George Soros: You Ain’t Seen Nothing YetPublishing musical chairs, bad news on the economy front, and gripes about law-school rankings — all in our daily roundup.
There Goes the SchneighborhoodRichard Gere has put his apartment in Julian Schnabel’s Palazzo Chupi on the market, private-equity execs come down to earth, Sam Zell continues to be wacky, and Jeff Zucker and Harvey Weinstein fight like a couple of queens over ‘Project Runway’ in our daily roundup of real-estate, finance, media and law news.
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Katie Couric and Sean McManus: Chipper at CBS in Spite of It AllMore troubles for Sam Zell, Heather Mills is coming to town, and half of Bear Stearns employees are facing the ax. Click through to read the rest of our news roundup from the fields of media, law, finance and real estate.
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In the End, Shouldn’t Palazzo Chupi’s Units Go to People Who Really Appreciate Them?Schnabel raises the price on his pink palace, a New York ‘Times’ journalist is jailed in ZImbabwe, and a Starbucks worker fights for her rights. And regrets? Citigroup has a few in today’s roundup of news from the fields of real estate, media, law, and finance.
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NBC Throws a ChangeupThe Peacock network is the first to ditch the traditional notion of television “seasons.” That, and more news from the city’s media, finance, law and real-estate industries.
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Bernanke Says That a Recession Is ‘Possible’As both the economy and the media seem to be contracting, Jared Kushner solidiers on, throwing himself into a new project after his breakup with Ivanka. All this and more in our roundup of finance, media, law, and real-estate news.
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Bankers to Paulson: You’re Kidding, Right? (Updated)Wall Streeters hope that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s plan for overhauling the U.S. financial system is an April Fools’ joke, Goldman head Lloyd Blankfein buys his maid a nice apartment, and someone has a birthday in our roundup of finance, law, media, and real-estate news.
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Buyout Exodus at ‘Newsweek’A dating blogger seeks a book deal, trading desks think recession, and Jean Nouvel wins the Pritzker in our daily roundup of media, finance, law, and real-estate news.
Dog Sculptor Jeff Koons Is in the DoghouseJeff Koons’s porn star ex-wife says he’s a deadbeat dad, protestors storm Bear Stearns ineffectively, and Vogue is in all kinds of trouble in our daily roundup of Law, Finance, and Media news.
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Rick Astley Is Somehow Relevant AgainThe Times gets “rickrolled,” the NYPD searches cavities, and John McCain creakingly weighs in on the actions the Federal Reserve Bank took on behalf of Bear Stearns in our daily roundup of Media, Law and Finance news.
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Katie Couric Goes There With Larry KingThe CBS anchor unleashes her inner adolescent boy, JPMorgan wins again, and a big-time lawyer heads to the pokey in our daily roundup of news from the fields of media, finance, and law.
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Jimmy Cayne Gets His Body GuardedWall Street goes back to work, Bob Schieffer postpones retirement, and a cat owner is charged with cruelty in our roundup of finance, media, and law news.
Jamie Dimon: ‘Many’ of Bear’s 14,000 Employees Will Lose JobsDid Bear Stearns collapse in part because of a whisper campaign? How will Starbucks keep its customers if everyone starts pinching pennies? And what did Sarah Jessica Parker think of Maxim naming her the “unsexiest woman alive”? Our weekly roundup of law, media, and business news.
