More on why big capital markets players are unmanageable
by ilene - July 9th, 2009 10:45 pm
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More on why big capital markets players are unmanageable
Courtesy of Edward Harrison at Credit Writedown
Yves had a very good post yesterday called “Why Big Capital Markets Players Are Unmanageable” on banks: the former i-banks and commercial banks. The biggest takeaway for me came from her statements regarding the level of responsibility that a junior level employee in an investment bank can have. She says:
What makes capital markets businesses different from any other form of enterprise I can think of is the amount of discretion given of necessity to non-managerial employees, meaning traders, salesmen, investment bankers, analysts. In pretty much any other large scale business, decisions that have a meaningful bottom line impact (pricing, new sales campaign, investment decision) are deliberate affairs, ultimately decided at a reasonably senior level. The discretion that customer-facing staff have in pretty much any business in limited. At what level does someone have the authority to negotiate a contract? And even then, how many degrees of freedom do they have?
That is a very significant factor in investment banking that makes it risky. Think about the blow-ups that have occurred in trading enterprises from SocGen to Sumitomo to Barings Bank. In most enterprises, most junior-level employees don’t have the decision-making authority necessary to allow these mistakes to happen.
But, Yves’ post got me to thinking a bit more about investment banking itself and the change in emphasis within firms. John Gapper at the FT had a revealing post yesterday on just this subject. He writes:
There is excited talk of investment bankers reclaiming the power and mystique that veteran rainmakers such as Joe Perella, Robert Greenhill and Roger Altman (all of whom now ply their trade at boutiques) once enjoyed at big banks, rather than being trained as technicians and treated as such.
How seriously should we take this? Not as seriously as the bankers do, it is safe to say. There will always be a place in the boardroom for a few senior advisers with the skills and temperament to give thoughtful and unbiased advice to chief executives facing big, risky decisions.
“Sometimes a chief executive needs a surgeon to operate but sometimes he needs a GP who understands people and politics and governance. The best