Think about it.

From: [redacted]
Sent: March 28, 2012 9:12 AM
To: Team
Subject: Spring Ahead

For those with direct/indirect coverage responsibilities, pls take out your lists today to remind yourselves who we have money out to and that your name is on the ComCom coverage team that got that money approved. Anecdotal observation I conclude is that where we pay attention in some reasonable, non-trivial ways (meeting, meal, call, insightful email), we get paid back in flow DCM capital markets participation

It’s just how this game works, the money doesn’t flat out speak for us, we need to speak for it, and we don’t have to stomp/yell, just be around, consistently the more frequency, the more client comfort, the more they feel reminded of their commercial obligations to us, the easier it is for them to remember to take care of us — lubricate to prevent rust, just like a motor engine or morning exercise

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Earlier this week, a man named Greg Smith resigned from Goldman Sachs. Smith informed his bosses of his decision to quit around 6:40 AM local (London) time and, a few hours later, circled in the rest of the world with an Op-Ed in the New York Times, which he penned not out of a desire to violate his (former) employer in the most gruesome fashion possible in front of clients and other interested parties but because he believed it to be the right, nay, the only thing to do. In the piece, Greg explained that his decision to leave the firm after 12 years of service did not come easily. But, after months of beating down a nagging little voice, a moment of truth presented itself that he could not deny. During rehearsals for the college recruiting video he starred, Greg realized that the lines he was delivering re: Goldman being a great place to work were a lie. A bald-faced one, in fact. Goldman had changed in the years since the Greg-ster arrived, and whereas it once felt like home and the people in it family, he’d come to regard it as a den of evil, run by monsters. Monsters who called clients “muppets”; who only cared about making money; who valued “shortcuts” over “achievement.” Of the latter, Greg spoke from plenty of experience. Though his personal achievements are too numerous to mention in full, they include being named a Rhodes scholar (finalist), learning to tie his shoes at the age of 22, winning third place for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games, and being named captain of the South African national table tennis team. OR WAS HE?

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Greg Smith is a Goldman Sachs “executive director” and “head of equity derivatives” in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. And, as you may have heard, today is his last day at the firm. Greg had a speech prepared for the big announcement, which he stayed up all night writing and planned to deliver on the trading floor at noon, but assuming security has other ideas, we volunteered to relay his story. A word of advice: brace yourselves.

Why is Greg resigning from Goldman Sachs? To understand why he’s leaving, you have to know what it was like when he got here, twelve years ago.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization.

For a while, Greg loved Goldman Sachs! And the feeling was mutual, otherwise they obviously would not have bestowed him the great honor of being “selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on the recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world.” Shortly after the cameras rolled and he got his star turn, though, things began to change. And not in a good way. Greg suddenly noticed that the culture that made him “love working for this firm” was gone. He no longer had “the pride, or the belief.” The moment of truth? When he realized he “could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.” It didn’t matter how great a performance he gave in those videos. It didn’t matter that audiences would ask if he really worked for Goldman or if they’d hired an actor, as he appeared to have been classically trained. It didn’t matter that his recruiting DVD had been nominated for several trade awards. It didn’t matter because Greg had seen too much.

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William Bryan Jennings is the co-head of North American fixed-income capital markets at Morgan Stanley, though his responsibilities have been passed onto a coworker for the time being until a particular matter is “resolved.” That matter would be a cab ride he took on the evening of December 22, which resulted in Jennings being charged with “second-degree assault, theft of services and second-degree intimidation based on race or bigotry.” At present, there are two conflicting stories about what happened.

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At Bloomberg today you will find a piece that is a bit hard to stomach if you’re the type of person whose heart goes out to the suffering. A bunch of financial services employees’ bonuses were slashed last year and, as a result, their lives have been turned upside down. Perhaps recalling how well their colleagues came off in Bloomberg’s first piece in what is apparently a series on bankers who are down, out, and willing to talk on the record, these people thought it wise to turn to reporter Max Abelson to tell their tale.

First, there’s Andrew Schiff, director of marketing for Euro Pacific Capital. Schiff has almost too many woes to mention but they include having to scale back his Connecticut summer house rental from four months to one; facing the pressure of paying private school tuition for two kids; living in a “crammed” 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex (Schiff and his wife were planning to buy a $1.5 million brownstone nearby but now, who knows); and traffic (“Schiff was sitting in a traffic jam in California this month after giving a speech at an investment conference about gold. He turned off the satellite radio, got out of the car and screamed a profanity. ‘I’m not Zen at all, and when I’m freaking out about the situation, where I’m stuck like a rat in a trap on a highway with no way to get out, it’s very hard,’ he said”).

