On the Seventh Day, They Worked, Amid Finance Crisis

By Oshrat Carmiel and Demian McLean

Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Sunday is the new Monday.

From Wall Street to Washington, the U.S. credit crisis has claimed the leisurely weekend along with Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Washington Mutual Inc.

``The news cycle is ruining everyone's weekend,'' Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist for Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ in New York, said in an e-mail. In addition to working more at the office, he's tethered to his BlackBerry on Saturdays and Sundays ``waiting for the next shoe to drop.''

Every weekend since Labor Day, the meltdown has forced U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve officials, members of Congress and Wall Street executives to huddle under pressure to react before Asian markets reopened.

On Saturday, Sept. 6, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson gathered with the chief executive officers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. On Sunday, Sept. 7, the government seized control of the mortgage-finance companies.

The following weekend, New York Fed President Timothy Geithner summoned Wall Street leaders to discuss the possible sale of Lehman Brothers. By Sunday night, Lehman was preparing bankruptcy papers and Merrill Lynch & Co. was selling itself to Bank of America Corp.

Forget Fishing

The next two weekends, government officials met in Washington to discuss a proposed $700 billion bailout of the financial-services industry.

The Senate approved the rescue on Oct. 1 and the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on it today, setting up another weekend of work to study and implement details if the measure passes, or come up with something else if it fails.

``Every weekend, there's been a crisis,'' said David Kotok, chief investment officer at Cumberland Advisors Inc. in Vineland, New Jersey, which manages $1 billion in assets.

Kotok said he had planned to spend his September weekends on a fishing boat. Instead, he's been on his computer and phone, trying to translate details of the latest news to worried clients.

``I've been here the last three Sundays, and I'll be here this Sunday,'' John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia Corp., said on Sept. 26, referring to the bank's Charlotte, North Carolina, headquarters. ``A lot of people are here.''

Wachovia's What-If

Sundays at Wachovia were more like strategy sessions rather than actual workdays, Silvia said. He and his colleagues followed the news and came up with ``what-if'' scenarios, he said.

The what-if for Wachovia came on the morning of Monday, Sept. 29, when the company agreed in principle to sell its consumer banking business to Citigroup Inc. The deal, triggered by Wachovia's mounting mortgage losses, was brokered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. over the weekend.

Citigroup had more than 200 people ``working on this nonstop'' for the 72 hours before the deal was announced, Citigroup Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit said in a Sept. 29 teleconference. Wells Fargo & Co. said today it had agreed to buy Wachovia for $15.1 billion in stock without federal assistance, ending the Citigroup deal.

Wachovia's Silvia said he'll be working again this weekend, studying the continued fallout from the crisis.

``It's almost most like the bubonic plague in Europe,'' Silvia said. ``It just goes from one town to the other town and you wipe out the entire population fast.''

The Treasury Department sent Paulson and a team of aides to Capitol Hill at noon on Saturday, Sept. 27, spokeswoman Michele Davis said. Some worked with lawmakers until 3 a.m. on the rescue package, she said.

Sunday Buffets

That team was replaced the next day with one that also toiled overnight, this time on the Wachovia sale.

``Working weekends has become so normal here that we now have a buffet breakfast and lunch each day,'' Davis said. ``Sunday was a spread more common on a day of watching football -- wings, cheese sticks, hot dogs and chili.''

In New York on the weekend of Sept. 13, Shai Waisman, a partner at Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP, missed a planned dinner with friends from Texas who were on a layover at John F. Kennedy International Airport. He had to prepare papers for the Lehman bankruptcy, which his firm is handling.

That Sunday, a cousin from Israel arrived for a visit and let herself into his apartment. She stayed for seven days, Waisman said, and he never saw her once.

``I've never seen so many New Yorkers with the same ashen, exhausted look at the same obscene hours,'' Waisman said.

His firm is also handling the Washington Mutual bankruptcy. ``I will be working this and every coming weekend for the foreseeable future,'' Waisman said in an e-mail yesterday.

`Days Run Together'

In Congress, the crisis has forced committees to schedule votes on other matters to late on weekend nights. The House Committee on Rules voted on tax-relief and energy-related bills at 10 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 28, a ``highly unusual'' time slot, said Emily Davis, a spokeswoman for Representative Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican who sits on the committee.

``The last time I had a day off was a couple weekends ago,'' Davis said. ``The days just run together.''

The past several weekends, U.S. Representative Eric Cantor and his aides have dined on pizza, Popeyes fried chicken and ``a couple nights of bad Chinese,'' said Rob Collins, chief of staff for the Republican from Virginia, who is deputy minority whip. About 10 Cantor staffers have been working weekends, Collins said.

Collins's wife, at home with their 10-month-old child, joined the social-networking site Facebook.com one weekend night as he worked until 11 p.m., Collins said.

The first message posted to her profile: ``I wish Congress would pass this bill so my son could see his father for once.''

Paulson's Rest

Takeout Taxi, a Falls Church, Virginia, company that delivers food from Washington restaurants, has seen orders more than double to as many as 150 the last three Sundays from the typical 50 to 70, said call representative Jenna Burrows.

``Sundays are usually pretty slow, but we've had a dinner rush each night that lasts till 10 o'clock,'' Burrows said Sept. 29. ``They want chicken tikka masala and kabobs.''

The long hours may be taking a toll on Treasury Secretary Paulson as well. During the marathon negotiating session Sept. 28 on Capitol Hill, he leaned back in his chair at one point and closed his eyes, sparking worries that he might need a doctor.

It wasn't a health crisis, just fatigue, said a person familiar with the deliberations.

To contact the reporters on this story: Oshrat Carmiel in New York ocarmiel1@bloomberg.net; Demian McLean in Washington at dmclean8@bloomberg.net.