MORE FROM CSFB
The never ending story of Credit Suisse First Boston and their main man Frank Quattrone continues. We have been covering these two crooks for over two years and it still isn’t over. This month the National Association of Securities Dealers states that it plans to file civil charges against Frank. The charges from the regulatory arm of the NASD include allegations that he failed to supervise CSFB’s technology analysts.
Correct me if I am wrong but what does Frank Quattrone have to do with stock analysts? He is a banker; he shouldn’t be fraternizing with the analysts.
The charges also include allegations regarding Frank’s role in the allocation of hot IPO’s to the personal brokerage accounts of executives who were also CSFB investment-banking clients. These “Friends of Frank” accounts made many Silicon Valley executives very, very happy.
CSFB suspended Frank Quattrone this past month after discovering evidence he knew regulators were probing the firm when he told staff to “edit” their files. In an e-mail from December 3, 2000, CSFB general counsel, David Brodsky, informed Quattrone that securities regulators and federal prosecutors were investigating CSFB. The e-mail contradicted Quattrrone’s statement that he knew nothing of the impending investigation, which allegedly states that he told employees on December 4, 2000 to dispose of some documents related to IPO’s.
This is a classic example of CSFB covering its tail. Quattrone was cleared in an internal investigation and promoted to the firm’s executive committee in 2001. He has always had the backing of CSFB’s chief John Mack. Quattrone generated 15% of CSFB’s revenue in 1999-2001. When you are bringing in that amount of business on Wall Street you could be selling cocaine from your corner office and the firm would not care. The bottom line is that Quattrone is no longer meeting the numbers; guess it is time to throw him to the wolves. Loyalty and integrity are not in the vocabulary of Wall Street firms. Brokerage firms will always look the other way for any misbehavior or malfeasance as long as their revenues exceed their legal fees.