Publisher Takes Back @GSElevator's Book Deal
Simon and Schuster has revoked the deal for the "behind-the-curtain" book from John LeFevre, the man who created the popular Twitter account "Goldman Sachs Elevator," Business Insider reports.
.Simon and Schuster has revoked the deal for the "behind-the-curtain" book from John LeFevre, the man who created the popular Twitter account "Goldman Sachs Elevator," Business Insider reports.
LeFevre was informed of the book deal's death today by e-mail, he told Business Insider. "In light of information that has recently come to our attention since acquiring John LeFevre's STRAIGHT TO HELL, Touchstone has decided to cancel its publication of this work," the book publisher wrote in a statement. The Twitter account has reached over 650,000 followers by posting supposed overheard conversations from inside Goldman's elevators, most of which deal with the excessively wealthy culture of banking. (Although few people actually believed that's where the tweets came from.)
What was that new information that made the deal fall apart? "It's just a comical mystery to me," the banker told Business Insider. For one, he never actually worked at Goldman Sachs, despite lying to The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin that he was a Goldman employee in 2011. Perhaps even more damaging, Gawker found evidence of joke plagiarism in his tweets.
LeFevre had a similar problem when a deal to actually work at Goldman fell through. LeFevre had reportedly been offered the position of head of debt syndicate in Asia. Sorkin, citing anonymous sources inside the company, wrote that the offer was revoked after LeFevre and his old employer fought over a non-competition agreement. LeFevre disagrees with that wording. “My contract was never rescinded," he told Sorkin. "We cordially agreed to part ways to avoid a public mess. I don’t know how much I can talk about it. It wasn’t acrimonious.”
The book deal is dead, but LeFevre doesn't think he'll be going away anytime soon. "Since I have been able to respond, my credibility has only increased. I have been asked to write a regular column for two of the most prestigious capital markets publications," he told BI.