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Daniel Magnus

  1. ink-stained wretches
    Former ‘Metro’ Publisher Daniel Magnus Alleges Abuse by SwedesDaniel Magnus, the recently laid-off publisher of Metro New York, is suing his former employer, Metro International, for severance pay and bonuses he says the Swedish company has reneged on paying him. The back wages and bonuses he says he’s owed add up to something like $400,000. The company says he shouldn’t get it because he was actually being fired for cause, and basically it’s all a pretty standard pissy-about-being-fired thing. Except then it gets weird. “At the heart of the dispute,” the Post tells us today, is the Metro slogan, “All of the News in Less of the Time.” According to Magnus, he did not authorize the slogan, but was “pressured to backdate and falsely sign” a document saying that he had. For this, he is apparently asking for damages of $117 million. What? Was this translated from the Swedish? Did something terrible and untoward happen, and Magnus was pressured and tortured by H&M-clad ruffians bearing Allen wrenches? Or is Magnus just suing his bosses because they pushed through a slogan that he didn’t like, and he fears that an association with said slogan will harm his future professional prospects? Cause, like, it’s not even that bad of a slogan. Kind of catchy, actually. METRO IS SUED BY ITS EX-PUBLISHER [NYP]
  2. company town
    Being Filthy Rich Means Never Having to Say You’re SorryFINANCE • Fortune searches Davos for financiers to express contrition over the current credit crisis but comes up empty. The closest anyone has come, the magazine notes, is the chairman and chief executive of Moody’s Corp, who said, “We and others have to retool our processes … In hindsight, it’s clear to us that there were fundamental failures in key assumptions supporting our analytical models.” Quoth Fortune: “That’s probably a little too mealy-mouthed and much too late to console people who bought the mortgage-backed commercial paper to which Moody’s and its rival Standard & Poor’s gave a top-notch AAA rating — only to discover it was actually junk.” Snap! [Fortune] • Just how big a fraud did Jérôme Kerviel, the rogue French trader, pull off? Before the bank caught him, he had taken out positions worth 50 billion euros. But some argue that he was responsible for only 1.5 billion euros in losses, and the bank’s board lost the other 3.4 billion euros unwinding his positions way too fast. Meanwhile, top executive Jean-Pierre Mustier told the Times: “I was speaking to a competitor, this competitor called me and said, ‘You are living what is a banker’s worst nightmare.’” Imagine how dramatic that must have sounded in French. [FT, NYT] • Bonuses now in the bank, Goldman rewarded bankers for a record-setting year with a special surprise: layoffs! [Deal Journal/WSJ]