2 Casualties from Knockout Punches at a Chicago Nightclub

Still trying to figure out what club this was in Chicago, but check out the video. The second dude gets popped pretty bad - for no apparent reason.

You can watch it here.

Try to download it here (not sure if it will work.)

William Blair Capital Partners is Gone - Again

An article in Crane's and the Chicago Tribune both confirm that newly formed team that was set to manage William Blair Capital Partners Fund VIII has decided to jump ship to a new fund that is to be named later.

The Tribune article pointed to the fact that Blair's lack of a private equity fund that is raising money in one of the most opportune times to raise money is shocking and could mean lost revenue for the Chicago based investment bank. Interestingly, this is the second time that WBCP (as it is often abbreviated as) has lost its private equity team. Several years ago, WBCP's team left to form Chicago Growth Partners.

World Series of Poker Main Event to be available via Pay Per View

The World Series of Poker's Main Event has begun with a bang. 8,600 entrants according to an AP article, but that number is going up and up as more people get in off of the wait-list. It is truly an amazing number and the fact that there is a wait-list to get into the event obviously means that any final number underestimates the true demand among poker players to test their ability against the world's greatest.

The anticipation looms for all of us following the tourney at home. In the past, you had to avoid the news sites or risk seeing who the winner of the tournament is before ESPN showed the event in September or October or whenever they show it. ESPN has already started showing the Circuit Events and will show some of other WSOP events leading up the main event over the course of the next few months. This year however, it seems that ESPN will allow viewers to watch the final table via ESPN pay per view. This could be yet another gauge of just how popular poker is getting among Americans.

Greatest scene ever?

There it is. Glengarry Glen Ross' greatest scene and perhaps the greatest scene in a movie ever. The movie contains arguably the best cast of any movie ever made, and this scene is just plain brilliance. Pacino (not in the scene), Baldwin, Spacey, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Jack Lemmon.

CBOE to launch stock exchange

The CBOE announced that it will launch a stock exchange and is moving ahead with its demutualization. A demutualization would lead to an IPO.

Leaking Deals?

The WSJ posted a good article on the possibility that several recent M&A deals have been leaked to certain individuals before they were announced publicly. Insider information, as its often called, can give certain market partcipants an "unfair advantage" and the opportunity to extract returns in excess of the general market.

Check out the article below.

Are Deal Makers
On Wall Street
Leaking Secrets?

Trading Jumps Before Acquisitions
As Low Surveillance, High Payoff
May Be 'Recipe for Bad Behavior'

By SERENA NG and DENNIS K. BERMAN in New York and KARA SCANNELL in Washington
July 28, 2006; Page C1

As the boom in corporate takeovers continues, unusual trading in obscure investments or via offshore accounts is raising concerns about insider trading.

Suspicious trading patterns -- including increased activity and well-timed bets -- have cropped up in several companies' securities in advance of news of their involvement in big transactions, suggesting Wall Street's deal-making machine may be leaking confidential information.

The list includes deals both mammoth and modest: the just-announced $21 billion leveraged buyout of hospital operator HCA Inc.; the $1.7 billion buyout of Petco Animal Supplies Inc.; the $2.6 billion sale of Maverick Tube Corp. to Tenaris SA; and Anadarko Petroleum Corp.'s $21 billion offer for both Kerr-McGee Corp. and Western Gas Resources Inc.

Some of the trading is in a corner of the financial markets that hardly existed during past takeover waves, which featured questionable trades mainly in plain-vanilla stocks, bonds and options. In advance of the HCA deal, there was a notable uptick in trading in financial contracts tied to HCA's bonds -- derivatives known as credit-default swaps.

Credit-default swaps are private contracts intended to be insurance policies against a company going bankrupt, but they also allow investors to bet on the likelihood of a bond default and are especially popular with fast-trading hedge funds that cater to wealthy clients and institutional investors. The more likely a company is to default, the more expensive its credit-default swaps become. When a company is bought in a leveraged buyout, as is happening with HCA, it assumes dramatically more debt, increasing the likelihood of a default.

In the five days before news of a potential HCA deal was disclosed in The Wall Street Journal on July 19, the price of HCA's credit-default swaps rose 11%, according to data from Markit Group. The market was effectively betting that the likelihood of an HCA default was rising at a time when prices more broadly in that market were rising just 4%, as measured by a Dow Jones index for these instruments. Triad Hospitals Inc., whose contracts usually move in tandem with HCA, declined 2% during the same period, Markit data show. The difference was starker in the six weeks leading up to the news. HCA swaps rose 31% in price, while a broad market index rose 10%, and Triad rose 11%.

