Hedge Fund Gossip!

Some comments on NY Mag's pictorial of the "Hedge Fund Wives"

#1 Perry's wife, doesn’t look 49 at all, very well done surgery. Too bad she’s a flower power tree hugging hippy and thus dirty on the inside.
#2 Griffin’s wife is smart, which is good because this way she has at least something going for her.
#3 Loeb’s wife has a ginormous head (and that’s the only well endowed body part it seems). Space for rent?
#4. Ganek’s wife: For a former style editor she sure seems to be 6 years too late with that quite unflattering (as in makes her look preggo fat) outfit.
#5: Icahn’s wife is a cougar, and with a name like Gail Golden… Makes me wonder what her "services" for women traveling without their husbands are all about.
#6: Robbins’ wife: Looks like she did a lot of taste testing of that “nutrient rich” peanut butter developed for Ethiopians. I commend her for sacrificing her body to charity. Apparently she spent all her money on it too, since that outfit looks like it was purchased at the Salvation Army.

clipped from nymag.com 1. Lisa Perry 49, wife of Richard Perry recently started her own line of retro-inspired clothes a huge Democratic donor who’s taken up Hillary-for-prez as her personal cause 2. Anne Dias Griffin 36, wife of Kenneth Griffin graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Business, and cut her teeth at Goldman Sachs in London before founding the $55 million Chicago-based Aragon Global Management 3. Margaret Munzer Loeb 34, wife of Daniel Loeb a former yoga instructor and graduate of Brown and NYU’s School of Social Work, married then-man-about-town Loeb in July 2004 4. Danielle Ganek 43, wife of David Ganek former Woman’s Day style editor In May, Viking publishes Danielle’s art-world send-up, Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him. 5. Gail Golden 57, wife of Carl Icahn founder of Gutsy Women Travel, which arranges luxury group trips for women traveling without their husbands 6. Amy Robbins 37, wife of Larry Robbins shelling out $1.3 million for a special, nutrient-rich peanut butter for Ethiopian kids

Good Call [Option] for "Gazik"

So it would look like Kremlin increasing Western presence and further legitimizing its destruction of Yukos, but if you read the terms carefully and sum it all up Gazprom is actually getting paid to hold a very lucrative call option, that can ultimately increase both its global and local reach. I never said Putin was a dummy!

clipped from online.wsj.com The joint $5.8 billion purchase by Italian oil giant Eni SpA and utility Enel SpA of assets once belonging to Russia's bankrupt OAO Yukos shows how hungry Western energy companies are for greater access to the country's vast oil and gas resources. The two Italian firms on Wednesday became the first foreigners to directly acquire assets through the controversial auction of Yukos However, as part of the deal, Russia's gas monopoly OAO Gazprom has an option to purchase 51% of most of these same assets within the next two years Should Gazprom exercise the call option, according to the statement, the assets will be operated through a joint venture between Eni and Gazprom. Gazprom also has an option to buy the companies' 20% stake in Gazprom Neft, Russia's fifth-largest oil company, in the next three years. Eni and Enel's participation in the deal also helps Moscow legitimize an auction process that was widely criticized as being part of the government's aggressive policy

Kenny G's Ambition

I can't fault him for the way he's thinking. Making enough new money to become old money in your own lifetime is quite a feat, but if he really wants to establish a lasting institution I hope he keeps his public issuances to the debt realm. A public hedge fund in an era of ever-increasing SEC scrutiny is a recipe for disaster, even if it is a quant shop.

clipped from money.cnn.com Kenneth C. Griffin fits the hedge fund stereotype quite nicely. He's young (38), fantastically rich (worth $2 billion or so), and he collects museum-quality art (he recently spent $80 million to take a Jasper Johns off David Geffen's hands). He's got the trophy home, obviously, and is married to a very attractive woman, the former Anne Dias. What sets him apart from his fellow nouveau zillionaires is the scale of his ambition. Griffin seems to be going for full-blown, captain-of-industry immortality, the kind achieved by titans who didn't just dot, but shaped, the landscape of business Ken wants to be a J.P. Morgan or John D. Rockefeller. That's hard to do if you're an adherent of the reclusive, cloak-and-dagger Way of the Hedgie. Citadel Investment Group, has around $13 billion in assets and is one of the largest and most powerful funds in the world. Citadel accounts for more than 3 percent of average daily trading volume on the New York, Tokyo and London exchanges,

Worse than Welfare

On one hand I do think a program like this has a chance to accomplish its mission, if executed correctly, and with private funds that’s all gravy - as good a charity as any. Unfortunately the article says that "If the experiment is successful, officials plan to make it a government-financed program." But why the hell should I give money to the poor for doing something that directly and immediately benefits them? Why the hell should I pay some random person because they went to the doctor when they were sick? Bloomberg compares this extortionist program to performance related bonuses on the job, which you get because you helped the firm make more money than it could have without you. The company is simply giving you a piece of the pie you helped bake. I really don’t see how some chump holding down a job at Mickey D’s for a year is going to translate into a return on my investment.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Seeking new solutions to New York’s vexingly high poverty rates, the city is moving ahead with a bold antipoverty experiment that will pay poor families up to $5,000 a year to meet targets like exemplary school attendance, going for medical checkups or holding down a full-time job, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said today. The incentives, he said, would allow struggling families who are often focused on basic daily survival to make better long-term decisions. “In the private sector, financial incentives encourage actions that are good for the company: working harder, hitting sales targets or landing more clients,” Mr. Bloomberg said in making the announcement at a family services center in Brownsville, Brooklyn. “In the public sector, we believe that financial incentives will encourage actions that are good for the city and its families: higher attendance in schools, more parental involvement in education and better career skills.”

