tears

  • 03 May 2010 at 2:45 PM

Pershing Square Has An Official Rule About Kicking People In The Nuts

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As you’re likely aware, one of the most important skills to master when you’re in this money making game is to be able to regulate your emotions. You can’t freak out every time you lose a little cash, and on the flip side, it’s probably a good idea to avoid doing an end-zone dance on the days you make it rain. Many of Wall Street’s most successful investors have perfected the art of staying cool and calm, with the best of the best being basically dead inside. Then you have Bill Ackman.

The Dead Inside model is not the one he’s chosen to follow over the course of his career. On the contrary, Bill is stuffed to the gills with emotion, and often feels compelled to let them out. No, scratch that. Letting his salty tears flow is not a choice, just like Ackman’s passion for standing up to institutions like MBIA and saying “J’accuse!” wasn’t a choice, it was his duty.

Obviously these raw and uncut displays of what Bill’s feeling haven’t prevented him from doing pretty well for himself. They have, however, caused a certain amount of agita for those around him. Bill’s visible tears at last year’s Target shareholder meeting were deeply distressing to Joe Nocera, who hasn’t yet evolved to the point where he’s comfortable seeing a grown man cry. And in Christine Richard’s Confidence Game: How A Hedge Fund Manager Called Wall Street Bluff, we learn of a couple other instances in which Bill’s inability to keep it locked up– one the adorable quirks we love most about him and probably the source of his success!– resulted in some minor and major fallout (making an employee uneasy and the enacting of the aforementioned Nut Kicking Rule, respectively). Richard writes: Continue reading »

  • 02 Mar 2010 at 3:22 PM

Stuyvesant Town Hurt Larry Fink On Very Deep Level

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When big money mangers make decisions that result in clients getting screwed, most people assume said managers don’t really give a rat’s ass. They still have their vaults of hundos to console them, and while they often write letters and release statements saying they’re sorry, that they want to regain investors’ trust, and so on and so forth no on really buys it. No one feels their pain or sees their contrition on a visceral level and I can’t remember the last time I saw one of these guys actually cry. Such is not the case with Larry Fink. This shit keeps him up at night. It makes him shout things like “I never said we’re perfect!” It hurts his mother, and in doing so, it hurts him.

Today, the investors who bought equity in the [Stuyvesant Town] deal have also lost their money, including major BlackRock clients—most notably the $200 billion California Pension and Retirement System (calpers), the nation’s largest pension fund, which effectively lost $500 million. At press time, calpers was weighing whether or not to retain BlackRock as a real-estate adviser.At the mention of these blunders, Fink, who has been sprawled in his chair, suddenly stiffens. His voice takes on a harsh tone that is leavened only by his visible anxiety. “When you manage money, you are going to make mistakes. You are not going to be 100 percent perfect. Our job is to minimize those problems, to cauterize them,” Fink says, his voice rising. “We’re not perfect, and I’ve never said to anyone that we are going to be perfect. Our investors had all the information we did and they did their own due diligence.” He exhales deeply. “Our real-estate division is struggling because of bad performance, and we’re making changes. I don’t care if the whole industry blew up, our job is to do better than the industry, and we didn’t in real estate,” he says. “I am not making excuses. I lose sleep over these problems.” The Stuyvesant Town loss was “an embarrassment,” he says. Then his voice drops to a whisper. “I mean, my mother gets her pension from Calpers.”

Larry Fink Is a Real Human Being With Feelings and Emotions [NYM]

  • 07 Jan 2010 at 3:10 PM

Anil Kumar Pleads Guilty In Galleon Case

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The former McKinsey director pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Mr. Kumar told the court that he had leaked to Mr. Rajaratnam that Advanced Micro Devices was planning to acquire ATI Techonologies. The leak occurred in March 2006 before news reports about the deal had surfaced. He said that Mr. Rajaratnam told him, “Anil, you are a hero.”

Kumar, visibly crying, also apologized to his colleagues “for the shame they have suffered,” but did not specify if he was talking about shame as it related to insider trading, or for the rap AK wrote and recorded while at the firm.

Continue reading »

  • 26 Jun 2008 at 1:03 PM

Angelo Mozilo More Or Less Suggests Bank Of America Stock Up On Lube

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mozilo-2.jpgCountrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo nearly started crying at the last CFC shareholder meeting. The salty discharge was overshadowed, comedy-wise, however, by the Moz’s promise– and he actually said this– that Bank of America “will reap the benefits of what we have sowed.” If that is not the greatest veiled threat EVER uttered, I don’t know what is. And you know he wanted to continue with something like, say, “Those suckers don’t even have a clue what they’re in for. Seriously, the long-term effects, merely taking lawsuits into account, will be not unlike having a scalding hot poker violently inserted where the sun don’t shine. [pauses for effect] They might as well have bought an asbestos company. In fact? Probably would’ve been better off doing so. Honestly, though, this deal is like getting a very expensive answer to the question, ‘what does it feel like to be ass-raped for an eternity?’ [shakes head at the thought] Anway, I see we have leaf cookies today, is that new? Man, I’m going to miss this shit.”
At Countrywide’s End, an Emotional CEO [BusinessWeek]