Time was, you put a house on the market in Greenwich, Connecticut and you got your $35 million asking price in a matter of days- and it didn’t even have to come with 26-toilets, a property that would cause a serious bidding war. Greenwich could count on Wall Street to make it rain ka-ching! on people’s faces come bonus time and those people would in turn say sure, here’s $35 mill in cash, buy yourself something nice and all was right in the world. Now? With this bull shit about putting “greater emphasis on deferred compensation” and “incorporating risk management into performance measures”? It’s making would-be buyers think things through and not jump at relative bargains at $15.95 million.

It’s been more than 500 days since Stanley Cheslock put his 26,000-square-foot Greenwich, Connecticut, “dream home” on the market for $17.95 million. The house and its surrounding estate — custom built by Cheslock in 2003, with a movie theater and 3,700-bottle wine cellar — is waiting for a buyer who sees the current asking price, $15.95 million, as a bargain. “It’s a steal,” said Cheslock, a co-founder of an investment firm, who has knocked almost 50 percent off the price he was asking when he first tried to sell the property five years ago. “It’s way underpriced.”

Homes priced at $10 million and above are accumulating on the market in Greenwich. They’re moving so slowly that it would take more than four years to sell them all, the biggest backlog since at least 2004, according to Mark Pruner, an agent with Prudential Connecticut Realty. Wall Street’s greater emphasis on deferred compensation, in which a portion of an annual bonus will be paid in the future, has stifled demand, he said. “Our market moves very closely with the financial markets,” Pruner, based in Greenwich, said in an interview. “Deferred compensation has totally hammered the over-$10 million market because people just aren’t getting large amounts of cash, and that market has traditionally been a cash market.”

“Previously, if you got a $10 million bonus, buying a $5 million house wasn’t that big a deal” said Pruner, who estimates that about half of all homebuyers in Greenwich work in the financial industry. “If you get $20 million — $3 million in cash and 17 in deferred compensation — are you going to borrow another $2 million in cash to buy a house? I don’t think so,” he said.

Thanks- for nothing.

Priciest Homes Languish In Greenwich, Connecticut [Bloomberg]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Time was, you put a house on the market in Greenwich, Connecticut and you got your $35 million asking price in a matter of days- and it didn’t even have to come with 26-toilets, a property that would cause a serious bidding war. Greenwich could count on Wall Street to make it rain ka-ching! on people’s faces come bonus time and those people would in turn say sure, here’s $35 mill in cash, buy yourself something nice and all was right in the world. Now? With this bull shit about putting “greater emphasis on deferred compensation” and “incorporating risk management into performance measures”? It’s making would-be buyers think things through and not jump at relative bargains at $15.95 million.

It’s been more than 500 days since Stanley Cheslock put his 26,000-square-foot Greenwich, Connecticut, “dream home” on the market for $17.95 million. The house and its surrounding estate — custom built by Cheslock in 2003, with a movie theater and 3,700-bottle wine cellar — is waiting for a buyer who sees the current asking price, $15.95 million, as a bargain. “It’s a steal,” said Cheslock, a co-founder of an investment firm, who has knocked almost 50 percent off the price he was asking when he first tried to sell the property five years ago. “It’s way underpriced.”

Homes priced at $10 million and above are accumulating on the market in Greenwich. They’re moving so slowly that it would take more than four years to sell them all, the biggest backlog since at least 2004, according to Mark Pruner, an agent with Prudential Connecticut Realty. Wall Street’s greater emphasis on deferred compensation, in which a portion of an annual bonus will be paid in the future, has stifled demand, he said. “Our market moves very closely with the financial markets,” Pruner, based in Greenwich, said in an interview. “Deferred compensation has totally hammered the over-$10 million market because people just aren’t getting large amounts of cash, and that market has traditionally been a cash market.”

“Previously, if you got a $10 million bonus, buying a $5 million house wasn’t that big a deal” said Pruner, who estimates that about half of all homebuyers in Greenwich work in the financial industry. “If you get $20 million — $3 million in cash and 17 in deferred compensation — are you going to borrow another $2 million in cash to buy a house? I don’t think so,” he said.

Thanks- for nothing.

Priciest Homes Languish In Greenwich, Connecticut [Bloomberg]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Time was, you put a house on the market in Greenwich, Connecticut and you got your $35 million asking price in a matter of days- and it didn’t even have to come with 26-toilets, a property that would cause a serious bidding war. Greenwich could count on Wall Street to make it rain ka-ching! on people’s faces come bonus time and those people would in turn say sure, here’s $35 mill in cash, buy yourself something nice and all was right in the world. Now? With this bull shit about putting “greater emphasis on deferred compensation” and “incorporating risk management into performance measures”? It’s making would-be buyers think things through and not jump at relative bargains at $15.95 million.