London to overtake NYC as Financial Capital

Unsurprisingly the continued excessive regulatory scrutiny (i.e. SarbOx, legislation against PE and Hedgies, etc.), restrictions and general bias in the liberally-skewed culture against paying people what they deserve ("OMG, that guy got a $50 million bonus for doing something I can't understand! He must evil corporate swine!") is going to kill NYC's (and America's) stance in the world, and the repercussions will be dire at best. If America doesn't embrace true capitalism, and do it soon, it will perish as a power.

clipped from www.bloomberg.com March 26 (Bloomberg) -- London traders are raking in salaries and bonuses as much as 50 percent higher than their counterparts in the U.S. U.K. traders' earnings increased as much as 22 percent, while U.S. salaries and bonuses rose as much as 15 percent last year Growth in hedge funds has boosted employment and wages in London. The city accounts for about 40 percent of the industry worldwide Initial public offerings in Europe, led by listings on the London Stock Exchange, raised almost twice as much as in the U.S. in 2006 A study by New York consulting firm McKinsey & Co., commissioned by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Senator Charles Schumer, concluded that the U.S. would lose its place as the leading global financial center in the next decade without legal and regulatory changes. Europe's financial industry is approaching the U.S. in size, with investment-banking revenue of $98 billion last year, compared with $109 billion in the U.S.

BP bends over for Putin

UPDATE on the Below:
BP did exactly what it was told (from NYMEX Newswire):
Russian oil company OAO Rosneft beat Anglo-Russian oil firm TNK-BP Holdings in an auction for 9.44% of Rosneft shares held by the bankrupt OAO Yukos, placing a winning bid only 1.2% above the starting price. Rosneft agreed to pay 197.84 billion rubles ($7.61 billion), less than RUB3 billion above the starting price of RUB195.5 billion.
A spokeswoman for the former Yukos management called the auction a sham, saying the sale was part of a drawn-out and deliberate dismantling of the oil group for the benefit of state-controlled companies and the Kremlin. “We believe the whole process is rigged,” spokeswoman Claire Davidson said. “This is thefirst stage in the world’s largest expropriation.”
Auction organizers defended the sale, however, insisting the deal was transparent and legitimate. “I think this was an open process,” said Nikolai Lashkevich, spokesman for Yukos’s
official liquidator. Analysts said TNK-BP appeared to have participated in the auction as a diplomatic gesture to Russian authorities, who have sought to present the sale of Yukos’s assets
as open and fair. TNK-BP’s participation may have been intended to give the auction a sense of legitimacy, analysts said.
--------------------------------------------------
Russia needed another bidder, so they brought in BP. Here’s what’s going to happen: BP bids, BP loses to Rosneft, BP magically gets a favorable contract soon after. The good news is that at least Putin is still putting up some form of facade to appear legitimate instead of just taking the assets outright. Ultimately he's just putting the final pieces in place for when he steps down from running Russia from the Kremlin to running Europe from Gazprom.

clipped from www.nytimes.com MOSCOW, March 23 — BP said on Friday that it planned to bid against the state-owned oil giant Rosneft in a bankruptcy auction for assets of the Yukos oil company BP is bidding in the auction Tuesday through a subsidiary of its Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, which is half-owned by Russian partners. some analysts speculated that TNK-BP had leant its name to the process to allow the auction to proceed in exchange for favorable treatment in other energy deals in Russia. For the auction to meet Russian bankruptcy rules, at least two bidders must participate. Until Friday, only the Rosneft subsidiary had formally expressed interest the same day TNK-BP announced the offer, Mr. Browne of BP was in Moscow for his second visit in three weeks the overseas management of Yukos, said the meeting between the chief executives of Rosneft and BP — the only two bidders — so close to the auction date could create the appearance of collusion.

Devouring what's left of the Yukos' carcass...

Putin's hunger for power (in every sense of the word) knows no limits... How to finish off Yukos before the term ends? "Auction" its remaining assets to the two state-run energy companies who will pay for them with loans secured at ridiculously low rates, sealed with the approval of nearly every major global investment bank.

clipped from www.bloomberg.com March 20 (Bloomberg) -- OAO Rosneft, Russia's state-run oil company, will borrow $22 billion as it prepares to buy up assets from bankrupt OAO Yukos Oil Co., helping President Vladimir Putin seal control of the nation's energy industry. Putin bolstered control of the nation's resource wealth over the past three years as state-run Rosneft and Gazprom acquired assets from Yukos, which was crippled by more than $30 billion in tax claims. Yukos's assets were valued at about $26.5 billion, signaling Rosneft plans to bid for all its oil production, refining and retail assets The loans were organized by ABN Amro Holding BV, Barclays Plc, BNP Paribas SA, Calyon SA, Citibank, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley. The interest rates on both loans will be between 0.25 and 0.5 percentage point above money-market rates,