March 28, 2024

DealBook: On Obama, Wall St. Shows a Reluctance to Commit

President Obama appeared at a gay and lesbian fund-raiser before heading to dinner with Wall Street financiers.Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPresident Obama appeared at a gay and lesbian fund-raiser before heading to dinner with Wall Street financiers.

President Obama’s $35,800-a-plate fund-raising dinner was the talk of Wall Street last week.

Held at Daniel, the Michelin three-star restaurant of Daniel Boulud on the Upper East Side, the event was seen as a test of the president’s popularity among the deep-pocketed financiers he has often vilified but has long relied on to finance his campaign. The tables were filled with moneymen like Marc Lasry, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Avenue Capital; Robert Wolf, the chief executive of UBS Group Americas; and Mark T. Gallogly, a co-founder of Centerbridge Partners.

The big news, however, was who wasn’t there: No Jamie Dimon, once referred to as the president’s “favorite banker.” No Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, a longtime Democratic supporter. Not even Richard Parsons, chairman of Citigroup and a member of Mr. Obama’s transition economic advisory board.

The conventional wisdom, of course, is that Wall Street has turned its back on Mr. Obama out of frustration with his so-called antibusiness rhetoric and “fat cat” comments about bankers.

But Wall Street’s absence may be more about optics — the way things appear— than reality. Behind the scenes, it seems that many bankers are not running away from the president as quickly as some might suspect.

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While many of the biggest name financiers feel that they can’t publicly support Mr. Obama through campaign contributions the way they did in 2008 — “it would be bad for business,” one brand-name chief executive of a major bank acknowledged — some still plan to vote for him. And some begrudgingly acknowledged that they don’t yet see a viable alternative to Mr. Obama among the Republican field.

It also turns out that Wall Street is not the only one concerned about optics. The president’s re-election campaign has not been actively courting Wall Street’s biggest C.E.O.’s to appear at such fund-raisers out of fear that their support could offend his most liberal backers, two people involved in planning his fund-raiser at Daniel said.

“A picture of Lloyd and Obama together probably isn’t helpful,” one of these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid upsetting his role in the campaign. (It is unknown whom Mr. Blankfein plans to vote for.)

While Wall Street executives still complain about the president’s name-calling and pressure for a regulatory overhaul, many say privately that his bark has been worse than his bite.

“Obama hasn’t been too bad to banks. He could have been worse,” said a top executive at one of the nation’s largest banks, a big supporter in the past who decided against attending the dinner because he did not want his colleagues and clients to see him supporting the president.

“His rhetoric was obnoxious,” he added, referring to the “fat cat” comments, “but since the midterms, he’s turned it off.”

He pointed to the appointment of William Daley, a former senior executive at JPMorgan Chase, as the president’s chief of staff as a sign of Mr. Obama’s shifting approach toward big business.

None of this is meant to suggest that all of Wall Street is secretly clamoring to support the president’s re-election. On the contrary, some of the industry’s top players have publicly criticized the president and are financing his Republican opponents. Hedge fund managers, in particular, have moved away from the president, redirecting their money to the Republican Party.

Daniel Loeb, the hedge fund manager and longtime Democrat, famously sent an e-mail to friends last Christmas expressing his outrage about the man he once supported: “In case the president’s hostage rant wasn’t enough to turn you off, I thought I’d buy any of you a great book for gals who just keep on pursuing the wrong guy. Made popular on Oprah a few years back, ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’ seems like the perfect holiday stocking stuffer for true blue Democrats who just can’t get enough of our president’s smackdowns on hard-working successful Americans known as ‘the 2 percent.’”

Even without the likes of Mr. Loeb, however, Mr. Obama’s dinner last week raised $2.3 million, outpacing an original projection of $1.5 million. And the Democratic National Committee raised $10.5 million in May, surpassing the Republican National Committee, which raised $6.2 million. The second quarter, which ends on Thursday, will give another glimpse of how the early fund-raising is shaping up.

Mr. Obama’s campaign set a goal of getting 400 individuals to each help raise $350,000 by year’s end. That may sound like a tall order — especially with much of Wall Street on the sidelines — but early indications suggest the effort is on track, according to people involved in the campaign.

In the last presidential election, some Wall Street C.E.O.’s took sides early. John Mack of Morgan Stanley was a Republican convert who supported Hillary Rodham Clinton. Roger Altman, the chairman of Evercore Partners, also supported her.

But this election cycle, Wall Street’s Washington hands say it will be unlikely for any of the top bank C.E.O.’s to back one candidate over another publicly — at least this early — because the role of government has become so integral to these big firms.

While it may appear that a Republican candidate like Mitt Romney — a former private equity executive — would be a natural for Wall Street to support, there are still worries that he may not become the nominee. Many of the other Republican candidates — like Michele Bachmann — are not taken seriously or are too socially conservative for Wall Street.

To the extent that Wall Street does donate, big name donors are expected to spread it out in small amounts, effectively hedging their bets like any good investor.

(It is worth noting that for all the talk of Mr. Dimon’s being an Obama supporter, he actually never donated directly to his presidential election. As a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he is barred from donating to individual candidates, though he and his wife, Judy, have been big donors to the Democratic Party and they did donate money to Mr. Obama’s Senate run in 2004.)

Of course, for all the whispered talk that parts of Wall Street will vote for Mr. Obama, there is still a lot of time for financiers to change their minds. The fact that they won’t put their money where their mouth is — at least not yet — may speak volumes.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d137215c2c22132773fe4cd960aa6c70

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