Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns

I read the interview of Jimmy Cayne the CEO of Bear Stearns (which has now been bought over by JP Morgan) the first big casualty of the Credit Crunch.

Inspite of everything that has been said about Jimmy Cayne (how he was playing bridge while Bear Stearns was sinking, akin the Roman emperor Nero playing the fiddle while Rome was burning) I still find a couple of things extremely interesting.

(1) He is a college drop out, and was a CEO of a multibillion dollar company which he was not the founder member. (I know Bill Gates, Michael Dell and Steve Jobs are also college drop outs, but they founded their own businesses). I guess it tells us about the times how they were different earlier, now without college education one really cant get a white collar job I guess.

(2) His line about how he got the job at Bear Stearns, is right out of a movie

Greenberg asked Cayne if he had any hobbies. Along with magic and yo-yos, bridge was a serious interest of Greenberg's. "And I said, 'Yes, I play bridge,'" Cayne recalled. "You could see the electric light bulb. He says, 'How well do you play?' I said, 'Mr. Greenberg, if you study bridge the rest of your life, if you play with the best partners and you achieve your potential, you will never play bridge like I play bridge.'"


You could have a young Amitabh Bachhan out of Deewar saying such a dialogue. (Instead of saying, "Main aaj bhi gire hue paise nahi uthha ta") Needless to say Jimmy Cayne is one of the best players in the world, and was recently ranked world no. 225 (I dont know what is his best ranking though)

Big Sailing Yacht

This is what I saw last Saturday at Portsmouth Harbour, (returning from Gosport where my sailing school Adrenaline Sailing is)

This is the 99 foot long sailing Yacht owned by Hugo Boss.

Isnt she lovely?

(Also I will have to soon blog about Sailing ... this is long long overdue)



And this is with the Spinnaker Tower in the background (it is the shape of the spinnaker sail used in racing yachts while sailing downwind)



Damn looking at these massive boats, all I can think is when will i buy mine. (I doubt I will ever be able to buy a 100 foot sailing boat, but a regular 36-40 footer will do)

One more pic (before the sails were being brought down as it is entering the harbour)




One more last question to all readers, if you ever buy a boat what would you name it?
I am confused myself, so help me think about a appropriate (hopefully funny) name for a boat.