* Rumble in the Roosevelt... Things got a little heated between Howard Tiffen, managing director and senior portfolio manager for Van Kampen Investments, and Peter Vaky, managing director and head of syndicated finance for SunTrust Robinson Humphrey Capital Markets, when Tiffen challenged Vaky over how allocations are carved up. Vaky responded by standing up and taking his jacket off. The situation was not helped by Eric Rosen, managing director and head of par loan trading at J.P. Morgan, commenting that people pay good money to see a brawl. The grandstanding was all in jest though, until the other panelists turned on Tiffen for not being American enough.
* Abusing the British ahead of July 4 was also a topic for Stan Sokolowski, a J.P. Morgan trader based in London, but from the U.S. He harangued the analyst who prepared his presentation for not being able to spell properly. In the presentation he gave, standardization was spelled with an "s." Sokolowski made a commitment to teach the poor analyst how to use the letter "z."
* The layout of the conference caused a few problems for speakers. With the audience in an L-shape speakers were unsure which side of the audience to address. Steven Bavaria, head of Standard & Poor's bank loan rating business, said he was just hoping to get through the talk without developing a twitch.
* "I still have scars from the rubber hoses."--A panelist commenting on a painful run-in he had with his compliance department 13 years ago over public/private information issues.