Hedge funds were hit hard by a combination of client redemptions and borrowing restrictions from prime brokers (their chief source of finance) last year.
One of these power brokers is Chief Kwataine, who oversees an area called Ntcheu, in central Malawi, home to some 500,000 people.
"Our client would have loved to have moved there," said Cleary's broker, Barry M. Gosin, chief executive of Newmark Knight Frank.
He rose on Wall Street from stock broker to chief executive of PaineWebber, then got out in 2004 while the getting was, oh, so good.
But Mr. Macklowe was not asking about the eight buildings he had just acquired, marveled the broker, Mary Ann Tighe, chief executive of CB Richard Ellis in New York.
Wendi Kopsick, a spokeswoman for Vornado Realty Trust, declined to comment, as did Chris Taylor, a spokeswoman for Bloomberg, and their broker, Barry Gossin, chief executive of Newmark & Company.
Their broker, Howard L. Michaels, chief executive of the Carlton Group, said the building had generated a lot of interest from investors because of the prospects for rent growth over the next few years.
Best of times: The 1999 launch party for Talk magazine, held in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty and attended by New York's social elite, which confirmed its host's status as the city's power-broker in chief.
There is also a place for Kim Rosenkilde of ICAP, the City broker whose chief executive, Michael Spencer, is a former Conservative treasurer and has donated almost £5m to the party.
Most of the witnesses, including an NYSE floor broker, the chief executive of RPM International and the chief investment officer of fund giant Vanguard, agreed that the tenet of the trade-through rule was sound.
