Dow. He made a promise not to take more than a $1 salary per year and who knew when the Christ that was going to happen. He was told he couldn’t have a Zen Garden. It was all too much to bear and Vickles had a major case of the sads. He lost weight. And because he lost weight he was forced to close his Tickle a Vickle booth in the office on Park (people don’t wait in line for hours to Tickle an anorexic Vickle). The whole thing was depressing to watch, let alone experience personally and we spent a good deal of time wondering if we’d ever have the old Vik back. It seemed unlikely. Today though? JOYOUS NEWS TO THE CONTRARY.
Some of Mr. Pandit’s most trusted advisers notice a new bounce in his step and say he is more energetic at meetings.
The Fed has massively cut rates over the last six months or so. The last time we had massive Fed easing, in the wake of 9/11, we wound up with the housing bubble. The time before that, when the Fed eased to pull us out of the recession of the early nineties, we wound up with the internet bubble.
So, of course, the natural question is where the next bubble will be. We’ve got strong inclinations to say energy, if only because the talk of rising global energy demand reminds us a bit too much of the talk of rising broadband demand we heard in the late nineties. Eventually the demand caught up with supply, but only after years of over-supply.
