Friday, January 30, 2009

Great moments in media relations

Financial Times Sues Blackstone for Web “Fraud”
Earlier today I suggested that we were headed toward a two-tier information economy where wealthy people pay for good stuff and everyone else gets free crappy stuff. But I may have miscalculated–maybe even rich people won’t be willing to buy the good stuff.

That’s one lesson you might derive from this odd lawsuit: The Financial Times is suing Stephen Schwarzman’s Blackstone Group (BX), claiming that the private equity group has been defrauding it since 2002. How? By allowing multiple people to use a single account to access articles on the paper’s FT.com site.



There is no savings in the world that is worth generating that amount of ill will. But then, if there is one thing we have learned about these investment houses, they are a little weak on risk analysis.

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