America's "Largest Minority-Owned And Operated Investment Bank" Shuts Down
Solyndra, Ener1, and now Kaufman Bros - The current economy may not be very good at creating jobs, even minority-focused ones, but its track record in inverse job creation is rapidly becoming second to none. Bloomberg reports that "Kaufman Bros. LP, the minority-owned investment bank that helped unwind U.S. stakes in bailed-out financial companies, ceased operations as of yesterday, according to a notice posted on its website. Chief Executive Officer Benny Lorenzo told employees that New York-based Kaufman was closing immediately in a meeting yesterday after trading closed, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Neither Lorenzo nor Chief Financial Officer Gerard Durkin returned messages left on their office and mobile phones yesterday and today." More amusing is the following description: "The company, which also has offices in San Francisco, said it was sought out by institutional investors, hedge funds and government agencies to help meet diversity goals." No comment. The closure notice can be found on the company's website. And so another bank bites the dust. Many more coming.
More:
Kaufman was founded in 1995 and billed itself as “the country’s largest minority-owned and operated investment banking and advisory firm” focused on technology, media, telecommunications, green technology and health care. The firm said in June that it helped advisory clients raise more than $50 billion since 1999.
The company, which also has offices in San Francisco, said it was sought out by institutional investors, hedge funds and government agencies to help meet diversity goals. Kaufman’s website said the firm participated in public offerings of Citigroup Inc. and American International Group Inc. as the U.S. Treasury Department disposed of stakes accumulated when it bailed out the firms during the financial crisis.
Lorenzo was born in the Dominican Republic and holds degrees from Cornell University and Harvard Business School, according to a company statement. He acquired a majority stake in March 2009 and became chairman and CEO in June of that year, according to the firm. Co-founder Craig Kaufman ceded those titles and became a managing director with co-founder Robert Kaufman, the firm said. Craig Kaufman didn’t respond to a message left at his office.
And here is why bank earnings in Q1 are going to be the worst yet:
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One thing folks who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks know how to do - take the money and run.
Naw, they lost it all on Watermelon futures.
Another MF Global vaporization act? Can you say re-hypothecation?
There is the correct answer we were looking for. In ZH speak, that's "re-hypothecation, bitches" by the way.
You misspelled "bitches". It's "bitchez".
Affirmative action at its finest.
Yeah, get Corzine in there to clean up the mess! It must have been their special race-related privileges that caused them to fail. Fucking simple minded clowns.
no doubt...a lot of closet Klansmen hanging around ZH just waiting for the opportunity to reveal how much of a fucking backward ass redneck at heart they really are...
They aren't closet Klansmen... at best they wear the Man-Burka...
Kaufman... hmmm...what kind of name is that?
I think it's the owner's last name. I wouldn't think it is wise to use Kaufman as a first name.
DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH. OK?
Don't argue against this or you will be branded a RAYCISS.
The company failed because of WHITE PEOPLE. Just like Detroit.
https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/national-iqs-calculated-and-validated.pdf
What is interesting is figuring out what +3 standard deviations gets you...
I remember back when I was a younger lad and had received a mail solicitation from this firm following a +25 point year. I have no idea how they managed to get minority ownership, must have been some hilariously complicated finagling, because the dudes on the flier looked to be of somewhat mysterious descent, either Albanian/Southern European or Middle Eastern. I guess that's potentially a different ethnicity from "white", but they did look "kinda" white, with 3 piece suits and "badass" style sunglasses. I wish I still had it, it was a pretty fucking funny flier.
Wasn't Keynesian economics and calculus stolen from these people by whitey?
Did anyone care they were minority owned? Not when it came to giving them money...because in the end...they didnt.
Bye bye miss American Pie I rode my chevy to the levy but the levy was dry...it was being managed by a minority driven organization instead of an organization that hired competent minorities.
May show what the free market does when decisions are made based on race, creed, and color rather than viability of the idea.
Yep, just like Lehman brothers.
LEH failed quickly. This other company was propped up for probably a decade, just like every other minority-owned enterprise. Probably for its entire history. Entire minority ventures have lived off of AA setasides for their entire EXISTENCE.
The entire EDIFICE of the "black middle class" is propped up by a MOUNTAIN of government jobs and entire AGENCIES devoted to their hiring.
