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There must be something about this premature summer heat that’s got L.A. all hot and bothered because we saw a new, heightened passion in Angelenos frolicking in the night this weekend. It had us wondering if you noticed it too. And we just want to know, in the words of Sir Elton John, can YOU feel the love tonight? Join us as we interpret the swelling passion we saw at the No Shirt/No Shoes party at Bardot Friday night through Disney’s animated musical The Lion King. Read the full story

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In a highly anticipated followup to last year’s standout Coachella weekend blowout that kept us dancing like fools ’til about 4am or so, A|X Armani Exchange and 944 Magazine returned with the 2nd Annual Neon Carnival Saturday night.  Considering how they killed it with arguably with best party of the weekend last year, we were delighted to see the old “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it” philosophy in effect. Read the full story

Not okay?

Jack Rappaport is a business professor at Lasalle University. Last month he gave students an opportunity to earn extra credit by taking a “symposium” on business ethics, for which he charged attendees $150. Their admission fee apparently went toward the hiring of three strippers, if you can even call them that, according to some attendees who were not impressed. “They were just dancing around the room,” said junior Louis Halegoua. “I mean, they had clothes on and stuff.” One, however, was apparently was doing a special kind of dance.

“I don’t know, just kind of laying on top of him. Not laying on top of him but straddling him. It was like a lap dance you could say,” said sophomore Brad Bernardino.

It was during the “like a lap dance” portion of the class that the business school’s dean happened to walk by the room and threw a wrench in the professor’s plans.

“We didn’t see him. He was, like, at the door. And he was like, ‘It’s over,’” said Halegoua.

The university has declined to comment, as has Professor Lap Dance, who said he wanted to tell his side of the story but can’t until the school has wrapped up its investigation. While we wait, it seem pretty obvious that if the Dean had simply pulled the instructor out of class and asked what was going on, he would’ve heard that the girls were about to play a serious part in helping the students role play real life situations in which the lessons learned in their biz ethics class could be applied. Situations like:

* “You’re with a client at a strip club and he’s just poured coke on a stripper’s ass [professor pours coke on a stripper's ass] and demands you snort it. Brad, what do you do? Do you refuse and make the client, in this case me, do it?”

* “Louis, your stripper friend mentions she’s bought up shares of a company called Lubrizol that she suggests your boss at Berkshire Hathaway take a look at.** She also says you should consider buying yourself a bunch before pitching it to the head honcho. What do you do?”

* “Brad, you and the stripper are best friends who’ve known each other for years and worked at a hedge fund together called SMACK Capital. During that time you profited off of insider information together. The Feds come to you and say you can get a better deal for yourself and compete in triathlons if you get the stripper on tape talking about how she destroyed evidence with two pair of pliers and the discarded the pieces around the city. the stripper was the the maid of honor at your wedding and helped you get over being dumped by your former fiance. What do you do?”

* “Louis, Brad is your direct report. He’s just killed this stripper and wants you to help him dump the body. You haven’t yet found out your bonus number. What do you do?”
he would’ve poured coke in the strippers’ ass and asked a student to snort it out and said

Lasalle Professor Investigated For Stripper Class [ABC]

**This is actually how David Sokol got the idea.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

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Friday night, the generally quiet, laid-back Santa Monica-Malibu coastline got a bit more excitement than we’re used to seeing in that part of town. And we’re into it. Things took a turn for the funky at the new weekly Sunset Fridays thowdown at Gladstone’s in conjunction with charity project, To Japan With Love. Read the full story

“If you’re interested in boring finance stuff like me, this is a break from that,” Scott Chancellor, who walked in the show and plans to work in private equity, told Dealbook.

The event benefitted the Dress for Success charity and modeled outfits “that might be equally appropriate for the dance floor and the trading floor.”

