William Bryan Jennings, the co-head of North American fixed-income capital markets at Morgan Stanley who is currently on leave, appeared in court today (wearing “a blue suit, white shirt and patterned tie”) to plead not guilty to assault and hate-crime charges. Read more »
Morgan Stanley
Accused Madam Didn’t Sit Through Countless Meetings Discussing Capital Markets Strategy To Be Treated Like Some Common Pimp
By Bess Levin
Remember Anna Gristina/Scotland? To recap, she’s the entrepreneur we were introduced to yesterday whose business hit a bit of a stumbling block when she was arrested by the Manhattan DA and charged with “promoting prostitution” out of her firm’s global headquarters, a whorehouse on East 78th Street. Gristina/Scotland is currently on Riker’s Island having been unable to post bail, set at $2 million, but prior to all this going down, she was just a (self-described) CEO with big plans and an outlook not so different from her colleagues in the business world. Before being nailed as part of a 5-year investigation, a typical day for Anna included: Read more »
Manhattan DA Pumps The Brakes On Mom/Madam’s Brothel Just As It Was About To Really Take Off With The Help Of Her Contacts In The Business World
By Bess Levin
HQ on East 78th Street
As the entrepreneurial among us know, successful, brand name business don’t just happen overnight. They take blood, sweat, tears and in some cases, other bodily fluids, that the public never sees. Anna Gristina was nearly there. The mother of four (who went by the name “Anna Scotland” professionally) had been providing hookers for to “wealthy, powerful men” (“politicians, top-law enforcement, influential lawyers, bankers, entertainment execs and Fortune 500 businessmen”) out of an Upper East Side whorehouse for a decade and a half, had developed a thriving client list willing to pay between $1000 (for a “Dream Girl”) to $2000+ (for an “Ultimate Elite Model”) per appointment, and made millions in the process. She was ready for the big time. Just the other day, in fact, Gristina/Scotland was sitting down at the office of her friend and business associate, a Morgan Stanley employee, to hear his plan for “expanding her operation through the Internet.” And then this happened. Read more »
Trail Of Breadcrumbs Led Police To Morgan Stanley Banker Who Accidentally Stabbed Cab Driver Over Fare Dispute
By Bess Levin“Jennings asked him to stop somewhere for food before taking the highway, so he took him to a deli on 10th Avenue, a stop that helped police investigators identify the banker, Ammar said. Video footage from the deli allowed police to recognize Jennings after Ammar said he was unable to remember the location of the banker’s house in Connecticut.” [BusinessWeek, earlier]
Specifically, her rights to Perrier on the company dime. It’s unclear what this woman’s name is so moving forward she’ll simply be referred to as The One With Brass Balls And An Allergy To Tap. Read more »
Morgan Stanley Exec “Accidentally” Stabs Cab Driver After Difference Of Opinion Re: Fare
By Bess Levin
William Bryan Jennings is the co-head of North American fixed-income capital markets at Morgan Stanley, though his responsibilities have been passed onto a coworker for the time being until a particular matter is “resolved.” That matter would be a cab ride he took on the evening of December 22, which resulted in Jennings being charged with “second-degree assault, theft of services and second-degree intimidation based on race or bigotry.” At present, there are two conflicting stories about what happened. Read more »
One More Peep Out Of Morgan Stanley Employees And Next Year’s Bonuses Will Be Determined By IQ Test (Results Posted In Lobby)
By Bess Levin
Gorman doesn’t fit the image of a Wall Street titan. Notwithstanding his $10.5 million pay package, he shows up at black-tie events in a rumpled tuxedo he bought as a business- school student in the 1980s. He keeps supplies of Vegemite — a favorite Australian food that’s made from yeast extract — in the executive kitchen and eats it on toast. He often walks home from his Times Square office to his Upper East Side townhouse and was spotted on one weekend in a track suit and sneakers waiting in line at the post office. The 6-foot-3-inch (1.9-meter), 195-pound (88-kilogram) Gorman’s favorite pastimes include reading John le Carre spy novels and taking boxing lessons weekly at his gym…Gorman is the sixth of 10 children born to Melbourne engineer Kevin Gorman. His father, now 90, was home-schooled until age 14 because he lived in the Australian outback, far from any town. Kevin Gorman once had each of his children take an IQ test, James says. He posted the results in the family’s living room, with each child’s score and expected occupation. James, whose sister is now a judge on the Supreme Court of Victoria, came in fifth — a result that relegated him to an expected job of “midlevel bureaucrat or manager,” he recalls. [Bloomberg, earlier]
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favorites
Bet Goldman Sachs Wouldn’t Have Played Favorites. Guess Ya Should’ve Thought Of That Before Relegating Them To Third Place
By Bess Levin
Not sure if the word has gotten out yet, but yesterday afternoon social networking site Facebook filed to go public. Almost as exciting as the news itself (for those who reach self-induced stroke levels of excitement over such things) was the answer to the burning question vis-à-vis which bank would win the coveted and lucrative role of lead bookrunner on the deal. As had been predicted, Morgan Stanley got the job. This happened, we’ve been told, because Morgan Stanley’s “dominant” tech team “has been largely unchanged since the mid-1990′s,” is based in Menlo Park rather than New York, has “seen every tech cycle,” and goes the extra mile to show that beneath their investment banker exteriors beat the hearts of a bunch of guys who really care. When it came to Pandora, which was said to be “wary” of the group, “Michael Grimes, co-head of global tech banking at Morgan Stanley, and his team wore concert T-shirts of their favorite bands from their Pandora profiles, including the Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath, under blue blazers when making their pitch.” In landing the Groupon deal, Grimes and his underlings presumably made sure to note the steal they got on laser hair removal using the site. And, of course, when making the hard sell for LinkedIn and Facebook, the bankers “set up accounts…in a show of support for their prospective clients.” AND YET! It appears only one networking site was granted the ultimate endorsement of Morgan Stanley. Read more »
One thing about Facebook is that Facebook doesn’t need the money that Facebook is raising in the Facebook IPO that Facebook just filed. (Did you hear?) It’s got almost $4bn in the bank and it can’t even be bothered to pretend that it’s got any plans for what to do with more:
The principal purposes of our initial public offering are to create a public market for our Class A common stock and thereby enable future access to the public equity markets by us and our employees, obtain additional capital, and facilitate an orderly distribution of shares for the selling stockholders. We intend to use the net proceeds to us from our initial public offering for working capital and other general corporate purposes; however, we do not currently have any specific uses of the net proceeds planned.
And while the selling shareholders undoubtedly will be happy to be able to sell in the open market, they can kind of do that now, with robust SharesPost and SecondMarket trading at high-eleven-figure valuations. Basically Facebook is IPOing because it’s got so many shareholders that it is legally required to register so might as well raise a few yards of rainy-day money while it’s at it.
When that’s your posture – and, to be fair, when people are beating down your door to buy your stock – you can be pretty, pretty cavalier with shareholder rights. What that means here is a two-class share structure (insiders get 10 votes per share, the public gets 1 vote), a board of directors that is not required to be independent, and Mark Zuckerberg controlling 57% of the voting power of the shares (while only owning 28%) via really quite all-encompassing voting agreements with current investors, some of which last until he dies. If your theory of public corporations is “they should be controlled by and for the benefit of the public shareholders,” this may trouble you. If your theory is “I’d follow Mark Zuckerberg anywhere,” then, carry on.
Other things to know or avoid knowing: Read more »
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