"Mark Mahaney, a star tech analyst at Citigroup, was just fired.
He got canned because one of Mahaney's junior associates leaked information about the bank's views on the FacebookIPO to TechCrunch writers Josh Constine and Kim-Mai Cutler, and that led to the state of Massachusetts fining his firm $2 million.
Mahaney also went outside required protocol interacting with a French journalist.
Here's how the story goes,according to a filing in the case.
On May 2, Eric Jacobs, a juniorCiti analyst who went toStanford University with Constine, emailed Constine and Cutler from his work email address to say:
I am ramping up coverage on FB and thought you guys might like to see how the street is thinking about it (and our estimates). Any feedback on the investment prositives and risks would be super helpful. I want to make sure I'm thining about this the right way.
This, of course is confidential
The junior analyst also attached a document titled "Facebook One Pager," which Massachussetts says contained "confidential, nonpublic information" including Mahaney's Facebook investment risks and investment positives, estimate of the company's EBITDA, and valuation of Facebook.
Constine emailed Mahaney's junior analyst back: "There's no way I can publish this doc from an anonymous source, right?"
Jacobs replied: "My boss would eat me alive."
Constine wrote back: "Just to be clear this is what Citigroup wrote about FB?"
Jacobs answer: "That's just an outline that I put together—it wil eventually become our initiation report at 30-40 pages."
Later, the other TechCrunch writer, Kim-Mai Cutler, responded to Jacobs's first email to ask for a clarification on one of the metrics in the Citi report. Jacobs responded with more detail.
Massachussets got its hands on all these emails because it was investigating the Facebook IPO and had a subpoena for Citi's email records.
In its legal filing laying out the facts, Massachussets does not name Mahaney, Jacobs, Constine, or Cutler."
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