Anyone know anything about drumming up interest in a stock that's down over 45 percent since going public? Wanna help him out after this lockup period ends? No? He could use a little assistance here. Needs a little help. Flew all the way to New York to just come flat out and say "help me." Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman is meeting with investors in New York today, a person familiar with the matter said, days before the lifting of a ban on stock sales by some of the company’s biggest shareholders. The person asked not to be identified because the meetings are private. Through yesterday, Facebook had tumbled 45 percent since the company sold shares at $38 in a May 17 initial public offering. The lockup on the first block of shares held by insiders expires on Aug. 16. Facebook, which hasn’t closed above the IPO price since its first trading day, needs to reassure investors that it can increase revenue from advertising as more of its almost 1 billion users access the social-networking service on mobile phones, said Victor Anthony, an analyst at Topeka Capital Markets in New York, in an interview. “Investors who bought into the IPO have lost billions of dollars,” Anthony said. “He needs to get out there and tell the story of how he’ll drive revenue growth.” Facebook CFO Said To Meet With Investors Before Lockup Expiration [Bloomberg]

Perhaps, some of you thought, that as he pushes 90, former Bear Stearns Chairman and CEO Alan "Ace" Greenberg would slow down a bit, as people his age tend to do. Retiring from his job at JPMorgan seemed unlikely-- he's only 85, after all-- but maybe he'd dial back his time on the magic circuit. Perform old tricks for colleagues, strangers, and friends, rather than new. Just generally not stay up to date on the latest trends in magicianry. Luckily, these baseless assumptions could not be further from the truth. In fact, Ace is sharper than ever, routinely humiliating those half (and even one-sixth) his age while teaching them the ropes in an alley behind JPM HQ. How does he do it? By keeping himself engaged with the upper echelons of the magic community, for whom he hosts a regular salon d'enchantment each month.

A year or so a go, commodities trader Vincent McCrudden was arrested for some things he put on a company website and some emails he sent out. The former involved an "execution" list containing the names of a handful of financial regulators, which he asked readers to aid him in crossing off ("I need your help," he wrote. "There are just too many for me alone"). The latter included an email to a CFTC staffer that noted: “You fucking corrupt piece of shit! I have let so many of you fucking corrupt mother fuckers off the hook for doing this to my life. You my friend are not getting away with this. I am going to do this my way now and you, you corrupt mother fucking piece of shit are the first on my list! laugh mother fucker…I am going to make you a test case!” To that end, the chief operating officer of the NFA was told, “It wasn’t ever a question of ‘if’ I was going to kill you, it was just of when." Were these emails particularly colorful? Yes. Should anyone who received them (or had their name placed on The List) been actually worried about losing his/her life? McCrudden could see how maybe things might have been interpretted that way, but no. As he told a judge, “I wrote provocative language on my website that could have been perceived as threatening. I would never intentionally hurt or cause bodily harm to another human being." And yet, this is still happening: Vincent P. McCrudden, a former New York commodities trader, was sentenced to two years and four months in prison for threatening to kill federal financial regulators. McCrudden, 51, who pleaded guilty last year, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Denis R. Hurley in federal court in Central Islip, New York...McCrudden said he was being persecuted for fighting back against unfair regulatory actions that destroyed his career. In addition to trading commodities, he ran his own hedge funds...McCrudden’s legal and regulatory entanglements began in 2000, when he was criminally charged with masking shortfalls in statements to his hedge-fund investors. The government said he included in his results money he expected to get from a lawsuit after Sumitomo Corp. (8053) was accused of manipulating the copper market. Ex-Trader McCrudden Gets 28 Months in Prison for Threats [Bloomberg]