Did it EVER occur to any of you people that something was amiss at TSA that they have nothing but blacks at the airports? Or at the USPS or FNM/FRE? Entire agencies are devoted (there are others besides these) to the PURPOSE of employing black people.
Diversity is strength.
Ideas? I though capitalism was based upon the oppression of minorities by those evil straight, white, males. Nevermind those white males were fleeing poverty in Europe as serfs to come to America against all odds.
there is no slavery except black slavery
there is no holocaust except THE holocaust. Irish, Armenians, Ukrainians...didn't happen.
there is no racism except white racism
there are no races except black and white. there is never an asian kid with a white group on TV, nor a hispanic or an indian, despite these being larger populations worldwide (and even the US with hispanics) than blacks.
...or the actual qualifications of the applicant.
So... Which minorities were in charge of running...
AIG?
Bear Stearns?
Countrywide?
Wachovia?
General Motors?
Diversity is everywhere.
BTW, you forgot FNM
The only diversity we should be concerned with is winners vs losers.
There increasingly going out of business, the investment banks. I wouldn't be shocked to hear about some irregularities with this company.
Your avatar keeps screwing with my head.
Caught my eye too.
I demand regulations! this kind of avatars distorts the market of greens and reds! ;-)
CQTM
"Naw, they lost it all on Watermelon futures."
that hilarious...
now, try that joke out the next time u got a brotha n ur face and tell me how hard it was swallowing ur teeth while laughing...
bitch ass racist....
u mad bro? happy black history month!
No question, overt racism. None the less I still thought it was funny. Sometimes it doesn't hurt to laugh at yourself. Ease up Bro.
That quip was mild compared to what goes on here. Try taking issue with more vicious hate mongering. You won't have long to wait.
Are you saying that blacks can't control themselves? Now who is the racist?
fuck you
hey Tyler...i hope ur taking note of some n ur audience...
that's just fucking weak. You always cried to your fat ass bitchy mother when your dad told you no, didn't you?
if'n he really black, you know he ain't have no daddy around...mfer either ditched or got locked up or shot
hey Tyler.. don't. The Thought Police have no place in a free society.
I think the minority referenced here may have actually been...
Harvard MBA's
http://www.theweek.co.uk/business/24431/mba-letters-spell-financial-ruin-harvard
and out come the rednecks...is this thread about Nascar too?
Nascar makes money, doesn't it? Now how about you?
Surely the previous "stress tests" would have properly identified any weaknesses with these banks.
Don't tell me the stress tests were a fake......... </s>
Are you guys serious? How many banks with little or no minority ownership have failed and/or stolen trillions to survive in the last few years?
Well...When the ratio is 1000 to 1 against minority owned, the #'s would be a little skewed eh?
No Maxine Waters help here apparently
They served their purpose and know too much, it was only a matter of time(ing).
Disproportionality...look it up. It's how there are "more whites on welfare"
Kaufman don't sound like no brothers to me, if Jewish owned banks are considered mnority owned we're in a heap of shit.
Poor Andy Kaufman.
He went too soon.
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/cc038c770a/andy-kaufman-performs-mighty...
I guess the banks have had their "dead cat bounce" for the month...
"Diversity goals", wtf?
Is this a regulatory requirement?
Lets see...the loan modification program..do you think it has a minority requirement to it....I do
When Fannie and Freddie sell all of their houses in mass....do you think there will be a minority componant to leasing them...I do
you can bet all of these are new social programs...not what is stated
of course there are minority requirements!
Obama ordered the federal government to STOP HIRING WHITES! Hiring was ordered FROZEN while they "studied ways" to increase diversity!
Nevermind that the fed gov is ALREADY overpopulated by blacks compared to their share of the population and some gov agencies so egregiously so that you have to scratch your fkin chin.
If you expect civilization to erupt from people who cannot create it or even to be MAINTAINED by them, then you've been asleep for...ever.
Tyler is chumming, throwing bloody meat to the lions.
Holy shit this thread should be a trip.
I was just thinking the exact same thing! Also: wouldn't you love the be the guy who is carrying Benny Lorenzo's phone around today?
Trav777 is going to almost hate himself when he sees what he missed!
But I'm sure he'll find a way to work it off.
