Harvey Weinstein Wants Asian!Many of the items in gossip columns we suspect are exaggerated if not totally made up, but there are some that sound wholly true. Try to guess which is which in today’s New York gossip roundup!
New York Newspapers Tanking More Slowly Than Papers ElsewhereMEDIA
• Of the top twenty American newspapers, the circulation of New York ones suffered less than others over the past few years. [Mixed Media/Portfolio]
• We hear … that gossip Website Jossip.com is up for sale. [NYP]
• And that ESPN The Magazine is beefing up its fashion coverage. [WWD]
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New York Public Library Lions to Become Schwarzman’s KittensFINANCE
• 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]
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Another Sad Day for SchwarzmanFINANCE
• Where has all of Steve Schwarzman’s money gone? A report saying that his fund would earn less than half of what was predicted caused Blackstone’s stock price to tumble. [NYP]
• Former Countrywide Financial, Citigroup, and Merrill Lynch execs get ready to explain to Congress why they got huge paychecks as their shareholders lost billions. [DealBook/NYT]
• Financier Carl Icahn ups his stake in Motorola. [DealBook/NYT]
white men with money
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.
white men with money
On the Inside, Steve Schwarzman Is Still Just a Short Kid From Philly Blackstone CEO and co-founder Steve Schwarzman comes across almost like a real-live human being in James B. Stewart’s profile of him in this week’s New Yorker, which traces the titan’s childhood as the son of a dry-goods store owner in suburban Philadelphia (at 15, he is stymied by his father’s reluctance to expand said store into a national chain, “like Sears”) through the infamously lavish 60th-birthday party that helped make Schwarzman the poster child for greed and self-indulgence of the new gilded age. But despite the fact that he has a net worth of at least $10 billion, “I don’t feel like a wealthy person,” Schwarzman tells Stewart, cracking a window into his psyche. Contrary to his actions, he’s also not entirely obtuse: “Private equity is seen as a symbol of the people who are prospering from a world in flux. That’s a lightning-rod situation.”
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Rupert Plucks ‘Journal’ From Its Home and Carries It Back to His LairMEDIA
• Like a bird of prey with a juicy morsel in its claws, Rupert Murdoch is moving the Journal back to his midtown News Corp. nest to feast on its carcass. New plans include more entertainment coverage and a sports page! [NYT]
• A mouse was spotted at the Times building! And as all apartment dwellers know, for every mouse you see, there are seven you don’t see. [Gawker]
• The Writers Guild has struck a deal that allows them to write for the Grammys. Good thing, because improvised speaking never really sounds as good as improvised music. [USAT, Vulture]
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At Least Sam Zell Is Pragmatic About the Fact That Most Journalists Are Functional AlcoholicsMEDIA
• Sam Zell, the real-estate tycoon turned media mogul, took his brusque, fake-folksy style to his minions at the Tribune with a new employee manual. A few samples: “7.1. If you use or abuse alcohol or drugs and fail to perform the duties required by your job acceptably, you are likely to be terminated. … Coming to work drunk is bad judgment. 7.2. If you do not use or abuse alcohol or drugs and fail to perform the duties required by your job acceptably, you are likely to be terminated.” Also, “You may want to think twice before you enter into an intimate relationship with a co-worker. When you start, it might seem like a good idea. It’s when you stop, or the wrong people find out (and they will) that you could discover that perhaps it wasn’t.” [WP, Tribune]
• Judith Regan on Giuliani: “Is he getting uglier? Is his face looking more twisted? What happened to him?” Don’t feel too bad, Rudy. You know what they say: When someone teases you like this, it means she likes you. [Mixed Media/Portfolio]
• Facebook threatened to revoke Nick Denton’s account after the blog-lord posted pics of Steve Brill’s recent-college-grad daughter Emily. [Gawker, Daily Brief/Portfolio]
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Steve Schwarzman Takes the Fun Out of BuybacksFINANCE
• Steve Schwarzman found yet another way to stiff his investors, using the GSO deal as an elaborate cover to buyback shares of Blackstone without the typical benefit a buyback program gives to other shareholders. No wonder the Chinese, who have lost $1 billion on Blackstone, hate him. [DealBook/NYT]
