Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

• Whoopi Goldberg has gone into contract to sell her two-bedroom loft at 101 Wooster Street. The comedian, actress, and View co-host put the apartment on the market for $3.99 million back in June and closed on the purchase of a home in West Orange, NJ just last week. [Cityfile, Sotheby's]
• After going into contract (and falling out of contract) multiple times, the triplex penthouse at 895 Park that belonged to the late movie producer and clothing entrepreneur Charles Evans has finally found a buyer. The four-bedroom apartment, which was first offered for $29.5 million in 2007, was purchased for $15 million by Robert Weisz, the CEO of the commercial real estate company the RPW Group, and his wife Cristina. [Cityfile]More

Icahn Under Fire | Two women who once worked for Carl Icahn have filed suit against the billionaire investor and his wife, Gail, over harassment they say they endured while working at his firm. Sandra Silva and Valerie Romano claim they were singled them out for abuse because they were "tech-savvy," and this stirred up jealousy in the office because Gail Icahn didn't know how to use email herself. (Go figure.) The two women, who were dismissed in late 2008 and are now seeking $1.5 million in damages, also claim that several execs "commented on their bodies" when they worked there and groped one of them, and that they had to endure ridicule for "having drinks with an unpopular coworker and trying to be friendly with the man who sold office supplies." [NYP]

Billionaire financier Carl Icahn started blogging to great fanfare in February 2008. But while he got off to a very solid start, posting regularly about "shareholder empowerment" and corporate governance, the last few months have been a big disappointment for loyal readers of The Icahn Report. Icahn—who, as far as we can tell, holds the title of America's wealthiest blogger—hasn't put up anything new since April 16, and it wasn't even an original post, since it had been copied and pasted from the Huffington Post. What's with deal? Has Icahn given up? More

• Citigroup posted its first profit in 18 months today, which made Wall Street very happy and sent Citi shares up to a whopping $4. [WSJ, DB]
• GE's first-quarter profit fell less than expected, dropping 35% compared to a year earlier, results that gave shares a boost in early trading. [BN, WSJ]
• AIG chief Ed Liddy still owns a big stake in Goldman Sachs, info that will be most pleasing to Goldman conspiracy theorists out there. [NYT, NYT]
• Is the banking business showing signs of recovery? [NYT]
• Carl Icahn and Kirk Kerkorian are locked in battle over MGM Mirage. [WSJ]
• General Growth Properties's bankruptcy will make hedge funder Bill Ackman a very rich man. And he already happens to be a very rich man. [NYT]
• The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco now says it was a mistake to allow Lehman Brothers to collapse. Now you tell us? [BN]

• The markets were down big yesterday—the Dow shed 254 points—but stocks should do better today as the first quarter of '09 comes to a close. [CNN, WSJ]
• ABC News reports that the FBI and federal prosecutors are "closing in" on AIG's most notorious exec, Joseph Cassano, who made as much as $300 million running the company's disastrous Financial Products Division. [ABC]
• Wondering what Andrew Cuomo has been up to? Here's your answer: He just forced JPMorgan to refund a group of customers $4.4 million. [DJ]
• Morgan Stanley is set to raise $6 billion for a new global property fund. [BN]
• France is now looking to limit executive compensation, too. [WSJ]
• The 15 largest global banks are expected to shrink their balance sheets by about $2 trillion in 2009. [Reuters]
• Google plans to commit $100 million to a new venture capital fund. [WSJ]
• One more victim of the recession: the sanctity of contracts. [NYT]
• Carl Icahn is taking a gamble: He's bidding on Atlantic City's Tropicana. [DB]

• Bernie Madoff will appear in court this morning to plead guilty to 11 counts. Then it wil be up to the judge to decide if he gets locked up immediately or is allowed him to remain free on bail pending sentencing. [DB]
• Meanwhile, the investigation into Madoff's Ponzi scheme is now focusing on the accounting firms that may have helped him carry out the scheme. [NYT]
• Base salaries on Wall Street may double as bonuses drop. [BN]
• Andrew Cuomo says Merrill Lynch misled Congress over the timing of its plans to award billions of dollars in bonuses last December.  [NYT, WSJ]
• BofA is putting a private bank it inherited from Merrill up for sale. [Reuters]
• Texas billionaire Allen Stanford took the Fifth yesterday.  [AP]
• Carl Icahn has abandoned his bid to take over Lionsgate. [BN]
• GE has lost its triple-A credit rating from Standard and Poor's. [DB]
• Foreclosure filings in the U.S. jumped 30% in February. [BN]

