BEST OF BOCA
Most over-used word: ethics.
Most underutilized concept: ethics.
Most under-attended panel: ethics in the securities industry.
Most notably absent: New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
Most indirectly attacked (not by name): Eliot Spitzer.
Best career advice: John Reed. “I do recommend retirement; it is a lot of fun.”
Best disclosure: Robert Colby, deputy director of the SEC. “My views do not reflect those of the commission or anyone else on the planet.”
Fastest route to SEC Chairman Bill Donaldson: Through the kitchen.
Best dig at the press: John Reed, NYSE interim head, in addressing a Q&A session after his speech. “Please identify yourself and if you are a member of the press. I have different answers for them.”
BETTER BEACHIN’
When former Citigroup CEO John Reed was flown in from a French island to fix the NYSE, consensus thinking was that he would come to love it and stay – as chairman, as CEO or perhaps as just a board member.
It appears he was serious. When pressed at last week’s Securities Industry Association annual meeting in Boca Raton. Fla., as to whether he would serve on the new board, he conceded it was hard to ask his friends to join without him.
“If it is appropriate, which it may well not be and if I am asked by the chairman, I would have to be willing to stay on for a while,” he said, adding “I don’t want to,” noting he would prefer to read books, write, teach and go back to France.
He seemed to reiterate the sentiment later in the speech when he said about the task he was given: “I’m proud I did it, not because I’m enjoying it – because I’m not – but because it was the right thing to do.”
DRAMA QUEEN
Wall Street has been besieged by conflicts for the past four years. So much so that some of the industry’s leaders consider war the best analogy.
Quoting decorated hero retired General Norman Schwarzkopf, Smith Barney CEO Sallie Krawcheck had the following advice for her colleagues: “We’ve won a great victory, and now we dare to ask that, just as we were willing to sacrifice and fight to win the war, we must be willing to sacrifice and search to win the peace.”
THE WEEK’S WINNERS & LOSERS
Winners:
Andrew Lack and Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, bosses at Sony Music and BMG, respectively, plan to merge their companies, getting a leg up on rivals Warner Music and EMI.
Fred Wilson, CEO of Donna Karan, looked likely to get the top job at Saks Fifth Avenue.
Carl Icahn, the billionaire buyout king, received clearance from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to buy about 7 percent of embattled Eastman Kodak Co.
Gil Schwartz, chief spokesman for CBS, who writes under the pseudonym Stanley Bing, just inked a two-book deal with HarperCollins estimated to be worth $500,000.
Losers
Lawrence Lasser, chief executive at Putnam Investments, was booted after his company was charged with fraud in the mutual fund trading schemes.
Richard Scrushy, former head of HealthSouth Corp., was indicted on 85 criminal counts for a scheme to inflate the income of his company by $2.7 billion.
Peter Kellogg, once one of the most powerful figures on the New York Stock Exchange floor, was accused of stock fraud to help his children.
Juan Marcelino, Boston’s highest-ranking Securities and Exchange Commission official, resigned a week after he came under political fire for ignoring a whistleblower’s exposé of the trading scams at Putnam Investments.