MBA Students Stroll The Catwalk For Charity [Dealbook]
Harvard Business School Students Can Build Their Resumes And Check Out The Hot Assets On Their Peers At The Same Time [BI]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

SAC Capital is reportedly close to signing a lease at 510 Madison that would give the firm the second through fifth floors, 66,000 square feet, and naming rights to the building (which comes with a health club and pool, meaning everyone will be required to pass a swim test- if you never learned how, I highly suggest you start dunking your head underwater during tonight’s bath to get yourself used to it, as floaties will not be permitted). While the Stamford office will always be number one, this much space and responsibility cannot be ignored and means we need to get to work.

This is our To Do List:

1. Name: so many ways to go on this one. We could always just make it the SAC Capital building with each 50 foot letter cast in bronze, positioned vertically down the side of the building. We could be vindictive with S a D Patty Tower. We could go subtle with: 3/50 Madison Avenue.

2. Decorating tips: in order to make this place feel like home, we need little interesting touches and flourishes everywhere. For instance, like the national debt clock there could be a Steve’s net worth clock ticking on the side of the building. Is there a need for some kind of embalmed pet or are we over that? Perhaps a subtle nod with some bearskin rugs? Those hula girl lamps Steve’s always wanted but were deemed too tacky for the Stamford office?

3. Use of space: the new building will be considerably larger than the old New York office at 540 Madison Avenue- how should we make use of the extra room? Everyone is allotted enough space for 27 monitors? Reflection rooms for meditation/quiet time? A 200-foot roped off Dance Revolution stage? Guest bedrooms in case someone wants to spend the night? A Dominos-wing with one room devoted just to cheesy bread? A sweatshop where you know what will be made, as a certain clothing manufacturer has been jacking up its prices?

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

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MFG Productions' weekly Thursday night party carried into yet another year with the first Dance Right of 2011 last night. Downtown Mexican spot La Cita maintained its status as the official site of the wee[...]

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$$$ Matthew Goldstein: Email of analyst visited by FBI went to big players [Reuters]

$$$ Paolo Pellegrini: “I’m stepping back, I’m trying to put together a more stable team, focusing on more quantitative types of disciplines. I think that there is so much arbitrary input in the investment process at this point, given all of the regulatory and central bank actions, that it is difficult to have a linear process of thinking about the world and how to make money. It’s sort of more complicated than that—there is a lot of unpredictable externality from decisions that are a combination of personal ideology of different players and political realities of different points of time.” [Bloomberg TV]

$$$ James Gorman: “We’re the prettiest girl at the dance.” [The Economist]

$$$ New New York AG to focus on mortgage, consumer debt [FINS]

$$$ The Legend Of Eli Radke [TRB]

$$$ Credit The Fed: Banks Are Healthier [Dealbook]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

US Pursues Sweeping Insider Trading Probe (WSJ)
Federal authorities, capping a three-year investigation, are preparing insider-trading charges that could ensnare consultants, investment bankers, hedge-fund and mutual-fund traders, and analysts across the nation, according to people familiar with the matter. The criminal and civil probes, which authorities say could eclipse the impact on the financial industry of any previous such investigation, are examining whether multiple insider-trading rings reaped illegal profits totaling tens of millions of dollars, the people say. Some charges could be brought before year-end, they say.

Ending Banks’ `Disco Inferno’ Will Involve Errors, Haldane Says (Bloomberg)
“Chuck Prince’s disco inferno causes murder on the dance floor,” said Haldane, who is the Bank of England’s executive director for financial stability. “The case for policy action may have grown over recent decades as competition in banking, and associated externalities, have intensified.”

US Banks Face $100 Billion Capital Shortfall On Basel (FT)
The top 35 US banks will be short of between $100 billion and $150 billion in equity capital after the new Basel III global bank regulations are imposed, with 90 percent of the shortfall concentrated in the biggest six banks, according to Barclays Capital.

Ireland Bailout Gets Lukewarm Welcome (WSJ)
The Irish government Sunday said it had formally applied for tens of billions of euros in aid from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. The EU and the IMF indicated the money will be forthcoming, pending negotiations on the steps the government will have to take to restructure its debts and cut its budget deficit.

