Archive for May, 2007

  • No Comment
    , May 1st, 2007 at 4:37 pm

  • The Portfolio Pile On
    , May 1st, 2007 at 10:54 am

    Conde Nast’s Portfolio has not gotten off to a great start. Now Dan Gross calls Tom Wolfe’s piece about hedge funders “astonishingly lame.”

    When Wolfe does give us a name, the piece reads like a clip job. He introduces us to Thomas Hudson’s Pirate Capital and Daniel Loeb’s acid pen—both nicely described in Steve Fishman’s New York piece three years ago. As BusinessWeek did four years ago, Wolfe describes Stevie Cohen’s mammoth house: “32,000-square-foot clubhouse and 14 acres of grounds! Next to Stevie’s art collection—which is nothing less than a world class museum!—Stevie’s indoor basketball court, year-round swimming pool under glass, his gym, his spa facility, his theatre for movies and every other electronic medium, his hair salon, two putting greens complete with sand traps and a fairway in between, and, as the piece de resistance, an ice rink the size of Rockefeller Center’s with a 36-by-24-foot rink house for the Zamboni!” This is like a Wolfe parody, a laundry list punctuated by exclamation points!!
    Indeed, there’s little evidence that Wolfe has any firsthand experience with these people. Yes, he attended the Robin Hood Foundation gala, and describes a scene at the wedding of Carl Icahn’s stepdaughter. But I don’t think he knows many of the young guys he so self-assuredly describes. (Maybe it’s because he doesn’t know where to look. At one point, he refers to “Merrill Lynch’s 41-story building in Times Square.” Perhaps he means Morgan Stanley‘s.)

  • Great Business, Bad Stock
    , May 1st, 2007 at 10:25 am

    Despite great business results, Google‘s (GOOG) stock hasn’t been such a winner. Since the beginning of last year, the stock is trailing the S&P 500, although there have been better entry points along the way.
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  • Chase Throws Away Customers’ Info
    , May 1st, 2007 at 9:50 am


    Scary.