It’s been more than 500 days since Stanley Cheslock put his 26,000-square-foot Greenwich, Connecticut, “dream home” on the market for $17.95 million. The house and its surrounding estate — custom built by Cheslock in 2003, with a movie theater and 3,700-bottle wine cellar — is waiting for a buyer who sees the current asking price, $15.95 million, as a bargain. “It’s a steal,” said Cheslock, a co-founder of an investment firm, who has knocked almost 50 percent off the price he was asking when he first tried to sell the property five years ago. “It’s way underpriced.”

Homes priced at $10 million and above are accumulating on the market in Greenwich. They’re moving so slowly that it would take more than four years to sell them all, the biggest backlog since at least 2004, according to Mark Pruner, an agent with Prudential Connecticut Realty. Wall Street’s greater emphasis on deferred compensation, in which a portion of an annual bonus will be paid in the future, has stifled demand, he said. “Our market moves very closely with the financial markets,” Pruner, based in Greenwich, said in an interview. “Deferred compensation has totally hammered the over-$10 million market because people just aren’t getting large amounts of cash, and that market has traditionally been a cash market.”

“Previously, if you got a $10 million bonus, buying a $5 million house wasn’t that big a deal” said Pruner, who estimates that about half of all homebuyers in Greenwich work in the financial industry. “If you get $20 million — $3 million in cash and 17 in deferred compensation — are you going to borrow another $2 million in cash to buy a house? I don’t think so,” he said.

Thanks- for nothing.

Priciest Homes Languish In Greenwich, Connecticut [Bloomberg]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Time was, you put a house on the market in Greenwich, Connecticut and you got your $35 million asking price in a matter of days- and it didn’t even have to come with 26-toilets, a property that would cause a serious bidding war. Greenwich could count on Wall Street to make it rain ka-ching! on people’s faces come bonus time and those people would in turn say sure, here’s $35 mill in cash, buy yourself something nice and all was right in the world. Now? With this bull shit about putting “greater emphasis on deferred compensation” and “incorporating risk management into performance measures”? It’s making would-be buyers think things through and not jump at relative bargains at $15.95 million.

It’s been more than 500 days since Stanley Cheslock put his 26,000-square-foot Greenwich, Connecticut, “dream home” on the market for $17.95 million. The house and its surrounding estate — custom built by Cheslock in 2003, with a movie theater and 3,700-bottle wine cellar — is waiting for a buyer who sees the current asking price, $15.95 million, as a bargain. “It’s a steal,” said Cheslock, a co-founder of an investment firm, who has knocked almost 50 percent off the price he was asking when he first tried to sell the property five years ago. “It’s way underpriced.”

Homes priced at $10 million and above are accumulating on the market in Greenwich. They’re moving so slowly that it would take more than four years to sell them all, the biggest backlog since at least 2004, according to Mark Pruner, an agent with Prudential Connecticut Realty. Wall Street’s greater emphasis on deferred compensation, in which a portion of an annual bonus will be paid in the future, has stifled demand, he said. “Our market moves very closely with the financial markets,” Pruner, based in Greenwich, said in an interview. “Deferred compensation has totally hammered the over-$10 million market because people just aren’t getting large amounts of cash, and that market has traditionally been a cash market.”

“Previously, if you got a $10 million bonus, buying a $5 million house wasn’t that big a deal” said Pruner, who estimates that about half of all homebuyers in Greenwich work in the financial industry. “If you get $20 million — $3 million in cash and 17 in deferred compensation — are you going to borrow another $2 million in cash to buy a house? I don’t think so,” he said.

Thanks- for nothing.

Priciest Homes Languish In Greenwich, Connecticut [Bloomberg]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

If you’ve got a regular thing going with a hooker in Greenwich, please note she may be lying low for a while. Perhaps somewhat more urgently, if you have a scheduled meeting for this week, you ought to consider backing out now as that hooker is a cop and you’re about to get nailed.

Greenwich Police say that the string of prostitution arrests they made are the result of a widespread web of activity in the region. Greenwich Police Capt Mark Marino said, “We came to realize that it was fairly widespread throughout the region. Obviously, it was easy to arrange these rendez-vous. It didn’t appear to be a shortage of women who offer their sevices and there didn’t appear to be a shortage of men who wanted their services.”

