Coruscation

Since the princes are nicer and more impressive, it is easy to be seduced into the belief that they also are more trustworthy. This is false. During the last few years, for example, the princes at Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers behaved with incredible stupidity while the hedge fund loners often behaved with impressive restraint.

As Sebastian Mallaby shows in his superb book, "More Money Than God", the smooth operators at the big banks were playing with other people's money, so they borrowed up to 30 times their investors' capital. The hedge fund guys usually had their own money in their fund, so they typically borrowed only one or two times their capital.

The social butterflies at the banks got swept up in the popular enthusiasms. The contrarians at the hedge funds made money betting against them. The well-connected bankers knew they'd get bailed out if anything went wrong. The solitary hedge fund guys knew they were on their own and regarded their trades with paranoid anxiety.

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The high cost of living is an obstacle for N.Y.U. students as well, who tend to spend their evenings in Manhattan rather than Brooklyn. The price of eating and drinking ($12 is a fairly typical price for a cocktail) can be a deterrent to socializing.

At the end of her freshman year, after a pained period of calculating her savings, Taylor Horak decided that she could no longer afford to go to school in New York, despite having grown increasingly fond of the university. In March, when she received her financial aid package for sophomore year, it covered much less of the approximate $52,000 for tuition, books, and room and board than she had expected. After computing that she would be more than $100,000 in debt by graduation, she withdrew from N.Y.U.

This fall she is going to a state school in Virginia where tuition will be less than $10,000. But she worries that she's been tainted by her year in the city.

"I'm stuck in this strange in-between space," she said. "You come up here and you're the Southerner, and you go back home and you're suddenly the snotty, cultured girl from New York."

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Just capering cuties in grainy black-and-white making the clichéd "you've caught me in my nightie!" face. The stories are bombastic but empty, always exposing something or other - sin, vice, sinful vice. Typical tales: "The Harlots of Des Moines!" or "Girls For Sale in Sex-Drenched Dusseldorf!" And there's always a Nazi story. In every issue, Nazis. Why? Because a large part of the target American demographic had spent its youth whipping Nazi butt, I suppose. And another part of the demographic really got off on Nazis, one fears.

In the back, the ads - "Bedtime story" books, novelty records shipped in plain wrappers, lots of truss ads (more so in the fifties than the 60s - by the JFK era, men were no longer rupturing their innards at the same rate) and innumerable tiny ads aimed at self-improvement. Because if there's one theme that runs throughout these mags, it's the need for the readership to improve itself. The readership knew it. If the readership didn't need self improvement, they wouldn't be reading these things.

-- James Lileks

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By far the most talked-about diet regimen in New York political circles is that of New York's junior senator, Kirsten E. Gillibrand, who has dropped pounds even faster in recent months than she has would-be election opponents. A spokesman, however, said that Ms. Gillibrand had embarked on her diet -- lean protein with large portions of fruits and vegetables, as prescribed by a nutritionist -- not for the campaign, but to return to her normal weight after having her second child, Henry, who was born in May 2008.

Indeed, an informal survey of lawmakers and candidates turned up fewer women on campaign-season diets, a theory for which was offered by Diane J. Savino, a Democratic state senator from Staten Island.

"Most women are going on a diet whether or not they have a campaign," she said. "Since I hit puberty, there hasn't been a week in my life that I haven't been on a diet. It's kind of like an ever-present condition for me."

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Extended real estate personal ?

Except for the sometimes heartbreaking images of a vanished past, the apartment looks like many an i-banker's bachelor pad. The drum kit for an Xbox Rock Band is stationed next to a 47-inch television set, which is surrounded by a bouquet of remotes. "I know," Mr. Yomtobian said. "It's really terrible there are so many."

The kitchen is bare bones; Mr. Yomtobian hopes that one day this will not be the case. "I'd like to find someone to help me renovate," he said. "And it would be an added plus if we cooked dinner together, too."

The theme of being able to share this space with another person is one he returns to again and again; banker's hours -- typically 12-hour days -- don't leave much time for socializing.

There is, however, a dog in residence, a rescue animal that Mr. Yomtobian named Lehman, a gift from friends to cheer him up after the bankruptcy. Mr. Yomtobian thought that Lehman had some cairn terrier in him until a person he met at the nearby Madison Square Park dog run suggested that he was part Glen of Imaal terrier.

Continue reading "Modern Love: earnest young banker builds home" »

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"What the heck is the name of that place? Oh yeah, Tradition," said John Ollquist, who refers to his younger brother by his nickname, Moose. "It's a different kind of firm, you understand, from Lehman Brothers. People don't call Tradition. Moose has to go out and say, 'If you like these prices, I can get them.' At Lehman, he could say, 'We own them; we can sell them to you for this price.' I don't know if it's better or worse, but it's probably harder."

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The traumatic upheaval that has roiled Wall Street during the past two years has produced - surprisingly quickly - a widely acknowledged new pecking order in the world of high finance: Goldman Sachs, in trading, and JPMorgan Chase, in banking, have become the undisputed industry leaders, with a hand in nearly every deal or trade. Clients can try to avoid these two, but only at their own peril.

