Find porn! Hear about the new voice-activated remote for the digitally challenged couch potatoes? It’ll never work unless they figure out how to have it respond to somnambular orifice noises, then they’ll really have something.
Culture clash? Former Morgan-Stanley execs are trying to give CEO Purcell (he gave birth to Discovery Card while an executive at Sears) the big boot, declaring him an unfit parent and put his Discovery baby up for adoption. As I see it, the main problem with Discovery and Purcell is that they came from the wrong side of the tracks, more than the white-shooed golden egos at the Morgan-Stanley finishing school can stomach.
Madden madness. After forty-one months in prison, Steve Madden is being boogied back into Madden Shoes with a multi-million dollar ad campaign. The ads are clever; the idea isn’t. A public company (SHOO - NASDAQ) spending buckets of company bucks to celebrate the release of a stock fraud con (who cares if he founded the company) is nuts.
Speaking of cons, Richard Scrushy, former CEO of Health South, ought to order several dozen wide black and white pin striped suits for his upcoming stay. My guess, ten years of rock pounding before parole is even whispered.
Dough-nuts. Speaking of nuts, second lien loans rank with the nuttiest. Imagine your business in the toilet. No problem, if your name is Krispy Kreme. You get Credit Suisse to hustle a bunch of its clients like insurance and pension funds to take a second lien and pony up a fresh $150 million. Not to worry, says Credit Suisse, because these second lien lenders get a higher rate of interest than banks, they are sophisticated, and they know what they are doing. Huh? When the s--- hits the fan boys, it doesn’t matter if the second tier lenders get a 100% rate of interest, there ain’t no money. Think I’m wrong? Adkins Nutritionals is thinning more than fat bellies—its $79 million second lien loans that it got in 2003 courtesy of Goldman Sachs and friends are being bid @ fifteen cents on the dollar, and second lien loans my friends, unlike fat bellies, don’t regain their losses.
Ugh! Lawyers for UBS, Europe’s largest bank, in a $29 million sex discrimination case that it lost and plans to appeal, argued that the accused manager’s conduct wasn’t discriminatory because he treated everyone badly. Executive management at this bank has bigger problems than sex discrimination. Pay the $29 million, boys, fire the manager, hire new counsel, and stuff the appeal.
Vibrator vibrato not up to par? Panasonic to the rescue with its new Oxyride batteries that promise to spin toothbrushes faster, make flashlights shine brighter, recharge camera flashes faster; volunteers for vibrator tests?
Hmmmm. On Tuesday, Pfizer, as part of an upbeat ‘our problems are behind us’ picture it tried to paint, told the world that sales of Celebrex ($3.2 billion in annual sales) and Bextra ($1.3 billion in annual sales), would begin to revive later this year and in 2006. BLAM! On Thursday, the FDA told Pfizer to stop selling Bextra and to smack a more prominent warning (one of those pesky ‘TAKING THIS MIGHT KILL YOU’ type of labels) on Celebrex. FYI, Pfizer’s CEO made $16.6 million in 2004, a 72% jump from 2003. Ya just gotta wonder.