After HCA reached a deal with its private-equity sponsors, prices of its credit-default swaps rose more than 60% and its bonds dived in value.

A surge of trading in stock options tied to HCA stock in advance of news of the deal has attracted the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission. On July 14, options traders bought and sold 10,322 options contracts, which gave buyers the right to purchase HCA stock at a fixed price in the future. By comparison, the average daily volume in call options during June was 1,142 contracts, according to data from Options Clearing Corp.

SEC officials say insider-trading enforcement actions have stayed relatively consistent in recent years. Since Oct. 1, 2005, the agency has brought 40 such cases; it had 42 such cases in fiscal 2004 and 52 in fiscal 2002.

But that could change as the takeover boom grows. A March study by England's equivalent of the SEC, the Financial Services Authority, found suspicious stock-price movements prior to 29% of the merger announcements it studied between 2000 and 2004. The study recommended more "visible enforcement action."

"Definitely something is going on. In the last few years, with all these hedge funds, there's probably a lot more leakage," says Narayanan Jayaraman, a Georgia Tech University professor.

To be sure, rumors are the markets' oxygen, and it can be difficult for regulators to prove the distinction between an ill-gotten piece of information and long-churning speculation that just happens to be true.

The merger market is changing in ways that have increased the possibility of leaks and the opportunities for players involved to profit from them before they are public. Deals are taking longer to play out and involve more deal makers. During the 1980s and 1990s, merger deals typically took a few weeks to consummate. In 1996, WorldCom Inc. spent two weeks from its first takeover discussion to seal its $12 billion deal for MFS Communications Inc. But boards have since grown wary of quick deals, demanding more methodical study. Discussions of a takeover of HCA began back in April.

"Clearly, the length and size of the deals seems to require more time, which of course increases potential leakage," says Cam Funkhouser, senior vice president of market regulation at the National Association of Securities Dealers.

The increasing use of lots of borrowed money to acquire companies in leveraged buyouts creates more leak potential. As the deals grow larger, more money, and thus more bankers and lawyers, are coming in "under the tent," in Wall Street parlance. In HCA's $21 billion transaction, announced Monday, six financial firms -- Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse Group, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Merrill Lynch & Co. and Morgan Stanley -- and at least seven law firms were involved.

Banks and law firms typically are required to submit to market regulators the names of people who worked on a given transaction. The HCA list is 40 pages long, a person familiar with the matter says.

Though using offshore accounts for illegal trading is nothing new, technology is making such trading easier. "There appears to have been an increase in illegal insider-trading activity taking place outside the United States in U.S.-traded securities," said Randall Lee, director of the SEC's Pacific Regional Office. "With advances in technology and the increasing globalization we're seeing people engage in insider trading anywhere."

In the case of Tenaris's acquisition of Maverick Tube, the SEC said in a complaint filed in federal court in Chicago that several individuals used accounts in Buenos Aires to make more than $1.1 million in profits from purchases of U.S. shares and call options of the latter company. Tenaris is an oil-and-gas pipeline supplier owned by an Argentinean conglomerate; Maverick Tube is based in Chesterfield, Mo.

In the Petco case, the SEC this month asked a federal judge to freeze $862,000 of profits in offshore funds used to trade Petco options in advance of its sale to a private-equity group -- even though regulators didn't identify the traders.

The SEC used a similar tack last November when it obtained an emergency asset freeze against "unknown purchasers" of call options in Placer Dome Inc. stock, a few days before Barrick Gold Corp. made an offer to buy Placer. At least 5,000 of the options were under water and set to expire at the time of the purchase, the SEC alleged. The SEC estimated the buyers used overseas accounts to make improper gains totaling more than $1.9 million. Petco didn't return a call for comment.

The rise of derivatives markets -- less closely regulated than stock and bond trading -- also creates new opportunities for insider trading. Regulators in the U.S. and the United Kingdom recently have been studying credit-default swap prices, but it isn't clear whether that is a prelude to a formal investigation.

Trading in credit-default swaps takes place away from formal exchanges. Banks, hedge funds, money managers and other institutions enter into contracts directly with each other and trade them in the so-called over-the-counter market.

