How Wall Street’s Bankers Survived Sandy

As a side note:

Robert M. Parker, Jr. is a …

… better watch ‘Mondovino’, an interesting documentary, to see for yourself what he and his ‘friends’ really are.

Here is the (lousy) trailer of an otherwise great documentary:

@Amazon.com: Mondovino

@Amazon.de: Mondovino – Die Wahrheit liegt im Wein

– How Wall Street’s Bankers Survived Sandy (ZeroHedge, Oct 31, 2012):

For millions of common people in New York and New Jersey, Sandy has been a historic disaster, with leaving ruined, homeless or forced to live in the dark and cold indefinitely. Sandy was a historic event for the Wall Streeters (a term used loosely as many of them reside in midtown or in Connecticut) among us too. And now, courtesy of Bloomberg’s Max Abelson, we see how some of them managed to (just barely) scrape through…

Kilimanjaro Capital:

“I had to go to the wine cellar and find a good bottle of wine and drink it before it goes bad,” Murry Stegelmann, 50, a founder of investment-management firm Kilimanjaro Advisors LLC, wrote in an e-mail after he lost power at 6 p.m. on Oct. 29 in Darien, Connecticut.

The bottle he chose, a 2005 Chateau Margaux, was given 98 points by wine critic Robert Parker and is on sale at the Westchester Wine Warehouse for $999.99.

“Outstanding,” Stegelmann said. He started the day with green tea at Starbucks, talking with neighbors about the New York Yankees’ future and moving boats to the parking lot of Darien’s Middlesex Middle School.

Credit Suisse:

Wilson Ervin, a senior adviser to Credit Suisse Group AG CEO Brady Dougan and a former chief risk officer at the Zurich- based bank, started the work week at 9 a.m. at the Hudson River, just north of Battery Park City, watching the weather worsen with his two daughters.

“The Hudson had some enormous whitecaps and looked a bit like a surfing-movie set from Hawaii,” he said in an interview. “The kids think that’s pretty cool.”

Ervin, 52, wearing black water-repellent pants and a yellow raincoat, went to the bank’s office at 11 Madison Ave. afterward to work on evaluations of managing directors and financial regulation. He ate a lunch of Raisin Bran, coffee and a banana from the 7-Eleven downstairs, he said.

Goldman Sachs:

Pablo Salame, 46, one of three Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) executives who oversee sales and trading, ate better. He posted a picture of 21 pieces of sushi on a Twitter account in his name on Oct. 29. “Only in NYC, Seamless Sandy sushi delivery in TriBeCa, Monday 730 pm,” the post said.

Morgan Stanley:

Morgan Stanley’s Gorman worked from the firm’s Times Square headquarters until mid-afternoon on Oct. 29, making him one of the last people to leave the building hours before Sandy made landfall, according to a person who works with him. He returned to the office the next day wearing blue jeans for the first time since he became CEO in 2010, the person said.

Sandy struck New York 13 days after Citigroup Inc. (C) directors ousted CEO Vikram Pandit and replaced him with Michael Corbat. The new boss, 52, spent time before the storm hit at the bank’s 399 Park Ave. “command center,” where he was briefed by senior managers, according to Shannon Bell, a spokeswoman.

The bank’s offices at 111 Wall St. were damaged that night when the storm battered lower Manhattan.

“The building experienced severe flooding and will be out of commission for several weeks,” Corbat wrote in a memo to employees yesterday.

WL Ross:

Wilbur Ross, who built a company from distressed U.S. coal assets and sold it last year for $3.4 billion, said on Oct. 29 that he’s staying out of New York for the week.

“I was scheduled to come back Sunday night, and I decided not to, because everything during the week would be canceled anyway,” said Ross, chairman of private-equity firm WL Ross & Co. “I’m stuck in Palm Beach.”

He stayed in touch with colleagues using a fax machine along with phone and e-mail. His Florida home includes a painting by Rene Magritte of petrified blue apples, an image that is also depicted on a custom-made Van Cleef & Arpels watch he owns, he told Bloomberg News this year.

AIG:

Thomas Russo, 68, American International Group Inc.’s general counsel, said he planned to work from home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where he has a view of Central Park, through at least Nov. 1.

“Central Park looks the same as it always does at this time of year, an array of colors giving pleasure to the eye and peace to the mind,” the former chief legal officer for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. said after the storm.

Schottenfeld:

Sean Gambino, who trades consumer stocks for Schottenfeld Group LLC, said his South Street Seaport neighborhood was “ruined” by a storm surge. He wrote instant messages because his phone wasn’t working.

“I now know what people feel like when you see them on TV and see their whole worlds just wiped away,” Gambino wrote. “Cars were just all over.”

His apartment’s lobby and basement were flooded.

“Think Katrina, but now it’s us,” he said.

So now you know. And don’t forget: in an absolute catastrophe, it’s bankers, women and children first.