A PRESCHOOL SAGA

Mainers must find the story as strange as a tale from some far, exotic land. A hotshot Wall Street analyst talks the head of the world’s biggest financial services firm into helping him get his twin toddlers into a fancy nursery school, considered the first stepping stone toward an Ivy League college. The analyst tells him the preschool is harder to get into than Harvard.

There’s a lot more to this tangled story, which involves investors’ losses of around $80 billion in AT&T shares, something of a run on Citigroup’s stock, and doubts about the future of Sanford I. Weill, the chairman of Citigroup. It became known when investigators found a flurry of e-mail messages. The mess began when Mr. Weill asked Jack Grubman, his hotshot Wall Street analyst, to “take a fresh look” at AT&T, which Mr. Grubman has been giving the tepid rating of “hold.” Mr. Weill wanted AT&T’s business in a stock offering. He also wanted the help of AT&T’s chairman in his struggle

for the Citigroup chairmanship.

Mr. Grubman obliged by changing his rating of AT&T from “hold” to “buy.” Reporting the move to Mr. Weill, he threw in the incidental request for help in getting his twins into the tony 92nd Street Y preschool (with tuitions up to $14,000 a year). Mr. Weill made a few phone calls, and Citigroup helped out with a $1 million contribution to the school. Voila! A lot of investors bought the AT&T stock, Mr.Weill got the chairmanship, and the Grubman twins got into the nursery school.

The 92nd Street Y and Citigroup deny any connection between the

stock rating, the $1 million gift, the chairmanship fight and the admission of the children. Mr. Grubman says his e-mail bragging about manipulating AT&T was just a joke.

Anyone who would believe all those denials would be a good prospect to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. That is, if he had any money left after using Mr. Grubman’s stock to play the market.

The Wall Street Journal, which told the story best, is milking it for all it was worth. It summed it up as “kid pro quo.”