What the fuck, I have some fuel for the fire, lets stoke this bad boy.
At my instution of higher learning, we have the damnest time hiring and keeping minorities, even though I live in a city with a high minority population. This is because other Universities are willing to pay even more than us, and pay down payments on homes with special low rate mortgages. We can't and don't do this, though we do have rentals we will offer at reduced rates.
If the candidates are decent, they can literally write their own ticket. They will earn thousands more a year starting salary than non minorities, and they will often not even be required to teach the first year, and maybe teach one or two courses the second year. Others will be required to teach at least one course the first semester and a regular load thereafter.
We look racist because we do not have enough minority profs. Folks who work for us with less education who are minorities will be put into positions of high visibility, even when they are not qualified (on paper) to be there. Sometimes these folks do so much "service" in this regard that they are too tied up to do the normal things they should be doing to advance their careers (like publishing and research).
While this is not true of my Department, I have known of departments that will heavily "mentor" minority candidates to get them through the tenuring process. This means publishing with them so that they can gets some articles on their vita.
Some of the candidates don't need all this mentoring, I feel horrible for them that the world assumes that because of their race, they have their position, when in fact they are excellent, period, end of it.
Some of the candidates benefit from the extra mentoring and take off on their own and fly higher than they would have without it.
Some of the candidates know they are getting extra help and, here I go, (INCOMING, AHHHHHHH) not only feel entitled to it, but work less hard because they know they are going to get the "help" because of their minority status. There. I said it. I have heard this out of the mouths of a number of people. They really don't get how they look when they express these kinds of attitudes while they are interviewing.
I used to be a liberal who thought that it was more important to get minority candidates up there in front of students, to inspire them that they too could do anything they wanted in life. I used to think a little hook or crook was okay to do this.
I am coming to it that I was wrong, that social engineering is wrong.
But discrimination is wrong. People of color really have been systematically given the shaft because of their race. They truly do have access to fewer resources, on average, than others. They also have a culture that in many cases does not support success.
My question is, in an open free market, how does the discrimination issue get sorted out?
I wish I could upvote this more.
"upvote this more."
I pitched in!
Ms.
No easy answers.
But no matter how "optically unjust" a market solution is, it is better than the alternative.
Pay the damn reparations and then fuck it.
One cent payable two hundred years ago to each enslaved African lifetime prisoner-worker compounded monthly at the average rate of interest over the ensuing two centuries sounds minimally fair. How much would those payments be?
Sadly, short of truly evening up opportunity across society via, say, a minimum yearly income regardless of work status the whole thing looks like a fool's errand.
But it makes us feel virtuous to pretend to be trying to really address the problem and it definitely keeps the fires of divide and conquer burning.
Maybe paying kids for academic and other recognized achievements would be the most elegant solution. Fat chance of even that happening, though, of course.
Good thing my relatives came over in steerage from Ireland and Norway to the US between 1910 and 1920. With the required $25 in cash and passed a health check at Ellis Island so they would not be immediately shipped back. So I don't owe any slave reparation payments. The reparations bill should only go to those blueblood Mayflower descendants and other people whose ancestors immigrated to the US prior to 1865. Anyone arriving after 1865 could not possibly have owned or benefited from owning slaves. Which is likely way more than half the US population given that the big flood of immigrants came over between 1870 to 1920.
And Irish immigrants don't get a reparations bill regardless. The Irish were far less valuable than slaves. No investment value, and you could always get as many starving Irish as you needed from the next boatload arriving in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Why pay good money for a slave when you could get an Irishman for a pittance wage? You did not care if they died, and if they did not work you replaced them with a hungrier Irishman.
Hee Hee
I'm gonna opt out of reparations too
Some of my ancestors came here as indentured servants, others owned slaves. Still others were Native and dealt with rather harshly by Ol' Hickory.
I'll just pay myself, thanks.
Just for fun though...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFpdiwdGA_o&feature=youtube_gdata_player
There were chattel slaves in many areas of the country well into the mid 1900s... [obviously not in the more urban areas]... so the whole, "I came here after the emancipation proclamation, therefore I cannot have benefitted from slave labor" nonsense can stop... aside from the fact that in many respects, we have de facto slavery now (of persons of all persuasions). It's a gray issue at best.
