WALL STREET
William D. Cohan
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February 12, 2025
Buying the Goldman Double-Dip
The latest boardroom trend among the top banks is the phenomenon of “double bonuses”—paying ur-top executives not only for their performance, but also to stick around without screwing the pooch.
William D. Cohan
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February 9, 2025
Trump’s Carried Interest Insurrection
Wall Street hasn’t had much beef with Trump 2.0 thus far, outside of the J6 pardons and his misguided response to the midair collision over DCA. But now that he’s taking on the carried interest loophole, things may change.
William D. Cohan
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February 5, 2025
A Wall Street Soothsayer Translates the Tariffs
Other than the blanket pardons for the January 6 offenders, and Trump’s D.E.I. press conference after the horrific helicopter-jet collision, the donor class on Wall Street is generally happy with Trump II.
William D. Cohan
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February 2, 2025
The Son Also Rises
SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son is among the most enigmatic and influential investors alive today. In a recent conversation at the Economic Club of New York, one of his biographers, the former FT editor Lionel Barber, offered a brisk primer on his legendary career.
William D. Cohan
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January 29, 2025
Sex, Lies & Nvidia
Yes, yes, DeepSeek’s low-cost alternative to ChatGPT might represent a sea change in how Wall Street models the financial impact of artificial intelligence. Markets like moats, after all. But investors racing for the exits ought to take the long view of history and stop losing their heads.
William D. Cohan
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January 26, 2025
Investment Banking in the Age of A.I.
Jon O’Herron, one of Lazard’s legendary partners, used to tell me that all you needed as an investment banker was “a yellow sheet of paper and a pencil.” Obviously, those days are long gone. Rogo, which just raised a new round, heralds a new dawn on Wall Street.
William D. Cohan
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January 23, 2025
Solomon the King
Goldman Sachs just gave C.E.O. David Solomon 80 million reasons to stick around for another five years. It also provided a plan for succession—the sort of road map that is still egregiously absent among some of Goldman’s largest peers.
William D. Cohan
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January 19, 2025
Trump’s Economic Inheritance
Despite a number of complex and even chilling signals, the new president will inherit the stable economy that his predecessor achieved but could never articulate—Trump’s latest stroke of luck in a lifetime of unprecedented good fortune.
William D. Cohan
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January 19, 2025
Leon Black Is Back
New legal judgments would seem to vindicate the Apollo founder, who had been enmeshed for years in the Epstein miasma and a couple other sordid scenarios.
William D. Cohan
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January 16, 2025
The Oracle of Bro-maha
Bill Ackman, the prolific X poster and hedge fund billionaire, has proposed a deal to position himself as his generation’s answer to Warren Buffett—his latest attempt to secure a place on Wall Street’s Mount Rushmore.
William D. Cohan
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January 12, 2025
Investing in the Trump-Musk Romantasy
Will the investor infatuation with Tesla (or SpaceX or Starlink…) fade after Trump and Musk have their inevitable falling out?
William D. Cohan
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January 9, 2025
The Trump M&A Deal Heat
Wall Street has caught M&A fever anticipating the incoming Trump administration, but C.E.O.s may soon regret placing big bets on a scenario rife with what ifs…
William D. Cohan
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January 6, 2025
A P.E. Morality Tale for the Ages
A talmudic reading of the underappreciated saga surrounding VitalCaring Group, a private equity concoction that a Delaware judge has branded a hallmark of modern duplicity.
William D. Cohan
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December 22, 2024
SpinCo City
After a year of legacy media conglomerate C.E.O.s alternately putting “everything on the table,” the scope of the real deal activity will become clear in 1H25.
William D. Cohan
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December 18, 2024
Space Cowboys
The rise, fall, and return of Zero-G, the “zero gravity” lower-priced alternative to Blue Origin, which allows tourists and researchers to experience the flavor of space over the Atlantic for 10 grand a pop.
William D. Cohan
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December 15, 2024
Zaz in Cable Wonderland
At first blush, WBD’s chief seems to be following Brian Roberts’ “SpinCo” strategy for his own declining linear assets. But a closer look at the sheer legal and M&A firepower he’s enlisted reveals a debt-reduction/P.E. play that more closely resembles AT&T’s sale of DirecTV.
William D. Cohan
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December 5, 2024
Trump’s Pre-Inaugural Stock Slump
The value of the president-elect’s media company, which is on track to lose an incredible $363 million this year, has bizarrely skyrocketed before the election and is trading at an absurd 2,770x revenue. Will Elon get his taste via a reverse merger?