I haven’t yet finished Anton Valukas’ 2,200-page report into Lehman, but I feel like I could have written it for him. The Chicago-based lawyer told me recently that he was greatly looking forward to my new book The Devil’s Casino: Friendship, Betrayal, and the High Stakes Games Inside Lehman Brothers, just as I was looking […]

On Monday night, in response to my article in this month’s Vanity Fair on Lehman’s Desperate Housewives (which was an excerpt from my forthcoming book, The Devil’s Casino: Friendship, Betrayal and the High Stakes Games Played Inside Lehman Brothers), hundreds (literally) of Lehman’s former women executives anxiously listened into a conference phone call helmed by […]

New York has a new hero in the form of 32-year-old realtor Jason Haber, the guy who told Moammar Khadafy’s representatives that he would only find them a lavish Upper East Side New York abode, if they returned the convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to Scotland and the prison he was sentenced to for life. […]

Earlier today the White House put out a press release noting that President Obama spoke with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and expressed his “disappointment” over the Lockerbie affair. (In case anyone has been under a rock these past few weeks, Brown has been at the center of a controversy over allegations that the Scottish […]

Yesterday I wrote how Britain’s Sunday Telegraph claimed that Libya paid three doctors to give the Scottish government medical evidence that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, 57, the convicted Lockerbie killer had only two or three months to live, when in fact he may have more.
The British Mail on Sunday meanwhile queried America’s outrage […]

In Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, the British reporter, Andrew Alderson claims that Libya paid three doctors to give the Scottish government medical evidence that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, 57, the convicted Lockerbie killer had only two or three months to live.
In fact, other doctors, according to Alderson’s report, said in June that Megrahi who […]

A few weeks ago, in July, US families of the Lockerbie victims gathered in front of a TV screen in both the British embassy in Washington, DC and in the consulate in New York.
They were connected via video conference with Scottish justice minister Kenny MacAskill, who discussed with them both the options of prisoner transfer […]

I just received an email from a Madoff victim who is still reeling from the double-whammy of having watched his wealth vanish, and learning that the soft-spoken financier he considered a friend is in fact a crook – possibly it’s now been reported - with cancer. (Prison authorities deny this).
He wrote me: “I hope the […]

I have not yet finished David Wessel’s In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic - mostly because - full disclosure - I’m scribbling away on my own book: The Great Mistake: The Fall of Lehman Brothers and the Weekend That Changed The World for John F Wiley & Sons, due […]

Never let it be said that journalism doesn’t reap results!
Last week I wrote how Andres Piedrahita, 50, the major shareholder of Fairfield Greenwich, the feeder fund that lost $7 billion of investors’ money to Bernie Madoff, was summering on his new $30 million yacht, Oxygen. His publicist, Tom Mulligan insisted he was only on board […]

I have unwelcome news of Andres Piedrahita, the brash Columbian chief shareholder of Fairfield Greenwich, the investment group mostly owned by the Noel family, that gave half their money under management - 6.9 billion dollars- to Bernie Madoff, and yet who took one per cent of clients fees and twenty percent of their returns for […]

I have seldom been as relieved to read an article as one that appeared last week by New York Times writer Andrew Das. It began: “In the moments after I felt the pop in my left shoulder, the sensation I felt was not pain. It was panic. How exactly does a 40-year-old man explain to […]

The Russian businessman I was having a drink with lived in London. “I prefer London to New York right now; in London not everyone talks about their depleted bank balance; in New York everyone does,” he said. I agreed. But then a friend took me for a late dinner at a restaurant I’d never heard […]

Anyone who thinks Michelle Obama should use tea with the Queen as an experimental fashion platform is sadly deluded. I cannot believe some of the suggestions I am reading on this site.
Bare shoulders at Buckingham Palace during the day would be seen as a tremendous insult to our monarch.
Do Americans not realize that in Britain, […]

Details magazine has dictated that the sexiest woman on the planet is not Scarlett Johansson, or Gisele Bundchen, but Jennifer Aniston — who is 40.
Meanwhile, People magazine puts Italian actress Valerie Bertinelli, 48, in a bikini on its cover. Cindy Crawford, 43, is covered in soap suds in Allure.
There’s a celebration going on among all […]

My neighbor at dinner, a hedge-fund manager originally from Texas, was emphatic.
“If your only identity is in your job or your money then there is no point living in New York any more,” he said. “Anyone who thinks like that will leave.”
He had a point. This town seems to have become unhinged by the populist […]

These days it’s not just financial journalists who follow the movements of financiers. So, too, do the entertainment channels and press. Who could have predicted the day would come when OK! magazine would care what mode of transport Ken Lewis, Bank of America’s chief, uses? But according to the New York Times, these topics are […]

Following inquiries with locals in North Salem, I am happy to report that the ponies formerly stabled with Paul Greenwood, the alleged fraudster, are safe.
They were quickly moved and dispersed among other stables up and down the East Coast as Greenwood realized the net was closing in on him, according to local sources.
What no one […]

