New York City-based financial and business “news” website Business Insider (BI) revealed the identity Wednesday of Litquidity, the creator of the anonymous Instagram account @LitCapital, and conservatives on X, formerly Twitter, were not impressed.
Business Insider set up the exposé with some background on what Litquidity had accomplished that catapulted the LitCapital account to online fame on Wall Street.
On March 17, 2021, Litquidity leaked an internal slide deck made by 13 Goldman Sachs investment-banking analysts. The deck described the pains of entry-level bankers slogging through the difficulties of working during the COVID-19 pandemic when the bank was busier than ever due to booming mergers and acquisitions in corporate America.
For years, @litcapital has kept his identity a secret: disguising his voice on the podcast he co-hosted, restricting phone use at events, hiding his face on Zoom.
But once @BusinessInsider started digging, it didn’t take long to find out his name.
— Claire Landsbaum (@landsbaumshell) February 7, 2024
“The sleep deprivation, the treatment by senior bankers, the mental and physical stress [ … ] I’ve been through foster care, and this is arguably worse,” one entry-level Goldman worker reported. “My body physically hurts all the time, and mentally I’m in a really dark place,” another said.
The story went viral in the financial news after Litquidity published the deck on Instagram. Today Lit Capital has over 800,000 followers as a result. A first-year investment banker told BI, “It was a seminal moment when people realized that Litquidity had become a place where you can safely, anonymously vent and expose abuse in the finance industry.”
Anon FinTwit coming together against Business Insider for doxxing Litquidity pic.twitter.com/YPRb9BKTQy
— High Yield Harry (@HighyieldHarry) February 7, 2024
Conservatives on X did not react kindly to the doxing. One account that goes by the hand Junk Bond Analyst posted a picture of the German officer from the film, “Inglorious Basterds,” jokingly asking as if interrogating a suspect, “You are hiding your Jefferies / Deutsche Bank background behind this ‘Litquidity’ meme persona, are you not?”
You are hiding your Jefferies / Deutsche Bank background behind this “Litquidity” meme persona, are you not? pic.twitter.com/rApipRpN40
— JUNK BOND ANALYST (@junkbondanalyst) February 7, 2024
One commentator asked whether Business Insider does not have bigger fish to fry, “The president’s son isn’t newsworthy to you idiots but an anonymous Twitter account is?” Meanwhile, another commentator wrote, “Business insider – the scum of the business world. Can’t wait till they go bankrupt and out of business.”
Someone suggested the author of the doxing piece may even get laid off from Business Insider, “Hundreds of journalists have been fired already this year and @thisisinsider decided to pay someone to dox @litcapital. Not what I’d like to see if I were in a bread line.”
