Mr. Whitney said he had told the client that his boss purchased 1,000 shares of A.I.G. that day to show that he was still confident in the company.
Elsewhere on the scale of Silicon Valley do-goodery, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos recently purchased The Washington Post.
According to JSJ, in the 1980s, the bosses purchased cloth in Pu Town with cash.
They reasoned that for big-ticket auctions, only the boss of a company could sign off on expensive purchases, rather than some underling who might be bribed into taking an order.
"IT'S our kind of game," is how Graham Mackay, boss of SABMiller, describes his British-based firm's $7.8 billion purchase of Grupo Empresarial Bavaria, South America's second-largest brewer.
When Steve Case, boss of AOL, wore a tie at the announcement of his firm's purchase of Time Warner a year ago, it was interpreted as a gesture to reassure Time workers.
Announcing an $8.5 billion purchase of Skype, an internet calling and video service, the boss of Microsoft kept boasting about how "super-ambitious" his company is.
Ask Thomas Ryan, boss of CVS, about the logic of his firm's acquisition of Caremark, and he starts to use phrases like "purchasing leverage".
The boss of EADS, the parent company of Airbus, Louis Gallois told reporters last week that China had suspended the purchase of planes made by European manufacturers because of the levy.
Lutz Goebel, the boss of Henkelhausen, a mid-sized German engine manufacturer, says his customers are already starting to procrastinate over purchases of new diesel engines.
