Some in New York see silver lining in Wall Street fiasco

Israeli Business Forum overbooked with newly unemployed corporate financiers hoping to become entrepreneurs.

By ALLISON HOFFMAN
TA stock exchange 224 88 (photo credit: Bloomberg)
TA stock exchange 224 88
(photo credit: Bloomberg)
All day Monday, haggard investment bankers walked mournfully in and out of Lehman Brothers' headquarters at the north end of Times Square in Manhattan, most clad in weekend wear that might be called "shiva casual" and toting plastic tubs, rolling suitcases or gym bags to gather their personal effects. The roughly 25,000 workers at Lehman and other institutions caught up in the weekend's financial crisis - including Merrill Lynch, which agreed to be bought by retail banking giant Bank of America, and American International Group, the insurance giant that will begin selling off pieces of its business to prevent going under - had no word of their fates, and no choice but to simply wait. Most in the companies' New York offices chose to do so in silence. Lehman cut workers off from external phone and e-mail contact via corporate systems early in the day, but even those who could be reached declined comment. "I don't want to talk," said Boaz Nol, an Israeli who is a vice-president in Lehman's private investment management division, when reached by The Jerusalem Post on his cell phone. To most, including the horde of onlookers and reporters who gathered outside the building on Seventh Avenue to gawk, the mute passage of workers under the watchful eyes of security guards - one with a dog - embodied tragedy. But savvy market players saw something else in one of the biggest collapses in Wall Street history: opportunity. Bankruptcy attorneys, even those not working directly on deals relating to Lehman's collapse, said they were flooded with work stemming from the crisis, while lawyers specializing in venture capital and private equity markets said their clients were actively looking for places to invest their money. "There are so many deals out there for people willing to take risks, and Israelis often have deeper stomachs for it," said Oz Benamram, head of the Israel desk in the New York office of law firm Morrison and Foerster. "In an economy like this there are things that will go for less than they are worth," Benamram said. Israeli investors looking for a safe haven have taken advantage of the weak US dollar and have been buying small companies and avidly investing in commercial real estate deals across the US all summer, he noted. Benamram said meetings at the Israeli Business Forum, a group for expatriate Israelis he helped found in 2002, have recently been overbooked with newly unemployed corporate financiers hoping to become self-starting entrepreneurs. Yet with the market already flooded with experienced bankers who lost their jobs earlier this year - including last spring, in the fall of the venerable Bear Stearns bank - many will be forced to make difficult choices. Israelis whose work visas were sponsored by their employers will likely join the steady trickle of workers who have headed home this year. Consular officials said they had no count on how many of the 350,000 Israelis living in the tri-state area around Manhattan work in the financial services industry, and had not fielded any phone calls Monday from Israelis concerned about their visa status. The first task for those affected by the crisis will be to move beyond the feeling of being victimized by the financial meltdown. They won't be the first: many in this generation remember the collapse of junk bond giant Drexel Burnham Lambert in the late 1980s. "There really is nothing new under the sun," said Rabbi Irwin Kula, the author of Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life. "They're going to be shell-shocked, but the same way these things purge the market, they can cleanse the spirit as well," Kula said. "The same way they have to decide what to throw out from the desk and put in the box, they can use a little inventory time for their spiritual state."