REAL ESTATE
• Does hotelier Jason Pomeranc need an ego check? He thinks the opening of his new Thompson Lower East Side hotel, which is slated to happen soon, is “going to be a moment in time that will be remembered as kind of when the Lower East Side came of age.” [NYO]
• Recession? What recession? Apartments around the city, such as ones in the Plaza and the Waldorf, are being rented out for $75,000 per month. [NYO]
• The Christian Scientist Church on Park Avenue subpoenaed neighboring co-op boards for documents revealing information about the social lives of the apartments’ residents. The court, however, says the boards don’t have to turn over the legal papers. [NYS]
FINANCE
• Finally, a good day on Wall Street: Stocks rallied because of banks purging toxic paper, oil prices sliding lower, and the dollar getting stronger. [NYP]
• Lone Star Funds agreed to pay $6.7 billion for Merrill Lynch’s mortgage-linked investments, which have been valued at around $31 billion. [WSJ]
• Steven Rattner, who was the chairman of Credit Suisse’s private-equity arm for twenty years, stepped down to spend more time with his family. [Bloomberg]
MEDIA
• “It’s difficult not to see McCain’s point that Obama has generally been getting not only more positive press but quantitatively more press, period,” said Jake Tapper, the senior national correspondent for ABC News. “That just seems empirically true. But it is a bit like Britney Spears complaining that Miley Cyrus gets more publicity than her talent warrants.” [NYO]
• The New York Times ran an article about BlogHer, an annual conference about the feminine blogosphere, much to the dismay of, well, female bloggers, who complained the piece was “published in the ‘Styles’ section, the section of the paper reserved for trend pieces, drink recipes, society photos, and wedding announcements. In other words, the girl part of the paper.” [Salon]
• People’s Obama cover underperformed on the newsstand, selling just 1.3 million copies, compared to the tabloid’s usual sales of 1.4 million to 1.5 million copies. The mag did move more than Us Weekly’s Obama cover, however, which sold 1 million issues. [Jossip]
LAW
• Sean Connery’s lawyer is getting involved in the war over the repairs at the actor’s East 71st Street townhouse. [NYP]
• Cadwalader is laying off 96 lawyers in its New York, Charlotte, London, and Washington offices. The cuts will come out of the real-estate, finance, and securitization practices. [WSJ]
• Governor Paterson signed a bill saying that New York will abandon its rule allowing personal-injury or wrongful-death insurers to disclaim coverage due to a late notice of claim. “It was anomalous for so long that New York would allow denial of coverage for claims considered late by insurance companies,” said attorney Marshall Gilinsky of Anderson Kill & Olick. “We always thought of it here as a trapdoor, as a ‘gotcha’ defense.” [Tags:
