More than 3,000 Wall Street executives, hedge fund managers and other very important people crowded the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on the West Side of Manhattan Monday night for the annual Robin Hood Foundation gala, with last week’s flash crash still on the minds of attendees.
Tables were outfitted with wireless credit card swipe devices with which to make pledges during the star studded event. But due to what was presumed to be a fat finger mistake one donor apparently tried to pledge $100 million. Even in a room filled the highest of high rollers, such as Robin Hood board member Stevie Cohen, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and the foundation’s founder, Paul Tudor Jones, the outsized donation still wound up getting flagged immediately.
“We like plenty of zeros, but be careful,” one of the event’s organizers announced to the audience, according to one attendee. “To whoever just pledged $100 million – we’re going to assume that was glitch so we’ll go ahead and void that one.”
The event, which was hosted by NBC anchor Brian Williams and featured performances by Stevie Wonder, Sting and Jimmy Fallon, raised nearly $90 million overall, with $27 million in pledges coming in just last night.
At one point during the evening, our source relayed, three different sections of the enormous meeting hall were pitted against each other. Designated celebrity cheerleaders, including New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan and actress Uma Thurman, used microphones to cajole audience members to give until it hurt. Rooting for his section was Michael Douglas, star of the upcoming Wall Street sequel, and who not surprisingly went to his go-to line: “Come on,” Douglas shouted repeatedly. “Greed is good.”
Rich Blake is a New York City-based freelance financial journalist. He currently contributes to Institutional Investor magazine, Reuters HedgeWorld and ABCNews.com, among others.
