Sallie Mae: fail

One can understand why the Albert Lord, Sallie Mae’s chief executive, publicly blew a gasket on a conference call last week. Stock in the student lender fell through the floor following the failure of an agreed buyout by JC Flowers. Unfortunately for Lord, he bet the house and then some on the deal’s success. Lord had to sell close to 1.3m shares, or about 97% of his personal stake in the company, in the resulting margin call. It’s far harder to see why the company exposed itself to another disa...