Massive losses, bailouts, big bonuses have done untold damage to bankers’ image
Reuters 27 February 2009
(NEW YORK) Americans have long tolerated Wall Street’s big bonuses, bigger egos and outsized influence because Wall Street firms and their executives at least made lots of money. Now, those days are over.
Huge losses, a multi-trillion-dollar government bailout and those never- ending bonuses have turned the legendary ‘masters of the universe’ into villains.
‘The image of the all-powerful Wall Street banker as master of the universe will take 50 years to recover, if ever,’ said Bryan Burrough, co- author of Barbarians at the Gate, a definitive account of the 1988 buyout of RJR Nabisco.
‘No longer are these people seen as soldiers of American capitalism striding out into the battlefield with their mansions in Greenwich and US$10 million bonuses.’
Wall Street has always lured the nation’s brightest with the prospects of fabulous wealth, more than making up for the long hours at the office and the intense pressures of the job.
But now, a system that lets bankers keep half their firm’s revenue every year, regardless of the long-term results, is endangered.
No less a figure than the new president of the United States said that it was ‘shameful’ for bankers to collect US$20 billion in bonuses in 2008, a year that taxpayers were forced to provide trillions of dollars to prop up an industry that mismanaged its way to a mountain of credit losses.
President Barack Obama and other officials want to cap compensation at government-backed banks at US$500,000 a year - a fortune to most Americans but chump change in Wall Street’s heyday.
‘The masters of the universe are now plaintive puppy dogs who don’t understand why their feed bowl has been moved,’ said George Ball, chairman of brokerage Sanders Morris Harris and former head of EF Hutton and Prudential Securities.
‘For a long time going forward, the business will be very different.’
Vilified, and with the prospect of fabulous riches fading fast, bankers around the world are having second thoughts about their profession.
‘What you’ll see is an irreversible trend away from banking,’ a veteran dealmaker at a big European bank confided.
A first-year employee at the same firm said that he may change career paths. ‘I’m not sure I’ll go back to banking after business school. A lot of me thinks I won’t.’
While investment banking will always attract people drawn to the fast pace and thrill of the deal, those embarking on a career in finance will have to lower their expectations.
Samuel Hayes, a Harvard Business School professor who has taught investment bankers the ropes since 1970, said that there was no denying the industry’s reputation had been tarnished.
‘There are a number of people who are disillusioned with banking,’ Prof Hayes said. ‘(The crisis) has given the industry an enormous black eye and it’s going to take a long time to recover from this.’
Certainly, some aspects of Wall Street are already gone. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley abandoned their broker-dealer model and became commercial banks last autumn.
Merrill Lynch, in danger of collapsing before being rescued by Bank of America, now imperils its new parent. Bank shares have sunk to their lowest since the early 1990s as investors nervously wait to see if the government will nationalise Citigroup and Bank of America.
In times past, bankers such as John Pierpont Morgan in the early 1900s and Felix Rohatyn in the 1970s were called on to solve the nation’s financial crises.
Now, many say, the bankers are the problem.
‘They’ve become villains,’ said Charles Geisst, author of 100 Years of Wall Street and a finance professor at Manhattan College. ‘Once, we looked up to the Vanderbilts and the Morgans. Now, rather than admire bankers, people want to shoot them.’
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Wall Street’s allure may be gone for good
Massive losses, bailouts, big bonuses have done untold damage to bankers’ image
Reuters
27 February 2009
(NEW YORK) Americans have long tolerated Wall Street’s big bonuses, bigger egos and outsized influence because Wall Street firms and their executives at least made lots of money. Now, those days are over.
Huge losses, a multi-trillion-dollar government bailout and those never- ending bonuses have turned the legendary ‘masters of the universe’ into villains.
‘The image of the all-powerful Wall Street banker as master of the universe will take 50 years to recover, if ever,’ said Bryan Burrough, co- author of Barbarians at the Gate, a definitive account of the 1988 buyout of RJR Nabisco.
‘No longer are these people seen as soldiers of American capitalism striding out into the battlefield with their mansions in Greenwich and US$10 million bonuses.’
Wall Street has always lured the nation’s brightest with the prospects of fabulous wealth, more than making up for the long hours at the office and the intense pressures of the job.
But now, a system that lets bankers keep half their firm’s revenue every year, regardless of the long-term results, is endangered.
No less a figure than the new president of the United States said that it was ‘shameful’ for bankers to collect US$20 billion in bonuses in 2008, a year that taxpayers were forced to provide trillions of dollars to prop up an industry that mismanaged its way to a mountain of credit losses.
President Barack Obama and other officials want to cap compensation at government-backed banks at US$500,000 a year - a fortune to most Americans but chump change in Wall Street’s heyday.
‘The masters of the universe are now plaintive puppy dogs who don’t understand why their feed bowl has been moved,’ said George Ball, chairman of brokerage Sanders Morris Harris and former head of EF Hutton and Prudential Securities.
‘For a long time going forward, the business will be very different.’
Vilified, and with the prospect of fabulous riches fading fast, bankers around the world are having second thoughts about their profession.
‘What you’ll see is an irreversible trend away from banking,’ a veteran dealmaker at a big European bank confided.
A first-year employee at the same firm said that he may change career paths. ‘I’m not sure I’ll go back to banking after business school. A lot of me thinks I won’t.’
While investment banking will always attract people drawn to the fast pace and thrill of the deal, those embarking on a career in finance will have to lower their expectations.
Samuel Hayes, a Harvard Business School professor who has taught investment bankers the ropes since 1970, said that there was no denying the industry’s reputation had been tarnished.
‘There are a number of people who are disillusioned with banking,’ Prof Hayes said. ‘(The crisis) has given the industry an enormous black eye and it’s going to take a long time to recover from this.’
Certainly, some aspects of Wall Street are already gone. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley abandoned their broker-dealer model and became commercial banks last autumn.
Merrill Lynch, in danger of collapsing before being rescued by Bank of America, now imperils its new parent. Bank shares have sunk to their lowest since the early 1990s as investors nervously wait to see if the government will nationalise Citigroup and Bank of America.
In times past, bankers such as John Pierpont Morgan in the early 1900s and Felix Rohatyn in the 1970s were called on to solve the nation’s financial crises.
Now, many say, the bankers are the problem.
‘They’ve become villains,’ said Charles Geisst, author of 100 Years of Wall Street and a finance professor at Manhattan College. ‘Once, we looked up to the Vanderbilts and the Morgans. Now, rather than admire bankers, people want to shoot them.’
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