How cosy. Silicon Valley venture capitalists, many of them beneficiaries of Frank Quattrone's generosity in the 1990s, gave the former investment banker a standing ovation at his public rehabilitation last night in Menlo Park. Allow me just one short moment of indignation, directed not at the chastened dealmaker but at his audience. Quattrone, the most powerful banker in the Valley until he became fallguy for the bubble, beat the government's obstruction of justice case. And there was nothing technically illegal about his Friends of Frank club, a group of executives and investors who funneled him business and received, to their personal benefit, hot public offering stock in return. If anything, the Credit Suisse First Boston banker, hungry for IPO mandates, was guilty merely of aggressive salesmanship; it was the recipients of his payoffs who breached their responsibilities. No wonder the VCs applauded, yesterday; many of them were part of the Valley's cosy cartel; Quattrone was the one that took the bullet.

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