Most of us have software that checks incoming email messages for viruses, but maybe what we really need is a lie detector test. It would come in especially handy for anyone in Jack Grubman's address book.
Grubman, the former Salomon Smith Barney analyst who's now under investigation and getting sued, had some of his messages leaked to the Wall Street Journal. In those January 2001 missives, he told a colleague he had an interesting reason for upgrading his rating of AT&T stock: The chief executive of Citigroup wanted him to. (Salomon is a unit of Citigroup.) Citigroup's chief exec, Sanford Weill, wanted to kiss up to AT&T CEO Michael Armstrong to get his support in unseating Citi's then co-chair John Reed.
We know that's a lot of people to keep track of, so here's the gist: Grubman made stuff up, the Journal printed it, and then the Journal got to be the first to debunk it, too. The WSJ's Charles Gasparino did hedge nicely when first reporting the story. He said the emails "could simply be idle swagger from Grubman" and "it isn't clear ... what prompted Mr. Grubman to make the claim -- or whether the statement is true at all."
Then again, Grubman could have been lying on Wednesday when he said, "I invented a story in an effort to inflate my professional importance and make an impression on a colleague and friend." If anyone other writers thought of this, they didn't mention it in their articles. Weill did say Wednesday that he asked Grubman to "take a fresh look at AT&T"; this was the New York Post's spin of choice. And there's always the possibility that Grubman upped his rating to give Salomon a better chance at an AT&T financing deal -- an equally embarrassing scenario Grubman denied in Wednesday's statement, and which the New York attorney general's office has been investigating.
The situation went from dumb to dumber today, with several outlets reporting that investigators are looking into whether Grubman upgraded his AT&T rating to get his kids into an, ahem, exclusive New York nursery school. It only sounds like an Onion article. Yet another Grubman email "suggests that he received help from Sanford Weill ... in getting his children into the nursery school run by the 92nd Street Y, and that Citigroup had made a $1 million donation to the organization," said CNN. If that's true, imagine what Grubman would do to get the kids into the right college. - Jen Muehlbauer
Analyzing the Analysts
http://online.wsj.com/page/0,,2_0807,00.html
(Paid subscription required.)
Analyst Says He Made Up Stock Claims (AP)
http://tinyurl.com/2oxu
Grubman Loses Face -- Again
http://www.thestreet.com/markets/matthewgoldstein/10054034.html
The Smoking Gun
http://www.nypost.com/business/62117.htm
Weill Probe Goes to Nursery School
http://money.cnn.com/2002/11/14/news/companies/grubman/
Wall St. and the Nursery School: A New York Story
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/business/14WALL.html
Grubman's Statement
http://tinyurl.com/2oj0
