FINANCE
• As Blackstone’s profit sinks 89 percent, Stephen Schwartzman gets the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street named after him. The naming rights came with a very generous $100 million donation, but we’re not sure we’re ready to go have lunch on the lovely steps of “Schwarzman.” It’ll feel like we’re an undergrad at Penn or something. [NYT]
• Wall Street says “There is a God” as its longtime persecutor, Eliot Spitzer, falls from grace. [NYT]
• Lehman Brothers, the largest underwriter of U.S. mortgage bonds, plans to lay off 5 percent of its workforce, which is about 1,400 people. Meanwhile, Bear Sterns, the second-biggest underwriter of mortgage bonds, lost more than $1.3 billion in market value yesterday as investors worried about the firm’s liquidity. [NYP, NYP]
MEDIA
• The Eliot Spitzer coverage crashed the New York Times Website. It probably crashed the Emperor’s Club VIP site, too. [HuffPo]
• Will General Electric take NBC Universal to the chopping block? It looks like the final answer is no, no, no. [NYT]
• Portfolio goes head-to-head with its competition. [WWD]
LAW
• Eliot Spitzer has hired law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind Wharton & Garrison to get him through this mess. [NYP]
• Meanwhile, will federal prosecutors throw the book at the governor? [LawBlog/WSJ]
• A New York court imposed a $900,000 fine on Theodore Roxford, the man who used fake names to make fake bids for publicly traded companies such as Sony, Playboy Enterprises, and PeopleSoft. Roxford was not, however, sentenced to an “execution by firing squad,” per his request. [Bloomberg via DealBook/NYT]
