"How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Paris?"
So goes the famous song by Judy Garland, which applies in a kind of reverse manner to the current goings-on at many of Wall Street's biggest firms: top dealmakers leaving life on The Street for life in a boutique deal-making firm, thus robbing banks of the talent and years of expertise they've come to count on to bring in the mergers-and-acquisitions dollars.
Green acres is the place to be
Specifically, Financial Times is reporting today that Morgan Stanley
Goldman Sachs
Morgan Stanley will survive
Either way, Wall Street is losing some of its top talent, but that time is probably overdue to some extent. Investment banking isn't the same since the crash, and all the big banks are reorganizing and trying to find new ways to make money:
-
Citigroup
just offloaded the remains of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney to Morgan Stanley, in an effort to streamline its offerings and return to its core competencies.(NYSE: C) -
Bank of America
just shed another 16,000 jobs: part of a plan similar to Citi's to slim down and get back to a more traditional, less volatile banking model.(NYSE: BAC)
With M&A activity universally down, Morgan Stanley's loss of Robey likely won't be catastrophic. Goldman apparently isn't even replacing Zaoui, which speaks volumes in itself for the near future of M&A.
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