~referring to clients by nicknames such as "King," "Raccoon" and "Chicken."~
DO you think that Ace has a client named ThunderChicken???-vbg-
March 8, 1999
'Ace' Greenberg of Bear Stearns
Celebrates a Golden Anniversary
By CHARLES GASPARINO
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Alan "Ace" Greenberg, Bear Stearns Cos.' chairman, prizes brevity: His meetings start on time and end swiftly. He returns phone calls within 10 minutes. He won't use two words when one will do.
So what's he doing Monday?
Celebrating 50 consecutive years at Bear Stearns. This endurance feat is nearly unheard of on Wall Street, where job-hopping is the norm. His secret: "I bring in money," Mr. Greenberg says, before abruptly moving on to his next investment.
He also takes home money-lots of it. Mr. Greenberg, 71 years old, received $18.5 million in salary and bonus last year, one of the biggest pay packages on Wall Street. This means it now takes him 11 ½ minutes to earn the entire annual paycheck -- $1,690 -- he received in 1949 as a clerk locating oil wells on a map for the big New York securities firm.
And if he's slowing down, it doesn't show. No Wall Street chairman manages money for clients as actively as Mr. Greenberg, who says he has no plans of quitting soon. Seated at his raised desk on the firm's trading floor, he barks out orders to his assistants, moving millions of dollars in stocks and other securities, and referring to clients by nicknames such as "King," "Raccoon" and "Chicken."
No one could call him a chicken. Over the years, he has loudly clashed with senior Bear Stearns executives over his penchant for quickly selling losing trading positions. In the 1960s, he confronted Cy Lewis, then Bear Stearns's chief, who tended to hold on to every stock he bought, and told him that strategy was bad business. The late Mr. Lewis relented.
Mr. Lewis, a seasoned trader in his own right, "thought just because you bought something, it would go up," Mr. Greenberg says now. "We almost came to blows."
That is a lesson he says he learned from his father, who owned a string of clothing stores in the Midwest. Dad's advice was simple and straightforward: If you have bad inventory, mark it down and sell it quickly.
Even now, he isn't afraid of taking controversial stands. Last year, he donated $1 million to help poor people get access to Viagra, the popular impotency drug, in a move that embarrassed some colleagues at Bear Stearns. Mr. Greenberg said he has no regrets.
Mr. Greenberg gave up the CEO post at Bear in 1993 to James Cayne, but he continues to most reflect the firm's cultural personality. His quirky memos, spoken through a fictional character Haimchinkel Malintz Anaynikal, are part of Wall Street lore, particularly the one exhorting Bear Stearns employees to save paper clips.
Mr. Anaynikal "is my kind of guy-cheap, smart, opinionated," Warren Buffett, the legendary investor, says in an introduction to a book of Mr. Greenberg's memos. "I just wish I'd met him earlier in life, when, in the foolishness of my youth, I used to discard paper clips. But it's never too late, and I now slavishly follow and preach his principles."
Mr. Buffett added that Mr. Greenberg "does almost everything better than I do-bridge, magic tricks, dog training, arbitrage-all the important things in life."
So how long will Monday's anniversary bash last at Bear Stearns? It is hard to tell. Ten years ago, his 40th-anniversary bash lasted all of 14 minutes.
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