• Bank of America bought Countrywide Financial, the huge mortgage company teetering at the edge of bankruptcy, for $4 billion in stock. Some observers worry the deal will take the bank down, but considering Countrywide was worth $30 billion before the mortgage meltdown, it may yet make B of A CEO Ken Lewis a king. [Deal Journal/WSJ]
• Merrill Lynch will likely take a $15 billion write-down next week, far in excess of the $12 billion some already bearish analysts had predicted. John Thain is looking to rescue the bank with still more foreign investment capital, but with the Senate getting anxious, that stream dry up. [NYT, NYP]
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Hey, HR! Lauren Conrad Needs a New Magazine ‘Job’FASHION
• Stella McCartney just had baby number three: Beckett Robert Lee Willis. [WWD]
• Mulberry’s new shoe line is set to debut on Valentine’s Day. [British Vogue]
• The Hills girls will no longer “work” at Teen Vogue. [WWD]
white men with money
Steve Schwarzman, Jamie Dimon, and Dick Fuld’s Elephant Dance ContinuesYesterday, we told you we’d read in the Post that Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman went to visit J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and Lehman CEO Dick Fuld, so that he could forgive them in person for having pulled the plug on financing for his PHH deal. But it turns out that maybe that was a total lie? “A person familiar with the matter says no such meetings took place, and that Schwarzman was, in fact, out of town when the meetings were supposed to have taken place,” the WSJ DealBlog reported today. However! The Journal does back up the Post source’s statement that Schwarzman didn’t want to be in a “pissing contest” with the banks, although their source used a different, though still penile, metaphor. “This person did say that Schwarzman decided a sword fight with the banks is of little value, and that it is hard to fault the banks for the stand they took.” Emphasis ours!
Related: Steve Schwarzman Is Friends With Jamie Dimon and Dick Fuld Again
white men with money
Steve Schwarzman Is Friends With Jamie Dimon and Dick Fuld AgainHey, did you hear? Steve Schwarzman was in a fight with Jamie Dimon from JP Morgan and Richard Fuld, the CEO of Lehmann Brothers, after the banks refused to help Blackstone purchase-mortgage lender and vehicle fleet manager PHH, after they’d promised to. What really got Schwarzman’s goat was the fact that they did help finance Sam Zell’s purchase of the Tribune because, according to the Post, Zell is a “nice guy.” So actually it’s kind of like that part in Mean Girls, when Gretchen and Karen tell Regina she can’t sit with them at lunch because she’s wearing sweatpants, but really it’s because she’s a bitch. Anyway, Schwarzman must have realized that the rest of his high school Wall Street career would be hell if he didn’t make up with Dimon and Fuld, so he went to see them and apologized in person, not even just over e-mail. Now everything is okay. “It seems we are friends again,” a source told the Post. “It was in nobody’s interest to carry on this p***ing contest and Stephen graciously recognized that.” Yeah, but wait till the pages of his burn book get leaked.
Steve’s Sorry [NYP]
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Bill Keller: UnleashedMEDIA
• Bill Keller on Rupert Murdoch: “I don’t know Rupert Murdoch, he is a combative 76-year-old newspaper guy with a tabloid soul and more money than God. With those resources at this stage it looks like he will do whatever the hell he wants to do. I don’t think he is going to be constrained by some strategic planning consultant telling him what he can do. That makes him very hard to predict.” [Media Mob/NYO]
• Meanwhile, the Times gave Sam Tanenhaus still more power, expanding his purview beyond the Book Review to the halcyon halls of “Week in Review.” It’s hard to tell if this is Keller’s endorsement of Tanenhaus’s talents or just an absurd overselling of some serious cost savings. [Radar]
• Jon Stewart shows he’s a real mensch and begins paying his staff just like all the other late-night hosts (Even though Stewart is paid far less himself.) Daily Show staffers never even missed a check. [Mixed Media/Portfolio]
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Did ‘The New Yorker’ Rip One of Its Cartoons Off ‘The Far Side’?MEDIA
• OMG, plagiarism in The New Yorker’s cartoon issue? [Gelf]
• Washington Post chief Don Graham has 300 Facebook friends. Poke away! [Washingtonian]
• Fox 9’s license is up for renewal, and a bunch of incensed New Jerseyans are fighting the station for failing to live up to its Jersey-side obligations. After all, the channel is based out of Secaucus but bills itself as “My9 New York.” [NYT]
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Stan O’Neal Disinvited to the Literal and Figurative PartyFINANCE
• Stan O’Neal wasn’t invited to a big Merrill Lynch reunion party thrown by Evelyn Juan, the son of a Merrill founder. Guess Stan will just have to drink himself to sleep in his board-provided office. [DealBreaker]
• Goldman’s unbelievable success is forcing all the other top banks to dig deep into the honey pot and pay out a record-setting $38 billion in bonuses, despite losing $74 billion in market value. Goldman, of course, accounts for almost half of the bonus pool. Let’s just say it’s good to be Goldman. [Deal Journal/WSJ, Bloomberg]
• Steve Schwarzman spared no expense for his son’s wedding and the tab ran to $150,000, including a $20,000 BBQ supper, $7,000 for drinks, and $50,000 to rent an entire hotel and keep the riffraff out. Still pales in comparison to Schwarzman’s $3 million birthday bash. [NYP]
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Is Kate Beckinsale Too Hot to Play Judy Miller?MEDIA
• Matt Drudge cracked open The New Republic’s Iraq fabulist controversy once again. Did the mag’s Baghdad diarist really make up details about mass graves and troops ridiculing a disfigured female soldier? Franklin Foer complains that Drudge’s docs could only have come from the Army. [Slate, NYO]
• Chris Jones, the managing editor of Portfolio.com, announced his departure from the mag after giving notice over a month ago. High-level rumors also indicate Joanne Lipman may soon be relieved from command — but only for the Website. [WWD]
• The Judith Miller movie is now filming in Memphis, and let’s just say that Kate Beckinsale is way too hot to be a reporter. On the other hand, the Valerie Plame CIA character, played by Vera Farmiga, looks just about right. [WP]
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Alan Greenspan: ‘Not My Fault’FINANCE
• Alan Greenspan says don’t blame him for the credit crisis. He may not have understood the dangers until recently, but the former Fed chief claims there’s nothing he could have done. [NYP]
• Who needs Wall Street 2 when Gordon Gekko is already back in the guise of Steve Schwarzman? The Blackstone founder just bought a big stake in a firm called BlueStar, the same name as the central company in the original Wall Street. [DealBook/NYT]
• Big surprise: Funds that invest in Vice typically do far better than those that insist on Virtue. [NYT]
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Someone Get This Lawyer a Monkey!LAW
• Did David Souter really weep when the Supreme Court handed down Bush v. Gore? Or is Jeffrey Toobin nothing but a big bad liar? [Above the Law]
• Big Law partner to summer associate: “Now the reason I’m giving this project to you, and not my secretary, or say, a monkey, is my secretary is busy doing much more important things, and I don’t have a monkey.” [Urban Agora via Above the Law]
• Jack Bauer, law professor? Georgetown plans to offer a course in The Law of 24. [Above the Law]
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Our Next President Will Probably Be a Lawyer. Objections?FINANCE
• A former Morgan Stanley VP and her hedge-fund husband pleaded guilty in yet another instance of “pillow-talk” insider trading. [Bloomberg]
• Richard Josephberg, a longtime financier and former Goldman analyst, was sentenced to four years behind bars for failing to pay his taxes for 29 years. That’s one year in the slammer for every seven without the IRS, not bad. [NYT]
• The unexplained cancellation of Henry Kravis’s little talk at the NYPL has some wondering whether he’s riding Steve Schwarzman’s coattails once again — only this time out of the spotlight. [Deal Journal/WSJ]
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Investment Banking: More Stressful Than IraqMEDIA
• The New Yorker thinks men are funnier than woman — running more than eight times as many men as women authors in “Shouts & Murmurs.” But what about cartoonists? [Radar]
• The Gawker-Observer conveyor belt switches directions yet again: associate editor Doree Shafrir set to go legit and start covering “ideas” for the curiously pink paper. [Gawker]
• Mark Deuze, the author of a new book on the media industry, claims that workers in media are the “most likely to accept exploitative labor practices.” Duh! [I Want Media via Mixed Media/Portfolio]
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Anna Wintour Puts Friends Before Fashion. Really.FINANCE
• Here come the job cuts: Lehman Brothers will shutter its subprime unit, leaving 1,200 employees out of work. [NYT]
• A new study suggests raising taxes on private equity wouldn’t make any difference because Steve Schwarzman and friends would just find new ways to wriggle out of them. After all, taxes are for the little people, right? [Bloomberg]
• Alan Greenspan supposedly told his new bosses at Deutsche that he would have lowered rates by now, though he denies it. [WSJ]
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Alan Greenspan Gets a Job, Richard Branson Goes BananasFINANCE:
• After touring the lecture circuit for the last year, Alan Greenspan finally got a real job advising Deutsche Bank’s securities division. [Bloomberg]
• Which heads will roll when all the dust from subprime settles? Some say John Mack, the CEO of Morgan Stanley, others Chuck Prince of Citigroup, but the biggest danger may be for Goldman Sachs’ “It” boy Lloyd Blankfein, who bet more than anyone else. [NYT]
• Time for another party? Steve Schwarzman’s Blackstone group tripled its quarterly profits, sending stock back up. [CNN and NYT]
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It’s Expensive Being Rupert MurdochMEDIA
• Did Dow Jones cost Rupert Murdoch an extra $1 billion just because he’s Rupert Murdoch? [Slate]
• Rik Hertzberg to blog for The New Yorker. From YearlyKos. And without fact-checking. [
gossipmonger
Gore and Sting, BFFAl Gore hung out at Sting’s apartment on Central Park West after the Live Earth concert. Roger Clemens got his hair highlighted for $120 at the Pierre Michel Salon. Jane Pratt feels vindicated now that Jane magazine has folded. Newly IPO’d billionaire Stephen Schwarzman and his wife dined at Club 55 in St. Tropez. A movie starring Alec Baldwin is set to hit theaters, even though he doesn’t want it released because he thinks it’s so bad it’s “unrecognizable.” Jon Bon Jovi took a helicopter to Ron Perelman’s party in the Hamptons. Teri Hatcher acted like a diva at Eva Longoria’s wedding. A clubgoer caught Paris Hilton smoking pot.
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Paris Likes ChineseParis Hilton’s first meal out of the clink was takeout from Mr. Chow. Former gossip columnist Charlotte Hays has written a book about attractive women and the rich men they marry. Rudy Giuliani wasn’t a fan of France until Nicolas Sarkoz — the “French Rudy” — was elected president. Brooke Astor may have cancer. Bill Clinton won’t be attending his personal trainer’s Chappaqua book signing. Laura Albert, better known as JT LeRoy, wants to pose for Playboy, though the magazine hasn’t made her an offer. Ashton, Demi, and their daughter went to the “Bodies” exhibit at South Street Seaport. A bunch of waiters are suing Sparks Steak House for allegedly using tip money to pay bartenders and others not entitled to it. Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman is throwing a party for Rhode Island congressman Patrick Kennedy.
company town
Hedge Funds Open to Petty CommonersFINANCE
• Steve Schwarzman’s company may be public, but the Blackstone head retreated and declined to ring the opening bell at the NYSE this morning. [NYP]
• The Supreme Court made it harder for investors to sue companies and executives for suspected fraud. [NYT]
• The Wharton School hired a marketing guy as its next dean. Rich alums, hold on to your wallets. [DealBook/NYT]
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Let Them Read BooksFINANCE
• At a New York Public Library fund-raiser held in his honor, Steve Schwarzman said the place did amazing things for “regular people.” [Deal Journal/WSJ]
• Former Bank of America CFO Alvaro de Molina is the latest big name to join Cerberus. When asked about his title, he said: “It’s Al. That’s not the way they work.” [Deal Journal/WSJ]
• A field guide to summer finance interns for creepy older guys. [Leveraged Sell-out via DealBreaker]
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Happy Eccentric Executive Day!FINANCE
• Steve Schwarzman’s chef spends $3,000 each weekend on food; Schwarzman makes his employees wear non-squeaky shoes, and at five-foot-six, he attributes his success to “little man” complex. [WSJ]
• “Page Six” is on the trail of an investment banker who wears kimonos and eyeliner. [NYP]
• If you’re a CEO, you may well be a lousy father. [Fortune via CNNMoney]
