Wall Street Folly

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Video: Interview with former Bear Stearns CEO Ace Greenberg - 5/12/09

Wall Street legend Alan "Ace" Greenberg  talks about the economy, Bear Stearns, how the investment banking model is forever changed, the  PPIP and toxic assets. 

Of John Paulson, "He's good.  He's one of the dumb guys who used to work for us.  We fired him....(laughter.) "Not true!" 

He also is asked where he got the nickname "Ace"....

Ace Greenberg: “There’s no more Wall Street”

Former Bear Stearns CEO, now at Lehman Brothers, has seen change after change in his 61 year career on Wall Street.  And now he says that Wall Street as we knew it is gone.

“There’s no more Wall Street,” Greenberg, 81, said last night in an interview on Bloomberg’s “Money & Politics” television program. “That model just doesn’t work because it’s at the mercy of rumors.”

“Rumors can start and turn into a self-fulfilling prophesy,” Greenberg said during the interview in Washington. He said he’s “never seen anything close” to the current economic decline and turmoil in the financial markets.

Former Bear Stearns CEO Greenberg Says Wall Street Is ‘No More’ - Bloomberg

Charlie Rose: A conversation with former Bear Stearns CEO Alan "Ace" Greenberg (10/22/08)

Tidbit from the Jimmy Cayne Fortune article: Ace Greenberg really had it bad for Barbara Walters

One of the more fascinating tidbits from Fortune Magazine's tome on former Bear Stearns CEO Jimmy Cayne is just how hot Alan "Ace" Greenberg was for serial man eater Barbara Walters, who we all know now from her kiss-and-tell-all was also seeing Alan Greenspan around the same time.  But she wound up marrying Merv Adelson.  According to Cayne, Ace himself wanted to marry Walters --

One day Greenberg told Cayne a story about his personal life that Cayne never forgot. At that time Greenberg was between marriages and had been dating regularly, but was growing increasingly concerned about the risk of contracting AIDS. "He decides he's going to get married," Cayne says. "And he's one of the guys that's dating Barbara Walters.... He says to me, 'I've decided I'm going to marry Barbara Walters.' The very next day in the papers she's engaged to Merv Adelson. I never said a word. Now normally - you know, if it was one of my buddies - I'd say, you know, 'Pretty good call there, pal. You're marrying her, except that she's marrying somebody else.... That's called bigamy.'"

The rise and fall of Jimmy Cayne - Fortune

Fortune Magazine's Jimmy Cayne article

Here's the link for the voluminous Fortune article on Jimmy Cayne.

Page Six Magazine tells us who you have to suck up to to get into the best Fifth Avenue coops (and 740 Park)

The New York Post's Page Six Magazine (which is now online) tells us who you have to impress if you want to live in the highest class NYC Coops...

Bear Stearns shareholder meeting: Still no love lost between Jimmy Cayne and Ace Greenberg?

This in from a reader who said he was at Bear Stearns' shareholder meeting this morning (Thanks!).  Given the friction between them, was Jimmy Cayne intentionally dissing Ace?

I attended the Bear Stearns annual meeting this morning and I found one interesting slight.  Ace  Greenberg arrived late to his last annual meeting of The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc.  Ace arrived in the room a minute before the 10am  official starting time, however, whether Jimmy Cayne did it on purpose or not, Cayne said he was starting the annual meeting a few minutes before 10am.  Ace was finding a seat in the front, while be marked tardy by those in attendance.  I wonder how Ace, who had a reputation when he was running the annual meetings of locking the doors at the appropriate starting time, felt about being late to his last annual meeting of the company.  Thanks, Jimmy.

The End: Part 3 of the WSJ's chronicle of Bear Stearns' fall; How Jamie Dimon dissed Citi's Vikram Pandit and scolded him to "stop being such a jerk"

In today's WSJ is their final installment of the fall of the Bear: "Bear Stearns Neared Collapse Twice in Frenzied Last Days". One  thing we found pretty funny in this totally unfunny story:  On the conference call among Wall Street CEOs on the fateful Sunday night when the $2 Bear deal was announced, there was an exchange between Jamie Dimon and Citigroup's Vikram Pandit, the junior CEO on the block:

Messrs. Geithner and Dimon led off with some brief remarks, noting that J.P. Morgan would be guaranteeing Bear Stearns's debts and that if the pact hadn't come together, the market impact may have been catastrophic. During the question-and-answer session, Citigroup Inc.'s new CEO, Vikram Pandit, spoke up.

Mr. Pandit -- who did not initially identify himself -- asked a shrewd but technical question: How would the deal affect the risk to Bear Stearns's trading partners on certain long-term contracts?

The query irked Mr. Dimon. "Who is this?" he snapped. Mr. Pandit identified himself as "Vikram." Offended that Mr. Pandit was taking up time with what he considered granular inquiries, Mr. Dimon shot back, "Stop being such a jerk." He added that Citigroup "should thank us" for staving off further mayhem on Wall Street.

Bear Stearns chief vs Fed chief: Barbara Walters seems to have never met an Alan she didn't like

According to Page Six, Barbara Walters, who recently published her kiss and tell memoirs, may be stinging from some of the criticisms over her affair with then-married Senator Edward Brooke.  But more interestingly is what a playa she was, also carrying on simultaneously with Bear Stearns CEO Alan "Ace" Greenberg, and then-future Fed chief Alan Greenpan. And her housekeeper couldn't tell the two Alans apart:

"Audition" also reveals that after breaking up with Brooke, Walters continued seeing Greenberg while also dating Alan Greenspan, the future Federal Reserve chairman.

Her Latina housekeeper couldn't keep the two Alans straight. "When they gave me the message, I could only ask, which one talked louder?" Walters wrote. "Alan Greenberg . . . talked in a normal tone of voice. Alan Greenspan was very soft-spoken. He almost whispered. And that's how I would know whether it was Greenspan or Greenberg."

Barbara Starts To Feel Heat - Page Six NY Post