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Conan O’Brien Reads, But Does Not Give Recipes to, ‘Good Housekeeping’MEDIA
•Yesterday the New York Post reported on Tiger Woods’s new $65 million Hamptons pad. The only problem? He didn’t buy the house. [Radar]
• Good Housekeeping published Conan O’Brien’s stew recipe in honor of Saint Patrick’s Day. Except it wasn’t actually his recipe. “I’ve never cooked anything in my life. I didn’t send this to them; they completely made this up,” he said, then added: “I love this magazine, I’m not mad or anything.” [WWD]
• After a year of bickering, Dow Jones decided it will no longer carry news from the Associated Press. [Reuters]
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JPMorgan Gearing Up to Move Into Bear’s Sweet HQFINANCE
• JPMorgan Chase will probably move its investment-banking unit to Bear Stearns’ smokin’-hot headquarters on Madison Avenue. The building is valued at $1.2 billion, which is just one-fourth of quadruple the price JPMorgan paid for the firm itself. [NYP]
• JPMorgan Chase’s valuation of Bear Stearns shows that financial institutions are significantly overvalued. Speaking of which, many employees had their life savings wiped out. [NYP, WSJ]
• Meanwhile Goldman Sachs’ earnings are down but beat analysts’ expectations. [DealBook/NYT]
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Who Is Bear Stearns’ Biggest Loser?FINANCE
• Joseph Lewis, the British billionaire who built up his stake in Bear Stearns last summer, lost about $1.6 billion this past weekend, approximately half of his entire fortune. Bear’s biggest investor, Dallas-based money manager James Barrow, whose firm had a 9.95 percent stake, also lost big — at least $750 million. Activist shareholder Bruce Sherman and departed CEO James Cayne each lost big on their 5 percent stakes, although Cayne might not care so much: He just closed on a $28.24 million Plaza pad and spent late last week playing bridge in a tournament in Detroit. [Bloomberg]
• Meanwhile, Bear’s “fire sale” is spreading like wildfire down the street, singing Lehman Brothers, among other top banks. [DealBook/NYT]
• And Barry Diller’s IAC is “sputtering.” [NYT]
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Eliot Spitzer Hires Guides to Keep Him From Washing Down River of DespairLAW
• Eliot Spitzer has been careful about the lawyers he’s selected to protect him against potential charges related to his activities with random twentysomething hookers, hiring a set of heavy hitters from white-collar crime specialists Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He’s right to be choosy: “Hiring a lawyer is not unlike selecting a river guide,” the Times says today. “One wants a professional who not only steers clear of the rapids but does so in a reassuring manner. It also helps if he knows what to do should the boat hit the rocks.” Yeah. That’s just how we would have put it. [NYT]
• A New York court rules that the daughter of a Jell-O heiress is not entitled to a taste of the multi-million-dollar fortune. [New York Law Journal]
• Is Hillary Clinton’s legal background hindering her campaign? [Law.com]
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New York Newspapers Tanking More Slowly Than Papers ElsewhereMEDIA
• Of the top twenty American newspapers, the circulation of New York ones suffered less than others over the past few years. [Mixed Media/Portfolio]
• We hear … that gossip Website Jossip.com is up for sale. [NYP]
• And that ESPN The Magazine is beefing up its fashion coverage. [WWD]
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Will ‘Kristen’ Get a High Rate From the Media, Too?MEDIA
• How did the New York Times get the Spitzer scoop anyway? [NYO]
• “CNN Admits: We Shouldn’t Have Used Alleged Stripper Biter As Spitzer Commentator.” [AP via HuffPo]
• Bids for an interviews with “Kristen,” the prostitute who slept with “Client 9,” are reportedly up to $100,000. [Guest of a Guest]
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New York Public Library Lions to Become Schwarzman’s KittensFINANCE
• As Blackstone’s profit sinks 89 percent, Stephen Schwartzman gets the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street named after him. The naming rights came with a very generous $100 million donation, but we’re not sure we’re ready to go have lunch on the lovely steps of “Schwarzman.” It’ll feel like we’re an undergrad at Penn or something. [NYT]
• Wall Street says “There is a God” as its longtime persecutor, Eliot Spitzer, falls from grace. [NYT]
• Lehman Brothers, the largest underwriter of U.S. mortgage bonds, plans to lay off 5 percent of its workforce, which is about 1,400 people. Meanwhile, Bear Sterns, the second-biggest underwriter of mortgage bonds, lost more than $1.3 billion in market value yesterday as investors worried about the firm’s liquidity. [NYP, NYP]
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Angelo Mozilo Just Wants to Help PeopleLAW
• After testifying in front of the House Committee on Government and Oversight Reform last week about the gargantuan pay package he picked up while his company hemorrhaged money, Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo made Congress a nice little offer: “Mr. Mozilo said he had left a card in each Congressional office with a help line for constituents having problems with their loans. He added that if the number didn’t work, “call me— I take this very seriously.’” [NYT]