The likes of Morgan Stanley, Barclays and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch - wounded but not fatally - continue to seek a firm footing on which to operate, while the so-called "zombie banks", such as Citigroup and Wells Fargo, remain on life support. Boutiques, such as Lazard, Greenhill, Rothschild, Evercore and Jefferies, that primarily provide advice to clients - and little capital - have been hiring broadly and have seen a resurgence of activity in their restructuring businesses, where a wave of recapitalisation and "amend and extend" deals have allowed many overleveraged companies to avoid bankruptcy filings. For the boutiques, the question remains whether, any time soon, there will be enough non-restructuring advisory business - formerly known as M&A - to justify all the new hiring.

But none of this is particularly surprising in the wake of the worst crisis to hit banking since the Great Depression produced the Glass-Steagall Act and the separation of investment banking from commercial banking.

What does seem to be spooking Wall Street these days, though, is the traction that some private equity firms, such as KKR and Apollo Advisors, and hedge funds, such as Citadel Investment Group, appear to be "backward integrating" into investment banking by building up their businesses that compete with Wall Street in the lucrative underwriting of debt and equity securities.

Continue reading "Who's who of banking, 2009" »

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Are in house counsels the miniballers of law ?

Many in-house attorneys that I have met lead nice little simple lives. They shop at discount outlets for clothes and drive Volvos or low end luxury cars. I wouldn't call that the life of a big dog. The simple truth is most in-house attorneys could not handle the demands of working at a peer firm. The ones that worked at peer firms, burned out easily and escaped to the havens of in-house counseldom. A low six figure salary and some stock options. Very pitiful indeed. You better pray that you don't fall victim to the economic tsunami as I see very limited future employment opportunities for you. As a tip, you better dip yourself in sour mustard so that the big rodents won't eat you first.

Continue reading "Big Law 1, vs in-house counsel 0 ?" »

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People leaving struggling big established firms and joining newer smaller firms, including foreign banks, or start-up companies.
Standard Schumpeterian renewal, or a consequence of the bailouts, tighter regulation and crackdown on compensation ?

In:
Aladdin Capital
Broadpoint
Pinetum Capital
BTIG
LaBranche Financial Services
Moelis & Company
Perella Weinberg
Evercore
Deutsche Bank
Credit Suisse

Out:
UBS
Goldman Sachs
Morgan Stanley
Citigroup
Bank of America and Merrill Lynch
Bear Stearns or a Lehman
JPMorgan Chase

Continue reading "New hot banks ?" »

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Property records show that the Edward R. Morrison, a law professor and economist at Columbia University, had some help financing the purchase. They obtained a $1 million first mortgage from Countrywide Bank, now a subsidiary of Bank of America, and a second mortgage directly from Columbia University for $1,039,000.

Elizabeth Schmalz, a spokeswoman for the law school, said the Columbia mortgage was provided by the law school as "one-time compensation assistance" to help Mr. Morrison complete the sale. The first mortgage was provided by Countrywide through another university program that provides mortgages at "favorable rates" to some faculty members. That program also provides a one-time $40,000 payment and an additional $40,000 a year in housing assistance.

"The greatest challenge to recruiting and retaining faculty in New York is housing," Ms. Schmalz said.

Mr. Morrison is a practitioner of empirical legal studies, analyzing the impact of the law on people and institutions. In 2007, another Columbia law professor specializing in empirical techniques, Catherine M. Sharkey, was recruited by the law school of New York University, whose foundation provided $4.2 million toward the purchase of an apartment for her use on Central Park West and West 106th.

Continue reading "Worker housing includes $40,000 annual mortgage assistance" »

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Does the recession leave more or less free time ? The evidence is mixed.

Raoul Felder, the Manhattan divorce lawyer, said that cases involving financiers always stack up as the economy starts to slip, because layoffs and shrinking bonuses place stress on relationships -- and, he said, because "there aren't funds or time for mistresses any more."

Once it was seen as a blessing in certain circles to have a wealthy, powerful partner who would leave you alone with the credit card while he was busy brokering deals. Now, many Wall Street wives, girlfriends and, increasingly, exes, are living the curse of cutbacks in nanny hours and reservations at Masa or Megu. And that credit card? Canceled.

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Fact: Charles Tyrwhitt New York City store #1 is located at Madison Avenue & 46th Street, on the ground floor of the ex-Bear Stearns corporate headquarters

Fact: Charles Tyrwhitt New York City store #2 is located at 7th Avenue & 50th Street, on the ground floor of the ex-Lehman Brothers corporate headquarters

Fact: Bear Stearns is toast

Fact: Lehman Brothers is even toastier

Conclusion: The shirts are cursed.

Shirt reviews; financial analysis by LongOrShortCapital.

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Update 2009 July: Now known as Wall Street Oasis.

ibankingoasis hobnobs with the junior monkeys of investment banking.
Example: their life in NY.

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epicureandealmaker on fat tails.
Derivatives: Transfering risk or reducing risk ?

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Zogsports mixes fun, social life and charity.

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