Frank Quattrone's Past Catching Up?. There's something hilarious, in a sick kind of way, about Credit Suisse First Boston's move to put on leave Frank... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
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The odor surrounding Quattrone has been growing for years. Consider his notorious stock-spinning operation, known as "Friends of Frank" (part of a detailed Fortune magazine story). True, everyone was doing it at the time, another example of how insiders enriched themselves at the expense of everyone else during the bubble. But Quattrone's tech group at CSFB took things even further.
Earlier this year CSFB paid $100 million to settle a kickback case. The bank wasn't happy enough with its already huge fees generated from technology public offerings, especially in the era when prices would soar the first day of trading. So CSFB allocated IPO shares to some hedge funds on the condition that they kick back outrageously large commissions on their trades, according to documents filed with the SEC settlement. Let's see. Make billions, pay a hundred million in fines. Sounds like good business to me.
I find myself agreeing with Adam Lashinsky's commentary this morning, in which he says Quattrone's troubles are "the beginning of the end of these scandal-ridden times. That's because Quattrone is bigger than Blodget. And he's bigger than Grubman. Symbolically, he's the big fish, as big to this era's story as Michael Milken was to his."
Big fish, scum-covered pond.
11:45:10 PM 
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