Maybe the real headline should be, "Financial Times finds old way to save newspapers." It's called the lawsuit. As reported by Cityfile:

You know we're in a deep recession when even billionaire financiers can't afford to pay for subscriptions to the Financial Times. In what will go down as one of the more bizarre (and unintentionally hilarious) lawsuits we've seen in quite some time, the newspaper filed a lawsuit against Steve Schwarzman's Blackstone Group on Wednesday for sharing an FT username and password instead of setting up separate accounts for its employees. Yes, an unknown "senior employee" at the colossal private equity firm "authorized the initiation and repeated renewal of an individual, personal subscription to FT.com" and then distributed the login details to company employees so they could all join in on the fun. (The court documents list the username as "theblackstonegroup" and the password as "blackstone," although FT says it has since "disabled the credentials to mitigate damages.")

The New York Post gives us the background on why the situation is absurd on its face:

Blackstone's penny-pinching ways stand in stark contrast to the way Schwarzman lives. Two years ago, his wife threw a $3 million 60th-birthday party for the buyout king that featured 500 guests, and included a performance by Rod Stewart. A Wall Street Journal story chronicled Schwarzman's fondness for $40 crab legs and for running up weekend food bills of $3,000.

For MediaFile's part, we see another tool that U.S. newspapers can employ to enrich their depleted coffers. Newspaper publishers usually wait for one among them to step forward and take action before falling in en masse (cutting dividends, laying off workers, etc), and we wonder why the lawsuit route should be any different.

Yes, there are differences between the FT and most U.S. newspapers. The FT charges hefty subscriptions to read the paper in print and online. (Online subscriptions run $179 to $299 a year, as the FT's complaint states). That means there is a monetary value to "sharing." Most U.S. newspapers charge nothing, but require registration.

Think about it this way, newspaper websites depend upon the information they glean through registration -- including how many people have registered -- to set rates that they charge advertisers. If the entire municipal staff in Anytown, Kansas, is sharing access to the Kansas City Star, it's presenting a distorted picture to the paper, which then presents a distorted picture to advertisers. With ad revenue in free fall and the possibility that some big-city papers might die within weeks, it seems fair to imagine that a trip to the courthouse could result.

And here's one more thing to think about: The FT's tone in its lawsuit might come off as priggish when you consider how much rampant username/password abuse goes on in the nation's offices these days -- but if the paper wins, imagine all the rest of the gold out there just waiting to be mined. Oh yeah, it might be a good time to get your own FT and Wall Street Journal subscriptions. You're doing a good deed by paying for the news.

(Photo: Reuters)

It’s enough to make Leon Black, Henry Kravis and Stephen Schwarzman jealous.

UK-based buyout firm Resolution, founded by entrepreneur Clive Cowdery, has not only launched a rare IPO - it raised £600 billion ($889 million) last week- but the deal enjoyed a 15 percent “pop” in its trading debut on the London Stock Exchange Wednesday.

The buyout fund will target U.K. insurance and asset management companies in deals in the range of £3 to 5 billion. And that may be part of why the IPO did well: The U.K. insurance sector has underperformed the market with companies contending with lower valuations.

The deal was only the fifteenth IPO to list in London this year, where new issues in 2008 have raised only $8.9 billion, down 78 percent this year, according to Thomson Reuters data, and the fourth largest. The U.S. market for IPOs is down by about the same for the year.

The deal’s success came in stark contrast to the cold shoulder the IPO market in the U.S. has given financial companies, including private equity firms.

Apollo Management, which used the private placement market in August 2007 to begin trading stocks, filed to transfer its shares to the New York Stock Exchange in April, while Kohlberg Kravis Roberts has postponed its complicated plan to use the Amsterdam-based listing of a subsidiary to list on the NYSE.

But then again, with the performance of rival Blackstone Group – its shares are down 70 percent so far this year, who can blame investors for sitting on the sidelines? And it’s been a brutal year for private equity firms with little improvement in sight.

Any regrets about the now-infamous birthday party, Steve?

That was the question asked by Fortune Magazine’s Andy Serwer at an intimate breakfast gathering at posh New York restaurant Per Se.

For those that have forgotten, Schwarzman’s 60th birthday party on Valentine’s Day in 2007, to which hundreds of guests were invited, featured British rocker Rod Stewart, comedian Martin Short, singer Patti LaBelle, two Harlem choirs and a marching band. It came to symbolize an era of excess — memories that some would now rather forget.  Months later, the financial crisis hit and Blackstone’s stock plummeted. It is currently about a quarter of its June 2007 IPO price.

“Obviously, I wouldn’t have wanted to do that and become some kind of symbol of that period of time — who would ever wish that on themselves? No one,” said Schwarzman, when asked if he’d do it again.

Lazard’s Bruce Wasserstein, being interviewed by Fortune alongside Schwarzman, chimed in:  “It was a great party”.

Schwarzman noted that his 61st birthday this year was muted. “61 is just fine. You notice it was quiet,” he said.