Barclays frat house
Ex-Lehman bankers brought hazing to bank
Morale at Barclays in New York plummeted last week after the bank fired Justin Kwan, a junior banker, for sending a jokey email to the new crop of interns, which was highlighted on last Sunday’s Business cover, Kevin Dugan reports.
The June 3 email from Kwan, a secondyear analyst in the bank’s Power Group, told the babyfaced bankerstobe that “if you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen,” and that they should bring extra ties to be used as napkins for their superiors.”
After Kwan was fired three days later, bummedout Barclays employees have inundated managers’ inboxes with questions about what they can and cannot say for fear of being let go, according to two bankers.
Barclays’ fratboy culture — which Kwan bragged about in his email — may be tough to change, one Wall Street insider told On the Money, since holdovers from Lehman Brothers, which used to informally hold “open bikini contests,” still run many of the desks there.
Mirror images
It doesn’t get more navelgazing than a set of awards for those who report on the media, but a host of boldface names showed up Thursday to quaff peach bellinis at the annual Mirror Awards held at the 42nd Street Cipriani. Among them Charter boss Rutledge edge ery Communications’s’ Zaslav and Turner Broadcasting boss David Levy.
Poetry lover and wellknown wisecracker Josh Sapan accepted his leadership award with his usual grace. Sapan, who runs AMC Networks, poked fun at Zaslav’s humongous pay package, saying: “If I could keep up with h his pace, I’d be sort of rich.”
This year three of the six awardwinners wrote about the topic of women in the media — though we did not see New York Times Executive Editor Dean Ba
cringe at alla at the best digital story category winner: “Where Are the Women? Why we need more female newsroom leaders.”
Baquet, who replaced Jill Abramson in the top slot after she was fired, delivered a moving speech about the late media columnist David Carr, saying that whenever he felt down about the future of newspapers, Carr would give him encouragement, and that Carr always delivered the unvarnished truth: “He never
sucked up to his bosses.”
Honest Alba
If there was a casting call for a young female entrepreneur, Jessica Alba (pictured) would nnever have expected a callback. “People just saw me as this girl in a bikini in movies, kicking butt — maybe not the brightest bulb,” she said at Forbes’ third annual Women’s Summit. “It took 3¹/₂ years of condescending nods and pats on the back, or ‘go back to endorsing things or go do a perfume.’”
Alba nownow hash the starring role as her firm, The Honest Co., which markets nontoxic household products. It started with $10 million in revenues in 2012 but has grown to $150 million last year and a valuation of $1 billion.
WhaleW wail
Marineanimal expert JeanMichel Cou
— who worked on the successful release of Keiko, the star of “Free Willy,” into a seaside pen (before he died in the wild) — said SeaWorld Entertainment can move its orcas to seaside sanctuaries without costing it money.
Cousteau told The Post’s Josh Kosman he is now working with the National Aquarium in Baltimore to move captive dolphins to a clean sea pen, possibly near Hawaii.
“I want to help SeaWorld,” Cousteau said. “If they continue the way they are [keeping Orcas in tanks despite the harsh criticism], they will go out of business.”