Then there’s Cobble Hill resident Daniel Arbeeny, a headhunter whose “income has gone down tremendously” and now must buy discounted salmon at Fairway and “read supermarket circulars to find good prices for his favorite cereal, Wheat Chex,” which is one step from giving out hand jobs under the Brooklyn bridge to make ends meet. Hedge fund manager Richard Scheiner had to sell two motorcycles (though because he actually saved some money, Zelda the labradoodle and Duke the bichon frise still get to live the lifestyle they’ve grown accustomed to at $17,000/year). Michael Sonnenfeldt’s friends are suffering from “malaise and a paralysis that does not allow [them] to believe that generally things are going to get better.” M. Todd Henderson feels sick (“Yes, terminal diseases are worse than getting the flu,” he said. “But you suffer when you get the flu”).

All traumatic experiences to be sure. And yet none come close to that of Hans Kullberg, whose harrowing story should serve as a cautionary tale to all.

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Something you may have picked up on when watching CNBC interviews is that if an anchor or a reporter has fond feelings for his or her interviewee, he or she often finds them difficult to suppress. Joe Kernen, for example, more or less fellated David Tepper when the hedge fund manager appeared on Squawk Box a while back, telling Tepper his “entire body had chills” at the thought of having him on set (Bill Murray received the same treatment last Friday). To that end, maybe you saw Darren Rovell’s interview with Kate Upton?

On Tuesday, the CNBC reporter sat down with the Sports Illustrated‘s swimsuit edition cover model. While it’s tradition for Rovell to do so, having chatted with Irina Shayk, Brooklyn Decker, Bar Refaeli, and Marissa Miller when it was their times to shine, this year was different, because, according to Rovell, he and Kate have something special. In order to show the world what they’ve got going on, Rovell first penned an op-ed for CNBC.com noting why SI *had* to put Kate on the cover and then, later, during the live interview, got down on one knee and asked Upton to be is Valentine. Her turning him down was not even the most awkward part! Rather it was the icing on the trainwreck of awkward that included the fact that 1) Mrs. Rovell is due to give birth to their first child in a couple days and 2) that he got down on one knee, perhaps thinking in that split second between him getting into a position generally reserved for proposals and asking his question, 19 year-old Kate would shout “Yes, I’ll marry you!” and they’d run away together. While D-Rove thought all was good, he heard that some people found the exchange a bit odd and this morning sought to set the record straight on WFAN.

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Some employees are preemptively miffed and, frankly, insulted.

“Deutsche bonus structure for Associates-Directors was revealed today:

*Up to eur50, all cash.
*Eur50-100, 70% deferred. Yes…
*Eur100+, 85% deferred.”

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As you may have heard, bonuses were announced at Morgan Stanley last week and while some employees here and there did okay for themselves, for the most part, people were not pleased with the fact that pay was down, on average by 20-30 percent. In fact, many were downright distraught, particularly among those who received zeros. As these things tend to go, a bunch of people have suggested they’ll be taking their talents elsewhere, where they’ll be appreciated and, at the very least, have made a point of sighing audibly around the office to express their disappointment.  By now, though, hopefully everyone’s gotten everything out of their systems because one person who’s no longer interested in hearing it? James Gorman. The Morgan Stanley CEO appeared on Bloomberg TV this afternoon to get a few things off his chest and among them: 1) Those complaining should consider waking the fuck up 2) If you let money define your happiness, he feels sorry for you and 3) “If you are really unhappy, just leave.” Seriously, get the hell out here.

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The take-away here is put in for that transfer to Brazil? From the front lines…

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The latest issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine has the answer to that burning question but first, let’s take a gander at who had the best performance, among large hedge funds.

1. Tiger Global, YTD total return: 45% (assets, in billions: 6.0)
2. Renaissance Institutional Equities, 33.1% (7.0)
3. Pure Alpha II, 23.5% (53.0)
4. Discus Managed Futures Program, 20.9% (2.5)
5. Providence MBS, 20.6% (1.3)
6. Oculus, 19.0% (7.0)
7. All Weather 12%, 17.8% (4.4)
7. Dymon Asia Macro, 17.8% (1.6)
10. Citadel, 17.7% (11.0)
11. Coatue Management, 16.9% (4.7)
12. Stratus Multi-Strategy Program, 16.6% (3.7)
13. OxAM Quant Fund, 16.4% (2.0)
14. SPM Core, 15.7% (1.0)
15. Pure Alpha I, 14.9% (11.0)
16. Autonomy Global Macro, 13.9% (2.1)
17. BlackRock Fixed Income Global Alpha, 13.8% (2.4)
18. SPM Structured Serving Holding, 13.5% (1.6)
19. GSA Capital International, 13.0% (1.0)
20. JAT Capital, 12.7% (2.5)

And for those who judge themselves by how many bags of hundos they’ve got to strip naked and roll around in…

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