Real Losses Have Nothing to Do With Money (NYTimes, 10/21/07)

October 21, 2007
Dealbook
Real Losses Have Nothing to Do With Money
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
SEVEN years ago, I received a call on a Sunday afternoon from Donald Meltzer, then the co-head of mergers and acquisitions at what was then Credit Suisse First Boston. I was hoping that he was calling with news about a deal. Instead, his voice cracked as he told me that Gordon A. Rich, a 43-year-old star at the firm, had died in a car accident the night before.
A lump rose in my throat. I had known Mr. Rich well — to friends he was known as Gordo. At his funeral, an overflowing room of hardened Masters of the Universe — the biggest names in the business — turned to mush; they didn’t just cry, they bawled. I sobbed, too.
Two weeks ago, I got a similar call. This time, Douglas Braunstein, the head of investment banking at JPMorgan Chase, called to tell me about another death, of someone else I knew well: Shane Wallace, a 38-year-old telecommunications banker at JPMorgan Chase. Mr. Wallace had been fighting brain cancer for more than a year.
Over the next 24 hours, I received more than a dozen other Kleenex-filled calls from Wall Street titans to commiserate about Mr. Wallace. Each time I choked up. Nobody talked about deal making or stock prices; they talked about his life, his family and his love of fishing.
And on Friday, I got an early-morning call that James M. Allwin, a 54-year-old former Morgan Stanley banker who was president of Aetos Capital, had died. Another good person, struck down too early.
I tell these stories not to be sappy, but because most Sundays this column examines the ups and downs of Wall Street. Usually, it is inspired by the news of the week, and that means the human beings behind the headlines can sometimes become lost.
So I thought it was worth taking the time to point out that the “titans of finance” don’t wear their suspenders 24 hours a day (except when they pull all-nighters). The mythical table-pounding banker for whom dollars and deals trump all else is, more often than not, exactly that: mythical. And the suspender-wearing thing is mythical, too — or at least probably out of fashion.
On Thursday night, I was reminded of those myths when I attended an annual memorial dinner for Mr. Rich, an event that always brings out some of the biggest names on Wall Street. Mr. Rich was the antithesis of the Gordon Gekko archetype and, even seven years after his death, he still commands a special loyalty.
In attendance was Joseph R. Perella, who founded First Boston’s mergers and acquisitions group in the 1970s; Charles G. Ward III, the president of Lazard; Raymond McGuire, co-head of Citigroup’s investment bank; Mr. Braunstein; and dozens of Credit Suisse colleagues.
The group, of about 175 people, has been getting together for the last five years to celebrate the life of Mr. Rich and to raise money for a scholarship fund they started in his name. It has become like a family reunion for the close-knit fraternity of merger specialists. Virtually everybody either once worked with or across the negotiating table from Mr. Rich.
And everyone was his friend. That’s a rarity on Wall Street; Mr. Rich had a Clintonesque ability to make anyone feel like the most important person in the room.
Mr. Rich commands this almost Pied Piper-like loyalty because he was the last person you would expect to find on Wall Street. Sure, he made millions of dollars. He made a cameo appearance in “Barbarians at the Gate,” the book that chronicled the battle for RJR Nabisco.
But he was a blue-collar investment banker. He was in on the joke; he regularly used to laugh about how he was overpaid. He was a prankster who lived for his family, cooking and the Yankees — an irreverent man shot through with personality who might actually have a tough time getting a job in finance today.
HIS former colleagues started the Gordon A. Rich Memorial Fund to help pay college tuition for needy students who are the sons or daughters of secretaries, janitors and other working-class members of the financial services industry. It reflects Mr. Rich’s own priorities — he often enjoyed gossiping with his staff more than his clients.
The memorial group has raised about $4 million since it started the scholarships. It helps send four new needy students to college annually, providing each of them with a $12,500 stipend. (Surprisingly, the foundation has too few applicants, so if you are reading this and you know someone who qualifies, tell them to apply.)
It may be sad that what humanizes bankers and brings Wall Street together the most is death, especially of people still young and in their prime. At Mr. Wallace’s funeral, it wasn’t just his colleagues in attendance. All his competitors were there, too.
Mr. Wallace received a diagnosis of brain cancer a year ago. It was amazing to watch an institution like JPMorgan, and all of his clients — he worked for MCI on its sale to Verizon — rally around one of its rising stars when he was falling. He drifted in and out of the office for the last year, working on the $27 billion buyout of Alltel until nearly the very end.
Shane Wallace may have been a deal devotee, but like some others on Wall Street, he was hardly in it just for the deal.
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