When Executives Hit the Links: Does Golf Affect Stock Prices?

Below is a fun but slightly off-topic post for this beautiful Sunday here in Westchester, New York.

An article in today's New York Times titled "Meltdown Didn't Hurt His Golf Game" highlights Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne's avid love for golf.  The story noted that he was able to play a number of rounds at the Hollywood Golf Club during the month of June, even while the company was making front-page headlines for the "near-meltdown" of one of its hedge funds due to the struggling subprime markets. 

We're golf fans here at Bespoke and were intrigued by the fact that the Times was able to find Mr. Cayne's recent rounds and scores.  Most CEOs and other corporate bigwigs keep their country club memberships fairly private. The Times, however, found the info on the handicap tracking website, GHIN.com.

So we went to GHIN.com and did some research for ourselves to try and find the handicaps of other Wall Street CEOs.  We were happy to find that most of them do in fact post their scores on the website.

Of the CEOs that we found, Merrill Lynch's Stanley O'Neal currently has the best handicap at 9.9.  Mr. O'Neal is able to play quite a bit, and he is listed as a member at four clubs -- Purchase Golf Club, Vineyard Golf Club, Waccabuc Country Club and Deepdale Golf Club.  He seems to be playing worse than his handicap shows lately, shooting a 90 at Deepdale on June 20th and a 90 again at Purchase on June 17th.

Lehman CEO Richard Fuld has the second best handicap at 10.3, although he hasn't posted a score since August of last year.  He's also listed as a member of four clubs -- Quaker Ridge Golf Club, Blind Brook Club, Purchase Golf Club and McArthur.

   

Bear's CEO James Cayne, the man who the Times wrote the article about, ranks third on the list with a handicap of 15.9.  Mr. Cayne definitely plays the most of the CEOs, booking 13 rounds in June.  The Times highlighted that his scores stayed consistent during his company's recent problems, but a look at his longer-term handicap stats shows that his recent scores have suffered.

Ranked second to last on our Wall Street CEO handicap list is Morgan Stanley's John Mack.  Also a member of Purchase Golf Club (as well as Blind Brook Club), Mr. Mack has a posted handicap of 17.  He recently posted scores of 97 and 96 on June 24th at Purchase.

 

The Wall Street CEO with the highest handicap (based on posted scores of the people we found) is Goldman's Lloyd Blankfein, although it is based on scores from 2001 to 2006 (we'll just assume his golf game has gotten better as the stock has risen).  His last posted round was on May 30, 2006 at East Hampton Golf Club where he shot a 109.

We're definitely not poking fun at their scores, as most of them seem like pretty good golfers.  It was just interesting searching on GHIN.com, so check out the site and let us know in the comments section if you find anymore handicaps.  We'll be back later with some posts to get you ready for the trading week.

Update: Should the Donald join the Senior Tour?  We just did a search for Donald Trump's handicap and found that he is a solid 3.4.  Listed as a member of the well-known Winged Foot Golf Club and Trump National (of course), Trump's last posted scores were on May 21st where it looks like he posted scores from his previous five rounds.  Do you think their are any mulligans involved in Trump's rounds?

Comments

[Ray the Golf Nut!]

Lol, that is funny. These guys would like to keep their private lives private but when it comes to golf scores they probably like to see who they're beating!

Ray

[David]

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