Last of the dot-com playboys?

November 15, 2001 8:12 PM

Last of the dot-com playboys? Henry Blodget, who talked up the tech boom and failed to predict the bust, has taken up Merrill Lynch's general redundancy offer and walked away with a cool $2 million. (This after ML settled with a client who had his portfolio wiped out by following Blodget's recommendations.) Somehow, though, I suspect that many casualties of the shrinking Nasdaq who followed his recommendations might wish a different "lifestyle decision" for him... (NYT, blah etc blah)
posted by holgate (7 comments total)

(And I also suspect that one or a dozen MeFites who've been laid off from tech firms with no severance might feel the same...)
posted by holgate at 8:14 PM on November 15, 2001

Funny, if your incompetence costs customers billions, you get a multi-million dollar severance package. Man, I'm in the wrong business!
posted by clevershark at 8:29 PM on November 15, 2001

Of course, Blodget made Merrill a tidy little sum before it was all over. His handshake is nothing -- nothing -- compared to what the firm took in.

Blodget was completely insignificant, as far as I can tell. There was nothing all that intelligent in his "analysis", and if it weren't for the $2 million, he'd come out a loser just like all the other little guys. The story was the investment banks and the brokers. If they hadn't found Blodget, they would have found someone else to say all the same things, suck up to their clients and hype up the markets.

How much do you think Blodget's boss is getting?
posted by mattpfeff at 8:50 PM on November 15, 2001

He said that he would use the book to explain ... what happened with Internet stocks and the analysis of them in the last few years.

"One of the things that happened at the end of the bubble is people forgot about what the downside was, and that's why a lot of people got hurt"

Pretty insightful stuff. Can't wait for the book to come out.
posted by dlewis at 10:01 PM on November 15, 2001

And the movie: the late Jack Lemmon playing Mr.Blodget.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:44 PM on November 15, 2001

I just like that Blodget is writing a book. $30 retail, $3 when you sell it to a used bookstore. Just like he likes: a 90 percent loss on your investment.
posted by werty at 7:03 AM on November 16, 2001

Severance packages on Wall Street are, for the most part, generous, in part because of the amazing profit margins when things are going well, and in part to keep from burning bridges in case they want to bring wonderboy or wondergirl back. Of course, the packages are proportional to what you were earning before.

As much as Blodget's boss is or was raking it in, Blodget was the mouthpiece for a lot of this insanity along with Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley. A lot of individuals and perhaps poorly managed funds burned their butts bigtime with all the garbage they were producing. The ensuing insanity generated the appropriate atmosphere for investment bankers to push IPOs for everything. There must be a site out there for the most ridiculous IPOs ever. It's amazing Archie McPhee never had an IPO. (No slight intended against Archie McPhee.)
posted by mmarcos at 4:08 PM on November 16, 2001