High Finance: Picking Up the Pieces

Each morning, in his extradition-proof haven of Brazil, Edward Mortimer Gilbert, 38, trudges down to take the sun along Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach.

Usually he is alone, brooding over the collapse of his financial empire (TIME, June 22) in the aftermath of Wall Street's Blue Monday skid. But last week Eddy had a companion—handsome, French-born Olivier Coquelin, 32. Coquelin is the manager of a Manhattan cafè society watering spot called Le Club, where Eddy, bedazzled by a "board of governors" that includes Noel Coward, Rex Harrison and the Duke of Bedford,...