Dear Ken, Go F*ck Yourself, Love Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Loeb
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2005 5:28
To: Ken Griffin

Dear Ken,

I understand that you recently hired an employee of Greenlight and have also attempted to hire Third Point employees in the past. I think Andrew made a horrible decision based upon discussions that I have had with numerous former and current Citadel employees/ indentured servants.

I find the disconnect between your self-proclaimed "good to great, Jim Collins-esque" organization and the reality of the gulag you created quite laughable. You are surrounded by sycophants, but even you must know that the people who work for you despise and resent you. I assume you know this because I have read the employment agreements that you make people sign.

I understand your need to hire employees from other firms, something that Third Point has not had to do based on the fact that, unlike yourself, I actually enjoy and have talent in investing and am able to nurture others within my organization whom I hire from wide ranging disciplines such as graduate schools, private equity firms and medicine.

Let me be clear that, under no circumstances, are you to approach any Third Point employees or attempt to offer them jobs. First of all, like Brad Radoff, who you poached from me some years ago, you do not even know how to manage people who invest. He has happily returned to the Third Point fold and is doing extremely well.

Secondly, those that you have approached know the low regard in which I hold you and your over-rated firm, and they are happy to meet with you and report back to me the sorry state of affairs over there and your desperate attempts to replicate our success.

My warning extends to any attempt you may make to hire employees of my friends in the event-driven space: should you attempt to hire people from them, I will consider it a similar act of war. My friends enemies become my enemies.

Good luck extracting exorbitant management fees and generating mediocre returns with your bloated organization and ego. By the way, there is little I enjoy as much as watching from afar as your reputation and "organization" declines at the same rate as your falling returns.

DL

Dan Loeb

Comments

[TB]

What level of education does this guy have? It amazes me that people can look up to individuals who lack any degree of class and communicate on such an infantile level.

[Brian Aldershof]

A gentle reminder....

CFA Institute has all those stupid rules, but the only ones they actually enforce are the rules about conduct during the test. Every year, CFAI publishes a list of the outcomes of professional conduct program (PCP) inquiries and every year the list just includes people who mess with the rules during the test. As ridiculous as it sounds, if you don't stop filling in the ovals when the proctor says 'Stop', they will boot you out of the program, publish your name in a publication received by 200,000 finance professionals, and make you spend lots of money on lawyers. They really will.

As obvious as all this sounds:

1) Read the rules thoroughly. The answer to 'I wonder if it's OK to [whatever]?' is no.
2) Leave all your books, notes, flashcards, etc. at home. You can't do any meaningful study in the parking lot anyway.
3) Use only the approved calculator
4) Respect the proctor more than your boss, your parents, your spouse, or anyone else in your life for 6 hours.
5) If something does go wrong, bow out as gracefully as you can. June isn't that far away.

I had my own encounter with the PCP program over an intellectual property dispute (with a particularly litigious hedge fund owner named Ken) and it was costly and very draining. I was exonerated (because I didn't do anything wrong) but you absolutely don't want this. I promise.