Word: diller
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Wall Street and the quants are stuck with each other. Stanley Diller, 58, an early quant who is managing director of fixed-income research at Paine Webber, left a job as an economics professor at Columbia in the mid-'70s to join Goldman, Sachs & Co.'s equity-research department. In those days, he says, "research was largely an image builder. It was something that brought in the customers." Now quantitative research "is the whole deal." If you don't have it, says Diller, you can't produce the new financial instruments, " 'cause you get crushed trying to hedge them." Meaning...
...ventures between them, and each firm is already eyeing prospective new partners. "There's plenty of adrenaline pumping here," Smith says. "We are a company on the prowl." So is TCI. No sooner had the merger collapsed than rumors began flying of a joint expedition by Malone and Barry Diller, who had only just lost his five-month fight for Paramount Communications, to find themselves a Hollywood studio...
...hand. Reason: Viacom stock was falling fast, and if the plunge accelerated, the company would have to issue more shares under the collar guarantee and drive down the price even further. That would slash the value of Viacom's bid for Paramount, thus all but handing victory to Diller. Berrard was adamant, however. "No collar," he snapped, "no deal...
Viacom couldn't afford to let Blockbuster get away, because Redstone needed the video chain's financial clout to defeat Diller and then help pay interest on the debt after the Paramount merger. So Greenhill, whose firm earned $12.5 million for advising Viacom, resorted to a game of high-stakes financial chicken. He allowed the Blockbuster talks to break off rather than accede to Berrard's demands. At the same time, Greenhill instructed Levitt to maintain contact with his pal Berrard. The strategy paid off on Christmas Day, when Levitt, calling from New Jersey on his Jeep Cherokee car phone...
BUSINESS: The Deal That Forced Diller to Fold...