Bob Greifeld, Chief Executive of Nasdaq Stock Market Inc, does not seem like the sort to party hearty, but in 2004 he did. He organized a week-long trip to Ireland for more than 20 family members, which included custom-written songs, re-creations of a medieval village, and a gourmet menu designed to exclude cream and butter. There were 55 staffers to care for the guests.

Sound elaborate? Just ask the party planner who put it together. 

“That was over-the-top on steroids,” Gregory Patrick told the Reuters Wealth Management Summit.

Just finding a lead chef took 75 hours, Patrick said.

The event cost about $611,000, Patrick said.

More details on the event can be found in this Times of London story. The party is long over, but arguments about how much Greifeld has to pay continue. Patrick argued he was owed cost plus a gross profit margin of 38 percent, which amounts to cost plus 62 percent. Greifeld argued that he thought he owed cost plus 38 percent, and that Patrick refused to give him the DVDs documenting the event until Greifeld paid what Patrick said was owed. A New Jersey state judge ruled that Greifeld did not have to pay more money and Patrick had to turn over the DVDs, but Patrick is appealing that ruling.

Steven Cohen, a lawyer for Greifeld at Wachtel & Masyr in New York, said the written contract did not corroborate Patrick’s claims.

Few people enjoy paying taxes, least of all the wealthy, for whom annual tax bills can run into the millions of dollars. U.S. President George W. Bush has worked to cut taxes that tend to hit wealthy people, such as inheritance taxes. But with a persistently high deficit, as well as the rising cost of the Iraq war and entitlement programs, many expect these taxes to rise.

Rich people seem resigned to higher taxes, said Gail Cohen, head of global wealth management at Fiduciary Trust Co. International, at the Reuters Wealth Management Summit. 

“….(T)here’s a feeling that’s it inevitable and I also believe that they see that the government needs the money,” Cohen said.

Growing up wealthy does not necessarily mean growing up money savvy. Psychologist James Grubman told the Reuters Wealth Summit that the children of the wealthy may not have grown up with budgets and financial constraints, and may not know how to spend responsibly.

Sometimes trustees–the people that administer trust funds for children of the wealthy–have to step in and give a dose of tough love. Gail Cohen, head of global wealth management at Fiduciary Trust Co. International, said that if a client has spent too much on their credit card, and risks bankruptcy if they don’t get cash, their trustee will not bail them out. Instead, the trustee will put the client into credit counseling.

For a wealthy person, impulse shopping can demand large sums of money–in some cases, upwards of a million dollars. High net worth individuals don’t tend to leave their money sitting in a checking account, and selling off assets to raise cash can take time.

Private banking clients sometimes ask to borrow large sums of money on short notice, said Brian Moynihan, president of global wealth and investment management at Bank of America.

“We had a client that was on vacation with his wife, and wanted to buy something not small, and walked into a branch, and asked us to deliver seven figures immediately,” Moynihan.

“That’s what makes us unique–we can handle those kinds of requests,” Moynihan added.  

Richard Bookstaber, principal at FrontPoint and author of a book about the perils of financial innovation, says that banks have every incentive to create increasingly complicated derivatives products, and allow customers to boost their leverage higher and higher. But that can result in big swings in financial markets, and is not necessarily a good thing for society as a whole, he says.

Barry Rosenstein, founder and managing partner of activist hedge fund Jana Partners, says that not every chief executive ignores activist investors. Kerr-McGee Corp. Chief Executive Luke Corbett met with shareholders, and then decided it made sense to speak to the activist investors that were lobbying for change at the oil and gas producer, which ultimately sold itself to Anadarko Petroleum Corp.  

A San Diego pension fund may have lost $175 million when hedge fund Amaranth Advisors LLC blew up last year, but that does not mean hedge funds should face increase regulation, said Jim Chanos, chairman of the Coalition of Private Investment Cos. and a hedge fund manager himself. Investors routinely make bad investments, but “you can’t regulate or legislate people from doing stupid things with their money,” Chanos said.

Phillip Maisano, head of alternative investments at Mellon Asset Management says that hedge funds have let go of many of their swashbuckling ways when it comes to battling central banks. The potential regulatory reprisals would be too strong. But funds will still attack weak companies, Maisano notes.

Scott Sperling, co-president of buyout firm Thomas H. Lee Partners, says that companies that would have once advertised on the radio or in print media are increasingly looking at the Internet.

Bret Pearlman, co-founder of private equity firm Elevation Partners, says that social networking website Facebook.com may make a good initial public offering candidate in a few years, if it continues to grow.