I feel sorry for Mrs. Gunty, the former Lisa Hope Shapiro. She may or may not have had a clear insight regarding the shadow on the character of her significant other, Murry Gunty, when they married. The two had certainly been doing well in the world of finance, but Murry Gunty has emerged this week as a symbol in the battle for free speech, and whether or not he — Murry Gunty — was guilty of grave ethical violations as a Harvard Business School grad student where he was accused of rigging the influential Finance Club’s election in his own favor, he, or someone close to him seems to have made an error in judgment by asking TypePad to influence blogger Marc Pincus to cloud Murry Gunty‘s identity by using only his first name in a recent blog post.
In the comments to Pincus’ original post mentioning Gunty, one Jim Delingco avers,
Murry Gunty runs a fund in Washington DC – Milestone Capital. But suffice it to say that his ethics/morals/etc. have contributed to a whole host of problems for him and that company. People don’t fundamentally change. He was a liar and a cheat at HBS, and he’s continued the same pattern at Milestone. He raised $88M w/ the help of some big DC banker Pincus, then bought a tile compnay that did something like 10x its original investment…but he pulled BS moves and lied his way thought the entire thing…and the investors apparently finally got a taste of his MO. Since then the fund has totally blown up. I spoke with an ibanker at CSFB about that tile deal. They hate him and say that he pissed off the seller so much that it damaged the bank’s reputation.
While this is consistent with information that is currently posted on Wikipedia about Murry Gunty, it is also hearsay and potentially damaging to Murry Gunty‘s reputation, whether or not it is true. Who is Jim Delingco? He only has a single Google reference today, and that is a reference to his comment on Pincus’ blog. Can we trust his comment? His comment would have little weight and his opinions regarding Murry Gunty would not have seen the light of day if TypePad had not, as Pincus charges, attempted a heavy-handed censorship of Pincus’ blog post. (In fairness to Six Apart, they managed a quick about face on their original attempt to censor Pincus, but not in time to stop the snowball of Murry Gunty criticism from growing).
Jason Lee Miller examines this further at WebProNews. He says,
If this were a court of law (I’m not a lawyer), and if Mr. Gunty wished to sue you for defamation, or just because he didn’t like what you wrote, his case would get nowhere because of the freedom of the press guaranteed by the Constitution. If it’s true, then it’s fair game.
The part he leaves out is that anybody can sue anybody for anything anytime, and the nuisance value often trumps truth and righteousness. I would hate to have a bigtime investment banker like Murry Gunty gunning for me. Scott Johnson, “Feedster founder and Ookles-promiser,” says,
I can understand that Murry Gunty doesn’t want this infromation to show up in Google — and a blog does that well — but he did cheat. Now you can argue that everyone deserves a second chance but this wasn’t cheating by a Harvard undergrad. It was cheating by someone at Harvard Business School (HBS). Given all the problems with ethics in corporate america and the prevalence of HBS grads in corporate management personally I think calling someone out with a history of cheating and making them visible in Google is a fine thing.
I wonder what the back story is here? When did Murry Gunty become aware of Pincus’ posting? Who attempted to influence SixApart on his behalf, and how and why did they do that? Was Murry Gunty himself foolish enough to think that he could push the rope of freedom of expression in a direction that would benefit him? Will the snowball of Murry Gunty criticism continue to grow and will solid facts be added, or will we continue to re-work the basic material relating to a really sad situation early in Murry Gunty‘s professional training?
Hey Frank,
Apparently Mark Pincus worked with Murray Gunty back in Mark’s investment banking days when he counselled the company that Mark was at to NOT hire him.
My understanding of all this is that Murry Gunty himself contacted Six Apart to have Mark’s post removed which led, naturally, to this whole deal.
I hear you on the “early” nature but you go to grad school when you’re, minimum say 24 years old. At that point yeah its “early” in your professional training but you’re also an adult and I’d argue that you’ve got your ethical grounding (or not) by that point in your life.
Also if you read Mark’s initial post on the topic:
http://markpincus.typepad.com/markpincus/2006/01/10000_words_on_.html
you’ll see why he did it:
“See this kid murry gunty was actually caught ‘stuffing the ballot box’ for head of the finance club. At HBS this was a highly coveted position as you were guaranteed a job at goldman sachs, meaning you’d one day be really fucking rich. ”
This wasn’t done for social status as you might try to stuff a ballot box in a high school election but but reasons of advancing his career w/ full knowledge of the benefits.
Finally I wouldn’t have taken this anywhere nearly as seriously if I didn’t know Mark Pincus personally both online and (somewhat) in meat space. While Mark isn’t a perfect human being — neither am I — he’s a decent guy with real accomplishments under his belt. Mark is many things but I’ve always known him to be an honest guy.
