Above: Jett's book. Below: screen grabs from his April appearances on CNBC Power Lunch & Today show

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Notes from the event | Jett's bio

Notes from Joseph Jett Event
By Pradnya Joshi, AAJA secretary & Newsday reporter

NEW YORK, APRIL 28, 1999--A victim of Wall Street's racism or just another guilty ex-trader trying to win back his good name?

Five years after he became embroiled in one of the biggest trading scandals, former Kidder Peabody trader Joseph Jett took center stage at SAJA's monthly meeting tonight, outlining detailed anecdotes and racial attitudes behind some of the most prestigious and well-known investment houses.

His talk was co-sponsored by the NYC chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association and by South Asians in Finance, and held at Maharaja restaurant. Board members from the New York Association of Black Journalists and the New York Financial Writers Association were among the 95 journalists, Wall Streeters, lawyers and the merely curious in attendance. Jett is currently on a nationwide book tour to promote "Black and White on Wall Street: The Untold Story of the Man Wrongly Accused of Bringing Down Kidder Peabody" (co-written by New York Times reporter Sabra Chartrand and published this month by William Morrow).

During his speech and in the Q&A, Jett indicted media attitudes, ex-lovers, the Securities & Exchange Commission investigators and the corporate Wall Street powers-that-be for prejudices that he said never gave him a fair shake.

When the scandal first broke, Jett described how he could walk by an oblivious media pack waiting outside his apartment looking for the bond trader whom they presumed was white. Days later after his picture was finally published, reporters began to recognize him. However, he soon discovered that he could slip in and out of his apartment unnoticed by simply taking off his Brooks Brothers suits and wearing a T-shirt, jeans and baseball cap.

"These reporters could not recognize me in casual clothes," he said. "It became clear to me that I actually was an Invisible Man."

Jett went on to describe interviews and stories that he said were more intrigued with the white women he dated and the oddities of his personality than trying to listen to his description of why his trades were legitimate. "It seemed that even the most simple of my explanations never made it into the paper," he said. Jett cited several articles and TV broadcasts in is speech, saying at one point that the New York tabloids actually did a more thorough job of covering the scandal than the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.

Jett said that he didn't even get normal treatment from one black reporter who had only two questions for him: "Is it true that you only date white women?" and "Why do you oppose affirmative action?" Jett, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School, did have a vision for providing opportunities for blacks. He said that when his firm put him in charge of the affirmative action program, he decided to hire the most talented minorities and women from top schools such as Harvard University, Morehouse College and Stanford University. However, he said his bosses opposed that plan by saying he seemed to be looking for people like himself. He recalls a colleague saying, "People like you don't need our help. We want real black people."

While Jett seems to have slightly moderated his views on the need for equal opportunities for blacks on Wall Street, he doesn't see himself as using "the race card." In response to a question from the audience, he said he refused to turn to black community leaders when the scandal first broke even though some of his lawyers were desperate for some public defense of Jett.

"I will never stop espousing my views... of the hegemony of the Negro priest kings," he said bluntly.

However, Jett saw racism in the way his enemies and several of his supervisors discussed the issue of sexual harassment. Jett said he saw one top black bond trader brought in from Goldman, Sachs fired six months later. When one of his supervisors called him in to explain the firing, the supervisor went into a long-winded explanation about "the tendency of black men to prove their virility" and "black male sexuality."

To protect himself from any accusations of sexual harassment, Jett said he never made pleasantries with women at the firm and responded to even a simple "hello" from a woman with his oft-repeated quote, "Discipline must be maintained." (In fact, he autographed copies of his book after the event with that quote).

While Jett talked more about corporate politics and racism than the intricacies of the math he used to make his trades, he still maintained he did nothing wrong. After an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, he was santioned by that body for record-keeping violations, but cleared of the more-serious fraud charges. He was fined $200,000 and ordered to pay back about $8 million in profits.

"The very trades that I was doing, they're doing on Wall Street now," Jett said. He described how the attorneys for the former Kidder Peabody and parent company General Electric did everything they could to pin the blame on him. Labeling current SEC Commissioner Arthur Levitt "a coward," Jett also detailed how he says the government agency has repeatedly disregarded its own time requirements for hearings and appeals.

The next chapter in the story of the life of Joseph Jett still remains to be written. But in the meantime, Jett is running a hedge fund for wealthy investors. While the hedge fund industry falls outside of the SEC's jurisdiction, just this week the Clinton Administration said it wants to introduce legislation giving federal agencies additional powers to examine hedge fund dealings and require hedge funds to disclose more information about their borrowing and trading practices.

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JOSEPH JETT, Wall Street's most successful black trader, was accused in 1994 by his firm, Kidder Peabody, of stealing millions in the industry's biggest scandal in years.

Five years later, he has written "Black & White on Wall Street: The Untold Story of the Man Wrongfully Accused of Bringing Down Kidder Peabody" (Morrow: April 1999), to tell his side of the story.

The book, which is co-written by New York Times reporter Sabra Chartrand, blames, in part, the media for "scapegoating" Jett.

Jett is a graduate of M.I.T. and the Harvard Business School. Before joining Kidder Peabody, he worked for Morgan Stanley and First Boston. He currently runs a hedge fund in New York City, where he lives.

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Listen to a Real Audio version of Jett's meeting with SAJA

Joseph Jett @SAJA on Real Audio