OT:
It is my belief that there is a strong political component to "justice". Take CMKX. Let's imagine the absolute worst that you can about Mr. Casavant. Let's suppose that all those Fifth Amendment invocations hide really bad things. Let's say that he issued himself stock wantonly, never kept any books, and never pursued any operations for the business. How much jail time do you think he'd get? A year? Wouldn't you be amazed if he got three years?
By contrast, let's look at Sam Waksal. What did he do wrong at Imclone? One case of insider trading. And all the while he built a strong company and saved thousands of people's lives. So the judge, jury, prosecution, and media weighed the good with the bad, and what did they give him? Seven years.
The difference between Mr. Waksal and Mr. Casavant is that Mr. Waksal was a big public figure who became the poster child for corporate excess at a time when people had lost a lot of money and were looking for scapegoats. Mr. Casavant is a nobody who may well have done much, much worse, but no one cares. So, if he's guilty of anything, he'll get off comparatively easy.
Returning to our original topic, my belief is that the brokers now realize how much anger is directed at them. Not only that, but when they have ineptly tried to play tough (a la Worldcom and Perelman) they have gotten REALLY nailed. So now their counsel does a quick assessment: a) I can advocate playing hardball, and, if it doesn't work, risk getting sued by my rich client (a la Morgan Stanley in Perelman), or b) I can advocate paying up and putting this behind them. Not surprisingly we are in the paying-up era--big-time.
This is a whole other matter from whether there was any real culpability on the banks' part with Enron.
what are your opinions as to the Citigroup payout to the Enron shareholders?
After their Worldcom debacle I think they'll pay anything. Sandy Weill is out of day-to-day operations; Prince just wants to put all this crap behind him.
AI