"You're talking about a very large and unregulated market which makes it hard to identify malfeasance or to ensure that people are abiding by the rules," said Chris Dialynas, a portfolio manager at bond behemoth Pacific Investment Management Co., or Pimco, a unit of Allianz AG. "The surveillance is low and the payoff is high -- that's a recipe for bad behavior."

Mr. Dialynas added that there aren't policing mechanisms or specific penalty systems in place for parties that trade credit derivatives using inside information. However, lawyers say that the SEC can probably find a way to bring cases against people or firms who buy and sell credit protection using inside information if it can be shown that fraud was involved in the transactions.

A few years back, four trade associations associated with debt markets jointly released a set of guidelines for banks with access to inside information about corporate borrowing plans.

"There's still lingering concern out there, but it's obvious to us that the large financial institutions have put in place internal barriers to prevent information from being shared across their divisions," says Kimberly Summe, general counsel for the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, one of the groups behind the guidelines.

--Mohammed Hadi contributed to this article.

Write to Serena Ng at serena.ng@wsj.com¹, Dennis K. Berman at dennis.berman@wsj.com² and Kara Scannell at kara.scannell@wsj.com³

WSJ lists major hedge fund milestones

Check it out below.

Hedge-Fund Milestones
July 27, 2006 11:32 a.m.

Hedge funds, lightly regulated investment vehicles for the wealthy, have proliferated in recent years. When Long Term Capital Management collapsed in 1998, the industry had about $240 billion under management. In contrast, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox this week estimated there are now about 8,800 hedge funds world-wide, with about $1.2 trillion in assets. Though they control just 5% of all U.S. assets under management, they account for about 30% of all U.S. stock-trading volume. But the industry's rise hasn't always been smooth. Review key milestones for hedge funds since 1995.

June 1995-- Highlighting the difficulties faced by many hedge funds in the mid-1990s, Bruce Kovner, a prominent currency and commodities speculator, disbands his U.S. fund and returns about two-thirds of the $1.8 billion he managed at Caxton Corp., founded in 1983. Caxton had averaged annual returns of at least 30% for most of its existence, but lost money in 1994 and was struggling again in 1995. Caxton's troubles weren't unique: Hedge funds' total assets under management shrank for the first time ever in 1994, The Wall Street Journal reported. Analysts said the industry's unwieldy size after a growth spurt from 1991-93, along with rising interest rates, were to blame.

October 1995-- An even more shocking closure follows a few months later, when Michael Steinhardt shuts down his $2.6 billion investment partnerships. Mr. Steinhardt's decision came despite the fact that he had enjoyed good returns in 1995 after a disastrous 1994. Mr. Steinhardt, known for his aggressive, short-term trading and big, risky market bets, started his fund in 1967 and was a pioneer of the industry. His average annual returns of 30% or more helped his assets under management balloon to $4.4 billion at their peak.

June 1997 -- Another legendary manager, Julian Robertson Jr., hoping to profit from the rising prices of mutual-fund and asset-management companies, puts a chunk of his Tiger Management Co. on the block.

September 1997 -- George Soros, founder of Soros Fund Management LLC, one of the world's largest hedge funds with $11.5 billion in assets, is accused by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad of bringing down the Malaysian currency, the ringgit, during the Asian financial crisis.

September 1998 -- After spectacular early success, Long Term Capital Management, a fund founded in 1994 by John Meriwether, the former head of bond trading at Salomon Brothers, faces a cash and credit crunch after a series of bad investments. The fund nearly collapses, but a consortium of Wall Street firms, including Goldman Sachs & Co., puts up $3.6 billion for a bailout.

October 1998 -- Hedge-fund operator Everest Capital Ltd., headed by Marko Dimitrijevic, loses nearly half of its $2.7 billion under management. Several college endowments, including those of Yale and Brown universities, are effected.

December 1998 -- Figures at the end of the year indicate the difficulty hedge funds faced in 1998. The industry shrank by more than $35 billion world-wide, and market losses were a factor in pushing down hedge-fund assets 15% to an estimated $204 billion at the end of December from a peak of $240 billion in July.

March 2000 -- Tiger Management LLC, a $6 billion hedge-fund, announces it will close down most of its operations and liquidate its investments. Mr. Robertson, Tiger's chief, blames the stock market's rush to Internet stocks. Meanwhile, throughout the year, Soros Fund Management struggles with losses as its attempt to venture into tech stocks fails and several people quit, including chief investment officer Stanley Druckenmiller. Mr. Soros vows to stick to more conservative investments.

