Has Every Wall Streeter Gone Insane? A Graphical Guide.
Maybe it’s hubris brought on by the second Gilded Age, but 2007 may well go down as the Year the Wall Streeters Lost It. Just in time to coincide with our Money Issue, we’ve assembled a handy graphical breakdown of financial-worker malfeasance, from Albert Hsu entrapping an ex-mistress in a simulated rape-kidnapping to John Fitzgerald just plain having a monstrous ego. Spooky! —Dan Amira
Job
Agent of Destruction
Consequences
Why we love him
Albert Hsu
Manager, Anchor Point Capital hedge fund
Jealousy: This past February Hsu posed as his ex-mistress on a bondage Website, requesting to be kidnapped and raped as part of a sexual fantasy.
At least two years of jail time.
Because the good guy was the one who answered the online ad and asked the mistress to confirm the rape fantasy. Make him look like Prince Charming and you clearly fucked up big.
Christopher Carter
Broker for Maxim Investments Groups
Wrath: During spin class this August, Chris threw a guy (and his bike) into a wall for grunting during his workout.
Lawsuit; probably now working out in his basement.
There are about ten times a day in this city where we feel like throwing someone — and whatever they happen to be sitting on — into a wall.
Seth Tobias
Founder and manager, Circle T Partners hedge fund
Death: Was found floating in his pool over Labor Day weekend.
Until details are sorted out, purgatory.
Police weren’t calling it a suspicious death until Tobias’s personal assistant came forward with “proof” that Tobias was murdered by his wife. And that he secretly dated a male exotic dancer named “Tiger.”
Timothy Sykes
Founder of now defunct Cilantro Fund Management
Overexposure: Sykes tirelessly promoted himself as his hedge fund hemorrhaged money.
The editor in chief of Trader Monthly disinvited Sykes from a party in September for making a mockery of the profession. (But then Sykes scored the cover of Young Money.)
He transformed an utterly trivial party spat resulting from his own ill-gotten publicity into … a mini media firestorm!
Richard “Chip” Bierbaum
Former trader for Calyon, a financing and investment- banking company
Recklessness: His risky unauthorized trading allegedly caused his company $353 million in losses this September.
He got canned.
This loose cannon refuses to play by the rules, profit-making or not. He’s probably roaming the streets right now, a rogue trader, still losing absurd amounts of money.
Andrew Z. Tong
Trader for Steve Cohen’s hedge fund, SAC
Complaisance: It recently came to light that, around July 2005, he began taking estrogen pills at the behest of his boss.
“Turned gay”: Began wearing dresses, slept with said boss. His lawsuit came before the New York State Supreme Court this May; it’s in arbitration now.
What was that conversation like? Boss: “I’m going to need you to take a close look at the Templeton account, aaannnd why don’t you also start taking these estrogen pills about four times a day. Thanks, man.”
John Fitzgerald
Mergers and Acquisitions for Limited Brands
Vanity: Fitzgerald didn’t commit a crime, because being a huge tool is still legal in Georgia. Key quote from his self-aggrandizing Website: “I used my 98th percentile score on the SAT&ACT to acquire a Mensa membership then combined that with my 97th percentile G.P.A. to go on to a five star collegiate program.”
His good name has recently been raked through the coals on sites like DealBreaker and Gawker — but we don’t think it’ll affect him.
He’s the real-life Dwight Schrute — if Dwight were a frat brother: His Website’s “Skills” section boasts that he once got a hole-in-one and has participated in — but did not win — a state archery match.
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