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Old 01-02-2012, 11:17 PM   #1
tw
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Attitudes that Many on Wall Street would call Acceptable

We finally know why HP so properly canned their president Mark Hurd. From ABC News on 30 Dec 2011:
Quote:
Hewlett-Packard Former CEO Mark Hurd Sex Harassment Scandal Detailed in Letter

A letter describing allegations of sexual harassment by former Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd has surfaced, claiming that the married Hurd repeatedly pressured a female contractor for sex and bragged about his popularity with “many” women, including Sheryl Crow.

Hurd allegedly showed off his checking-account balance of over $1 million to impress the contractor, Jodie Fisher, who made the allegations of harassment.

Fisher hosted executive summit events for HP, earning $30,000. The letter written by her celebrity attorney Gloria Allred was obtained by the media late Thursday after the Delaware Supreme Court unsealed it. Hurd’s lawyers tried to keep the letter confidential but the court ruled the attorneys did not show that disclosing it would violate California’s privacy rights.
Meanwhile Larry Ellison of Oracle decided this was acceptable. And hired Hurd as a co-president.
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Old 01-03-2012, 12:18 AM   #2
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Maybe Larry feels encouraged knowing the Hurd is a player and thinks he may be lucky
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Old 01-04-2012, 08:13 PM   #3
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Either that or Larry was impressed with his checking account.
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Old 01-04-2012, 09:21 PM   #4
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Originally Posted by footfootfoot View Post
Maybe Larry feels encouraged knowing the Hurd is a player and thinks he may get lucky
Fixed that for ya.
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Old 03-14-2012, 08:50 AM   #5
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I didn't really know where to put this but....

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TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.

It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.

These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.

When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.

My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.

I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/op...ewanted=1&_r=1
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Old 03-14-2012, 10:05 AM   #6
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Quote:
TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs
.
Also his last day at work... period.
No one will hire him after putting his name on such an public piece.

But then, it is sad that workplaces can change that way,
and that pride in work gets swallowed by the $-monsters.

I've also seen it happen, not in banking, but in health care.
Some young people go into medicine to make lots of $, but I think most do not.
But patient care and quality of research are the first easy victims of the MBA's.
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Old 03-14-2012, 11:04 AM   #7
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I've written a similar piece about every place I've ever worked and left, but the Times has not taken an interest.

My pieces would read something like this
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Old 03-14-2012, 05:07 PM   #8
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Originally Posted by Lamplighter View Post
.
Also his last day at work... period.
No one will hire him after putting his name on such an public piece.
I'd hire him. In fact, I don't think he'll have any trouble getting a job -- or going off on his own and bringing a lot of clients over.
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Old 03-14-2012, 07:40 PM   #9
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Ho hum. Nothing new. All that is expected and normal when profits are the purpose of the company or organization. As was true with Fiorina in HP. Or Whitmore or Perez in Eastman Kodak. Allen of AT&T. Surma of US Steel. Wagoner and Roger Smith of GM. Scully and Splndler of Apple. Nardelli in Home Depot and Chrysler. Henry Ford or Jacque Nasser in Ford. Cannavino and Akers in IBM. Frazier of Merek. Corzine from Goldman Sach who later did nothing as NJ Governor and then raided customer's investment accounts to cover up his losses in derivatives.

Well proven is why financial oganizations can never be over regulated. Goes right the conflict between Lookout and me. I defined the problem. He took offense because he was part of the problem. A conflict and anger that he has recently confirmed again. Because only the product is important. Profits are only a metric; clearly not the purpose.

Very little difference exists between a company that believe profits are its purpose. And mafisos families, stock brokers, communist governments, dictatorships, and loan sharks. In every case, the purpose of that organization is to enrich themselves. Screw the customer, productivity, employees, the law, or the principles that made America great. One need only view Cheney to appreciate an attitude that creates corruption. That even justified torture.

Only reason that posted article is shocking: some are still so naive as to not realize why this recession even exists. Why those employees have that routine attitude promoted by Wall Street. Why the rich are getting richer at the expense of all others. They actually think their wealth and income is more important than anything else. More important than America. They are corrupt. They have no idea what makes a productive business. Would not know innovation if it was stuck up their nose. And don’t care.

Ivan Boesky publically admits he had that same corrupt attitude. His corruption was the basis for Gordon Gekko. Jack Abramoff of the famous K Street scandal now openly admits how corrupt he once was. That corruption was so routine that he did not even know his attitude was corrupt.

We are nothing more than dumb sheep to be fleeced. Those I went to school with who later became those stock brokers were typically some of the poorest students. But then even criminal minds are not known for their intelligence.

His NY Times article only says why the California energy crisis was created. Why those criminals went unprosecuted. Why it took humiliation from the state of Oklahoma before George Jr would prosecute Enron. But then George Jr was also educated by the same corrupt philosophies.

The purpose of any company is its product. For profit and non-profits alike. An honest executive must even know how to use the product because that is their #1 purpose. To advance mankind. To provide customers with better products. To do what William Edward Deming so bluntly defined. Employees in GS could not even bother to know what products were. Their only purpose was to enrich themselves – which is routinely advocated on a Wall Street that cannot invest in innovation and productive businesses. Who were so corrupt as to even finance Eastman Kodak’s buggy whip business.

Why is Deming an enemy of business schools? Business schools created those examples in Goldman Sachs. Legalized corruption. People so pathetically immoral as to think the purpose of a company is only its profits. The article only demonstrates what everyone here should have known years ago.

Obviously Greg Smith is so appalled at what is normal and acceptable business practices as to endanger any future employment. To remind every reader how corrupt Wall Street is. But then everyone in the Cellar should know that by now. Once upon a time, Wall Street was how innovation got financed to create great American institutions. Now it is where some of the greatest criminal types pinch $millions at the expense of all other Americans. Because only the most corrupt would think the purpose of a business is profits. Notice how many above are corrupt and therefore enriched.

Last edited by tw; 03-14-2012 at 07:46 PM.
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Old 03-14-2012, 10:20 PM   #10
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^^^Ho hum. Nothing new.^^^

Quote:
Goes right the conflict between Lookout and me.
That threads almost ready for the 4 year bump.
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Old 03-14-2012, 11:07 PM   #11
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^^^Ho hum. Nothing new.^^^
As usual, another post that says nothing. Classicman - ever since you were fired, you have become particularly nasty.
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Old 03-14-2012, 11:12 PM   #12
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As usual, another post that says nothing
Either you are referring toy your own post or you missed the link I provided with the historical content from your statement.
Just tryin to help.

Quote:
ever since you were fired, you have become particularly nasty.
Actually I am most pleased not to work for that tyrant any longer.
There are other issues, but that isn't one of them.


By the way - you never thanked me for correcting your historically inaccurate post about Nixon and the Watergate scandal.
No prob buddy. I got yer back.
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Old 03-14-2012, 11:35 PM   #13
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By the way - you never thanked me for correcting your historically inaccurate post about Nixon and the Watergate scandal.
If the Chief Justice name was relevant, then you would have provided it. Correct. Earl Warren was not the Chief Justice. It was Warren Burger. Does not change what was relevant meaning it was not worthy of discussion.

Last edited by tw; 03-14-2012 at 11:44 PM.
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Old 03-14-2012, 11:40 PM   #14
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If the Chief Justice name was relevant, then you would have provided the name.
Then why did you provide the wrong one in the first place?
That is not a logical excuse.

But its ok pal. No worries.
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Old 03-14-2012, 11:46 PM   #15
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Then why did you provide the wrong one in the first place?
For the same reason you did not bother to provide the correct Warren.
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