Street Trading Man
Life-size cardboard cutouts of Mick Jagger and the boys greet customers at the E-Trade Financial Center in downtown San Francisco, and unusually active day-traders might win tickets to see these granddads of rock n' roll live.
These are just two of the ways E-Trade Group Inc. has been leveraging its sponsorship of the current Rolling Stones tour. A big spender on television ads and high-profile national events, like the Super Bowl halftime show, it is using the tour to get in front of its target demographic - 28- to 50-year-olds with $50,000 to $500,000 of investable wealth.
At last weekend's stop in San Francisco, the E-Trade logo still was not as prominent as Jeff Koons' outsized cartoon renderings of the British band's famous tongue-and-lips symbol. And the four band members kept their stage banter to typical comments about the bad weather - not the slumping market.
But E-Trade is carefully watching the impact of this sponsorship. Since the tour started in Boston on Sept. 3. Connie Dotson, the Menlo Park, Calif., company's chief communications and knowledge officer, has been tracking revenues from each of its business units that can be tied to the sponsorship.
Working out the financial details with the Rolling Stones, one of the most lucrative and organized bands still playing, was easier than one would expect.
"They are very tough negotiators - we walked away from the table three times," but "they are very disciplined - they set goals and deliver against them," Ms. Dotson said in a recent interview.
Time on Their Side?
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s chief financial officer, Dina Dublon, was on the defensive again this week over its credit woes.
On Tuesday, Ms. Dublon pleaded the company's case while speaking at U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray's financial services conference in New York, when she told the audience that she does not believe its investment banking initiatives have undermined its strategy.
"In my opinion, only time and results will prove us right," she said.
Her message: The company, which has been hit with problem credit after problem credit, is still comfortable with its approach. "We accept the role of credit in our strategy." That said, Morgan Chase continues to actively manage its portfolio, Ms. Dublon said.
It will continue to have more capital at risk than the traditional securities firm because the company believes there is a competitive advantage in that model, she said.
Among the hurdles the firm has to get over before then is its wrangling with 11 insurers for nearly $1 billion of claims backing contracts between it and Enron Corp.
During her speech, Ms. Dublon said that failure to recoup the entire amount from the insurance companies would reduce its Tier 1 capital ratio by 15 basis points.
Still in the Game
Elliott McCabe, a 38-year-old managing director in Bank of America Corp.'s sports finance and advisory group, was honored by a sports trade weekly last week as one of the "Top 40 Under 40" in the sports business.
Mr. McCabe, who once played football at North Carolina State University, was the only banker on the list of executives from sports teams, sponsors, news media and service providers cited by Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal for their impact on the sports industry.
In 1991 Mr. McCabe and Jim Nash cofounded the sports finance practice at the company, then called NationsBank Corp. Mr. McCabe says the practice was the first of its kind at a major bank.
At that time they were working on a financing package that would help bring professional football to the company's hometown of Charlotte (the Carolina Panthers began playing in 1995).
More recently, the group have helped structure financing for the National Football League, the Nascar auto racing circuit, Major League Baseball, and a slew of professional sports teams.
