In a “champagne war,” rival tables of Wall Streeters try to outdo each other by ordering expensive bottles of French bubbly. Shutterstock
Expense accounts are back in play. For some two years, due to pandemic fears, Wall Streeters were not allowed to entertain, and that put a crimp in the lifestyle. “When bankers took me out, I had to pick up tabs,” said a client. “Now the entertainment budgets are back and they are making up for lost time. It’s $12,000 dinners at Hawksmoor with $2,500 bottles of Chateau Margaux.”
A source inside the nightclub world told The Post that a venerable Italian restaurant in Soho “is the definitive place to go if you are a Wall Street guy with a bonus of $500,000 or more who wants a young prostitute
Those very same high-rollers are also being courted by the clubs where they blow thousands on a single night. “We brought in our big Wall Street clients who spend a lot of money and gifted them a bottle of Louis XIII cognac,” Sameer Qureshi, co-owner of Somewhere Nowhere told The Post. “It had been aged for 100 years, went for $45,000 and is extremely rare. We paired it with caviar and served it. Representatives from the [liquor] company hand delivered the bottle and it had to be consumed while they were there – but that was not a problem.”
At Somewhere Nowhere, finance dudes sometimes meet a girl, take her to the hotel downstairs, then come back up to the club to party more. Stephen Yang
As for the Deutsche Bank firings, a consultant with one of Manhattan’s splashier jiggle joints told The Post that a night of lap dances does not need to end with pink slips.
“The adult clubs are all ,” the consultant said, referring to the fact that only 40 percent of the strip joint can be devoted to topless dancing. “So they all have restaurants and corporate cards can be charged to the restaurant component” – regardless of where the money actually went.
Or else they can make like some of their stock-slinging bros and skip the g-string formalities altogether. They just need to know where to go. ” He added, “You go there and see very attractive women sitting alone or with equally attractive friends or with less attractive men and you might wonder what the connection is. It’s an extremely deliberate kind of matchmaking and is booming right now.”
Summing up these “Pretty Woman”-style arrangements – though he could be speaking for all the riches from the current Wall Street gold rush – the source said, “It’s a pretty good deal for everyone
“A Wall Street guy asked my friend for a girl to bring to St. Barts,” he said. “He was pre-qualified with an ID check – they don’t want guys who are stretched financially – and a meal at the restaurant. That way he meets the girl, she meets him and they both know who they are going with. In the end, he winds up spending $25,000 on the trip and $10,000 on the girl for a long weekend. ”
Sometimes, though, when young Wall Streeters sit at opposing tables, things get competitive. “We had a champagne war two weeks ago,” Richie Romero, managing-partner of Nebula, told The Post. “One guy sees the parade of cocktail waitresses, bringing bottles to the table, maybe with the ‘Rocky’ theme playing and girls run hookup inloggen to the table. The guy single-picks and shoos away whoever he doesn’t want. Egos get bruised and it’s revenge of the broker. Then the other guy wants to outdo him and it goes back and forth. They were both over $30,000 or $40,000 that night.”