The New York Times profiled Steve Cohen, Mets owner. Their article includes the following;
Those who know him say his view of subordinates can be similarly binary — morons and moneymakers, doers and duds — producing sometimes savage encounters in the workplace. Business associates have been routinely berated in front of peers, their intelligence insulted in a hail of expletives. “That’s your best idea?” he has asked his traders, peppering profanities. “Are you stupid?”
…
Competitors spoke of Cohen the way baseball watchers assessed titans of the steroid age: Yes, he was talented. Yes, everyone hustled for an edge, often in the ethical murk. But S.A.C. could seem especially tethered to the period’s excesses, an inspiration for the legally dubious firm on the television series “Billions.”
For years, prosecutors aggressively pursued S.A.C. — “a veritable magnet for market cheaters,” they said — indicting and convicting employees found to have engaged in illegal trading. Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan at the time, eyed Cohen with particularresolve. (Bharara did not respond to requests for comment.)
Though Cohen was never personally charged, S.A.C. pleaded guilty to insider trading infractions in 2013, becoming the first large Wall Street firm in a generation to admit to criminal wrongdoing. Cohen paid a total of $1.8 billion in fines. During a mandated hiatus from managing public money, he transitioned to a “family office,” Point72, that would manage much of his personal fortune, estimated today by Forbes to exceed $17 billion.
(via NY Times)
