Thank you to Allen Wheat at CSFB for providing an exciting finale to what was otherwise a relatively quiet August. Wheaty's bid for little DLJ lit a fire under the investment banking sector and fat cat Euromarketeers were able to sit back on their yachts and watch their already substantial private fortunes soar into the pale blue beyond. With our own holdings in DLJ bought at $42 per share and sold (just in case Wheaty changed his mind) at $86.50 plus our Lehman stock crashing through the $140 barrier, we were almost tempted to spend another fortnight in Sotogrande. However, as our friends and our editors have reminded us, five weeks' holiday was already right over the top. But has Allen Wheat made a mistake? The DLJ shareholders certainly do not think so and at the full $90 per share, Joe Roby and John Chalsty must have shares and options in the firm worth $300m each. That is not bad for an organisation which never threatened to darken the front door of the bulge bracket club and always used the tradesmen's entrance. When the original founders, Bill Donaldson, Dan Lufkin and Bill Jenrette publicly floated the company in 1970, no one on Wall Street outside the firm took much notice. If you had suggested that one day it might be bought for $11.5bn, your feet would not have touched the ground before the men in white coats had you in the ambulance.
September 08, 2000
