Madoff Mess Means Business for Pawnshops and Lazard
Madoff Mess Means Business for Pawnshops and Lazard
December 19, 2008, 11:43 AM
Bernand L. Madoff’s giant Ponzi scheme has created legions of losers across the world. These include huge European banks, charitable organizations, Eliot Spitzer’s family and many, many others.
But a few people seem be getting a boost from the debacle. One of these may be Levi Touger, who runs a scruffy pawnshop in Royal Palm Beach, Fla.
Mr. Touger tells The Associated Press that he’s seen an uptick in well-heeled customers since the Madoff scandal broke. Mr. Madoff, pictured above, was a big wheel in Palm Beach society, and many of its wealthy (or perhaps formerly wealthy) residents are facing serious reversals of fortune.
Some of the talk about Mr. Touger’s new clients has been overblown, he said, like early reports of a Lamborghini being put into hock.
In fact, he is a bit cagey about exactly what sorts of items have been passing over his counter in recent days.
“What can I say?” he said to The A.P. “Things you and I don’t see in Macy’s.”
Another winner in the Madoff affair is Lazard, the investment bank led by Bruce Wasserstein. Lazard has been hired by the trustee in the case to help sell the trading operations of Mr. Madoff’s firm, according to a note on the firm’s Web site. Lazard confirmed its hiring by the trustee to DealBook.
The firm is being liquidated by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation under the watch of a trustee, Irving Picard, and a bankruptcy judge (the same one presiding over Lehman Brothers‘ bankruptcy case).
Mr. Madoff’s trading operation employed about 200 people and was once the largest market maker on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The firm also handled nearly 10 percent of the volume in New York Stock Exchange listed securities in the late 1990’s.
But the business has suffered in recent years as the Big Board and other markets moved to electronic trading systems that could better compete with Madoff and other market making firms. The switch to decimalized stock quotes in 2001 also dented Mr. Madoff’s profits, which came mostly from pocketing the difference between the bid and ask price for a particular stock.
Selling part of Mr. Madoff’s firm may not be the most glamorous assignment out there for Lazard. But with the deal-making business in a near coma these days, adding anything to the deal pipeline is a bit of a coup.
Go to Article from The Associated Press via The Palm Beach Post »
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