The 17 Nastiest Feuds In Wall Street History

Financiers Jay Gould and Cornelius Vanderbilt engaged in one of the most epic feuds dubbed the "Erie war" in an effort to control Erie Railroad.

In 1868, Gould, a railroad developer who was a member of the board of directors for the company, teamed up with his co-conspirators James Frisk and Daniel Drew to issue a bunch of fraudulent shares of the Erie Railroad's stock.

He was able to legalize his actions by bribing legislators in Albany. 

This ended up watering down the stock price causing Vanderbilt to lose about $7 million.  

Gould later returned most of that money back, but Vanderbilt lost his attempt to control the company.

Source: Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Source: notablebiographies.com

In August 2012, bond king Bill Gross took a few shots at Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel in an investment letter explaining why stocks are going to be horrible investments.  

Siegel later appeared on CNBC and explained how Gross's analysis was wrong. 

He also appeared on Bloomberg TV and pointed out that Gross had called for the DOW to fall to 5,000 back in 2002 over the next 10 years but that it was at about 13,000. 

Gross appeared on Bloomberg TV shortly after that and fired back with, "Well Professor Siegel is getting a little nasty here but it seems like the gloves are off." 

What's more is in response to Siegel pointing out that Gross's analysis was off when he looked at the hundred year time frame for the 6.6% return, Gross responded with, "Well Professor Siegel's Ivory Tower again lacks common sense. If wealth is created at 3 percent a year in terms of GDP and that wealth is divided as it always is by government, by labor, and by business in the form of corporate profits, then its hard to see how one element corporation and stocks can continue to 3 percent more than real GDP going forward, and that's common sense."

It started with a "forgettable" deal in 2004, and became a famous feud that spanned seven years and racked up millions in dollars in lawyer fees between two activist investors.

In 2003, when Ackman's former investment firm was in trouble and he was being investigated by the SEC, he cold-called Icahn and asked him to buy his shares of Hallwood Realty, a real estate company trading for about $60, but Ackman said was worth $140. Icahn agreed to buy the shares for $80, with a deal that he would split the profit with Ackman if he sold the shares within 3 years. When Hallwood merged with another company for $137/share in 2004, Ackman called Icahn for his share of the profit. Well, Icahn reasoned that he didn't sell the shares in the merger even though he did not own them anymore.

A legal battle ensued with poisonous words, where Ackman called Icahn a "shakedown artist" whose word was "useless" and also convinced another investor to refuse Icahn's money.

Ackman ultimately won the fight, and Icahn paid out $9 million.

Source: Dealbook

They're still fighting!

Just last Friday, Ackman was invited on CNBC to respond to some criticism he recieved from Icahn on Bloomberg TV the previous day over his Herbalife short. 

Minutes into the segment, Icahn called in on live television to confront Ackman directly.

"I'm telling you he's like a crybaby in the schoolyard.  I went to a tough school in Queens you know and they used to beat up the little Jewish boys.  He was like one of the little Jewish boys crying that the world is taking advantage of him..." Icahn said when Ackman called him up in 2003, adding "You rue the day I ever met the guy."

"This is not an honest guy who keeps his word," Ackman fired back later.  

U.K. hedge fund manager Hugh Hendry, a partner and chief investment officer Eclectica Asset Management, has a reputation for his spirited media appearances.

Back in 2010, Hendry duked it out with professor and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz on BBC's Newsnight.

During the exchange, Stiglitz said that betting on a default was absurd and that's what Hendry was betting would happen in Greece.  

Hendry then said, "Um hello? Can I tell you about the real world?" (Watch it here)

Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) appeared on CNBC's "Closing Bell" with Maria Bartiromo to talk about Sandy Weill's call to break up the big banks and it was not pretty. 

Their conversation changed to the Volcker Rule and subsequently prop trading. 

Maria said, "So you're going to leave it to the banks to tell you this is proprietary trading or this is proprietary trading?"

Frank went off and said, "Maria, if you want to have a serious conversation without mocking me..."

And when she got to the fiscal cliff issue asking when are the adults going to enter the room, Frank really went off: 

"I don't take kindly to being called a non-adult. You know, you remind me sometimes of what your colleague Joe Kernen said when I tried to get the conversation more thoughtful ... he said, 'Oh this is cable TV, not C-SPAN' ... I want to talk seriously about the issues ... you keep changing the subject."

Former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Maria Bartiromo had an unbelievably intense interview on CNBC's "Closing Bell" last month.

The interview turned ugly when the subject changed to Hank Greenberg, whom Spitzer pursued as New York AG. 

