A UBS spokesman sent the following statement:

Given the size of our US Equities business and our role as a major market maker, UBS was affected by these issues, as we believe other market participants may have been.

Consistent with our policy on market comments on our positions or intra-quarter performance, we are not disclosing the amount of the loss, which is not material to UBS.

We are continuing to consider avenues to recover our losses in this matter, but have not yet taken legal action.

Ahuja (Photo by Kevin Hees)

There’s a book party at Tao next week, but its guest list looks more like a Davos reunion. Among the yeses: ex-Chairman of the Fed Alan Greenspan, Nobelist Joseph Stiglitz, Pershing Square boss Bill Ackman, and Financial Times editor Gillian Tett.

Assuming they show, that’s not a bad draw for a first-time author. Then again, The Alpha Masters, by 27-year-old Squawk Box producer Maneet Ahuja, isn’t just any book. Like the party, the book is an impressive feat of investor-wrangling, a collection of insider accounts from low-profile, high-powered hedge fund managers like John Paulson, Marc Lasry and David Tepper. It’s out on May 21 from Wiley.

During a midday break in a windowless office at Squawk Box network CNBC headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, NJ on Friday, The Observer asked Ms. Ahuja if her elusive subjects would be celebrating their portrayal in Alpha Masters. “I haven’t checked the R.S.V.P. list, um, in the last hour,” she said. “I was advised not to harass for updates.”

Harassment—or tenacity, some might say—is Ms. Ahuja’s calling card. The Alpha Masters, and a related rash of exclusive CNBC gets, including blue chip investors like Ray Dalio and Eddie Lampert, earned Ms. Ahuja a reputation as one of the best-connected young producers in television. Forbes’s “30 Under 30” and Elle’s “Genius” lists have identified her as a kind of Hedge Fund Manager Whisperer. And now, after four years behind the scenes, she’s diligently training to become an on-air reporter.

“I knew some of these guys from a prior lifetime,” Ms. Ahuja, wearing a yellow boucle jacket and close-up friendly long lashes, said casually.

Prior to joining CNBC in 2008, Ms. Ahuja parsed financial data for the Wall Street Journal and turned down a job with George Soros. When explaining her quick rise, Ms. Ahuja relies heavily—and graciously—on the notion of good luck. She was “fortunate” to land an internship on Wall Street at seventeen, and it was “just chance” that her supervisor never came back from maternity leave.

Once she’d assumed her old boss’s duties, it was auspicious that the deans at Columbia helped Ms. Ahuja arrange her class schedule to allow her to work three 12-hour days a week at Citigroup and, later, Merrill Lynch, where it was sheer providence that she was allowed to dabble in a small hedge fund called Endeavour Capital.

It may have been “the luck of the draw” that her first assignment at Squawk Box was to prepare for an appearance by David Einhorn (who was quickly becoming one of the world’s most famous hedge fund managers for his Lehman Brothers short), but after that it would be hard to argue that Ms. Ahuja didn’t arrive under her own steam.

Impressed by her facility with a balance sheet, Mr. Einhorn became a point of entry to the world of messianic money managers. Still, it took two to three years of “bordering-on-stalkerlike activities” to get access to the book’s other characters.

“Maneet is a force of nature,” said Jonathan Wald, a former CNBC exec now at CNN. “Anybody who has dealt with her or who has been on the receiving end of her assault knows that’s true.”

She chased down money managers at industry events, interviewed their investors and friends, cajoled their lawyers.

“You say, ‘No, no, thank you,’ and Maneet just keeps calling back, incredibly polite and incredibly persistent,” said Sallie Krawcheck, the former Bank of America head of wealth management. “So when you are ready to say something, she’s at the top of your mind.”

Ms. Ahuja modestly chalked it up to her press credentials.

“I felt very fortunate to be calling from CNBC, a platform that people trust and recognize,” she said, noting that Squawk Box is “watched in the White House.”

Last month CNBC shrugged off a Daily News report suggesting that execs were “freaking out” over Squawk Box’s declining ratings. The network had always been more interested in a small but influential audience, they said, one that Nielsen’s not great at keeping tabs on.

Sure, CNBC has a reliable audience among bankers who wake up to check the Asian markets and like to ogle Becky Quick, but with cable news viewership down more broadly, it’s the big-name interviews that have the ability to generate buzz.

“The thing that I wish I could bottle and sell is that somehow she has these people in the palm of her hand,” said Squawk Box co-anchor and New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin, who stressed the importance of booking to the program’s success.

For example, he said he was astonished to see the turn-out for Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conference this week.

“He’s not giving them a new a fact or some great revelation,” he said, “40,000 people show up just to listen to a man talk about the way he thinks.” (Business Insider even live-blogged Ms. Quick’s pre-conference interview with Mr. Buffett.) Plus, some of Ms. Ahuja’s hedge fund sources became major draws at CNBC’s annual, $5,000-a-head Delivering Alpha conference.

“There aren’t a lot of 23-year-olds who wake up every morning wanting to book the biggest names in finance,” said Mr. Wald, who hired Ms. Ahuja. “ When one comes in over the transom you snap them up.”

AT CNBC, Ms. Ahuja’s mornings often start at 5:30 a.m., after a 15-minute ride from her Upper West Side apartment, and disappear in a flurry of news meetings, pre-interviewing and source-hunting.

“Last night I was here until past midnight again,” she said, “but that’s self-inflicted.”

At some point she found time to write a 500-page book.

“My friend Bethany McLean was like, ‘Publishing a book is like having a baby,’ and it’s so true,” Ms. Ahuja said. There’s a delivery date, a lot of anxiety, and some unexpected costs. “Everyone in this building has heard me use that analogy.”

On her desk (one down from Mr. Sorkin’s), there was a stack of business cards with the book cover—birth announcements—stacked neatly beside several economics textbooks, an equations cheat sheet, and the kind of calculator that induces high-school anxiety dreams. Underneath was an assortment of colorful platform pumps.

The daughter of a corporate banker and an accountant, Ms. Ahuja said she has always been obsessed with finance, and has been watching CNBC since she was a child.

“My parents are immigrants from India,” she said, “so it was either doctor, lawyer, or something in finance.”

She says she “fell into” journalism intending to go back to Wall Street, and an intern’s reverence and fascination still pervades her book.

“The minute I got into Citigroup, suddenly I was surrounded by impressive bankers in the financial institutions group, working on billion dollar deals,” she said. “I was of course at the very, very, very bottom, but I just wanted to learn as much as I could.”

Inspired by Jack Schwager’s 1988 Market Wizards, Ms. Ahuja aspired to reveal the human thought processes behind the financial transactions, which she says are poorly reflected in publicly available SEC filings.

“Until I started working on the book, I didn’t realize how active [the subjects] were in assisting institutions during the financial crisis and the huge deals they made off it,” she said.

While some top hedge fund managers still don’t take her calls, many did. She chose to only profile those who were willing to participate. She said she was “humbled and impressed by the level of insight and access” those hedge funders gave her.

“Who doesn’t want to talk about making fifteen billion, eight billion off of their strategies?” Ms. Ahuja said.

Only the most pious capitalists will be riveted by the revelation that, for example, “cultivating a calm mind and demeanor hasn’t dampened [Bridgewater founder Ray] Dalio’s love of independent thinking,” but the book is complicated by what happened after the hedge funders agreed to participate. One of the book’s most impressive gets, John Paulson, experienced a 52 percent drop in 2011 and, to some, recent market volatility has dimmed the aura of genius that once surrounded hedge funds. Ms. Ahuja is quick to point out that hedge fund managers are patient and resilient. It took Mr. Ackman almost a decade and investigations by the S.E.C. and Eliot Spitzer before his short of MBIA cashed out, she noted.

In the meantime, one could say Ms. Ahuja is hedging, ever so slightly, on hedge funders. Asked to name a favorite recent story, Ms. Ahuja pointed to the “Disruptors Summit” she put together two weeks ago, bringing in not money managers but tech founders and venture capitalists like Viddy’s Brett O’Brien, Scribd’s Trip Adler, Marc Andreessen and the Winklevoss Twins, who are “re-wiring” the financial industry from within. She said she wanted to be more proactive, and cover start-ups before the big deals get reported.

“It got a lot of pick-up,” she said of the event. “Jack Welch even called in to the show to say how great it was.”

kstoeffel@observer.com

Via 24-hour financial news network CNBC—because, after all, they would know—seasoned matchmaker Samantha Daniels has some tips to offer if you're on safari for a man from the financial sector. Her advice?