October 2001-- Charles Schwab Corp., the top U.S. online and discount broker, announces plans to start offering hedge funds to its clients in the next year.

December 2001 -- Though hedge funds now control more than $500 billion in assets, most saw mediocre results for the year, with average returns of 3.2%. The Sept. 11 attacks, a vacillating stock market and a lack of deal-making are key reasons for the weak returns.

March 2002 -- In the midst of a slew of hedge-fund fraud cases, the SEC says it is actively monitoring developments in the industry. In the past 18 months, the SEC has prosecuted Michael Berger for covering up $400 million in losses from investors in his Manhattan Investment Fund and fined Mark Yagalla for plundering Ashbury Capital Partners.

January 2003 -- A new breed of hedge funds, which have a reduced minimum investment requirement, are gaining popularity. Most traditional hedge funds require investments of $250,000; but new funds such as Oppenheimer Tremont allow affluent individuals to invest as little as $25,000.

May 2003 -- The research firm Strategic Financial Solutions LLC estimates that there are about 4,100 hedge funds in existence, with about $450 billion in assets.

September 2003 -- The SEC recommends regulations for the hedge-fund industry, including a requirement that managers register as investment advisers and be subject to occasional audits.

July 2004 -- Hedge funds, looking for other places to put their money, are increasingly competing with private-equity funds to provide capital to ailing companies. Perry Capital, an $8 billion hedge fund, gave $100 million revolving line of credit to the energy company, Xcel Energy Inc. Hedge funds are also becoming prominent in acquisitions. A group of a dozen hedge funds make it into the final round of bidding for the Texas Genco Holdings Inc. unit of CenterPoint Energy Inc., but loses out to two big-name private equity funds: Blackstone Group and Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts.

November 2004 -- Assets under management by hedge funds reach a record $1 trillion. They have grown 20% a year, on average, since 1990.

May 2005 -- Citigroup Inc. announces it is forming a joint venture with Pacific Alternative Asset Management Co. to offer hedge-fund portfolio-management services to its wealthiest clients.

August 2005 -- Greenwich, Conn. becomes the unofficial hedge-fund capital with more than 100 funds. Greenwich-based hedge funds collectively manage more than $100 billion, about a 10th of the total invested in hedge funds world-wide.

August 2005 -- Bayou Management LLC, a $440 million hedge fund based in Stamford, Conn., closes down without returning investor money. The founder, Sam Israel III, is accused of overstating gains and understating losses.

February 2006 -- The SEC's registration requirement takes effect.

June 2006 -- Amid a tumultuous stock market, a slew of hedge funds shut down, including KBC Alternative Investment Management, which drops from $5.3 billion in assets to less than a $1 billion in 18 months.

June 2006 -- The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacates the SEC rule requiring hedge-find advisers to register with the agency, calling it "arbitrary." The decision is a major victory for the $1.2 trillion hedge-fund industry and forces the SEC to find another way to monitor it.

--Compiled by Shivani Vora

Bear Stearns' Employee Stock Option Proposal

The WSJ had an interesting article that piqued my attention yesterday. The article discussed a Bear Stearns research report that advocated structuring employee stock options by selling part to the markets, thereby allowing for easier valuation of said options.

The article was very compelling, although the major downfall to the described structure is that the term would often be in the time frame of 10 years. A 10-year period seems long for an options market that thrives on volatility.

I was able to get my hands on the Bear Stearns research report. It can be found here.

Below is the WSJ article in full, or check out the link here.

Outside Audit
How to Value Stock Options?
Bear Stearns Weighs In

By DAVID REILLY
July 26, 2006; Page C3

Another contestant has joined the race to build a better mouse trap for valuing employee stock options.

Analysts at Wall Street's Bear Stearns Cos. have outlined a proposal for competitive pricing of employee stock options that they claim would be a better gauge of value than the models companies currently use. The idea, laid out in a recent report, calls for companies to sell 10-year options to investors to be traded alongside the stock options they grant employees.

Then, once an employee gains the right to exercise the options, or vests in them, they would trade alongside the existing market-traded instruments. As they exist today, employee stock options aren't tradable. An added benefit: being able to trade employee stock options could make them more valuable, so companies could issue fewer options and still generate the same amount of compensation for employees, said Dane Mott, a Bear Stearns accounting analyst.