• Since the federal death-penalty statute was revived in 1998, New York federal juries have been reluctant to impose the death sentence. [NYT]
• You know those ads for legal firms in the Metro? Yeah, they’re really not all that effective. [Legal Blog Watch]
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Another Sad Day for SchwarzmanFINANCE
• Where has all of Steve Schwarzman’s money gone? A report saying that his fund would earn less than half of what was predicted caused Blackstone’s stock price to tumble. [NYP]
• Former Countrywide Financial, Citigroup, and Merrill Lynch execs get ready to explain to Congress why they got huge paychecks as their shareholders lost billions. [DealBook/NYT]
• Financier Carl Icahn ups his stake in Motorola. [DealBook/NYT]
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‘Esquire’ Feels That Heath Ledger’s Final Days Haven’t Been Examined Tastelessly EnoughMEDIA
• Esquire reports on how Heath Ledger spent his last days… except the story is not exactly true. Or, um, tasteful. [Vulture]
• Let the deluge begin! Media companies line up to bid for Weather Channel, which is up for auction. [DealBook/NYT]
• Wal-Mart appears to be irritated by Meredith Corporation’s creative tactic of selling its magazines, which include Better Homes and Garden and Ladies’ Home Journal, at the Dollar Tree store. [Folio]
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Rupert Murdoch Isn’t Ruining the ‘Journal’ — the Reporters AreMEDIA
• You know how the stories in The Wall Street Journal have gotten punchier and shorter? Yeah, well, apparently it is not the great soft hand of Rupert Murdoch making these changes. The journalists are cleaving to him of their own free will. “Our people are doing this in advance, I think, to make him happy,” a reporter told the Washington Post. [WP]
• “Is the Hillary Clinton campaign staffed with morons or do they just not care anymore? It is unbelievable that on the night before the Texas and Ohio (and Vermont and Rhode Island) primaries they would set up an impromptu press room in a freaking men’s bathroom, complete with urinals.” [HuffPo]
• Fox and CNN to go head-to-head. [Mixed Media/Portfolio]
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Sickos Behind Marketing for Airborne Were Lying to Us AllLEGAL
• Manhattan’s Tonic East restaurant will pay $35,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging that the eatery discriminated against blacks wearing hip-hop clothing and urban wear to a Super Tuesday event for Barack Obama supporters. [NYT]
• Office procrastinators might have to look for a new method for wasting time: Scrabulous is under fire. [DealBook/Alley Insider]
• Airborne, the cold-relieving drug of choice for many cube dwellers around the city, will pay $23.3 million to settle claims of false advertising. Says one critic, “Airborne is basically on overpriced, run-of-the-mill vitamin pill that’s been cleverly, but deceptively, marketed.” Holy wow. Anyone want to come together and ratchet this up to class-action against “second-grade teacher” founder Victoria Knight-McDowell? [CNN]
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Reporters Pissed About Changes at ‘The Wall Street Journal’MEDIA
• The Wall Street Journal wants a cut in its reporters’ book deals. Also, they fired their longtime First Amendment lawyer Stuart Karle. “We’re pissed,” one reporter says. [NYO,
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Barack Is the New Brangelina!MEDIA
• Turns out Barack Obama’s underwear is more interesting to Us Weekly readers than Britney Spears’s custody battles. A Q&A with the Chicago senator in which he refused to answer the boxers-or-briefs question generated the some of the highest-ever traffic for a single article on the site, second only to news of Heath Ledger’s death [WWD]
• The Sam Zell bloodbath continues: The Tribune Co. owner axes 120 Newsday jobs. [NYP]
•Is Matt Drudge the world’s most powerful journalist? [Telegraph]
• The FBI isn’t happy with a recent Rolling Stone article on the Joint Terrorism Task Forces. [Mixed Media/Portfolio]
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About.com Chief Steps Down As New ‘Times’ Investors Eye Internet AssetsFINANCE
• Scott B. Meyer, the chief of About.com, said yesterday that he would step down next week, on the heels of news that Scott Galloway and his merry band of vagilantes were going to try to pressure its parent company, the New York Times, to change the way they handle internet operations. [NYT]
• Two former Wall Streeters take responsibility for insider trading. [WSJ]
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Katie Couric Must Really Hate GoldfishMEDIA
• Katie Couric’s YouTube channel provides real service journalism: While chitchatting with Joe Biden, the CBS anchor recommends viewers tune into her favorite viral video — the one where a little girl watches her goldfish get flushed down the toilet. [HuffPo]
• The New York Times op-ed columnists can’t endorse political candidates. This “isn’t a problem” for Maureen Dowd because she doesn’t “do a partisan column.” [NYO]
• Vegas, take note: Big Apple broadsheets are front-runners in the race for the Pulitzers. [E&P]
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Scott Galloway Raises Stake, Prepares to Plunge It Into Heart of ‘NYT’FINANCE