• Get him to talk about something other than his career. Because these gentlemasters of the universe are so attached to their intensely fulfilling careers, "it’s your job to get his mind on you and off the S & P," explains Ms. Daniels.
• Be able to talk about his career. Literally, the next piece of advice: "...At least if you know something you can participate in a conversation with your guy."
• Be easy, trick. "You shouldn’t be difficult." Also: "Be convenient and easy for him." Finally: "You need to be accommodating or his schedule and time constraints or he will get frustrated and find another woman." That whole menstrual cycle thing? Begone!
• The people in your life are boring, unless they can be traded in an emerging market, so don't talk about your bitch friends, m'kay? "His attention span for social stories is very short," Ms. Daniels advises.
• Be hot, or GTFO. "Wall Street men tend to like women who are attractive and that other men notice when they walk in the room." Straight outta Galapagos!

 
Unfortunately, Ms. Daniels' expertise doesn't extend to this writer's gender, so The Observer can't speak to personal experience having tried out Ms. Daniels' tips, the rest of which you may find here. That said, while some would argue that you probably shouldn't have felt bad for men of Wall Street before, this may be just cause.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Eric Stein

The U.S. Attorney and Postal Inspection Service announced Tuesday that Eric Stein, age 53, had been arrested and charged "with running an investment scam through Return-A-Pet LLC--a Manhattan-based company he operated..." Authorities who investigated Stein's business say he may have lined his pockets with up to a half-million dollars over the last 3 years by hoodwinking consumers into buying "sham Return-A-Pet distributorships using false and misleading advertisements."

This is familiar territory for Eric Stein.

The scam was huge. So big it even turned heads in Nevada. So big that when Stein, one of the main suspects, went on the run, his glamour shot made it onto America's Most Wanted. We're referring to Eric Stein's first scam, which was eventually covered by CNBC's American Greed, a documentary series exploring major league con games.

In that case, which occurred in the late 1990s, Eric Stein and a handful of co-defendants (one was memorably named Ina Liberty Bell) bamboozled investors into buying into direct response infomercials. The pitch was an attractive 50 percent return on a minimum $5,000 investment in only 3 months. Stein took that money, played the mogul and also used it to keep drawing investors back into his web. He was charged with securities fraud and racketeering. Stein and his cohorts collected nearly $20 million.

According to the U.S. Attorney's press release about Stein's arrest on Tuesday, Return-A-Pet "provided enrolled pet owners with access to a toll-free number that was staffed 24 hours-a-day and printed on the pet’s ID tag, in order to help lost pets be returned to their owners."

On Return-A-Pet's now defunct website the service explained:

The Return-A-Pet registry is designed to give you peace of mind while protecting your privacy. Our system makes it easy for the person who finds your pet to get your beloved family member back to you quickly and safely.

Return-A-Pet distributors purchased a $5,000 package (Stein was apparently fond of that base $5000 fee to buy into his deals) which supposedly included 425 enrollment kits. If you just wanted a trial package of 10 kits, you could get away with paying just $100 to check it out.

People bought in, wiring fees ranging from $5,000 up to $50,000 to Stein's business bank accounts in Manhattan or mailing checks to his office on Fifth Avenue. Stein, who also may have used the alias "Robert Philips" when dealing with irate "distributors," allegedly kept the money. Court documents contain statements from victims in Texas, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and South Africa who recounted conversations with both "Philips" and Eric Stein.

Stein ran Return-A-Pet while still on supervised release for the scheme for which he'd been convicted in Nevada.

Speaking to CNBC 4 years ago about his big con, Eric Stein explained techniques he used to fool investors into thinking the business was legitimate, like fake references about how great it was. He also said, "Greed does not lead you down a road to success; it leads you down a path of destruction."

Stein currently faces charges of mail and wire fraud. If convicted on both counts, he could face up to 40 years in prison.

Eric Stein: A con man in his own words - YouTube.

Illustration by Drew Friedman.

"THIS IS NOT SOME OPINION! This is a mathematical fact!"

In a now-infamous Aug. 9, 2011, taping, a cable news host has just boiled over at his assembled panel of guests. He's yelling, at full volume. "I've been coming on TV for three years doing this," he bellows, exasperated. "And the fact of the matter is that there's a refusal on both the Democratic and the Republican side of the aisle to acknowledge the mathematical problem, which is that the United States of America is being extracted!" He has now erupted. "It's being extracted through banking! It's being extracted through trade! And it's being extracted through taxation! And there's not a single politician that has stepped forward to deal with this!"