Hope that helps clarify it.
Scott, I’m glad you dropped in to shed more light on Murry Gunty. Since I know you, and since everything Mark said was pretty much corroborated by online sources, I was ready to open up and post about this, even though I have no direct knowledge other than online sources.
For me, the meat in this material is that a guy like Murry Gunty tried to get to a blogger through the service provider (SixApart) in order to control information. SixApart self corrected with a pretty quick “oops, our bad,” but the fact of their intitial contact remains. And that contact was an attempt to dumb down the quality of info that bloggers provide by asserting terms service that would prevent identifying real people in blog postings that appear controversial.
I was circumspect, selective in my choice of information to include in this post, not mentioning for example the ironic circumstances that Murry Gunty and his wife support Sidwell Friends School, a private school in the Bethesda and DC areas that purports to “prize diversity” and to inculcate “Quaker values” while actually drawing children of privilege away from the public school system and thereby diluting the quality of public education.
My writing was cautious and attempted self-protectively to draw a line between what we know and what we infer, because while the truth is a defense against libel, who wants to have to defend himself?
Everything I’ve presented is second hand and/or derived from source materials found only on the web. My post could therefore be taken as the first mutterings of an angry mob of swift boat style true believers and discredited for that.
Yet, if we are to shine the light of critical scrutiny on Michael Milken or the Nazi Pope, must we not also criticize Murry Gunty?
Hmm, tough one. I’m waiting til we get to the review section at the back of the chapter before attempting to answer this excercise question: “So, who are we to feel sorry for, again?”
Charles, I swiped the teacher’s textbook and it has all the answers transcribed in it. There is a reference to Baby Gunty… will the truth set him/her free, or merely sour an otherwise idyllic upper class family life? And who am I to mess with people’s lives like that? And shouldn’t the photographer intervene to save the life of the insurgent about to be executed rather than going for the Pulitzer prize winning shot?
wow. so cool to see how nicely this was all laid out and the intelligent dialog around it.
honestly, i was just rambling one day on an airplane on my blackberry, pissed off at a world that celebrates and elevates a murry gunty while leaving so many more deserving souls behind. i’ll also admit that it is fun for me to see this story get all this attention now.
as for six apart, that’s a tough call for me. they were wrong and i applaud them for so quickly admitting it but i do worry about the people who get a terms of service violation note and dont know they can say fuck off. 6A should affirm in their TOS that they have no right to remove any of my content.
It’s hard for hundreds of former employees to believe that a $52,000,000/year company could become a $15,000,000/year company in less than three years, but under Milestone Capital DC we did.
Say goodbye to a one-time good company (Rauch Industries, Gastonia, NC.
Look, Pincus is highlighting a guy whose ethics are completely dubious. It is an interesting experiment to see if a tiger changes its stripes. Let me tell you that I know for a fact Milestone is a powder keg. The guy has done things there that will eventually come to light and that are consistent with his former behavior. All those who know him despise him and his partners stay with him only because he writes checks with dirty money to those he needs to keep. He surrounds himself with scoundrels that only care about the dollar, but they loath him too. He is unanimously despised by all of his counterparts at Milestone and when the truth and shit hits the fan, they’ll all go running and he’ll have to face the music himself. His own actions will destroy him, not this blog.
Gunty is very important, because it shows how are highest level of academic institutions will continue to support people of dubious character who then go out in the world and steal and cheat. In this day and age, could there be anything more important in the business community? All who know the guy think he’s an aweful human being; lawyers, deal guys, bankers, but he pays them and apparently that’s what matters, right? Honor, ethics, loyalty? These are meaningless in a world of Murry Gunty. Is this the kind of guy, or the type of people, we feel HBS should push out into the world? They should be ashamed, because he certainly isn’t.
I respect the viewpoints expressed in recent comments from Flanagan and Schwartz (above). I am however unable to verify the substance of their negative assertions regarding Mr. Gunty and his present performance at Milestone and it is worth noting that their online presence is in each case essentially anonymous.
It’s ironic what Flanagan and Schwartz say about Gunty, because everyone that knows the two of them think they are complete morons with no ethics and that they sleep with farm animals (especially Schwartz, or perhaps that is his wife). Isn’t this all a bit ridiculous? Frank, why exactly do you respect their viewpoints? Can someone say anything they want at all without any evidence and you will respect it? Don’t they seem to have an extreme point of view that might compromise the respect their comments deserve?
I respect the viewpoint expressed in the recent comment from Mr. Doewitz, and while the comment was delivered from an IP address belonging to a relatively successful $10 billion fifteen year old hedge fund based in Dallas, Texas, I am unable to verify any other details regarding his identity, or — indeed — his existence. He is an anonymous online presence.