Last night saw the launch of new magazine DealMaker ("Acquiring Minds") from Doubledown media, the publishers of similarly-rich-financier-themed magazine Trader Monthly, now offering investment bankers, private equity executives, venture capitalists and other M&A professionals their very own magazine, because that's a group that is traditionally highly under-served. Held atop the Mandarin Oriental, the launch party featured many men in suits, and some women who skewed, er, slightly younger, plus a pan-Asian theme which made for delicious dim sum, dumplings, chicken satay, and bowls of fortune cookies with quotes from the magazine, most of which actually still worked when you tacked on "in bed" at the end of them (e.g. From Citigroup chairman emeritus Sandy Weill: "I'm tenacious. I'm hard to knock down"...IN BED! Sandy's 73. Go Sandy!).
Seeing as it was a party for the aforementioned finance types, we weren't expecting to see anyone we recognized (we being your crack ETP team of Rachel Sklar and Melissa Lafsky), but dang if right after we snapped the above picture did the fetching young lass by the Dealmaker sign didn't turn out to be amNY dating columnist Julia Allison. Also in attendance 
were MarketWatch's Jon Friedman, wearing only slightly more fabric than Allison; Page Six macher Richard Johnson with wife Sessa von Richthofen; Andrew Ross Sorkin from the NYT's Dealbook, who no doubt must be sorta tired of having people think he's responsible for Studio 60; NYT advertising reporter Stuart Elliott, NYPost Media Inkster Keith Kelly; briefly, Radar scribe Jeff Bercovici, carrying his classic man-purse; Webster Hall curator frequent Page Six citee Baird Jones ; plus notorious partygoer/crasher/person-actually-on-the-guest-list impersonator Priyantha Silva and mono-named man-about-town Shaggy (yes, that Shaggy, not that Shaggy, nor that Juice Newton, for that matter). It would have been sort of funny if Silva had been impersonating Juice Newton last night, but we forgot to ask him.
Business-side notables included Dealmaker cover man, Michael Price of Evercore (voted #1 Telecom rainmaker in the country!) and his colleague Jane Wheeler (also on the list in the Financials sector!) plus #1 Healthcare rainmaker Jim Forbes of Merrill Lynch, leading media/entertainment banker, UBS's Navid Mahmoodzadegan,and #1 Industrials player Stephen Benson of Stephens Inc. We're not really sure what any of that means, but we do know one thing, and it's not how to spell 'Mahmoodzadegan': It was raining rainmakers. Hallelujah! Juice Newton would have had a good time.
Thanks to the rockin' strains of Manhattan City Music, the Chopin Vodka 'CEO Martini' (not to be confused with the 'Middle Management Martini'), and a few ladies whoopin' it up on the dance floor, the party seemed less like a stodgy Annual Shareholders Meeting than your cousin's surprisingly fun
wedding (yes, there was a conga line, and yes, ETP joined in). After sucking back a few last-ditch chicken satays and exacting a promise from the only guy in a baseball cap to let us drive his Ferrari, ETP figured it was time to leave, and also, we couldn't fit any more dumplings in our purse. Alas, they had run out of gift bags, so we could only dream of the 15% off coupon for a massage at the Mandarin Oriental, the way we similarly dream of being able to afford the $400 for a massage at the Mandarin Oriental.* The Cartier stationery sounded nice, though, if we wrote letters, as did the cigar, if our humidor weren't already so packed with Cohibas and Montecristos. It would have been good to have one, though, if only as an excuse to go up to some random person with it and say, "Havana good time?" Book ETP for your next classy party here.
*We did not double-check this figure, we're guessing. Roll with it.