Five months and a couple hundred thousand views later, answering The Observer's call from a hotel room in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the 39-year-old host of MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show sounded nothing like the man whose unhinged, frothing-at-the-mouth rants on unmitigated corporate greed went viral last summer. Nor did he sound like the man who frustrated Ed Schultz, of all people, to the point where he ended the segment in disgust, or the man who has been known to cut off guests completely. It didn't even sound like the guy whose favorite New Yorker was Teddy Roosevelt, and whose first book, hitting bookstores in barely a week, bears the unsubtle title Greedy Bastards!

Dylan Ratigan answered the phone sounding like a calm, collected New York City bachelor enjoying a tropical vacation. One couldn't help wondering if maybe the apoplectic, vein-popping madman wasn't perhaps a bit of a TV creation?

Not quite. Mr. Ratigan's rants, he assured us, were "100 percent spontaneous."

Even the notorious "extraction" rant, the episode the show's website refers to as his Network moment, was pure, unvarnished Ratigan, he insisted. "It's terrible and embarrassing behavior," he said. "It's unprofessional to behave that way in public, for God's sake."

Not that he regrets the outburst. "If I had just gone on and said those things, then no one would have watched it," he explained. "So I walk away and I'm like, 'At least everyone is going to hear about the bank extraction.' Not because they want to, because they want to hear Ratigan lose his shit. It's kind of funny," he laughed. "If I could do it on a premeditated basis, then I'd do it more often. I'd be more famous."

Instead, the host, whose live show airs weekdays at 4 p.m., said he would rather promote a more thoughtful sort of discourse. More calm, nuanced, and positive—conversation that is, in his own words, "fuelled by compassion."

MR. RATIGAN, who is 39, grew up in Saranac Lake, N.Y., the only child of a single mother, a social worker, whose Hungarian, Jewish father (a "hero" to his grandson) came through Ellis Island without knowing any English, but somehow built a flourishing carpet business. Mr. Ratigan's grandfather died in a work-related accident, climbing spools of carpet in his Astoria warehouse. "Having watched how hard that man worked," he said with a sigh, "you always kind of feel like … the nature of the work that I'm doing? It's really not that hard."

After graduating from Union College upstate with a bachelor's in political economics, he worked for a time as an auditor for parking garages around the city, winding up living in a townhouse owned by his boss. His neighbors happened to include Susan Brown, the ex-wife of Michael Bloomberg—"We used to sit in the garden and smoke cigarettes together"—and the couple's two daughters, Emma and Georgina, the three of whom he became friendly with. After leaving New York briefly to travel the country by train for a year (he was in his 20s, he explained: "It sounded like fun, so I did it"), he returned to the city and paid Ms. Brown a visit. She asked what he planned to do with his life; Mr. Ratigan had no idea. So Ms. Brown harangued her ex-husband about hiring the young man, and finally Mr. Bloomberg relented.

The timing was good. As Mr. Ratigan tells it, "The company was in the middle of an explosion of growth, and it went from 8,000 to 250,000 terminals while I was there."

At Bloomberg, Mr. Ratigan went from reporting on mergers and acquisitions to editing. He eventually landed on-camera, winning a Gerald Loeb award for his reporting on the Enron scandal. Despite his sometimes overbearing demeanor (most notably, a loud voice that sometimes caused Mr. Bloomberg scream at him lovingly across the newsroom to "Shut up, Ratigan"), he was ultimately elevated to global managing editor for corporate finance, a position created for him. He hated the work, though, particularly the endless rounds of meetings. He left the company for a brief consulting job with Boeing, and was eventually lured to CNBC, where he co-created and hosted the daily stock market analysis show Fast Money.

Despite viewing Mr. Bloomberg as a mentor, Mr. Ratigan took issue with the mayor's handling of the Occupy Wall Street protests, which Mr. Ratigan supported and visited on several occasions with an MSNBC camera crew. Though Mr. Ratigan identifies himself as a conservative, and stands more than a few notches to the right of some of his MSNBC colleagues, he seems to have an instinctive sympathy for the underdog. "I've spent a lot of my career dealing with the wealthiest, most powerful 1 percent as a reporter by covering them and interacting with them," he pointed out, "and as a social worker my mother has spent the bulk of her career dealing with some of the most impoverished 1 percent."

The Bloomberg administration's approach to the protests, Mr. Ratigan said, "was disappointing for me." He pointed out the unique opportunity the mayor has to address issues like wealth inequality. "Mike is in a position to do that, and I think to do that in a way a few people could," he said, quickly adding a note of optimism: "Listen, I'm still hopeful that he may do that, although there is certainly not any indication."