When Spitzer dropped the word "fraud" Bartiromo called him out.  He replied, "Facts matter Maria... I know this is cable TV, but facts matter."

However, it was when Spitzer asked Bartiromo if she read a document that things got crazy and he said, "You are under oath right now!... I am being very serious right now..."

Bartiromo responded with, "I am not under oath with you.... I am not in your courtroom, you are on my show!"

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman was on CNBC's "Squawk Box" to discuss his book, but the hosts seemed more interested in his view of the government's role in the economy.

After his appearance, Krugman blogged the following: (emphasis ours)

Kernen later fired back on Twitter with "Krugman blogs 'Zombies on CNBC' after interview. Dismissed every fact he didn't like as myth. 

Back in 2009, Reuters' Felix Salmon wrote a blog last fall called "Anthony Scaramucci's sleazy sales pitch".

Salmon accused Scaramucci, who runs Skybridge Capital, of being a fake TV hedge fund manager and a self-promoter who uses a "fake-it-till-you-make-it approach" among other jibes.

Scaramucci said he tried to get Salmon fired twice.

They seem to have turned it into more friendlier banter these days. 

It's no secret that Corzine, who served as Goldman Sachs CEO from 1994 to 1999, was ousted from his position by then-COO Hank Paulson. Paulson later served in Goldman's top spot until 2006, when he left to become Treasury Secretary for President George W. Bush.

But when Paulson and Corzine ruled Goldman together, a civil war brewed between the two that made their reign at the bank an "unmitigated disaster," as Goldman chronicler Bill Cohan wrote. A lot of enmity stemmed from a class of personalities, and Paulson was often irritated by Corzine's ambitions to make the firm bigger.

Source: Vanity Fair

The JP Morgan head's tiff with Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney started when Dimon lashed out at Carney when the Canadian expressed he was in favor of more stringent Basel III regulations during a private meeting at a International Monetary Fund Conference in Washington D.C. last September. 

According to witnesses, Dimon "launched a tirade" against Carney, calling the regulations discriminative against Americans.

Turns out, there's also a chance negative sentiment between the two may have begun brewing in 2010, when Carney used a quip alluding to Dimon and his daughter at a public speech in Berlin.

Source: Financial Times

The battle between David Einhorn and Bruce Berkowitz began over Florida land developer St. Joe.

At an investment conference in 2010, Einhorn had publicized a short position he had in the company, believing the struggling company was overvalued.

He said he had emailed Berkowitz, who was a huge fan of the stock, if he would debate him.  Berkowitz didn't respond.  

That is until an SEC filing was released showing that he upped his stake in St. Joe to 29% as soon as the news broke that Einhorn was short the stock. 

The current IMF chief and now former Barclays CEO had an infamous tussle at the World Economic Forum in 2011, when the two disagreed over the Eurozone crisis.

Diamond said he believed the crisis would continue to progress, while Lagarde—then France's Finance Minister—said she believed the area had stabilized.

Lagarde openly confronted Diamond with an "I disagree" said pointedly to the then-Barclays head during a panel.

A year later, we all know who was ultimately right.

Source: WSJ

The relationship between JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and former Citigroup head Sandy Weill has been called one of the "most complicated personal relationships in modern American capitalism."

The two began working together when Weill convinced Dimon to come work for him at American Express after business school over Goldman Sachs because he would have "more fun." Together, the two were credited with building the Citigroup banking empire together. But it all came to a halt when Dimon left Citigroup abruptly.

Weill and Dimon have both confirmed that Dimon was fired. It seemed there was a clash of personalities near the end of Dimon's tenure at Citi, as Weill felt that Dimon was becoming over ambitious.

Source: CNN Money

Wing Chau, the founder Harding Advisory LLC,  sued Michael Lewis and Steve Eisman over the book "The Big Short" in 2011. He claimed that Lewis' book about the 2008 mortgage market crash "falsely depicts him as one of the 'villains' behind the U.S. financial crisis."

The lawsuit points to a passage that depicted a conversation between him and Eisman—told from Eisman's point of view.

In BI's opinion, though, "The Big Short" really made Chau seem like a dummy—because he was the one buying up the subprime mortgage CDOs that many hedge funders were shorting and made billions off of.

Source: WSJ

The two investors had a very public feud over three Atlantic City Casinos owned by Trump that Icahn wanted to take over. Despite that, Trump had told the press he and Icahn had been good friends for years.

Well, Icahn ended that supposed friendship when he was profiled by the New York Times:

“Additionally I find it odd that he’s now claiming to be my good friend,” Mr. Icahn said. “I was not surprised when I was not invited to his daughter’s wedding precisely because we are not good friends.”

Source: The New York Times

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