Police were tipped off to the activity by Stamford Police in early April. It took about a month for Greenwich Police to investigate and make the arrests after using the Internet and surveillance…“Hopefully, the word will get out,” Marino said of the arrests. “If we can deter them from coming to Greenwich, I’ll be satisfied.”

The men and the undercover officer agreed to meet at a pre-arranged location within Greenwich so the undercover officer could perform a sexual act on the men in exchange for a cash payment.

[New Canann Patch]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Given that they’re probably not speaking at the moment, the Jets quarterback most likely did not propose to Eliza Kruger, the 17 year-old daughter of Greenwich Capital founder Konrad Kruger, who recently discussed bedding Sanchez and his clinginess afterward with the press. But I still have my fingers crossed and I’d like you to do the same that the band appearing on Eliza’s ring finger in a recent photograph is from Sancho, hoping to get an investing gig with Papa Kruger after retirement.

Eliza Kruger- Facebook Photo [NP]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

As you may have heard, Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez has a 17 year-old lady friend. Her name is Eliza Kruger (pictured) and she’s a high school student in Greenwich who he met at nightclub Lavo on New Year’s Eve. Liking what he saw, Sanchez gave her tickets to the January 2 Jets/Bills game and then, a week later, took her dinner at Nobu and back to his house in New Jersey where they “hooked up” (she posted pictures to Facebook of a bed with rumbled sheets afterward, natch). For those of you wondering if Sanchez was wading into statutory rape category- he wasn’t. Eliza looked up the age of consent in New Jersey and it’s 16, so everything was cool. Or at least it should have been but sometimes people get bent out of shape when a 24 year-old has relations with a girl who was 11 when he was 18. What also made things awkward was that Eliza seems to have just been in it for the sex but Sanchez wanted more! He would text her at all hours of the night, like at 2am on a Wednesday to “hang out” and she respond, “Um, I have school tomorrow.” He was contacting her as recently as January 24, seeing if she wanted to chill after the Jets lost the AFC Championship Game and people, like Eliza’s father, started to be all, “leave her alone, stalker.”

But! Today brings news Sanchez might not have been actually harassing a 17 year-old girl but rather trying to get to her dad, knowing the guy could offer him unparalleled investment advice, Papa Kruger being Konrad “Chip” Kruger, a partner in Stamford-based financial firm Five Mile Capital Partners and founder/former co-CEO of Greenwich Capital.

Konrad “Chip” Kruger, a partner in the Stamford, Conn., financial firm Five Mile Capital Partners, who court records show received a $48 million bonus, severance and a deferred-compensation package when he left the firm Greenwich Capital in 2000.

He also was in a partnership that in 2005 bought 78 percent of the commercial real-estate subsidiary of General Motors Corp. — at a cost of $500 million.

“The return on this investment is potentially staggering,” wrote a Connecticut divorce-court judge in 2006, dissolving the marriage of Konrad and Eliza’s mother, Marie Kruger.

Ours is just a theory. It may or may not pan out.

Sanchez And His HS Gal [NYP]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

US Added Few Jobs Amid Bad Weather (WSJ)
Nonfarm payrolls rose by 36,000 last month, far below Wall Street expectations; economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast payrolls would rise by 136,000. Manufacturers reported employment gains but builders, transportation and warehousing companies reported declines, likely due to bad winter weather.

Goldman Sachs Turns Bullish on Europe Banks as Debt Risk Eases (Bloomberg)
“For financials the narrowing of sovereign spreads in peripheral eurozone, which our economists expect to continue, is a clear positive,” London-based Oppenheimer wrote in the report dated Feb. 3. “Banks are one of the least expensive sectors in the market and the trade-off between their growth prospects and earnings in the next few years looks especially attractive.”

Shumway to Return Client Cash in $8 Billion Fund by End of March (Bloomberg)
Chris Shumway, who announced he would step down as chief investment officer of his $8 billion Shumway Capital Partners LLC in November, said he’ll return client capital by March 31, according to a letter sent to investors. Shumway, 45, who started the Greenwich, Connecticut, firm with $70 million in 2002 and has produced average annual returns of 17 percent before fees, will continue to manage money for himself and his employees.

Jeff Skilling’s Son Found Dead At 20 (NYP)
The 20-year-old son of imprisoned ex-Enron president Jeff Skilling was found dead in his Southern California apartment. Police found the body Tuesday after being told by friends of John Taylor Skilling, a student at Chapman University in Orange, that he had failed to show up for a dinner date and wasn’t answering calls. Bottles of medication were found near Skilling, who reportedly had been distraught over a recent breakup with his girlfriend, police said.

