Jack Grubman Finds Work in New Jersey

He's back.

Those who said Jack Grubman would never find work again in this town were partially right. The disgraced telecom analyst who was barred from Wall Street for life, has landed a new job over the river in Fort Lee, N.J.

Distinctive Devices, a network-equipment supplier that sells digital TV technology and telecom gear in Germany, India and Russia, said Friday that it hired Grubman as a strategic adviser.

Earl Anderson, a director of the company, says Grubman will be an outside consultant, not a full-time employee. "He'll be doing marketing and strategy, hopefully hooking us up with some of his contacts," says Anderson.

Grubman's representative did not return a call for comment.

Grubman rose to fame in the '90s as an outspoken advocate for upstart phone companies that he argued would be nimble and innovative enough to unseat giants like AT&T (T Quote). His enthusiasm for speculative underdogs, combined with a wave of deregulation and a flood of investment money, helped drive some of the highest-soaring stocks of the telecom bubble era.

Though some of his theories proved to be accurate, the overheated investment climate he fostered created an oversupply of network capacity and competitors that well overshot demand for data and phone service.

During the industry's dramatic collapsed, Grubman kept positive ratings on stocks like WorldCom, Focal Communications and Winstar, even as he derided the companies in emails to colleagues and certain clients.

Aside from the millions he made and then lost for investors, it was Grubman's dual roles as analyst and investment banker that drew the most attention from securities regulators.