Chris Flowers

[MartinWhitman]

I cannot believe this a****** is really demanding 3,- EUR per share from the government for his shares that are de facto more than worthless. I mean, he was involved in this mess by financing long term investments with short term financing. So if there is any guy in the Private Equity world that really deserves to go broke, my vote goes to Chris Flowers, the smart ex-Goldman banker.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/euPrivateEquityNews/idUSTRE51I3FJ20090219

[MartinWhitman]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aiWFCwsU1Az8&refer=germany

[MartinWhitman]

According to the Financial Times Deutschland, Flowers is also playing hardball at HSH, another troubled german financial institution. There he threatens to vote against a rights offering which would dilute his shareholdings. This guy is probably very desperate, I wonder if he would behave like that in the US.

 

in german : http://www.ftd.de/unternehmen/finanzdienstleister/:Widerstand-gegen-Kapitalerh%F6hung-Flowers-wagt-Machtprobe-bei-HSH/476662.html

[link01]

totally agree with you on jcf.

 

i was a shareholder of his enstar group for a while a year and a half ago, thinking that here was an attractive insurance runoff biz rum by a highly regarded, smart private equity guy witha tremendous record behind him of outsized returns (ref his original shinsei coup).

 

it soon became clear, tho, that this was a guy who benefited from the unprecedented boom in the credit markets, not from any investment acumen or operational wizardry...like most PE guys...which, after all, are really LBO guys dressed up in new clothes & going by a more socailly acceptable name. i bailed when he made his $60 a share bid for sallie may. the financing scheme was brilliant, but the investment rationale was suspect no matter how you cut it!

[Partner24]

He tries to play with taxpayers money. How can I qualify this behavior? I'll let each one of you do it yourself.

[MartinWhitman]

Obviously Flowers had to accept some dilution in the case of HSH.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=a49JfXkbaAXs&refer=germany#