Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Casting the Lehman Brothers Movie | The Wall Street Journal published an excellent piece today on the fall of Lehman Brothers, which is worth a read if you're into that sort of thing, you have access to the Journal site, and you have the patience to digest a 4,800-word article. This afternoon WSJ.com followed up with a few casting suggestions for the movie that will inevitably be made about the biggest bankruptcy in history, and while we can't say we're convinced about George Clooney playing John Thain, Ben Kingsley in the role of Dick Fuld strikes us as an unusual and yet oddly compelling choice. It's certainly better than what the Celebrity Match Up game came up with: The site's facial recognition software picked Andy Garcia as Fuld's ideal stand-in. [WSJ/Deal Journal]

• The U.S. economy slowed sharply in the third quarter, according the new figures released by the Commerce Department this morning. [MW]
• Lehman Brothers has won bankruptcy court approval to sell its investment management assets, including Neuberger Berman. [DB]
• What did banks do with their bailout billions? They're not saying. [AP]
• A record number of M&A deals were cancelled in 2009. [FT]
• Investigators looking into the Madoff mess continue to focus their attention on a key Madoff lieutenant, Frank DiPascali. [WSJ]
• A Madoff investor has filed suit against the SEC, the first attempt by a victim of the scheme to go after regulators. [Reuters]

• President Bush announced a rescue plan for General Motors and Chrysler that will provide $13.4 billion in federal loans. [CNN]
• Jamie Dimon and Bob Rubin will go bonus-less this year. [Reuters]
• Not surprisingly, Credit Suisse's plan to pay out bonuses with "toxic" securities has "elicited livid reactions from senior bankers." [WSJ]
• A former Lehman employee has been charged with insider trading. [CNN]
• One person who will profit from the Madoff mess: Bruce Wasserstein. Lazard has been appointed to sell the trading operations of Madoff's company. [WSJ]
• There are two—yes, two—books already in the works about Madoff. [TBS]

William Cohan, the banker-turned-author who published The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co. last year, has a few details on just how much Bruce Wasserstein's investment banking firm is making off the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. For advising Bryan Marsal, the turnaround guru who is now running what's left of Lehman, Lazard is collecting $400,000 a month for the next two years (and then $150,000 a month thereafter). But there's more: Lazard is also getting a $5 million fee for the week's worth of work it did in September advising Lehman on the sale of its headquarters at 750 Seventh Avenue to Barclays. Wasserstein is also expected to receive another $5 million for its efforts to sell Lehman's investment-management businesses, including Neuberger Berman. And there's good reason to assume that Wasserstein is sitting back right now smiling at his current circumstances, says Cohan:More

Fox 5 reporter Arnold Diaz paid a visit to Dick Fuld's house in Greenwich clad in a faux leather trench coat as part of one of his "Shame on You" segments this week. It's not quite as satisfying as Diaz's encounter with Martha Stewart a couple of weeks ago, and, unfortunately, he doesn't get a chance to pester Fuld personally like one of Bill O'Reilly's operatives managed to do with ex-Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O'Neal a month ago. On the plus side, though, he does get chewed out by a Eastern European man (Fuld's butler, perhaps?), and the police eventually turn up and force Diaz off the property. Video of the encounter is here. [Dealbreaker]

While New York women hoping to bag themselves an investment banker have seen the pool of potentials tragically dry up, take a moment to spare a thought for the girls in Tokyo—at least the ones whose lives revolved around dating Wall Streeters who'd been transferred to work in the city's Roppongi Hills complex. Now, as 25-year-old Haruna Hiraki gloomily says to her friend at a bar that had once been a prime spot: "I told you this place was finished. Lehman, Goldman: They've all been sacked or gone back to America." More

It will be a big night for disgraced Lehman CEO Dick Fuld and his wife Kathy: The couple's collection of postwar drawings goes up for auction at Christie's this evening. The Fulds reportedly made arrangements to sell the pieces over the summer—and the auction house gave them a $20 million guarantee, a decision it probably now regrets—although news of the sale emerged four days after the investment bank went bust. Works by Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Arshile Gorky, and Agnes Martin will be available to those who still have a few million to spare (and who aren't too deterred by the Fulds' bad mojo). Meanwhile, some of the art that Dick once enjoyed seeing on the walls of Lehman Brothers will also be coming to market in the near future: The bankrupt bank is selling $8 million worth of pictures currently languishing in warehouses in New York and Paris. 

Niki Gregory, Perhaps? | "Which wife of a top Lehman executive went on a $132,000 shopping spree at the Americana Manhasset Mall the day after her hubby filed for bankruptcy?" Page Six asked today. It didn't take very long for commenters over at Dealbreaker to come to a conclusion. After eliminating Dick Fuld's wife Kathy (who spends most of her time in Greenwich and wouldn't be caught dead shopping at a Long Island mall), the crowd seemed to settle on Niki Gregory, the wife of axed Lehman president Joe Gregory, who has a home in nearby Lloyd Harbor and was rumored to be filing for personal bankruptcy in September. [Dealbreaker]

Fuld Loses His Job Today, His Art Collection Next Week | Richard Fuld, the disgraced CEO of Lehman Brothers, will officially leave the firm by the end of the year. (With no bonus, not surprisingly.) In other Fuld family news, the couple's $20 million collection of Abstract Expressionist drawings will be auctioned off at Christie's a week from today. [Bloomberg]

Lehman's Victims | The Daily News combed through Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy filing to see who was left holding the bag. Among the parties owed cash: the Ritz Carlton on Central Park South ($239,671), Equinox gyms ($354,653), Charge & Ride car service ($41,374), and a fire extinguisher repairman in Brooklyn. [NYDN]

♦  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

Good News | Lehman Brothers is hiring! Experience handling enormous bankruptcies a plus! [Bloomberg via Clusterstock]

Barclays Cancels Christmas | Barclays, which acquired the operations of a bankrupt Lehman Brothers in September (and has been firing people left and right ever since), has cancelled its annual Christmas party. [Dealbreaker]

One more sign that these are tough economic times: more and more women are selling their eggs for cash. According to fertility specialists, the number of women willing to go through with the ordeal of hormone treatments and fertility drugs has risen 30 to 40 percent over the past few months as more women are tempted by the a payday that can be between $5,000 and $10,000. The trend isn't limited to eggs. Sperm donations are up, too, which may explain what former Lehman Brothers bankers have been doing as of late (when they're not selling stuff on Ebay, of course). [ABC News]

♦  Bad day ahead? Stocks fell sharply in Europe and Asia overnight and ugly corporate earnings have investors worried. [MW]
♦  Wachovia, which is being acquired by Wells Fargo, reported a third-quarter loss of $23.9 billion. [Bloomberg]
♦  Yahoo says it will lay off 10 percent of its work force. [NYT]
♦  Federal prosecutors looking into the collapse of Lehman have subpoenaed other firms to find out if their analysts were misled by Lehman execs. [WSJ]More