While Mr. Ratigan's career as a talking head seems to be speeding along a well-traveled route—hopping from one network to another amid a spasm of leaked news reports; moving from straight reporting to loudly articulated opinion; unleashing a made-for-YouTube tirade; publishing a book—he insists it's all been a reaction to circumstances. Primarily, he cites the financial meltdown, and what he sees as the financial press's failure to prevent it, see it coming, or at minimum explain it to viewers.

"It's negligent," Mr. Ratigan said, "to be in the national media covering a national unemployment crisis, covering a national housing crisis, covering a national education crisis, covering a national poverty crisis," and not be communicating the basic underlying principles to your audience.

For instance, the idea that credit derivatives are not backed by actual assets, he said, "is utterly insulting beyond all comprehension. It's one of those things where the more you learn about it, the more horrifying it becomes."

And the Obama administration hasn't helped matters, he said. "We've seen no change. We've seen the Obama administration and [Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner actually codify and advance" the broken system. "Instead of blaming George Bush or Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, you realize that they're all doing it!"

As for financial journalism's role in the economic meltdown, he said, "It's grossly disappointing." He laughed. "What do you want me to tell you? It's embarrassing."

Mr. Ratigan left CNBC in April 2009. "I'm happy to not be a journalist," he said, noting that the constraints of the profession had made it impossible to see the big picture. "My old style was, ‘Well, this is a sport [in which] we try and figure out what's the best idea to put money into,'" he said. In his new role, he can step back and impart a larger point, namely: "This is a fundamentally corrupt global system that people don't understand."

Righteous though he can sound, Mr. Ratigan is not altogether unimpeachable. In December 2010, MSNBC announced that steel company Nucor would be sponsoring The Dylan Ratigan Show's "Steel on Wheels" tour of the country. At the time, Mr. Ratigan told TVNewser's Gail Shister: "I won't talk about Nucor on the air, absolutely not," in light of the potential conflicts. But in a February 2011 episode, he toured a Nucor factory in Seattle.

When The Observer asked him about the discrepancy, Mr. Ratigan exhaled loudly. "That's an absolutely fair criticism," he said finally. "I recognize that was a mistake," he added, explaining that he should never have promised not to cover Nucor in the first place.

That might not satisfy a professor of journalistic ethics, but it's more of a mea culpa than one might expect. "Your ego is a huge liability to your judgment, and when you get into these jobs, your ego only gets bigger," Mr. Ratigan said. "How can I go on TV and blather about integrity and all this nonsense and then not exhibit it? I'd be a real asshole."

It's another reason he doesn't necessarily consider himself a journalist. "I'm an advocate who hosts a show, let's be honest," he said. The advocacy Mr. Ratigan is referring to is his Get Money Out! movement, which aims to introduce a new Constitutional amendment banning corporate campaign contributions. Mr. Ratigan said the group is the largest nonprofit in the world pushing for corporate political finance reform, "by dollars, by people, by staff, and by signatures." While he said he has ruled out running for office (at least until his amendment passes), he intends to keep pushing the issue.

"I will do as much as possible to address what I see as the structural misaligned interests in America," he declared. "I'm hoping that we'll be able to enlist tens of millions of people." And to those who question the propriety of such an effort by a newsman, he said, "To the extent to which I am able to acquire and amass and advocate resources around an agenda that is transparent, and people know what I'm doing, it's what I'm going to do. I'll start a circus. Are you kidding me? We have to do this. Who cares if Dylan Ratigan is a journalist?"

GREEDY BASTARDS!, Mr. Ratigan said, was conceived as a response to the economic decline of the last three years. It was written with a team of five researchers, a ghostwriter, and a close college friend—a PhD in stem-cell biology—to help "logic-proof" the 245-page text.

That title notwithstanding, the book doesn't actually go after the bastards themselves, but instead takes aim at a cultural tendency, what the author calls "greedy bastardism," which can be adopted or discarded at will.

The antidote to greedy bastardism, Mr. Ratigan writes, is a systemic set of values he dubs V.I.C.I. (or vici, Latin for ‘I Overcame'), which translates into Visibility, Integrity, Choice and Interests.

That formula might not be quite vehement enough for some of Mr. Ratigan's fans, who presumably expect a bit more red meat with their reading. "I'm sure they'll be taken aback," he admitted. "They might be a little confused. But I'll be able to reveal my own process of self-discovery, because my reaction to all of this has been fury and frustration, and what I've learned is that it's not constructive."