• Ah, so that’s where all the G5s on the Teterborough tarmac were headed! The private-equity world descends upon Munich for the annual spectacularly named Super Return conference. [DealBook/NYT]
• Vagilante Scott Galloway and Harbinger Capital Partners raise their stake in the Times to just over 19 percent. [NYP]
• Hey, everyone! Hedge funds are a risk to the entire financial system! No duh. [Business Week]
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Joe Dolce, Former ‘Star’ Editor, Gets a Taste of ‘Culture’MEDIA
• Former Star editor-in-chief Joe Dolce resurfaces, bringing Culture & Travel magazine back into the spotlight. [WWD]
• Former Seventeen editrix Atoosa Rubenstein resurfaces, bringing Alpha Kitty back into the spotlight. [HuffPo]
• And for those wondering how to keep tabs on colleagues who are masthead hopping, check out e-newsletter Gorkana, brought to your in-box by friendly PR people. [NYT]
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Lawyers Advocate an Oscar for ‘Michael Clayton’ — That George Clooney Makes Them Look So Good!LEGAL
• Lawyers everywhere are crossing their fingers for a Michael Clayton Oscar win. “In 80 years, only 10 legal movies or actors playing members of the legal community have taken home gold,” a columnist sighs. Awwwwww. Wait a second. We didn’t do the math, but isn’t that more than like, every other profession? How many people playing bloggers have won Oscars, for instance? Slickster lawyers. Always trying to trick us with their fancy talk. [Law.com]
• Could John Edwards be our next attorney general? [The American]
• The Sean Bell “50-shot” case is set to go to trial on Monday. [NYT]
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Just in Time for ‘Times’ McCain Scuffle, ‘Time’ Editor Says Papers Shouldn’t Endorse CandidatesMEDIA
• What is the New York Police Department’s policy for awarding press credentials? Journalists wonder the same thing. [NYT]
• Time managing editor Rick Stengel ponders why newspapers endorse political candidates at a time when news consumers doubt the objectivity of the media. [Time]
• Details of the deal that Newsweek struck with George W. Bush’s former brain have emerged: It’s a two-year, sixteen-column contract. [NYO]
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The Gray Lady Lets Jim Impoco Come Crawling BackMEDIA
• Fired Portfolio editor Jim Impoco makes his comeback at The New York Times Magazine, where he’ll be a consulting editor. [NYO]
• NBC puts its traditional glitzy advertising on the back burner. That’s really too bad for the girl who was hoping to be assigned to keep tabs on John Krasinski during the day of the presentations. [NYP]
• Nielsen CEO David Calhoun charts a new course for his media-measuring company. [Fortune]
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Jane Fonda’s Vocab Malfunction Might Affect FCC’s Ruling on Janet Jackson’s NipplesLAW
• Jane Fonda’s vocabulary malfunction on NBC’s Today show last week might influence the legal battle between CBS and the FCC over Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction in her 2004 Super Bowl halftime appearance. [Legal Intelligencer]
• New York City criminal-defense lawyer Jeffrey Schwartz receives support for representing the accused murderer of a 7-year-old girl. [NYT]
• Are television shows the reason lawyers get a bad rap? [Law.com]
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‘Us Weekly’: Keeping ‘OK!’ HonestMEDIA
• NBC golden boy Ben Silverman sells his production company, Reveille, to
Rupert Murdoch’s daughter, Elizabeth. [LAT]
• CNN producer Chez Pazienza is forced to pack his bags after blogging for the Huffington Post. [TVNewser/Mediabistro]
• Us Weekly reports that OK! magazine “sensationalized” Grey’s Anatomy star Eric Dane’s battle with cancer in a cover story. (Actually, he only had some malignant cells on his lip frozen off in a doctor’s office.) “This isn’t the first time OK! has been wrong,” they note. But is Us really crusading against yellow journalism? Or are they just annoyed they didn’t get the scoop? [Us Weekly]
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‘Post’ Ruins Man’s Life Because He Has Weird SexMEDIA
• The Post violated a man’s privacy by publishing his name after he was injured in an S&M sex tryst. They also, um, called his wife and published where he lived. While activists protest, a spokesman says, “The Post will happily name every adult caught in a dog collar.” One day we need to really start “happily” naming every married Post editor caught at a strip joint. [Portfolio]
• Sam Zell’s Tribune Co. will cut staff by two percent. Is it the same two percent that he’s already cursed out? [LAT]
• Times scribe Alessandra Stanley spends a column (a few days late) talking about how MSNBC’s “Best Political Team on Television” is in disgrace. Sadly, it’s CNN that incessantly uses the “Best Political Team” moniker, which causes Gawker to ask whether the TV critic actually “owns a TV.” [Gawker]
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Rudy Takes a BreatherLAW
• Now that he’s dropped out of the White House race, Rudy Giuliani plans to decompress before he starts lawyering at Bracewell & Giuliani. [Texas Lawyer]
• Oh, snap! Skadden is so not pleased about the hottest-female-associate contest that took place on the Skadden Insider blog. [Law.com]
