Pershing Square

Pershing Square

I am writing this story for my pal Larry, who will be worried as hell for the next 1,300 or so words that I am going to say something in writing and that it will be put onto the internet, which is immutable as an NFT, and that it will be something that will stick to his foot like a random piece of dirty chewing gum. It gets me chuckling inside just to think of that. Back in my days at Bear Stearns there were three guys who formed my inner-most team. It was actually more than that. We were good friends even though every management handbook will tell you that managers should not “make friends” with their subordinates because there is likely to come a time when objectivity is required and that may get compromised due to a friendship. I don’t think I ever took that advice at any time during my career and while there may have been some compromises at some point in time over a forty-five years career, my management style was simply more personable with my team than it seemed to be with most management teams. I am sure there were some who worked for me along the way that either didn’t like that aspect or some of my superiors who thought it was unwise and a flaw, it seemed to work a lot more than it created problems and it was probably the only way I knew how to function. The good news is that most of my team members still remember our time together fondly, regardless of our relative success or failure at any stage (though success is always easier to share pride in. So, these three guys were and are my friends.

I haven’t worked with them for fourteen years now and that’s a long time. One of them I first met in 1992, so thirty years ago. That is Greg and he worked in my Department at Bankers Trust in Retirement Services and then resurfaced to work with me again in 2002 on a venture we worked to get funded. He was always the guy I felt operated most like I operated for better or worse, and was always a high potential performer second to none. Then there is Roger. I met Roger in 1997 when his firm was acquired by Bankers Trust. He connected with me in my work with CARE and as a three-Ivy graduate (Dartmouth undergrad, Columbia MIA, Harvard MBA) he was and is the most patrician Wall Street guy I have ever known well. I have known lots and lots of Ivy grads on Wall Street, but none who moved in the global and U.S. marketplace with the ease and finesse that Roger did. Almost every situation we ever encountered we could always count on Roger to know someone important from some phase of his life, education or work life. Roger lives on Fifth Avenue to this day and is still the most patrician guy I know well. He is also one of the best and nicest men I have ever met. I always felt that, as I was regularly told by people, he may be too nice for Wall Street.

And then there is Larry. I met Larry in 2003 when I joined Bear Stearns. He was a company lawyer, specifically a 40-Act specialist or investment management legal eagle, who worked for the General Counsel at Bear and was assigned to work on issues with our Bear Stearns Asset Management crew that I was reassembling as the newly-minted CEO of that arm of the firm. I brought Greg on board to run the hedge fund arena and Roger to run the private equity arena. In both cases there was some two-step finagling to be done within the staunchly BEAR culture to maneuver them into position, but they both trusted me enough to know that I would get them to where they needed to be in good order (that doesn’t mean as quickly as they liked, but hey both did get there). Larry became my consiglieri in the fashion or Robert Duvall in The Godfather series. Asset management, especially housed in a big broker/dealer like Bear and perhaps even more so in a nasty, rough-and-tumble mud-wrestling shop like Bear needs lots of lawyering and compliance. I needed a consiglieri and Larry enjoyed the notoriety and access it gave him. Larry was always very conservative and righteous in his advice on legal and regulatory issues, which I also appreciated. Larry is now a senior partner in a major consulting practice in the Wealth Management area. I trusted the ethical orientation of all three of these guys, which is why we probably all became so friendly.

Then again, they say that friendships forged in the crucible of crisis also make the strongest bonds. And boy, did we have enough crises to keep things bonding and bonding, culminating in the “100-foot wave” of the 2007 subprime/CDO tsunami that crashed onto what I called our first bungalow on the beach to get hit by the wave. The lint was that we went through a lot together in 2007 and for three of us, we had gone through a lot together once before in 2003. It all sort of culminated at the time of my wedding to Kim in March, 2007, when these three guys formed a trio to sing an original set of lyrics sung to the tune of My Girl by The Temptations and appropriately named for the occasion, My Grogg. Understand that at this extravaganza on the top floor of the Puck Building in Soho (the same place where When Harry Met Sally climaxed), every Broadway or Cabaret performer that knew Kim was scheduled to perform, so it was quite a daring feat for these three amateurs (technically Roger had been part of the Hasty Pudding Club at Harvard) to perform on that night at that venue. That set them in stone as three of my best friends and certainly my crew from Bear for all time.

As I was heading to NYC for this latest kids Holiday visit, I realized I had a few free time slots and I happened to get a note from Roger with a business question regarding an investment we are both in. So, I set up a date for breakfast with Roger at a popular and conveniently-located restaurant under the viaduct on 42 Street across from Grand Central. It’s a spot many New Yorkers use for just this purpose. I then got Larry looped in and then Greg. We had reconvened the 1960 Yankees though I will refuse to say who was Mantle, Maris, Yogi or PeeWee.

We started gathering at 9:30 and didn’t finish until 12:30. And here’s the thing, the three of us agreed on only one thing…that we had not laughed so much for fourteen years. I had the best time I can remember with everyone telling stories about our successes and failures, about the funny people we knew and the Uber-scary people we knew. It was a hoot and I will forever remember Pershing Square as the place where I laughed my ass off for three hours and gave the biggest tip for breakfast I have ever given (well, actually, I made the guys all cough up $20 and gave her $60, which they all noted I took full credit for…)