Wilbur Falcone is a pig who can play the piano and lives with a hedge fund manager of the same name, who was dealt some bad news today. This is her story.
“Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” — Unknown
Wilbur glanced down at her watch. 12:13. Usually, she hated when people were late and, under normal circumstances, this would have gone beyond the point of what she’d tolerate. Hell, make her wait more than 5 or 6 minutes and you were ensuring you’d be receiving a series of irate texts inquiring sharply as to “WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU??????!!???” and threatening “If you’re not here in 30 seconds I’m leaving.” But today she was practically willing Tom to continue making her wait under the bodega awning. Just another minute. Just one more minute.
She took a long drag off her cigarette. Almost immediately, Phil popped into her head, as he often did these days. “What are you doing,” he’d say, in a way that told you he was irritated but irritated because he cared. “That shit will kill you.” She’d let him convince her to give it up years back, citing evidence about what it would do to her singing voice, and hadn’t even ever used the emergency stash at the bottom of her vanity, even despite all that had gone down these last 18 months. But now she needed one. Just a few puffs and she could be transported, if only for a moment, from this nightmare. Continue reading »
Let’s role-play for a second. You’re a well-known hedge fund manager who’s had a really, really shitty 18 months. Your investors hate you, because of petty little stuff like 1) you loaned yourself $113 million from a gated fund to pay personal taxes 2) you tied up a good chunk of their money in a walkie-talkie passion project 3) you will only let them leave if they can find a buyer for said passion project on the black market and you both know that’s not happening any time soon. It appears as though you’re somewhat past due on paying property taxes. The deal you’ve bet pretty much everything on may be fucked. Your singing and dancing pig, the one person you thought you could count on and who, even if you lost everything, would still make you feel like a rich man, has started not just considering her options but unapologetically flaunting them in your face. (You didn’t need Wilbur to have her date– a potential new benefactor and the third this week– pick her up just as you were getting home to see them leave and you really could have dealt without hearing him ask “Who’s that guy?” and hearing her cruelly laugh and answer, “Oh him? He’s nobody”?). So when the SEC, which has been investigating what you’ve been up to, offers you a deal to settle by agreeing to be banned from the securities industry, what do you do? Do you say, “You know what, that actually sounds great,” because honestly, what are you holding onto anymore? This way, you can start fresh. Give the double-finger fuck you to everyone and take off? Maybe that’s what you do if you’re you but in this scenario you’re Phil Falcone and you’re not going anywhere. Throw in the towel, his ass. Continue reading »
LightSquared is a wireless venture that seeks to create “convenient connectivity for all.” But, as the part-time Phil Falcone biographers among us know full well, it stands to do much more. In short, it will make or break backer Harbinger Capital. Success will mean billions for Falcone and his investors, who are more or less being held hostage until this whole thing pans out. Failure will mean Wilbur Falcone looking for a new benefactor on the 5:54 Metro North to Greenwich.
As one can expect when one is doing ground-breaking, visionary-esque work, LightSquared has encountered some opposition. The yachting community worries the interference will cause them to get lost at sea. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says it “may degrade precision services that track hurricanes, guide farmers and help build flood defenses.” Mars is similarly pissed. Last week brought news that LightSquared caused “interference to 75 percent of global-positioning system receivers examined in a U.S. government test,” though that won’t matter much if this thing runs out of cash, which it just might. Continue reading »
When all is said and done, there are two types of people in this world: those who would feel comfortable conducting or taking part in a “business” meeting held in an unmarked van and those who would not. It’s important you know which camp you belong in, because according to the Times, the travelling office is officially a thing.
Steve Kantor admits that he likes to travel in style. He is an affable investment banker, concerned about flaunting his wealth, but he drives around Manhattan in what looks like a simple black delivery van. Of course, most vans do not have chauffeurs, as Mr. Kantor’s has. Or a built-in office, custom installed. “I have two big-screen televisions; I have a couch in the back that goes into a bed,” Mr. Kantor said. “I have four chairs that go back and massage you. It has a desk, a table and an intercom so you can have meetings in there if you want to.”
The most popular model is made by Mercedes: a stripped-down, basic version of the van, the Sprinter, starts at $41,315; Mr. Kantor’s version, which Mercedes-Benz Manhattan arranged to have customized, is fitted with satellite television, a Wi-Fi network and flat-screen monitors, and sells for $189,000. Even that is not quite enough for some New Yorkers, who employ designers to install even pricier custom details that easily drive up the total cost to $500,000…And although the modified Mercedes van is popular in several large cities, Howard Becker, president of Becker Automotive Design in Oxnard, Calif., said New York, with its executives in hedge funds and finance, had become his best market…[some owners request] the installation of a vacuum cleaner so the chauffeur can remove every crumb and grain of sand…the vacuum option could be seen on a recent morning on Park Avenue, when Carmelo Umpierre, a 44-year-old chauffeur, idled the $425,000 van he drives for an executive based in Connecticut.
And these things don’t just appeal to people who are attempting to up the sketch factor of their business dealings by leaps and bounds (“Martin Brass, a 43-year-old former Wall Street executive turned investor…said he simply wanted to “have meetings and presentations in those vehicles”). Apparently 18 years and no pre-nup also means family car/conference room. Continue reading »
He could have been busy putting the finishing touches on Wilbur‘s Halloween costume (he’s going as a slutty butcher** this year). You don’t know. Continue reading »
Pop quiz: you’re a hedge fund manager named Phil Falcone. Your relationship with your investors has been on the downhill since you loaned yourself $113 million from a gated fund in order to pay personal taxes you didn’t set aside enough cash to cover. You apologized after the fact but apparently that wasn’t good enough, because they’d already moved on to freaking out over your decision to tie up much of their capital in a side project building walkie-talkies that might not pan out on account of the growing opinion that it might kill a few people. A bunch of them asked for their money back and although you weren’t really in a place to be offering any cash refunds, in July, you came up with what you thought was a pretty genius alternative plan to offer them, in place of actual money, illiquid LightSquared equity. Great idea, right? You thought so, too, but noooooo, they didn’t like that.
At this juncture, most money managers would’ve said, you don’t like that? Well door number two is the option to go fuck yourself. But not you. Even with everything you’ve got going on, from your pissy investors to getting killed on the walkie-talkies, to the boss riding you, to a prima donna named Wilbur who doesn’t let a day go by without not only letting you know he’s got options but flaunting them in your face, you went back to the drawing board. And there, you came up with something even better. Continue reading »
Over the last 10 months or so, the relationship between hedge fund manager Phil Falcone and his investors has not exactly been mutually satisfying. Not that they’ve been keeping a list but, if pressed to get into specifics, Harbinger Capital clients might cite a few reasons why they’ve been less than thrilled with Falcone of late such as: 1) The lackluster returns in Harbinger Capital’s flagship, which have in no way mimicked the highs of 2007. 2) That time he told reporters his investors are idiots. 3) The fact that he’s come to adopt a loose definition of the term ‘hedge,’ and put a whole lot of their money in a wireless venture that the universe seems hell bent on making sure never even has the chance to cause GPS interference. 4) The note those who requested their money back received in July, informing them that rather than getting cash, they’d be the lucky recipients of illiquid LightSquared equity. And then there would be the incident about which they really get pissy, and where things started to go down hill: 5) The time Phil choose to “loan” himself $113 million from a gated fund in order to pay personal taxes. Today, however, brings word that should do a lot to smooth ruffled feathers. On points 1-4, not much to say there. No one changes in a day. But! On point 5? Big progress. Huge. Continue reading »
