A new set of e-mails appears to again finger Credit Suisse First Boston star banker Frank Quattrone as the man behind shifts in analyst coverage made to placate client company bigwigs.
The e-mails, first published in this week’s Fortune magazine, seem to show Quattrone agreeing to shift analyst Tim Newington off EarthLink coverage after company chief exec Garry Betty fumed to senior CSFB banker William Oglesby that he’d take his banking business elsewhere.
Newington’s reassignment “gives us a more graceful way of dealing with Garry . . . i.e., ‘the fit with the analyst just was not there and we have fixed it by moving the coverage,’ ” said the April 17, 2001, e-mail from Oglesby to Quattrone.
Quattrone forwarded the e-mail that same day to Jamie Kiggen, head of Internet coverage, and to others, asking what they thought.
Kiggen responded he’d be “happy to help out if the goal is to get [EarthLink] sold.” At the time, the Internet service provider was hoping to cut a deal with Yahoo!.
EarthLink’s coverage, according to the Fortune story, was transferred to Kiggen, but the Yahoo! sale never happened. Within months Newington reportedly left CSFB. He now works at Goldman Sachs.
Quattrone at the time held sway over the technology banking department – including the research team – giving rise to potential conflicts of interest. The EarthLink e-mails are among a set of incriminating documents at the heart of a Massachusetts lawsuit against the big Swiss-owned firm.
Credit Suisse First Boston may pay up to $250 million in fines to regulators as part of a global settlement of conflict-of-interest charges that have embroiled 11 other large investment banks. The global settlement only covers the banks themselves, however, and regulators are still building cases against individual staffers.
CSFB did not return calls for comment yesterday.
Galvin has subpoenaed Quattrone to testify on Jan. 13.