In 2008, Fursa Strategic Alternatives, an asset management firm run by Massapequa resident William F. Harley III, informed investors that it would be closing its doors and returning everyone’s money. As some money managers can likely attest though, making the decision to close up shop (and writing people to say as much), doesn’t mean you’re emotionally ready to do so. Harley, for example, couldn’t shake the feeling that he was put on this earth to be an investor and, god damn it, he was going to invest until the day he died. So he did what any rational human being in his position would, and decided to just, you know, hang on to his clients’ money for a while. Of course, the pesky little varmints kept calling, so he had to disconnect the phones and to avoid an awkward confrontation wherein they appeared at the firm’s building demanding their cash in person, he moved HQ into the basement of one of his other businesses, a Hooters restaurant. That got people off his tail for a while but, unfortunately, they popped up again and this time are taking legal action. Read more »
Long Island
Four Years After Shuttering Fund, Long Island Asset Manager/Hooters Franchise Owner/Frederick’s Of Hollywood Devotee Not Ready To Part With Investor Money Just Yet
By Bess Levin
Back in May, we had a frank discussion about drinking with colleagues and/or clients after work. Specifically, how many drinks one should put away in order to have a good time but not cross any unfortunate lines. At the time, we used a young lady named Sophia Anderson as our guide and said that, assuming you have the tolerance of a 21 year-old female and consider being arrested post-Happy Hour for driving your car through a stranger’s house one of those lines, no more than a dozen beverages should be consumed, with fourteen being the absolute max. Today we have just a quick update, to those for whom it bears mentioning, that if you’re going to ignore said guidelines and have that fifteenth cocktail shortly before accepting a ride home from an equally sloshed coworker who confuses someone’s front lawn/foyer/kitchen/backyard patio with the road, you should probably not agree to lie to the police, say you were the one driving, and have them breathalyze you with 370 ounces of alcohol (and some cocaine) in your body. Not even if you’re in love with him or her; not even if he or she promises to take take you on vacation after all of this blows over; not even if you were passed out the whole ride and a bit disoriented after “[waking] up as…the car drove through the house.” Read more »
The former Lehman Brothers chief operating officer and close personal friend of Dick Fuld has reportedly put his Lloyd Harbor. For $22 million you get a 15,000-square-foot main house, a 6,000-square-foot guest house, nine acres, 6 bedrooms, 8.5 baths, a 7 car garage, what appears to be a duplex apartment for shoes, and a little piece of history. Plus, you’d read be helping out the guy, who never collected his $230 million in deferred compensation. [Dealbook]
Exotic Dancer Turned Financial Services VP Teaches Long Island Cop A Thing Or Two About Hard Work
By Bess Levin
In 1992, Tara Obenauer was a dancer at a now-defunct gentleman’s club called Stringfellows. The Long Island native had graduated from Adelphi University the year prior and was set to attend law school but, she told the New York Times for an article titled “Topless Bars For A Crowd In Pin Stripes,” “The money here is just so good. I can make $1,000 a night or more, if I really work at it.” Obenauer worked hard for the money a few years longer and following a brief interlude as a stay-at-home mom, received her MBA from Hofstra and got a job at Guggenheim Capital Markets, where she spent five years as a compliance officer before joining Forbes Private Capital Group as a Vice-President. If Mike Tedesco, the Long Island police officer who used to two-time his wife with Obenauer had taken a page from her playbook, maybe he would have been lieutenant or something by now. Unfortunately, none of Obenauer’s can-do work ethic rubbed off on Tedesco and this had to happen: Read more »
Citing the potential of “Occupy Wall Street” to become a “global brand,” a Long Island couple has filed to trademark the name of the amorphous organization responsible for the protests and encampments in lower Manhattan and other U.S. cities…In a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) application, Robert and Diane Maresca are seeking to trademark the phrase “Occupy Wall St.” so that they can place it on a wide variety of goods, including bumper stickers, shirts, beach bags, footwear, umbrellas, and hobo bags. [TSG]
Mortgage Broker Who Paid Undercover Investigator $150 To Kill A Man Really Just A Victim Of Big Misunderstanding
By Bess LevinYou know how it is. Read more »
Tiger Woods’ alpha mistress, Rachel Uchitel, said the 9/11 death of her former fiance, investment banker James Andrew O’Grady, was meant to be. “I believe Andy was meant to die because he was too good,” she tells Page Six Magazine, in The Post on Thursday. “I’m almost happy it ended the way it did because I’ve learned so many lessons from him. It would have been tragic if we got into fights and then divorced.” Had O’Grady lived, Uchitel — who went on to reportedly make $500,000 a year working as a VIP hostess at Tao Las Vegas and at New York’s The Griffin, where she met Woods — believes her life would have been much different. “I would be a fat housewife with three kids in Sands Point, LI,” she tells the magazine. [NYP via Daily Intel]
Area Man Warns Business Community To Not Get Taken For A Ride By ‘Scam Artist’ Recruiter Promising Him The World (A Gig At UBS)
By Bess LevinFrom the mailbag: Read more »
A refrain typically heard when discussing Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies is that it “must” be a Ponzi scheme. Those shouting ‘Ponz’ simply can’t wrap their minds about the eye-popping returns in the Medallion fund-made up mostly of employee money- and the comparatively less stellar performance of RIEF and RIFF. They’re also made nervous by the huge computers housed on RenTec’s campus-esque grounds; throw in a socially awkward CEO who professes to hate human interaction and a couple of unicycles and Ponzi is the only way they can square things away. These people are, of course, imbeciles and the statement “Jim Simons hates the feeling of nicotine in his lungs” would hold more weight. No, the quants at Renaissance are far too intelligent to run some amateur hour scam any hack broker could pull off. They make honestly, through complex algorithms and loopholes in labor laws. Read more »
Back in August, the Daily News ran this photo of Billy Joel on a bike with an unnamed blonde woman, who the paper claimed was an employee of Morgan Stanley and Joel’s new lady love. In October, a report claimed she was actually a Goldman Sachs “banker” (a tip possibly sourced to the GS c-suite, where they would just love to be able to say one of their own is tapping Joel). Today, the saga has finally been put to bed. The woman has gone public to say her name is Alexis, she works at Morgan Stanley and she’s in love with Mr. B. Read more »
These are your hints:
1) Asness is currently a Marvel comic book collector, in addition to his duties at AQR Capital
2) As we know from Scott Patterson’s The Quants, as a teenager in on Long Island, Asness was “obsessed with little besides girls and comic books”
3) Also from The Quants, the following image: “Friday morning at AQR, August 10. Asness glanced pensively at a candy-colored array of Marvel superhero figurines lined up along his east-facing window. Spiderman. Captain America. The Hulk. Iron Man.”
4) In a new profile of Cliff out tomorrow in Bloomberg Markets magazine, the manager sits on his desk flanked by said dolls, in a full-page glossy photo.
Okay, give it your best shot. Read more »
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