Page 255 - Executive Warfare

The New Bosses

soon as we discovered this, I asked for a meeting with the mayor and the
police commissioner. I assured them that we would analyze every case
individually and make every police offi-
cer whole.
Now, the mayor and the police com- THE GOAL HERE IS
missioner are busy people. If I hadn’t NOT TO GET YOUR
already made an effort to get to know REGULATORS TO
them, I might not have gotten that LOOK THE OTHER
meeting. WAY IF YOU HAVE
What did it help us avoid? Possibly DONE SOMETHING
criminal action, a lawsuit, fines, and TRULY EGREGIOUS.
some really awful newspaper headlines, THE GOAL IS TO
any one of which can be a career killer. WIN THE BENEFIT
The goal here is not to get your reg- OF THE DOUBT IN
ulators to look the other way if you have THE GRAY AREAS.
done something truly egregious. That is
not going to happen. If you’ve deliber-
ately poured toxic waste into the river for 25 years, forget it. If, however,
there has merely been an undetected leak, you may get a chance to fix the
problem without being punished severely.
The goal here is to win the benefit of the doubt in the gray areas.

WALL STREET ANALYSTS—THE FIX MAY BE IN
During the dot-com boom, stock analysts at brokerage houses often gave
investors an unrealistically enthusiastic picture of the stocks they covered.
There was a purpose to this good cheer, of course. It helped their firms
win investment banking business from those same companies.
Then Eliot Spitzer got interested in this conflict of interest, and there
were public hangings, big fines, and some new rules. Now analysts have
discovered a new power—to talk a stock down—and this has only
increased their influence over the companies they cover.

235