Made Up Story About AT&T Ratings. Jack Grubman, a star Wall Street analyst during the heyday for technology stocks, said Wednesday that he made up a story about how he used his ratings of AT&T stock to help his boss win a power struggle at Citigroup.
Grubman said the story, sent by him in e-mail memos to another analyst, was just baseless boasting on his part. “I invented a story in an effort to inflate my professional importance and make an impression on a colleague and friend,” he said in a statement.
Grubman, who worked at Citigroup’s Salomon Smith Barney brokerage, is among analysts under investigation and is named in shareholder lawsuits over alleged manipulation of stock ratings. He resigned in August but insists he never issued a biased rating.
He was responding to a Wall Street Journal story that disclosed the e-mail, in which Grubman said Citigroup Chief Executive Sanford Weill pushed him to review his rating of AT&T stock to curry favor from AT&T CEO C. Michael Armstrong, a Citigroup board member, in a bid to oust a boardroom rival.
Weill also denied the account in a memo sent to employees and made public by the company. “I have said before, and will say again: I never told any analyst what he or she had to write and I never would,” he said. “Nor would I ever attempt to manipulate a board member’s vote. Any suggestion that I did is just wrong.”
Weill said the New York state investigators who first uncovered the e-mail already had been told the story was made up, and he expressed anger that it had been leaked.
In the late 1990s, Grubman became one of Wall Street’s most powerful analysts. His advice was sought and closely followed by both top executives making billion-dollar deals and small investors who staked their savings.
When technology stocks collapsed and many high-flying companies such as Global Crossing and WorldCom fell in bankruptcy or scandal, he and other leading analysts were accused of touting weak stocks to lure business to their companies.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, Citigroup said Grubman and its Salomon Smith Barney unit have been named in 62 class-action complaints.
New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who has been probing conflicts of interest at Wall Street firms involved in researching and trading stocks, uncovered the e-mail from Grubman, according to the Journal.
Spitzer is interested in what role Weill had in Salomon’s AT&T rating, including an upgrade by Grubman right before the telephone giant was planning a massive stock sale to finance its wireless unit.
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