• Marty Peretz, former owner of the New Republic, is buying back the mag with a group of investors led by former Lazard exec Laurence Grafstein. [Politico]
• The New York Times Co. has successfully raised $225 million by selling off 21 floors of its Eighth Avenue office building. [NYT]
• "Was last week the worst one in CNBC's 20-year history—or the best?" asks the Times today. Thanks in part to Jon Stewart, we're pretty sure it was its worst, but ratings are up so CNBC execs aren't complaining. [NYT]
• Carl Icahn is stepping up his effort to take control of Lionsgate. [Variety]
• McClatchy, which publishes 30 daily newspapers, says it plans to slash 1,600 jobs, or 15% of its work force, as well as cut salaries across the board. [WSJ]
• Mag covers with Barack Obama have performed well, by and large. [NYP]
• Watchmen was No. 1 at the weekend box office, grossing $55.7 million. [EW]
• The Tribeca Film Festival announced its May lineup today. [THR]

Happy Birthday | Feel free to wish Agyness Deyn a happy birthday if you see her at Fashion Week: The model is turning 26. Carl Icahn turns 73 today. Ice-T is 51. Tennis legend John McEnroe is 50. Sean McManus, the president of CBC News and CBS Sports, is 54. Times science reporter Natalie Angier is 51. TV host Steve Kmetko is turning 56. And photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders is turning 57.

• JPMorgan Chase posted a 76% drop in profits in the fourth quarter, results that chief Jamie Dimon eloquently described as "very disappointing." [WSJ]
• Washington is close to finalizing a deal to give Bank of America billions in extra cash to help it "digest" the purchase of Merrill Lynch. [Reuters]
• What's Morgan Stanley doing with its bailout cash? It's buying an oil supertanker, which is what we'd do, too, if someone gave us $10 billion. [BN]
• An exec at Blackstone has been charged with insider trading. [CNN]
• Carl Icahn is suing fellow activist investor Warren Lichtenstein. [DB]
• The Dow dropped 248 points yesterday with Citigroup taking a particular beating, shedding 23 percent. But that doesn't mean Vikram Pandit isn't doing his best to keep morale up. [NYP, WSJ]

Arianna Snags Carl | Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown are locked in a bitter battle to line up high-profile contributors for their respective websites/blog networks, but it looks like Arianna will emerge as this week's winner: She's convinced cranky billionaire Carl Icahn to not only blog on his own site, but also post the same pieces on the Huffington Post. Now you can not read Icahn's boring missives on two sites instead of one!

♦ Detroit's Big Three automakers presented new turnaround plans (and their request for $34 billion) to Congress yesterday. [WSJ, Bloomberg]
♦ Merrill Lynch plans to cut year-end bonuses in half. [Bloomberg]
♦ Now that it's turned itself into a commercial bank, Goldman Sachs is thinking about starting an online banking operation, too. [DB]
♦ Goldman is tapping Gerald Corrigan, a former head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to serve as chairman of its bank holding company. [FT]
♦ Billionaire financier face-off: One of Carl Icahn's companies is suing a firm owned by Leon Black. [NYT, NYP]
♦ Ramius Capital, the struggling hedge fund operated by Peter Cohen, is closing four of its funds. [WSJ]

♦  The Big Three automakers are putting finishing touches on new business plans to take to Congress this week, part of a last-ditch effort to secure a federal bailout. [WSJ, Bloomberg, NYT]
♦  Shoppers spent $41 billion over the four-day weekend, up 7.2 percent from the year before. That was better than expected, but retail experts are still pessimistic about the holiday season outlook. [CNNMoney, WSJ]
♦  Hedge funder Paul Tudor Jones has suspended withdrawals as he splits his $10 billion flagship fund into two. [FT]
♦  The bailout has already cost more than World War II, in case you're keeping count at home. [Clusterstock] More

♦  Horror of horrors: The average Goldman partner may take home a bonus of $1 million or less this year. [FT]
♦  One of Goldman's flagship hedge funds, Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, has lost close to $1 billion since January. [FT]
♦  UBS posted a third-quarter profit, but it still laid off 700 U.S.-based employees last week. [CNNMoney, NYP]
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♦  Treasury officials say as many as 1,800 institutions may apply for government investments in the next few weeks. [WSJ]
♦  GM hasn't been so lucky extracting cash: The Treasury has turned down a request by the automaker for $10 billion to help finance a merger with Chrysler. [NYT]
♦  Henry Kravis's KKR is delaying its plan to go public on the NYSE until 2009. [CNNMoney]More

Live Like Saddam for $31 Million | Billionaire Carl Icahn has said he's selling his 177-foot yacht for $37.5 million to trade up to an even bigger boat. Well, this might just be a the bargain he's looking for: Saddam Hussein's former palace at sea, the Basra Breeze, is now on sale for $31 million. That's not all that much money considering the 272-foot vessel is bulletproof, comes with its own operating room, is fitted with surface-to-air missiles, and has enough china to serve dinner to 200 guests. The bad news? "The décor is a monument to 1980s bad taste," and it will probably cost another $30 million to refurbish. [Times UK]