These CEOs broke the rules at a secretive summit to expose a billionaire’s crude sexual comments
Summary
But almost as soon as his session began, attendees said online and in interviews with The Washington Post, Fisher used the spotlight to make crude, inappropriate remarks, including comparing his wealth management strategy to picking up women for sex. The backlash did not go public, though, until hours later — in large part because of a summit-wide privacy policy meant to confine the information shared by industry leaders to only those who pay the $25,000 to attend. According to Chalekian and other attendees, Fisher also made crude comments about genitalia and mentioned financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was indicted on federal sex-trafficking charges earlier this year before dying by suicide in prison. At one conference in Dana Point, Calif., last year, Fisher said it was “stupid” to brag about financial performance in a direct mailer, according to video of the summit obtained by Bloomberg. Fisher compared that move, according to Bloomberg, to “walking into a bar and you are a single guy and want to get laid and walking up to some girl and saying: ‘Hey you want to have sex?’ You just turn yourself into a jerk.” Fisher told Bloomberg he is an “easy guy to dislike” because he manages so much wealth, adding that he regretted taking the speech invitation because it ended up being a “pain in the neck.” “Some of the words and phrases I used during a recent conference to make certain points were clearly wrong and I shouldn’t have made them.