Bear Stearns also proposes allowing employees to take some of their options grant in the form of a debt instrument that would guarantee some return, whereas stock options either become profitable or expire worthless.

Employee stock options currently aren't traded, so companies use various models to value them. But executives complain these models are really designed to value exchange-traded options, not employee stock options, so the models overstate the employee stock options' value and thus lead to a bigger-than-needed hit to profits.

There are hurdles to the Bear Stearns idea, however. Exchange-listed options (which are sold by third parties, not the companies whose stock they track) have very short lives, usually only a few months each. Creating marketable securities based on long-term employee stock options would require investors to grapple with many uncertainties.

"In the options world, 10 years is a very long time," said Stacey Briere Gilbert, chief options strategist at Susquehanna Financial Group. Investors who typically trade options would have a hard time measuring the volatility -- or the amount of change in a share price -- in the long-term employee stock options, Ms. Briere Gilbert pointed out. Volatility is a key component of options trading. Fluctuations in interest rates would also be a greater risk over a 10-year period.

"I don't think there's going to be a whole lot of interest in trading long-term options on individual stocks," added Robert Whaley, a finance professor at Vanderbilt University.

Still, Prof. Whaley said Bear's idea could be worth exploring given companies' interest in coming up with new options-valuation approaches. Several companies tried last year to come up with their own market-based valuation methods. The Securities and Exchange Commission shot down their efforts, saying the approaches didn't create actual market values.

Here are the details of the Bear plan: Say a company wants to issue 10 million stock options. It would first give employees the choice of taking their grant as a mixture of options and a debt instrument that would have a guaranteed payout. This would allow an employee to have the upside that can come from stock options, while also guaranteeing that they will see some money if the firm's stock tanks.

Assume that the employees decide to take 65% of their grant as options and the remainder as bond units. The company would then take the 3.5 million options employees didn't take up and sell those in an auction. The premium generated from this sale would determine the market value of the options and be used to determine the expense the company should book. The premium income would also be used to fund the bond units, which would be invested in short-term, high-grade debt.

Those employees who do choose to exercise their options after a four-year vesting period would have options that are the same as the existing, market-traded options, which would remain outstanding for an additional six years. At this point, the bond units would also have vested and employees would receive the principal and interest generated as a cash payment.

Write to David Reilly at david.reilly@wsj.com¹

Allen Edmonds Sold

Allen Edmonds, the high-end shoe retailer, was sold to Goldner Hawn, a private equity firm. Allen Edmonds "is one of the last remaining shoe manufacturers with production operations in the United States."

More Deals, Less Premium

Reuters on the less premiums on M&A deals.

Google the ISP?

Google is making the steps toward creating a massive ISP that would supplement its website and ad-based revenue, according to IBD.

Started Reading Hedgehogging by Barton Biggs

What I'm reading right now.

Colin Farrell and Leno

Fortunately for Colin, this incident was not shown on the Leno show, but you can bet it would have been the most viral video on youtube.

Crazy stalkers ruin everything but make for good news stories.

The Smart Money in Idaho

The deep pockets of American capitalism were in Idaho last week, for the Allen & Co. yearly powwow. Apparently the investment bank's annual conference attracts the bigwigs and has been the breeding ground of several deals. Andrew Ross Sorkin reports in his DealBook on this annual conference of big-time financiers. Why am I not surprised that this year's invitation only conference was filled with private equity players (much different than the past)? Interesting to me was the fact that uber-raider Carl Icahn was not present.

GM/Ford merger???

Could it happen? Surely the thought has crossed the mind of investors and executives, but seriously, could it really happen? BreakingViews makes a compelling case.

Fodder for Financial Media

The summer months have historically been a time marked by stagnant markets because most investors are vacationing. But the news of a possible tie-up between General Motors-Nissan-Renault is keeping the members of the financial media sources busy.

Yelp.com

Another addition to the Web 2.0 list of services, Yelp.com is a great site to get independent, sincere reviews of restaurants, tourist attractions, etc. from nearly all major U.S. cities. The site has a "community" type feel to it, and, if it hasn't become mainstream, it may do so soon. Forbes had a nice little article on the founders and their burgeoning site.

The end of the LBO era?

Citing the fallout of the HCA LBO, BreakingViews writes that the PE boom may have reached its peak. A lot of people have been predicting that the end is near for the easy money and massive buyouts, but BreakingViews puts a great perspective on the situation.

