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“We’ve been working with Goldman Sachs since Blackstone was founded almost 25 years ago and I’ve been personally working with them for over 40 years, and we’ve never had any circumstance where there’s been any question about their ethical character or their behavior on any transaction we were involved with.”
“We’re a major client of Goldman and we’ll will continue to remain a major client of Goldman.” (via Reuters)
Steve was kind enough to take some time out of his day to ruminate on the financial crisis over a seafood platter. In summary: This blows, thanks to ratings agencies and mark-to-market accounting, but Geithner is on the case, so don’t worry.
Private equity company Blackstone Group LP (BX.N) CEO Stephen Schwarzman said on Tuesday that up to 45 percent of the world’s wealth has been destroyed by the global credit crisis.
“Between 40 and 45 percent of the world’s wealth has been destroyed in little less than a year and a half,” Schwarzman told an audience at the Japan Society. “This is absolutely unprecedented in our lifetime.”
45 percent of world’s wealth destroyed: Blackstone CEO [Reuters]
I am both saddened and outraged to have to tell you that the SEC has brought a civil complaint today against Ramesh Chakrapani in our Corporate Advisory Services Group, charging him with passing on inside information three years ago about a pending transaction on which he worked as a 30 year old vice president.
We are all shocked by this alleged breach of the law and violation of our firm’s compliance policies and ethical standards. This employee has been suspended and we have told the authorities that they will have our firm’s full cooperation in their investigation into this matter.
This is the first time in the firm’s 24-year history that any employee of the firm has been accused of any infringement of securities laws.
Oops.
Steve Schwarzman on Blackstone Insider Trading Trouble: ‘I Am Personally Infuriated…’ [DealJournal]
“And I just hate that I’ve been locked into this whole $400 crab legs shtick thing. Like, it was funny at first but now it’s all people see me as, and it’s sort of taken over my entire identity and I don’t know how to escape it and it’s like the crabs are eating away at me instead of the other way around. And it’s crazy because crabs aren’t even by favorite food, not by a long shot! The reporter just caught me on a day I happened to be eating crab salad but it was totally freaking arbitrary and if memory serves I think I’d requested a bag of Lays but my wife had just put me on a diet and vetoed “that garbage.” It just really makes me want to go a killing rampage, this association. I want to go circus freak crazy on all the people who keep disseminating this picture of me as a guy who’s so *obsessed* with crabs that he found a plastic surgeon who would perform a procedure that would replace his arms/hands with crab leg/pinchers. Like, fuck off, get some new material! And don’t get me started on that prick at Blackstone– Peterson– who thinks it’s just so funny to send me YouTubes of crabs having sex, like that’s something I get off on. Why doesn’t anyone write about how I love chalupas, Cubans, tuna straight from the can when I’m feeling particularly naughty. Even just taking shellfish into account crabs don’t make my Top 3. I’d definitely choose mussels or oysters or cockles with a little vinegar over crabs. Why are you laughing? Oh…yes, I said ‘cock.’ Hilarious.”
Therapists to the Elite: Challenges of $600-a-Session Patients, a series examining the effects of the growing concentration of wealth [NYT]
As you, but not Yahoo!, know, George Carlin died yesterday. In his role as Kennedy Center chair, Steve Schwarzman said of Carlin, who was named the winner of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, “…[he] not only made us laugh, but he made us think.” While you might be quick to say, “Obviously not too hard, Crabs, because Carlin spent most of his career railing against, among other things, the myriad bull shit ways people like you’ve gotten rich,” it seems the late comedian was able to penetrate Crabby, conspicuous in his lack of golf playing, on at least one issue:
Natasha Archdale is a genius. The London-based artist, who charges up to $30,000 per piece, allows her clients, the majority of whom work in the financial industry, to purport masturbatory feelings for loved ones while craftily hiding their true agenda, that being masturbatory feelings for themselves.
