CEO Astrology: Reading the Stars for Barry Diller, John Thain, Chuck Prince, and Steve SchwarzmanMany of you know celebrity astrologer Susan Miller as the uncannily accurate predictor of your fate. You’re in good company: She’s got A-listers like Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom paying her to do their charts and gets fifteen million page views a month on her Website, Astrologyzone. She’s asked to analyze the stars for actors, musicians, and starlets all the time — but when we got the chance to talk with her, we wanted to know what the future holds for a group of guys even nearer and dearer to our heart. Guys like embattled IAC CEO Barry Diller, Blackstone CEO Steven Schwarzman, ousted Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince, and Merrill Lynch newbie John Thain. After all, these people have much more power to wreak havoc in our lives if the stars choose not to shine on them. After the jump, read Miller’s uncannily prescient analysis (it would be more precise if she knew the times of day they were born) and learn what warnings these four financial powerhouses need to heed if they want to come out of 2008 on top.
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Todd Thomson Attempts to Vanquish an Already-Vanquished Chuck PrinceNow that Chuck Prince is out at Citigroup, everyone can say what they really thought of him. Todd Thomson, the former head of Citi’s wealth-management department, who was fired in January after a delicious spate of reports questioning his spending (his extravagant office was commonly referred to as the “Todd Mahal”) and his relationship with CNBC’s Money Honey Maria Bartiromo, jumps in first. Thomson told Reuters today that he suspected Prince himself orchestrated the “smear campaign” against him, because he was trying to divert attention from the issues at Citibank and also, perhaps, because he considered Thomson a rival. “There was a very significant rift between me and the now ex-CEO,” he told Reuters (click the picture to watch the video). “I’ve never been accused of having anything other than an appropriate relationship with Maria Bartiromo. And I do have an appropriate relationship with Maria Bartiromo.” Bartiromo concurs: “Something happened between Todd Thomson and Chuck Prince, and somehow I got wrapped up in it,” she told the Times the other day. “Clearly, there was another agenda going on.” An agenda! A rift! A triangle! It’s all so Shakespearean! These people have been wronged!