PE says debt at HCA is just too much

Hospital operator HCA was close to a deal with financial sponsors, but the deal fell apart at the final moments. The PE firms, which included the likes of Bain, KKR, and Merrill's private equity arm, balked at the company's current debt load. The "near deal" and impending break up was first announced by the WSJ.

How big was the World Cup? Huge

Internet juggernaut eBay says that the World Cup was so big that each time a match began, bidding and site activity plummeted. That's how big the world's most popular sporting event was. Even the Company's CEO, Meg Whitman, was surprised at the remarkable effect the matches taking place had on the activity on ebay.com.

Back from Vegas

Im back from the 8 day excursion to Las Vegas. The trip was labelled a "poker trip" and it the experience lived up to its billing. For the week we were there, we played, lived, and breathed poker for 18 hours a day, ate for 2 hours a day, and got what little time there was for sleep in between. I finished the trip down about $300 but I felt like I had become a much better poker player in the process. Watching the World Series of Poker event for a little bit on one of the days was a pretty cool experience as well. It's good to be back, although the vicious market swing put a sour note on things. Being at home for a while means I get to watch CNBC and follow the tape, which of course has been red mostly. Yahoo!'s report was brutal, so im not expecting much tomorrow (Wed the 19th).

Financial Times: Aviva in talks to buy AmerUs

The Financial Times, which has speculated in the past that UK insurer Aviva may be interested in AmerUs, is reporting that again a deal is being discussed. See the link here.

Washington Post: FBR ought to be careful

The FBR deal that was announced over a week ago seemed like a great way for the investment bank/mortgage REIT to unlock value in its capital markets business. The justification went that because investment banks and capital markets businesses trade at higher P/E multiples than mortgage banks like FBR, spinning off FBR's capital markets business would unlock value in this franchise for shareholders, given that FBR's current stock trades like a mortgage REIT.

However, the Washington Post sees the deal a little differently, as this article states.

"The plan to raise $400 million through a private sale of stock in FBR Capital Markets Corp ., with parent FBR retaining a 67 percent stake in the unit, pushed FBR's stock up 11.7 percent since it was announced on June 22."

The benefits of said deal are that the capital markets unit gets $400 million in cash and a liquid stock. The downside is that the managing directors, the value of any middle market investment bank, may lose faith in the operation and head for the exits. When the brain trust of an investment bank exits, there is little left. This is unlike most retail businesses, because for investment banks human capital, or stated another way, the strength of the manpower is paramount. An investment bank is only as powerful as its MDs relationships. Sure many investment banks can survive in the lending arena where they can open their balance sheet, but FBR is not a bank and hence have to rely on the confidence their clients have that FBR will be able to provide the best advice and execution.

Trump hires Apprentice Loser

Apprentice fans may remember Andy Litinsky, the Harvard grad who was significantly younger than the rest of the Apprentice contestants. While he was fired on the Apprentice, Trump has hired him to pursue an unspecified venture, although reports are that it will be trying to create some sort of real-life version of the game Monopoly. Seems suspect to me.

AOL To Offer Free Hi-Speed Internet Access? Misleading Title

Talk about a misleading title to this article. There is no way AOL would ever off free hi-speed internet access to Americans. It would never happen. But this article's title says just that. Actually, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that AOL may provide free e-mail to everyone with a high speed internet connection. I am sure a lot of people were duped by this article's title.

Snoozing repairmen and annoying customer service reps

The AOL debacle that was recently unveiled through digg.com has everyone pointing to web 2.0 as the new age of consumer activism. The story goes that an AOL user had to be on the phone with customer service at AOL for 21 minutes in order to cancel his account. The AOL user, obviously fed up, decided to post the call online. Digg.com carried the link and it spread quickly. The Comcast story is similar. A user was getting Comcast repairs to his internet connection at his home. The repairman ended up falling asleep on his couch.

The NYTimes writes that this could be a sign for how consumers finally get to fight back.

New book will go inside the investment banking world

The NYTimes had a nice article on a book that will soon be released on the investment banking world. The book, written by Evercore banker Jonathan Kree, is said to have been circulating around the desks of wall street's elitest. The premise of the book is on the rise and current state of the investment banking "scene." For years aspiring bankers read Monkey Business and Liar's Poker to prepare themselves for the culture and intrigue of investment banking, but those books were written on the perspective of junior people (associates/analysts). Perhaps Kree's book, titled "The Accidental Investment Banker," will be read by established bankers because they can relate to it more. We shall see.