eFinancialCareers

Not long ago, the prospect of Wall Street hiring again seemed remote indeed. But with the Dow hovering around 9500, capital-raising reaching robust levels and even the M&A markets showing small signs of life following Disney’s $4 billion acquisition of Marvel and Baker & Hughes $5.5 billion deal for rival BJ Services, Wall Street firms are doing the unthinkable and adding headcount. So much has changed since the calamitous events started... Read more

The freshest entrée on Wall Street’s menu at the moment is, sadly, layoffs. Hundreds of Lehman’s bankers are still in limbo. Merrill and Bank of America may get rid of 20,000. Around 2,000 of Dresdner’s investment bankers will be eliminated when the merger with Commerzbank is completed in a few months. Citigroup has cut at least 10% of its investment bankers. Even the mighty Goldman Sachs has taken the axe... Read more

The events of this past weekend – coming six months after Bear Stearns was thrust into the arms of JPMorgan – leave America's financial system in tatters, but not without hope for the emergence of a new order on Wall Street, that will once again return to its main purpose of efficiently allocating capital on a global basis. While the demise of Lehman could have been foreseen in the... Read more

There’s consensus growing in and around both Wall Street and the Square Mile that the compensation paid to bankers and traders needs to be revamped. Pay not only should be reduced, the thinking goes, but there also is a need for a mechanism by which bankers and traders can be held accountable for their actions in any given year. But when I attended an event sponsored by the CFA Society... Read more

Lost your job? You have two years to find a new role, says William Cohan, former banker turned award-winning author. If you’re one of the thousands of bankers who’ve been laid off in the midst of the current financial crisis, it may be difficult to imagine a time when you can return to Wall Street or the City at anything like your former level of pay or responsibility. However, it’s... Read more

M&A pros are most likely to come through the current crisis with their careers intact, says author and ex-banker William Cohan. As the still evolving mess in the global credit markets begins to reach the upper echelon of Wall Street management – who could have predicted that Chuck Prince, Stan O’Neal, Warren Spector, Tommy Maheras, Peter Wuffli and Oswald Grubel would all be purged in the same year! – it is... Read more