• Perhaps Covington & Burling should have consulted its client Major League Baseball before agreeing to represent pitcher Roger Clemens. [American Lawyer]
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Meet Microsoft’s ‘Gatekeeper of Funding’FINANCE
• Now that Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid, it’s up to Microsoft’s self-described “gatekeeper of funding” Christopher P. Liddell to plot the company’s next chess move. [DealBook/NYT]
• Fearful that 90 percent of TheStreet.com’s franchise revolves around Jim Cramer, today the finance-driven Website launched Mainstreet.com, which will revolve around celebrities and personal finance. You think Britney’s psychological drama is intense? Wait until you hear about her bond portfolio. [NYP]
• France’s rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel might have had an accomplice. How did police find out? By sifting through 2,000 pages of instant-message traffic. Bet that was a gr8 time. [NYT]
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Martha Stewart Gets Starstruck When It Comes to MadonnaFASHION
• Martha Stewart used her digital camera to snap pictures of celebrities at the Gucci event at the U.N. the other night. “It’s for my blog,” she explained. [WWD]
• Anna Wintour and Suzy Menkes are getting kind of tired of Fashion Week. [The Cut]
• A twelve-page photo spread in the March issue of Harper’s Bazaar reenacts the two-hour delay of the Marc Jacobs show last fall, starring Helena Christensen, Allison Sarofim, Genevieve Jones, Cindy Sherman, Kim Gordon, and members of Jacobs’s own PR team, all looking visibly annoyed. Weird, and also kind of awesome? [Fashion Week Daily]
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Delta and Northwest to Fly in FormationFINANCE
• High fuel prices and a soft economy have sent Delta and Northwest Airlines running into each other’s arms. The two could announce a definitive plan to merge as early as next week. [NYT]
• Senate Republicans have axed a proposed economic-stimulus bill. The Dem-proposed $158 billion package, which sought to avert a full-fledged recession, came up one short of the required 60 votes. [FT]
• But, no worries. Economists put odds of a U.S. recession at 49 percent, which means we’re not technically there yet. Also, for what it’s worth, this video is funny. [WSJ]
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Jeff Bewkes Starts Cleaning House at Time WarnerMEDIA
• At least 75 Time Warner layoffs are expected to be announced today. The layoffs are among CEO Jeff Bewkes’s first public tasks since taking the helm of the company from Dick Parsons last month. Earlier today, Time Warner announced a 41 percent decline in fourth-quarter earnings. [MSNBC & AdAge]
• Maybe some of those Time Warner folks can hang their hats over at Condé Nast. The Observer evaluates Portfolio’s recent spending spree, during which it recruited top talent from The New Yorker, the Post, and the Times. [NYO]
• (Product)Red, the love child of Bono, iPod, and the Gap, has raised more than $22 million for fighting HIV and AIDS in Africa. But considering the big advertising bucks spent during the Super Bowl and elsewhere, some are arguing that it’s not enough. [NYT]
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Finance Types Split Over Hillary and RomneyFINANCE
• Wall Street hopes Hillary has a super Super Tuesday, but private equity is standing by one of its own. Fourth-quarter campaign-financing reports show Senator Clinton taking in the lion’s share of donations from the Street’s top ten financial firms. Meanwhile, Bain Capital co-founder Mitt Romney is still tops among the PE crowd. [NYT/Dealbook]
• So, what’s it gonna be, boy? Stuck between Microsoft’s rock and Google’s hard place, Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang has limited options for saving his company at his disposal. [NYP]
• If you believe the latest hype, Citadel is paving the way for an IPO after all. Ken Griffin’s asset-management firm has split its proprietary hedge-fund business from its client-based options-making business. “Legally, it makes it cleaner,” said Josh Galper in an interview. [Bloomberg]
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Hathaello Checks Out Miss Sixty
FASHION
•Lela Rose thinks she’s still in the running to design Jenna Bush’s wedding dress, despite a first family visit to Oscar de la Renta last week. [NYDN]
•Anne Hathaway totally lied when she said she wouldn’t be attending any fashion shows this week. She and Raffaello Follieri were at Miss Sixty. [The Cut]
• Sheryl Crow enters the fashion arena, with an affordable denim line by the same people who make Victoria Beckham’s dVb line. [WWD]
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Semel Out at Yahoo, Microsoft In?FINANCE
• Courtenay Semel’s dad, Terry, is out at Yahoo. And Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid for the company might just be déjà vu. [NYT, Deal Journal/WSJ]
• Recession-has-already-started watch: The economy lost 17,000 jobs in January, the first time since the lovely tech-crash days of 2003 that total payrolls have shrunk. [Reuters via NYT]
• One of the few lucky bankers with a bonus burning a hole in your pocket? Try London restaurant Vivat Bacchus’ new “Bonus Tasting Menu” for a mere £1,000. [DealBook/NYT]