[the mere fact that your ancestors had the opportunity to come here was likely based (possibly loosely, I'll admit)upon the backs of slaves].
waaaah
I guess your Ulster brethen can now pick up the tab on those reparations. It's a good thing for you that you pushed us out of Northern Ireland before you came here. That way, we could settle the land (and chase away the English crown) before you arrived.
Hey... Your welcome.
your's is an ugly question. my understanding boils down to: it doesn't. based on this, I would say that any program fueled by public funds that tries to rectify some part of this would have to be moderate, well-designed, limited in scope and with an expiration period, followed by a phase where you could monitor the change without the program
mind you, my observations are from the eurozone and based on the various governments programs mired to let handicapped people better access the working force - no idea if this really applies to race.
'They also have a culture that in many cases does not support success.'
If you mean monetary 'success' then maybe. It's important to note that the US is a land of many sub-cultures that are often ethnically based. Mainstream 'culture' in the US is so incredibly vulgarized that I find all the little cast off groups an absolute breath of fresh air. My suggestion would be to concern yourself with more important issues than this one.
Mscreant,
In a free market you can not eliminate discimination, any more than you could eliminate it in a social engineering economic system. The difference how ever is that in a free market system if minorities are unfairly treated in the labor market then that imbalance will be taken care of by people hiring who do not discriminate.
Think about it, if their was a labor pool just as well qualified and cheaper than the one most people pick from what whould you go with? Why do you think industry is moving to China? Why do you think farmers higher Mexican immigrants? The fact is that free markets can't get rid of or prevent injustices from happening, all it does is naturally get rid of imbalances. Social engineering on the other hand creates and exacerbates imbalances.
It does not.
My question is, in an open free market, how does the discrimination issue get sorted out?'
It's called slavery. But blacks don't WANT to work. Guess what the UE rate is for white people with an education? It's like 2% The funny thing is blacks are so vociferously against slavery but how many blacks do you know that have an iphone? Who do you think makes iphones? It's not the Keebler elf, it's Chinese slaves.
Blacks simply don't have brains evolved for higher learning. What's the black renaissance? p diddy? lil wayne? Come on. It's white people that discovered electricity, flight, space travel, the internet you're using to read this, computers, cars, the assembly line, the combustion engine, splitting the freggin' atom, television, the printing press, rocket science, anti-matter, etc etc etc. Why do you think no blacks work at CERN? What like half a black guy works at NASA? The grey matter simply isn't there, it hasn't evolved enough yet. They are practically fresh out of the jungle, they need time evolve. You said it yourself Ms.Creant...minorities need "special mentoring"
Why do you think Africa is so fucked up? Don't tell me it's the inordinate population of white people. What's the last thing that came out of Africa other than A.I.D.S and a few hurricanes? Exactaly.
You can call me racist I don't give a shit, it is what it is.
I'm not convinced we whitefolk are all that great, considering such a small segment of the population has so totally fucked up "our" great white nation. It can't be our fault the USA is a mess, right?
On the other hand, if the niggers are that inferior, what does this imply about non-Jews? Especially considering the Jews run the entire planet...
Sometimes being a devout racist is just too confusing. Someone needs to chart out all the racial/ethnic talents and abilities so we can all find our proper place.
" You can call me racist I don't give a shit, it is what it is."
hilarious....u and all ur other soon to b n the minority, inbreed hillbilly, "i wish we could go back to Jim Crow" cracker brethren....
funny......
yeah dawg, that shi be funny. Watch dem crackas witha on the vine.
And then the taxes that fed the ebt cards dried up.
winter is coming, grasshoppers (and moon-crickets).
black rule is great...if you like how Detroit works.
blacks cannot even sustain a civilization HANDED TO THEM with ALL THE PARTS working and a ton of instruction manuals!
They will fuck up everything they touch as surely as Cabrini Green went from a first-rate housing complex to something utterly destroyed.
Welcome to BRA, you sniveling, belly crawling white bitch pieces of trash. Cheer for your own destruction, but do it over there. You can live in your compound like the south africans I know, waiting for someone to put you out of your misery.
fo tha muthafuckin WIN bitchez
EVERYTHING bob just said is true. Read it again, fuckfaces.
