• Employees at Goldman Sachs can expect the "biggest bonus payouts in the firm's 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year." [Guardian]
• Banks like Merrill Lynch, UBS and Citigroup are "hiking pay for their top investment bankers in an attempt to stop an exodus of talent." [FT]
• Bill Gross of Pimco has "emerged as one of the nation's most influential financiers." How do we know this? Tim Geithner has him on speed-dial. [NYT]
• Russian-American billionaire Len Blavatnik is suing JPMorgan for allegedly mismanaging an investment account with $1 billion in assets. [NYT]
• Jack Welch is lending his name to a new online MBA program. [WSJ]
• Warren Buffett auctions off lunch every year for charity. The bidding is open, but it's not expected to rake in the fortune it did in years past. [Guardian]

• Former Morgan Stanley vice chairman Bruce Fiedorek has "quietly" put his fifth-floor co-op at 998 Fifth Avenue on the market for around $45 million. The 7,000-square-foot apartment, which was renovated by Stephen Sills and James Huniford and is one floor up from Len Blavatnik, is being listed by Kathy Sloane. [NYO]
• The sixth-floor co-op at 960 Park Avenue that belonged to the late Baroness Jacqueline de Gunzburg has gone into contract. It had been on the market most recently for $10.95 million. [Cityfile, Stribling]

Eliot Spitzer came out of hiding the other night to make an appearance at an event organized by The Atlantic, money manager Boykin Curry and his wife, interior designer Celerie Kemble. Billed as a "Not State of the Union viewing party" (and held at a townhouse owned by Russian-born billionaire Len Blavatnik), the former governor took to the mic after President Obama finished his remarks before Congress and explained to the crowd who he thought deserved blame for the current economic crisis:

The Post has spotted a new real estate trend: apparently quite a few people have paid more than $45 million for apartments and townhouses recently. This "new stratosphere" includes Harry Macklowe ($60mm), J. Christopher Flowers ($53mm), Phil Falcone ($49mm), Dan Loeb ($45.8mm), Jon Tisch ($48mm) and Len Blavatnik, who paid $50 million to acquire a 15,000-square-foot townhouse from "Seagram's president Edgar Bronfman Jr." Bronfman hasn't served as the president of Seagram for about a decade now. But let this slip-up serve as a lesson to us all! If you take over your father's immensely valuable liquor empire and then sell off the pieces to fund your misguided investments in the music and film industries—and lose billions of your family's money in the process—you may be forced to downsize.