There was a funny thing that happened this summer, which is that Mr. Universal Banker Sandy Weill went on CNBC and said that the supermarket model of banking that he pioneered was a good idea at the time but no longer the correct thing, and everyone who was anybody weighed in Read More
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
The paint had scarcely dried at 15 Central Park West before the building’s first residents set to knocking down the walls and stripping out the ultra-luxury condo’s ultra-luxurious finishes. Not that the finishes were lacking—like the layouts, they were widely considered to be exquisite—a stunning marriage of old-fashioned grandeur and modern sensibilities. In fact, ex-Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill thought that architect Robert A.M. Stern had done such a fine job designing the building that he hired him to do a massive renovation on his brand new, $43.7 million penthouse.
In the upper echelons of Manhattan real estate, the pursuit of perfection is as common as Sub-Zero refrigerators and private elevator landings. Haunted by dreams of what could be, owners are forever tearing magnificent properties apart in the hopes of transforming them into even more magnificent properties.
Such dreams often pay off handsomely. To wit, Mr. Weill’s freshly-renovated penthouse was so striking that it fetched $88 million shortly after completion. But of course, it would surprise no one, particularly not Nicholas S.G. Stern, son of A.M. and the owner of boutique construction concern Stern Projects LLC., if the Russian tycoon who bought the celebrated spread started his own renovation any day now. Read More
Lawsuits against financial institutions under investigation for manipulating interbank lending rates such as Libor continue to pile up, according to The Wall Street Journal. Plaintiffs holding bonds that pay some amount above the Libor rate have the best chances at legal victory, The Journal says. The legal liability facing banks may total as much as Read More
And so the Vikram Pandit Sandy Weill Refutation Tour continued: Yesterday, the current Citigroup chief executive told The Financial Times that Citigroup was already right-sized. Which is to say, the bank didn’t need to broken up, as Sandy Weill, former CEO and architect of the mergers that created the banking behemoth, told CNBC last month.From the FT: Read More
Nearly a month after former Citigroup chief executive Sandy Weill called for the break-up of the biggest U.S. banks, current Citi CEO Vikram Pandit told the Financial Times that the bank is sized just right.
How to define ‘subprime?’ The answer may determine the fate of the government’s case against three Read More
Rogue bank or rogue regulator? That was the subject of some debate yesterday, after New York’s top banking regulator, Ben “long-arm-of-the” Lawsky, filed an order alleging that Standard Chartered Bank had conducted $250 billion in off-limits business with Iranian banks. According to The New York Times, the Department of Justice, Federal Reserve and the Treasury, among other authorities, had been debating the extent of Standard Chartered’s wrongdoing. In April, Mr. Lawsky’s deputies told federal authorities that DFS planned to move forward with the case, but it wasn’t until Monday morning that the state agency alerted the Feds that it was about to file the explosive order. Read More
‘Curse of Dick Fuld’: Ken Watanabe, chief executive officer of Nomura Holdings and the driving force behind the bank’s purchase of Lehman Brothers European and Asian operations, resigned as the company indicated that insider-trading offenses committed within the company go beyond those identified by Japanese regulators. Mr. Watanabe leaves Nomura three weeks after Read More
Sandy Weill, the financier who built Citigroup through a series of acquisitions in the 1980s and 1990s, and created the model for the behemoth banks that dominate the industry, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the biggest U.S. banks should be broken up.
“What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that’s not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that’s not too big to fail,” he said. Read More
Elena Rybolovleva has an $88 million bee in her bonnet. Mrs. Rybolovleva has locked horns with her husband, Russian oligarch and fertilizer king Dmitry Rybolovev, in a bitter divorce battle, with his reported $9 billion at the center of the fracas. The international battle royale has spilled into New York, where Mrs. Rybolovleva has accused her husband of purchasing Sandy Weill’s prize $88 million condo at 15 Central Park West in an effort to divert funds in advance of the impending divorce. Read More
Russian fertilizer kingpin/oligarch/billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, he of the “buying my baby girl the most expensive apartment in, like, forever” fame, was slapped with a lawsuit today claiming that he purchased the $88 million apartment at 15 Central Park West through an LLC that he used to hide assets from his estranged wife, The Observer has Read More