For all those worried about the hundred or so valuable show ponies stabled in North Salem by alleged fraudster Paul Greenwood and his wife Robin, let me give them an update - with hopefully another to come.
After Greenwood, 61, and his partner Stephen Walsh were arrested last month for allegedly siphoning off $500 million from […]

My English friend was worried. “I guess the next step is getting American-accent lessons,” she said over dinner the other night.
She is a peer of mine — we were at Cambridge together — and she has wound up in New York working in a senior position for an American bank on Wall Street. We frequently […]

New York’s latest financial criminal mastermind — and remember, we now have one a day being unveiled — is Paul Greenwood, 61, the bow-tied town governor of North Salem, New York’s horsey area. (Until recently it’s where the American Olympic equestrian team trained.)
Greenwood spent the alleged $500 million he is accused of siphoning off from […]

W hile New Yorkers suffered minor heart attacks on Friday, as banking stocks plunged to levels not seen since 1997 around 2pm - before turning around and climbing back up, LA, so friends told me, was basking in sunlight – and its own glory.
In fact even as he watched Bank of America’s share-price nosedive […]

New York Fashion Week is here - and, as Lela Rose, the Texan designer, says as she threads her needle and fits her models, “the show must go on.” “We need a little pick-me-up,” she emailed me, “and I actually think the upcoming week should be a way to move forward. That doesn’t mean we […]

T oday in a courtroom in South Carolina, Esther Elizabeth Reed’s fantasies finally ended. The 30-year-old brunette, who has spent eight of the past ten years on the run, often entering Ivy League schools under adopted fake identities, and evading cops with an extraordinary web of deception faces up to over four years in prison.
For […]

Another day, another one bites the dust. Friends everywhere are losing their jobs.
They’re bright. The New York Times described the growing ranks of the city’s unemployed as the new chic club in town. In part, this is because the people who are losing their jobs are the best and ergo the most expensive talent around. […]

“How much should a Wall Street CEO get paid?” The question got bandied around on Thursday night at dinner — by a bunch of Wall Street CEOs.
The question was the topic of the day following coverage of the extravagant ways of John Thain, former CEO of Merrill Lynch, who spent $1.2 million on his office […]

Every day turns up an astonishing new detail of the incredible story of Bernie Madoff and his $50-billion Ponzi scheme: aside from Obama’s inauguration, New York can talk of little else. And some of the new angles are very odd.
It’s just been reported that Bernie’s late mother, Sylvia, herself had stock-trading troubles. In 1963 the […]

Today prosecutors will make their case that Bernard Madoff should be jailed for violation of bail conditions. On Christmas Eve he mailed out trinkets worth more than $1 million to family members. His defense lawyer says Madoff had no idea he was doing anything wrong and that these items were sentimental. Prosecutors argue his act […]

I wish I could say that this holiday season has felt as cheerful as usual. But the emptiness in New York’s streets and stores both on December 24th and 26th merely amplified the depressing retail statistics. Eager sales assistants hawked their marked-down wares with an enthusiasm bordering on desperation. “I can hold any item for […]

“What recession?” shouted the front page of the New York Post last week, beside a picture of a blonde Swedish countess, Marie Douglas-David. Douglas-David, a former banker at Lazard, is divorcing her husband of six years, George David, former CEO of United Technologies and worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
She is reportedly refusing to accept […]

The mass hysteria surrounding Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50 billion ponzi scheme just leaves me with one question. When are we going to stop talking about Madoff’s “victims” or “foolish investors” and instead ask investors to take responsibility for their own actions? Madoff’s scheme was alluring. The guy was low-key and likeable; he […]

So, just when I’d hoped Sarah Palin would disappear from public consciousness, it seems we can’t get rid of the former Republican Vice Presidential candidate. She’s everywhere and so too is the ongoing controversy over her ultra-expensive Hollywood style “make-over”. This weekend New York Times revealed details of the $165,000 the Republican party had spent […]

On the eve of Thanksgiving, just as I was about to go on TV to deliver a light-hearted spoof about what life would be like for Barack Obama without his BlackBerry, the screens filled with the terrible footage of the attacks on Mumbai. While we watched the gruesome spectacle, ticker-tape warnings at the bottom of […]

Read the papers, watch TV – and we’re told a global recession of almost depression proportions is taking place, fragmenting the social hierarchy. At the bottom end there is tragic chaos represented by suicides and rising crime. At the top, there’s divorce, misery and a small effort to be less ostentatious about one’s wealth. […]

Given that it hasn’t yet got properly cold here, it feels like a very strange hallucination. In a naked effort to make us forget that we are living in an economic meltdown, the stores are full of Christmas trees and fairy lights. Their illusion makes you feel you are in some sort of dream world […]

I n January 1995, Veronica DeGruyter Beracasa de Uribe Hearst gave an intimate lunch for Diana, Princess of Wales, in her opulent apartment on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 66th Street. The Princess was in New York to give an award to the then editor of Harper’s Bazaar magazine and fellow Englishwoman, Liz Tilberis. […]

