A Kinder, Gentler Clawback??
The image of former Merrill Lynch boss (and 740 Park penthouse owner) John Thain‘s wife asking for a plain paper bag when she went shopping at Hermès not long ago — and then being ridiculed for it — highlights the disconnect between the media’s “the sky is falling” reporting on the economy and the real […]
Book-Banning Stores Go Bye-bye
No one wants to see a store close — any store, especially a book store, and especially now — but there may be an element of karma in yesterday’s announcement of the closing of almost a third of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s two dozen retail stores. For the last several years, the Met’s stores […]
Cuomo vs. Thain
Dealbook reveals that NY AG Andrew Cuomo is not taking no for an answer from 740 Park penthouse owner John Thain.
Rogues’ Release: The Morning After
Fashion Week Daily revealed on Friday (above) that the publication date of Rogues’ Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money That Made the Metropolitan Museum has been advanced a week to May 5, 2009. That’s the morning after the Costume Institute’s annual gala at the museum (aka The Party of the Year […]
My Wife on Desperate Housewives
A sweater from Bibelot, the steamin’ hot line designed by my wife Barbara Hodes, appeared on the luscious Teri Hatcher on Desperate Housewives on Sunday. Watch the clip, above. She’s the one who keeps her sweater on.
There is such a thing as “Too Many Trophies”
And suddenly there is only one 740 Park apartment on the market —Serena Boardman of Sothebys’ listing of the apartment (4/5C) formerly occupied by the late Randolph and June Speight. Aging I-banker Peter Huang‘s duplex next door (4/5D), which had been listed at $38 million (maintenance $10,574), is not (despite reports here and elsewhere) in […]
Rate-Jacked
The story on rate-jacking in today’s New York Post struck home because it just happened to me. Citibank used some of its government bailout money to send me a letter raising the effective annual percentage rate on my Visa card almost 50% higher than it had been, and informed me that unless I accepted the […]
I’ve Got a Little List
In today’s New York magazine, Beth Landman looks at vacancies, real and imagined, at 740 Park Avenue. Lucky for those dying to live there, though the list one broker keeps of aging widows in the building is now down to one name, the owners of once-hot hedge funds and executives of on-the-dole banks are re-filling […]
What, Me Ponzi?
In a post from last month that I just caught up with, the blog Zero Hedge hints that another Bernie-Madoff-style tempest may be brewing in the teapot that is 740 Park. “A notable figure in the HF [hedge fund] community, who shall remain nameless but who has been rumored to himself have certain dabblings in […]
Midnight Express
The Turkish museum director who played inside man in the theft of two items from a famous looted treasure has been sentenced to thirteen years in prison. The Lydian Hoard was discovered in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in the early 1970s after it was looted from a tomb dating to the era of […]