The Most Dangerous
Deal in America
Condé Nast Portfolio
September 2007 issue
By Daniel Roth
This is what the people came for, but Stephen Feinberg looks as if he’d
rather be anywhere else. He stands motionless on one end of the
sprawling stage, practically hiding behind a lectern decorated with the
massive golden coat of arms of Manhattan’s Waldorf-Astoria. The Wall
Street investors who pack the room sit expectantly, ignoring—for the
first time all morning—their BlackBerrys, which scroll silently in
their pockets.
Feinberg, who is 47, sports thinning brown hair
and a wispy mustache. Without any notes, he launches into a meandering
speech. Between long pauses, he wends his way through market analyses
that seem deliberately vague. At the heart of his speech, he sums up
the philosophy that guides his company: Reveal as little as necessary;
be anonymous; be invisible. “We try to hide religiously,” he says. “If
anyone at Cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his
apartment, we will do more than fire that person. We will kill him. The
jail sentence will be worth it.” There are a few nervous laughs.
Since graduating from Princeton 25 years ago, Feinberg has never given
an interview and has never been photographed by the press. Not that
there has been much demand until now. On Wall Street, the C.E.O. of
Cerberus Capital Management, an investment firm with $26 billion in
assets under management, has long been admired. (“You probably think
you’re smart,” says one former employee. “Now take your brain and mine,
take them to the 28th power, and you have Steve Feinberg.”) To the
general public, though, Cerberus has been just another shadowy buyer of
companies in an already overpopulated field. The firm’s purchases
include a grab bag of brands that lurk on the edge of consumer
consciousness: Fila sporting goods, Mervyn’s department stores, Alamo
and National rental cars, Air Canada, the GMAC lending arm of General
Motors.
All that changed on May 14 when another mustachioed
C.E.O., Dieter Zetsche of DaimlerChrysler, announced he was selling
Chrysler to Cerberus for $7.4 billion. (Daimler is retaining a 20
percent stake.) It marked the historic end of the German carmaker’s
cross-cultural business experiment and the return of an American icon
to U.S. soil. Feinberg didn’t even bother to appear at the press
conference.
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