Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Frank Quattrone and the Dot-Com Lawsuit: a Blast From the Past

Oh Baby, is Frank P. Quattrone on a roll! This month the technology banker and his firm, Qatalyst Partners, advised on two multibillion-dollar mergers. The deals add to a string of assignments that have re-established Mr. Quattrone as Silicon Valley’s marquee deal maker.

But into each life a little crap must fall. Dealbook reports that now a judge has issued a decision that throws some cold water on Mr. Quattrone’s hot streak. Judge Nancy Gertner of Federal District Court in Boston on Friday denied a request by Mr. Quattrone and his co-defendants to dismiss a decade-old lawsuit that charges his former bank, Credit Suisse First Boston, with issuing misleading stock research on AOL-Time Warner. The case now proceeds to trial.

The ruling comes as a new wave of analysts covering companies like Facebook and Groupon are securing large pay packages from investment banks. This latest Internet craze calls to mind a decade ago when dot-com analysts were Wall Street’s darlings. Jack Grubman, Henry Blodget and Mary Meeker earned millions of dollars publishing research on the sizzling companies of the tech boom. As for Mr. Quattrone, he was the era’s rock-star banker, advising on dozens of initial public offerings for companies including Cisco Systems and Amazon.com. Then came the dot-com bust….

Read more at http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/a-lawsuit-blast-from-the-dot-com-past/

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