Solengo Capital vs Dealbreaker.com Imbroglio Update: Fighting Like Ferrets*

Well, maybe the lawyers ferrets aren't fighting yet, but they're circling each other warily, looking for an opening, baring their fangs and hissing. Or, at least not immediately returning each other's calls, and tossing words like "restraining order" and "first amendment" around. Hey, these ferrets are precocious.

When I first mentioned the story yesterday I didn't expect Dealbreaker to link my post from here on their own site. If I had known that, I might have, you know, tried to say something intelligent, rather than lamely excerpt some quotations, and make an Oscar Wilde reference that isn't even that funny.

So here goes:

I'm not a finance professional, but from a marketing standpoint, making a stink about a blog posting your brochure seems dumb. If Solengo hadn't flipped out and called in their lawyers, a few Dealbreaker readers would have made cruel jokes at the fund's expense, and then moved on and forgotten about it next week as soon as someone else somewhere in the banking community did something entertainingly insane.

Normally, any publicity that generates name-recognition (short of your CEO being arrested for devouring babies) is good publicity. However, Solengo Capital is not trying to sell sneakers or an online dating service. Their product, and their target client are low-profile, and the opposite of mass-market. Especially in a situation where their head trader took center stage last year at a fund meltdown that made people who don't even read the business pages hear the words "hedge fund" they might have wanted to keep their heads down a little longer.

In this case, given the notoriety associated with Solengo's principals, unleashing their lawyers on a blog that is well known for its diffidence was almost guaranteed to blow up in their faces. This may come as a shock, but straight-up journalists all read blogs, trolling for story ideas, since the new media is often quicker on the uptake than the old media. So the next thing you know, Reuters has taken the story global, and CNBC is on the phone to Dealbreaker editor John Carney.

In closing, I have three four key points:

*Since Solengo Capital can obviously afford some badass lawyers, they should also retain a badass PR flack.
*Solengo still sounds like a poorly conceived 4-door sedan built by GM for the Honduran market.
*Imbroglio Capital would be a great name for a fund. Motto: "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!"
*I've been blogging since 3/31/06 and I haven't gotten a single Cease & Desist letter. Not even from Sony. I'm obviously not trying hard enough.








If you're late to the party imbroglio, read up in Dealbreaker.com's archives here.




*Good God, I've been waiting months to re-use that expression again.

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