Chrysler town and country

We despise all the public attention we are getting, Stephen Feinberg, the secretive founder of Cerberus Capital Management, wrote to his investors last month. We do our best to avoid the spotlight, but, unfortunately, when you do some large deals, such as Chrysler and GMAC , it is hard to avoid. Well, yes and a letter like this certainly won t help. Many Wall Street deal makers were shocked by it, BlackBerrying the letter around town with exclamation points in the subject line. One moment, Mr.

Feinberg sounded cavalier about the prospects for the companies he controls. The next, he seemed cold and ruthless. Cerberus is, of course, the hedge fund-cum-private equity firm that bought Chrysler last year for next to nothing. Mr. Feinberg is the brains behind the operation, but John W. Snow , the former Treasury secretary, is the frontman. Mr. Snow is trotted out for press conferences and interviews because of Mr. Feinberg s self-described disdain for publicity.

Dan Quayle , the former vice president, is also on the payroll. To Mr. Feinberg s apparent dismay, Cerberus named for the mythical three-headed dog that guards the entrance to the underworld has grabbed a lot of headlines lately. The reason is that people can t stop speculating about whether its investments, notably Chrysler and GMAC, the former financing arm of General Motors , are going to go under.

Cerberus, which got into the private-equity game late, made perhaps the riskiest bets at the peak of the buyout boom. Indeed, if there is one buyout portfolio that Wall Street worries about most, it is Cerberus .