Indeed, the rage-aholic outbursts that have fueled Mr. Ratigan's rise—leading The Daily Beast to dub him "The Angriest Man in Cable"—seem to be abating, and not a moment too soon. "Over the past year," he said, "I've gained 25 pounds. I've started smoking again. It has made me miserable."

Mr. Ratigan, who lives in Tribeca, is indulging a softer side. He has been known to get on stage with one of his favorite bands, Fountains of Wayne, and play the gourd at their concerts. He has taken up paddleboarding. "It forces you into the present tense, you know?" he said. And he recently sought out Deepak Chopra personally to get the guru's advice on chilling out.

"I'd like to lose some weight and I'd like to be happy," said the broadcaster, who has been engaged twice but is currently single. "I still want to do this job, you know, and I have to find a way to do that, and the only way to do it is to have some compassion."

He stops, and then adds: "Including compassion, by the way, for the bankers. And the politicians."

How will that play on cable, we ask him, where everyone knows anger is what sells?

"We're going to find out if compassion sells."

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Not that much, really. But: some things.

It looks like Adoboli's Twitter account was hacked sometime after he started it, as the only messages he's Tweeted are all spam ads. That said, he does have a few interesting follows:

He may be interested in Middle Eastern politics, as evidenced by his following an Egyptian Twitter account helping get messages out of a telecommunications blacked-out Egypt during the January riots. He also followed Dan Nolan, a Dublin-based journalist who's done work for Al Jazeera covering the Middle East.

He's a CNBC fan, specifically, a Fast Money fan: Guy Adami, Joe Terranova, Pete Najarian, and Jon Najarian are all regulars on CNBC's Fast Money.

He enjoys the musings of this "TubbyTurner1" fellow.

And...that's about it. He also picked up a bunch of followers—including his newly-created fake Twitter doppleganger, @Kweku_Adoboli and the Twitter account of an "Option-Trading Junkie"—but that's more or less it.

Can't say we didn't look. And here, we'd concede that his cached Facebook page—which includes his fandom of The Wire membership to the "Princess Beatrice's ridiculous Royal Wedding hat" fan group—is slightly more telling.

Then again, he could've followed four guys from Squawk Box instead. So there's that.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Parsons: I must say I thought that there still was an awful lot of emotion and heat around the bailout, and this was somehow practically satanic.

Becky Quick: We hear it all the time.

Parsons: Believe me, I hear it on the streets.

When Parsons takes to the streets, he listens to the people, and they talk about the demonic possession of their neighbors, who thanks to the evil in their souls cannot see why the $45 billion Citi bailout was good for everyone. It did yield a profit of about $12 billion for the taxpayer, after all.

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

On the case is Trish Regan, the CNBC reporter whose book, Joint Ventures: Inside America's Almost Legal Marijuana Industry will be out soon. "Marijuana USA" is an apparent follow-up to "Marijuana Inc." -- a documentary about California's "Emerald Triangle," the marijuana capital of America, another Trish Regan production.

Why is CNBC so obsessed with pot? We'll be tuning in to "investigate."

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

The announcement, made last night during an interview with CNBC, is not exactly a surprise. In the last two months, a series of scandals have led to the departures of chief innovation officer Lee Abrams, CEO Randy Michaels and a much-hated six-legged statue, Bureaucratic Shuffle, that makes for a pretty apt mirror for all this mess. 

"I don't think that I envision that I am going to have any kind of a role going forward and so, as soon as we get it out of bankruptcy, I will wish whoever takes over a lot of good luck and they should enjoy being in the media business more than I did," Zell said on CNBC last night. "When we're done with the bankruptcy process, I will turn it over to whoever the creditors decide they want to run it and wish them a lot of good luck.”

Tribune Co. filed for Chapter 11 in 2008.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

The series will feature pseudo-controversial stars like Jay-Z, but seems to mostly focus on traditional Bloomberg tech types. It kicked off last week with Mark Zuckerberg and continues this week with Steve Jobs.

But that doesn't mean Game Changers isn't bare-knuckled stuff.

Last week starred the estimable Nicholas Carlson, deputy editor of Business Insider, quoting Mark Zuckberg's IMs. "I'm going to 'blank' them. I'm going to 'blank' them right in the ear."

This week Bloomberg scored a talking head, unidentified in the preview, to compliment Steve Jobs' ability as a pitchman.

"There's wasn't a goat farmer in Afghanistan that hadn't heard about the f**cking iPhone."

Last week Carlson had to literally say "blank." This week Bloomberg opted for the edgier F - silence vowel - CK. Heads up CNBC, they're coming for your turf.