MsCreant's stupid university frets because they don't have enough blacks. LOL. And the ones that can pass a background check demand mad wages...for what? Because of their BLACKNESS. To avoid the diversity police. They are paid to be black and make stupid white people feel better about themselves.
The ENTIRE black middle class is A FRAUD. It exists because of stupid liberal whites who hate themselves because their race discovered the transistor and blacks discovered nothing.
Bad news...cognitive acuity is NOT distributed evenly across the human race. I hit the genetic lottery in this respect; most of you didn't. Whites and asians as a result of evolution just get more tickets and on average a higher payout from this lottery than hispanics or blacks.
Wow. Trav. That was harsh. And apparently true.
I mean, what am I missing, here? I don't want to be considered "racist" as it is defined in the parlance of our times... But, well, jeeze.
Isn't MENA the cradle of humanity? The birthplace of civilization? Hasn't that general vicinity had, like, several TENS of THOUSANDS of YEARS to get ahead?
But lookit it. The place SUCKS. It's a cesspool with virtual animals running it. In some cases, it literally eats its own! So, then, how did we arrive at this lowly state, where to call a spade a spade (as it were,) is considered a crime of hate?
If I'm missing something, here, (and thank you, MS., for busting this thing WIDE open...) someone tell me! Why does the Jewish Nation run the world, we sniveling white folk work in it, and the Negroes beg in it?
Is the math messed up somewhere I haven't yet found?
MsC, I was recent fired from my job for no cause. Being white male I have no recourse. NONE! We need workers rights for all people. Not just the chosen few. That is where we start. Eliminate quotas in the private sector is another good policy.
are you sure you weren't fired because you suck?
Well, MsCreant, you work for a Federally subsidized industry. Higher education as we've come to know it in the USA WOULD NEVER EXIST in a real free market system.
So yeah, there's corruption and misallocation of resources, but really, if there were not, you wouldn't have the job, either, no matter what color you are.
I am painfully aware of the truth you speak.
Your honesty and candor is refreshing.
In a real open and free market the 'descrimination issue' would work itself out. Price and value are discoverable.
MsCreant, you were doing fine until you reached this part of your narrative. Everything you wrote before it argues against your conclusion that it is "because of their race".
I am open to listening, you clearly see a point I do not.
People will chose not to hire someone because they identify them as a particular race. That is discrimination, not just prejudice. Being prejudice all day long is fine. If a group is deprived of access to resources based on a socially constructed identity, the group in question will not thrive. Where have I got it wrong?
You admitted that there are so few qualified minority applicants that institutions end up bidding against each other to hire them. Others are forced to lower their standards and hire less qualified applicants in order to fill their diversity quotas. Among the less qualified, you've noticed an attitude of entitlement combined with intellectual laziness. None of these things that you've observed speak very well for blacks as potential recruits for any business.
I accept your liberal background as proof that your observations are not racist in their motivation, but why are you so quick to assume that others are less capable of higher reasoning? Maybe the reason blacks in the past have been passed-over in hiring, or otherwise "given the shaft", is due to the fact that they just weren't as qualified as other applicants, regardless of race.
I may be misinterpreting, but I think the ...uh, point?... is that you started out by describing how many of the minority profs really aren't performing as well or as well-qualified.
So the inference is that: no one has EVER been discriminated against because of their race--they're discriminated against because they really don't perform as well or possess the same qualifications.
(I'd wager the reason you have trouble following the thought-process is because you may not be quite racist enough. Worth the reminder that most of the die-hards DON'T actually raise a good point.)
The thing is that even with such a point raised and discarded as stupid, there's far too much of the "social construction" going on in ANY racial consideration. If it is the case that "races" are indistinguishable in terms of capacity and are held back by social forces ALONE, then no amount of prospective "engineering" can ever address the issue, because the very same social forces that ingrain *unfair* prejudices also promote self-destructive social behavior. If it is the fashion for certain social groups to distinguish themselves through freely chosen options, how can anyone reasonably argue that those social groups SHOULD NOT be judged based on their active characteristics?
This isn't easy to phrase, but a simple example should suffice: I don't assume young black men are stupid, but I RATIONALLY CONCLUDE that a young man wearing his pants belted at his knees is kind of an idiot.
See the problem?
no. Your jus rayciss.
Well, duh. I'm an American. This is an incredibly racist society.