Eat-What-You-Kill Bond Traders Rise From Wall Street Wreckage

[Lucky Luciano]

So, some Wall St people are leaving big firms to work for little ones to avoid government imposed paycaps:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=advOE636FaQM&refer=home

March 24 (Bloomberg) -- Wall Street bond trading is heading back to the 1980s, when private partnerships and independent firms dominated the market.

Jon Bass, who traded debt five seats from Salomon Brothers Inc. Chairman John Gutfreund and later helped run fixed income at UBS AG, joined equity broker BTIG LLC to help start its credit operation last month. BTIG, with a pool table and gym adjoining its seventh-floor midtown Manhattan trading room, is one of more than 50 credit dealers seeking to take advantage of the widening gap at which securities are bought and sold.

Smaller firms are emerging from the wreckage of the world’s largest financial companies, which are conserving capital following more than $1.2 trillion of writedowns and credit losses since the start of 2007. They’re luring traders with a shot at $500,000 commissions for two days’ work as banks that accepted federal bailouts retrench and slash bonuses.

--SNIP--


Some salesmen at the largest firms, which are reducing compensation as business slows under the glare of government oversight, saw their compensation fall from $2 million in 2007 to just their base salary of $150,000 in 2008, with no bonus, according to Michael Maloney, president of Wall Street recruiting firm Maloney Inc.

“All the A-level and B-level salesmen will make more money on commission,” Maloney said. “I know one salesman who made half a million dollars in his pocket in 48 hours. He could gross $500 million at Citibank and he’s not going to get paid a dime.”

--SNIP--

“The talent is streaming out of the doors of the big firms,” Bruce Foerster, a former Lehman Brothers managing director and now president of South Beach Capital Markets in Miami said. “As the best and the brightest leave, they will tip their hat to Senator Christopher Dodd. Bright people won’t want to be at places where the government is.”

[formercia]

1. "Bright people won’t want to be at places where the government is.”

Neither will criminals.

[xchrom]

2. the best and the brightest -- or the ehically challenged?

will smaller firms be able to legally afford the ethics of these guys.

[Demobrat]

3. More power to them.

Let them go someplace where they can be happy, make millions and get on with their lives - without begging for help from taxpayers. Works for them, works for the taxpayers.

[sufrommich]

4. This is such a lie, let their "best and brightest" stream out of the

doors, there are thousands of competent business people who will stream in right behind them.To imagine that there are not enough workers willing to do their job for less than they make right now is naive at best.

[glitch]

7. self-described, I am sure. They need to not let the door hit their toxic asses nt

[mike_c]

5. they're greedy parasites....

Words fail me, I'm so angry that anyone gives a rat's buttocks about these parasites and their "talent." They're greedy, self obsessed bastards. They are the grease that keeps the worst aspects of the capitalist machine running smoothly, concentrating wealth into the hands of the "investor class" they serve and enriching themselves in the process. They are raping the world around them, where real people struggle daily, kept poor because the parasite class needs to take the fruits of their labor.

[NC_Nurse]

6. They would have left without the bailout too. These firms failed and rats don't

stay on a sinking ship.

[msongs]

8. funny how these jobs are not outsourced, only jobs of people who do real work nt