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Eight Dollars and Ninety-nine Cents!

admin — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:03:21 +0000

Only $8.99. Nope, that’s not Citigroup’s new stock price (dream on!), but a suggested contribution to our Beer Fund. Our Beer Fund is kept in a locked box in the back of Sy Sperling’s roadster, and cannot be opened without a pair of matched keys, one of which is buried in a nest of wigs in our office safe. Now that’s security! Why $8.99? You can still get a bucket of beer in some places for that amount. Sometimes the buckets have handles and a pouring spout, but the principle is the same.

We believe in sharing. Click our PayPal button below, and buy us some beer.

Blast From the Past: the Paul Leung Memo, 2000

admin — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:04:32 +0000

Here we have a very young recruit to Salomon Smith Barney’s Investment Banking Division, barely 23, telling his bosses how they need to get on the stick and give the SSB kids the same favors and freebies that their ex-classmates at Lehman and Goldman Sachs are getting. Unlimited expense accounts, no responsibility for T&E reports, and free black-limo rides to work are some of these routine perquisites. ….His aggressive advice spooked Managing Director Hans (”Harry Potter”) Morris, and soon led to one of the most diastrously morale-sapping innovations of the era: the non-stop casual-dress policy…

Read it all.

Yes, It’s Bailout Time

admin — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:15:42 +0000

Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. government may step in to rescue Citigroup Inc. after a crisis in confidence erased half the bank’s stock-market value in three days, according to investors and analysts.

This is as good a time as any to remember that a few years ago Citi was the largest bank, not only in America but the world; and that the First National City Bank, successor to Nicholas Biddle’s Bank of the United States, was for many decades one of the most secure and well-managed corporations in the world.

The trouble began only when John Reed acceded to Sandy Weill’s merger plans ten years ago (and the SEC gave approval). Sandy Weill was basically just another Icahn or Boesky, an egotistical corporate raider who bought up long-established companies (e.g. Salomon Brothers, Travelers Insurance), gutted them for their hard assets and goodwill, and used the proceeds to buy a new venture to add to his towering monument to himself.

Before calling on Federal funds, Weill’s assets should all be attached. That would be fitting and moral, but there doesn’t seem to be any legal way to manage it…

Citi Stock Will Never Go Below $20? So They Say.

admin — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:04:05 +0000

From The Stockmasters.com, March 5, 2008:

“Yesterday Citigroup Inc. (Public, NYSE:C) hit a 52-week low and that may be the last time we see shares under $21.”

This is about six months after it hit a six-month low of $42.