F or a moment last week, around midnight on Tuesday, we all went mad with joy. Mad in a way I’ve never seen or heard. As I went to bed around 4am I could still hear the screams from people in the street: “We did it.” Emails came in from friends the next day “I’m […]

F or a moment last week, around midnight on Tuesday, we all went mad with joy. Mad in a way I’ve never seen or heard. As I went to bed around 4am I could still hear the screams from people in the street: “We did it!” Emails came in from friends the next day: “I’m […]

If you weren’t in Times Square tonight, the only place to be was downtown in the West Village at Gavin Brown’s gallery for an installation by Jonathon Horowitz called Obama ‘08.
Hundreds of artists, including Piotr Uklanski and Elizabeth Peyton along with collector Peter Brant, model Jessica Joffe and one of the Olsen twins crammed into […]

When I first heard of of the passing of Madelyn Dunham, 86, grandmother of Barack Obama, my reaction was like that of my friends: “Oh no. How tragic she missed this by just a few hours: the likely culmination of an historic journey to the Presidential nomination by her own flesh and blood.”
This morning’s press […]

We’re finally here: tomorrow is Election Day. You could cut the tension with a knife. Many of my friends have been stumping in swing states for Obama over the weekend, terrified that at the last moment a “Bradley effect” could rob him of the victory the polls predict. I don’t think this will happen. H […]

I love the concept of the “Smash Shack” the store opened in San Diego, where according to CBS News, victims of the credit crisis are taking out their frustrations by buying fragile objects and hurling them against the wall.
I haven’t got to that place mentally myself. But nonetheless I think the “Smash Shack’s” basic […]

The other evening I went as a guest of friends to a dinner to raise money for a hospital in New York. This was the same hospital where my twins were prematurely born. On entering this world they weighed only 2lb and 3lb respectively, but went on to thrive. So I was glad to be […]

B ack before the fall of Lehman Brothers and the global economic collapse, I had a dirty little secret: my weekly addiction to the TV series Gossip Girl, about the absurdly rarefied lives of a fictional group of wealthy New York teenagers. Now ratings for the show are soaring: more than ever, people want cheap […]

“How poor are you?” That’s what formerly rich guys ranging from hedge-fund kings and tech pioneers to bankers and trust-fund heirs are now asking each other at dinners around town.
This group doesn’t care who ends up buying Wachovia. That’s all background news; just one more sorry piece of detail in the carnage of a lost […]

L ast week saw not just the initial failure of Hank Paulson’s bail-out bill but also the death of the $800 bottle of wine.
“It’s just not OK to have that on your expenses at a time like this,” one restaurateur says he has been told by banker clients. In this cut-throat world of mergers and […]

Alberto Vilar once promised so many millions to both New York’s Metropolitan Opera and London’s Royal Opera House that his name was engraved in both places — only to be removed in 2005, when prosecutors charged him with stealing most of his fortune.
But the former financier said that what has hurt him most in the […]

“I understand why the British are livid,” said a friend (American) who is high up at Lehman. My friend was talking about the Sunday front page headlines – screaming that a $2.5 billion bonus pot was being retained – from the English bankruptcy court - by Barclays to pay eight US senior executives who […]

The story I’d been hearing for some time has finally emerged in the mainstream media: namely that Hillary Clinton, her husband, Bill, and many of her major financial supporters, known as “bundlers” are so livid at what they see as underhanded — I’ve even heard it called “vindictive” — play by the Obama team, that […]

F riday saw a brilliant move by John McCain in choosing Sarah Palin, the 44-year-old governor of Alaska, to be his running-mate. Theoretically, if you look at the polls which had McCain close to the Obama-Biden ticket before this announcement, his appointment of Palin ought to make up for all his deficiencies. Palin is young. […]

Like 37 million American viewers last Wednesday night, I sat transfixed as I watched the previously unknown figure of Sarah Palin turn herself into the angel of the Republican party. But the burning issue in my mind was: what is a hockey mom? OK: I am British, and I’ve never touched an ice hockey stick. […]

T he phone has rung off the hook all weekend. “Are you OK?” I’ve asked friends whose husbands have been at Lehman Brothers. No, of course they are not. They just saw everything they’ve worked for go down the drain. A lunch barbecue with a Lehman executive who has been there 16 years was cancelled. […]

Like 37 million Americans last Wednesday night, I sat transfixed as I watched the previously unknown figure of Sarah Palin turn herself into the angel of the Republican party. But the burning issue in my mind was: what is a hockey mom?
As a New York mother, I don’t believe the subject has ever come up […]

In New York, the pre-movie hype about Woody Allen’s latest movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, had all been about the kiss between Penélope Cruz, onscreen and real-life girlfriend of male lead Javier Bardem, and America’s modern version of Marilyn Monroe, Scarlett Johansson.
So as I shovelled down popcorn at the New York premiere last week I was […]

L ast week, in the wake of the near-implosion of mortgage insurer Fannie Mae, and with rumors swirling about the fate of Lehman Brothers, where the stock has plummeted 70 percent, I got an email from a friend. Instead of his usual pithy jokes — he sent me his investment fund’s second quarter report.
He wrote:
“Even […]