Big Fine Over Bug In ‘Quant’ Program (WSJ)
A unit of French insurer AXA SA agreed to pay $242 million to settle fraud accusations by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it hid from clients for nearly a year a serious software glitch in a quantitative investment model.

Germany’s Merkel, in Reversal, Urges Rescue of Euro (NYT)
In exchange for bolstering the euro zone rescue fund, Mrs. Merkel will press others to mimic Germany’s economic rise. She is proposing to coordinate retirement ages across countries, scrap any links between wages and inflation and bring corporate tax systems closer together. In a remarkable about-face, Mrs. Merkel now wants more economic integration in the euro zone, including regular meetings of its leaders.

‘You Will Be Lynched’ Says Egyptian Policeman (Bloomberg)
“A policeman looked me in the eye and said: ‘You will be lynched today,’ running his finger across his neck. Others spat on us. They hit the two men in our group in the face through the broken windows, scratching Mahmoud and punching my other male friend. Someone pulled my hair from the back.”

BofA Gets $700 Million for Unit Lender Has `No Reason’ to Own (Bloomberg)
The bank will get at least $700 million from QBE Insurance Group Ltd. for the Balboa insurance unit, exiting the market for coverage of foreclosed homes and those with distressed buyers.

Bernanke Denies Fed Is Stoking Inflation (WSJ)
“I think it’s entirely unfair to attribute excess demand pressures in emerging markets to U.S. monetary policy, because emerging markets have all the tools they need to address excess demand in those countries,” he said in answering a question from the audience. “It’s really up to emerging markets to find appropriate tools to balance their own growth.”

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Each year at Christmas, Paul Tudor Jones orchestrates a holiday spectacular on his front lawn, spreading cheer far and wide. People travel from all over to see the display (set to music) and the tradition, which last two full weeks, is much cherished among the residents of Greenwich. As discussed last week, Jones-A-Palooza 2010 is expected to “rival those of past years,” with the possibility for Rockettes, chicken and PTJ dressed as the big man. Anyone who goes will surely have their mind blown and all are welcome, free of charge because Tudor is a very generous man. And yet, according to one Greenwich elected official, he’s not giving enough when it comes to celebrating the birth of Christ.

Today’s Greenwich Time brings the news that the town’s light display has fallen on hard times, a sad scene the paper can’t help but juxtapose with the one in PTJ’s driveway.

While a billionaire treats the populace to a Christmas display of epic proportions in one part of town, the Greenwich Chamber of Commerce is admittedly struggling to raise money to light up the downtown, Byram, Cos Cob and Old Greenwich business districts for the holidays because of the recession. “I can tell you these last couple of years the total number of contributions has dropped significantly,” said Mary Ann Morrison, the chamber’s president and chief executive. “There is no doubt about that.”…In contrast to the situation in the shopping areas, hedge fund manager and philanthropist Paul Tudor Jones II flipped the switch on his holiday lights at his Belle Haven mansion Friday, a display that reportedly costs several hundred thousand dollars and has become a legend.

“Maybe we can get him to donate some for (Greenwich) Avenue,” Selectman David Theis suggested, laying the guilt on thick. Except that, you know, PTJ is already doing his fair share of spreading Christmas spirit. What’s next, he pays for everyone’s gifts and personally bakes them fruitcake, too? Does he take on all of Christ’s events? Does he cover the costs of rabies shots for the Easter Bunny? Where does it end? Sure, he could buy them some lights, but beyond a box or two from Home Depot, that doesn’t really seem fair. Especially when we’re talking about town filled with billionaires, many of whom aren’t pulling their weight in the Xmas department. How about, given that Jones is doing his display, we get Biff Basness to cover Greenwich Ave?

Greenwich Holiday Lights Display Falls On Hard Times [GT]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

As many of you may be aware, some of us intimately, each year Paul Tudor Jones holds a Christmas spectacular on his front lawn in Greenwich, Connecticut. Open to the public, it’s become a favorite event for children and adults of all ages, far and wide. After being forced to cancel his Halloween extravaganza this year, as a result of neighbors who lack any heart, some worried that PTJ’s Christmas show would suffer the same fate. Well worry no longer. This thing is on, and that’s not all.

According to Greenwich Time, “the display is expected to rival those of past years.” Considering that in “past years,” the display has included upwards of 36,000 lights, little drummer boy dances synchronized to music that people can listen to on the radio as they pull up to the house, one wonders what PTJ could to do to top himself. Will the ladies of Beamers be performing as Rockettes on the front lawn? Will every onlooker get a free bucket of chicken? Will a Santa suit-wearing PTJ allow guests to bounce on his knee? These are the things we need answers to.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker