Michael Phelps Is Gold for NBCPlus, lawyers make criminals sing (to ‘Don Giovanni’), another spectacular apartment you can’t afford hits the market, and more, in our daily industry roundup.
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The Upper East Side Completes Renée ZellwegerThe actress smoothly buys into a hard-to-crack co-op, while JPMorgan and the New York ‘Times’ struggle, in our daily digest of real-estate, finance, media and law news.
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Meredith Whitney Eyes Goldman After Stock DropAnalysts aren’t so hot on the formerly golden bank this week. Plus, the latest on Andrew Cuomo, George Clooney, Diane Von Furstenberg, and more, in our daily industry report.
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Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts Expand Their Real-Estate HorizonsThe Hollywood couple will be moving into bigger digs than originally planned at One Madison Park. Plus, the latest on Wall Street, in the Hamptons, and down at 30 Rock in our daily industry roundup.
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The Obamas All Over the Glossy Newsstand, Once AgainMichelle and Barack appear on the covers of ‘Ebony’ and ‘Essence.’ But Meghan McCain has an interview in ‘Glamour’! Plus the latest on Barbara Corcoran, John Thain, and the other captains of industry.
There May Be a Day When Port Authority Is Nice to Look AtWe know, we know — dare to dream, right? But there are proposals to build above it, and the renderings look lovely. Plus, news from the finance, law, real estate and media industries, in our daily roundup.
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Citigroup Posts $2.5 Billion LossA lot of big news at the banks today — but there’s also crazy stuff going down with Jeff Zucker, Dan Rather, Brooke Astor (from beyond!), and Barack Obama, in our daily industry roundup.
Andrew Cuomo’s Kiddie VictoryPlus the latest on what’s up with UBS, Beth Israel, and McDonald’s in our daily industry roundup.
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Richard Branson to Kick Off Virgin Hotel Chain in New York?Bajillionaire Branson may be spending more time in Manhattan. Meanwhile, Cablevision lawyer Harvey L. Beneson mortgages his Hamptons house to pay off his lawsuit, UBS clients run scared as a federal investigation warms up, and another magazine catering to the rich appears on the horizon, in today’s roundup of news from the worlds of real estate, law, finance, and media.
Katie Couric and Sean McManus: Chipper at CBS in Spite of It AllMore troubles for Sam Zell, Heather Mills is coming to town, and half of Bear Stearns employees are facing the ax. Click through to read the rest of our news roundup from the fields of media, law, finance and real estate.
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Bankers to Paulson: You’re Kidding, Right? (Updated)Wall Streeters hope that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s plan for overhauling the U.S. financial system is an April Fools’ joke, Goldman head Lloyd Blankfein buys his maid a nice apartment, and someone has a birthday in our roundup of finance, law, media, and real-estate news.
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UBS Replaces Old Jerk With New JerkerJerker Johansson, a 22-year veteran of Morgan Stanley and a close ally of former Morgan Stanley co-president Zoe Cruz, who was fired in December, was named the head of UBS’s investment-banking operations this morning. He takes over from Huw Jenkins, who left in October after write-downs due to the subprime crisis, and CEO Marcel Rohner, who was serving as the interim head and who last month had the pleasure of announcing the largest-ever quarterly loss by a bank. Also, he is Swedish. Okay, let’s face it: Dude will be based in London, so it’s not like we care about him that much. We just wanted to say, Jerker. Jerker, Jerker, Jerker. Heh.
UBS Names Johansson Chief for Investments [WSJ]
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‘Blender’ Gives Britney Spears a New BodyMEDIA
• Britney Spears looks great on the new cover of Blender — too bad it’s not her body. [Radar]
• Stephen Chao, the former News Corp. exec who lost his job after hiring a male stripper for a company party and almost drowning Rupert Murdoch’s dog, announced a new Website for how-to videos. First video: how to get fired in two easy steps. [NYT]
• Now that Judith Regan’s settled her suit with Murdoch, will she give her winnings — likely north of $6.5 million — to charity like she once promised? [Mixed Media/Portfolio]
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Law & Order, ECU — FBI Probes Investment Banks With Its UnitLate yesterday afternoon, the FBI announced it was investigating fourteen banks for accounting fraud relating to subprime-mortgage loans. “There are some irregularities we are looking at,” Neil Power, chief of the FBI’s Economic Crimes Unit, told ABC News, adding that “good old-fashioned greed,” likely played a part in the turmoil in the U.S. housing market, which has led to $135 billion in credit losses since last year. Power declined to say which companies were targets of the investigation but did say that they were “dealing with the people who securitize them and then the people who hold them, such as the investment banks.” Coincidentally, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley yesterday all separately disclosed that government investigators had asked them for information about their subprime activities. And they might as well add UBS to their list: The Swiss bank, which posted its fourth-quarter results this morning, announced it would be writing off $14 billion, all of it related to subprime mortgages.
FBI Opens Subprime Inquiry [NYT]
Feds Investigate Banks Over Subprime Lending [CNBC]
FBI Wades Into Subprime Mess [ABC News]
UBS Writes Off $14 Billion [NYT]
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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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GE Still Hearts NBC … For NowMEDIA
• General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt said he’d postpone any decision on selling NBC until after the 2008 Olympics. Let’s just hope 30 Rock and Friday Night Lights last that long. [FT]
• Doris Lessing beat out Philip Roth, who was rumored as a top candidate, for this year’s Nobel Prize in literature. It probably helps that Lessing’s most recent novel doesn’t involve an old geezer fucking a “luckless goy chick” in the face. [NYT, Hitchens/Atlantic]
• FSG dominated this year’s National Book Award finalists, with five out of ten in fiction and nonfiction coming from the tweedy publisher’s lists. [NYT]
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Murdoch Mulls the Liberation of WSJ.comMEDIA
• Murdoch is hinting heavily that he’ll take WSJ.com free, but Dow Jones CEO Richard Zannino doesn’t think it’s such a great idea. [WSJ]
• Well, we’ll be — Portfolio pulling down pretty good ad pages. [NYP]
• Roger Ailes, former CNBC president now with Fox Business Network, making many CNBCers interested in switching teams. It may be many things, but it won’t be boring! [NYO]
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Bedbugs Infest Cadwalader, Wickersham & TaftLAW
• Bedbugs infest Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft’s New York office, but the person who “brought the insects into the firm is no longer associated with the firm.” [Above the Law]
• Wannabe law students are looking to blogs and independent rankings for information about prospective schools. [WSJ]
• Two partners at Chadbourne & Parke are drafting a lawsuit to force the New York State Legislature to raise judicial pay. [New York Law Journal]
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Welcome, Hedge-Fund Backlash!FINANCE
• Not all hedge funds are profitable. UBS is closing its fund, Dillon Read Capital Management, after a loss of $124 million in the first quarter. [Reuters via NYT]
• Ken Moelis, who is leaving as UBS’s investment banking president in June, is trying to staff his boutique investment bank with former colleagues like Navid Mahmoodzadegan and Warren Woo. [Deal Journal/WSJ]
• The New York Fed warns that the current hedge-fund climate puts the economy at risk for a Long Term Capital–esque crisis. [DealBook/NYT]
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A Last-Minute Bid for TribuneMEDIA
• L.A. Billionaires Ron Burkle and Eli Broad jumped back into the Tribune contest, offering $1 per share more than Sam Zell. [NYT]
• After Joy Press left for Salon, new Voice editor Tony Ortega rehired former editor Brian Parks to edit the arts and culture section. [Eat the Press/HP]
• Former Times public editor Dan Okrent appears in the upcoming film The Hoax, playing a publishing exec engaged in fraud. [WWD]