Criticism Hinders Fed Plan (WSJ)
The criticism “has raised questions about the Fed’s ability and resolve to control the yield curve,” said Mohamed El-Erian. “The criticism has unsettled markets naturally inclined to worry about the politicization of the Fed and its loss of autonomy,” he said.

Soros Gold Bubble Expanding as ETPs Hold 9 Years of U.S. Output (Bloomberg)
“People who are selling gold here are making a big mistake,” said Michael Pento, a senior economist at Euro Pacific Capital Inc. in New York who correctly predicted gold’s highs the past two years. “The gold bull market will end when real interest rates become positive and we’re very far away from that. The Fed believes it’s going to have to print more money to keep real interest rates from rising and rescue the economy.”

No Exodus: Financial Service Sector Investors Return To London (FT)
Foreign-owned businesses accounted for 9.1 percent of new authorizations by the Financial Services Authority in the first half of 2010, according to data compiled by IMAS corporate finance advisers. That is up 40 percent from 2009, when foreign-owned companies accounted for 6.5 percent of new authorizations, as financial services groups worldwide struggled in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

For-Profit Colleges May Lose Access To US Aid Over Violations (Bloomberg)
For-profit colleges that pay recruiters based on the number of students they sign up may lose access to U.S. government student aid, which provided the colleges with $26.5 billion last year and can account for as much as 90 percent of company revenue.

Putin Calls Meeting On Tiger Threats (NYT)
Ministers from several countries gathered Sunday in St. Petersburg at the invitation of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to begin a five-day meeting with the goal of protecting tigers. Only a little more than 3,000 are estimated to be living outside captivity. Mr. Putin is so fond of the animals that he was given a cub for his 56th birthday. But it is perhaps no accident that Mr. Putin has chosen to make an endangered feline the subject of the conference rather than a threatened canine — the wolf, for example, or the wild dog. Throughout history, prominent men have identified with the majesty, power and machismo of large cats.

“Leaders especially like to think of themselves as having the virtues of large cats,” said Stephen R. Kellert, a professor emeritus and senior research scholar at Yale University who studies human-animal relationships. “They like the image of the stand-alone, solitary yet fearsome hunter.”

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

As someone who follows Wall Street and especially hedge funds for a living, I’ve long suspected, nay, known, that the secret to many a money manager’s success is a daily shimmy down the trading floor. However, and I think most of you will back me up on this, I figured the first time anyone would publicly admit to it would be attached to the name of a firm whose headquarters are located in Stamford, CT and whose founder could’ve been a dancer if he hadn’t gotten into stocks. Instead, it’s PIMCO, and it’s Bill Gross’s dancing feet.

Lately, [Gross] has been trying to loosen up a bit in the office, where he prefers to focus, in silence, for hours in front of his trading screens. To break the quiet he helps impose, the morning we meet he starts a new ritual: at 8 a.m., a song that someone recommends is blasted over the sound system. Mr. Gross kicks it off with Short Skirt/Long Jacket by the alt-rock band Cake. He even helps lead a conga line past rows of stunned-looking traders.

If you think this was just for the benefit of the reporter 1) I don’t want to hear about it and 2) think again! Gross has long been the guy the industry looks to when it needs someone to be brave, whether it’s about dancing or speaking out on the evils of the automatic flush. Now that he’s gone first, everyone else should feel confident enough to do the same. Is your trading floor equipped with disco balls that descend from the ceiling when they sense a certain level of hip gyrations, while the rest of the lights dim and house music starts blasting, like bham bham bhamb and boom boom boom? Is it not unusual to see a bunch of PMs shimmying down the aisle like gay chorus line circa 3PM? Is it okay and in fact encouraged for employees to “get low”? Share it with the group.

The Obsessive Life Of Bond Guru Bill Gross [Globe And Mail]

Related: Bill Gross Will Cut A Bitch For Speaking And/Or Audibly Breathing On The Floor
What Does Bill Gross Think About On The Can? He’s Happy You Asked

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker