Free Republic

* 2012 investment banking revenue seen sliding 15 percent * Average return on equity seen at 5 percent this year * Larger firms urged to expand in emerging markets * Smaller banks must focus on niche sectors, products Up to 15 percent of the 500,000 jobs in investment banking could disappear in the next five years as the euro zone crisis and stiffer regulation hammers revenue, profitability and risk-taking, Roland Berger Strategy Consultants said on Wednesday. A study by Roland Berger Strategy, one of the world's leading consulting firms, suggests that investment banking global revenue is set to fall by...

Hating Wall Street is an American tradition that dates back even to the days when Thomas Jefferson cursed that money lover Alexander Hamilton. And for centuries, the complaints about it have largely stayed the same: It does nothing! It creates chaos! It’s a parasite that sucks hardworking Americans dry! (Or something to that effect.) But these are distortions of a fundamentally beneficial business. The country’s largest investment banks, commercial banks and a few big insurance companies (what we generally refer to as Wall Street) play the crucial role of intermediation — matching borrowers with lenders. Most of the time, the...

The financial reform that is about to be passed is a farce. Like so much in Washington, it is strictly for the tourists. The following article from Sox First provides commentary on the legislation: "You think the Obama administration's legislation to fix US financial regulation is going to change Wall Street? You're dreaming! Nothing has changed, investment banks are a protected species in the US. Hailed by some sections of the media as something that will put banks on a bigger leash, the reality it does nothing of the sort. It's just a massive con because of the way the...

For Goldman Sachs, AIG -- and by extension, the American taxpayer -- is a gift that keeps on giving. A year and a half after Goldman pocketed billions of dollars that Uncle Sam funneled into American International Group when it was on the verge of collapse, Lloyd Blankfein's gold-plated investment bank is set to fetch as much as $100 million by selling off pieces of the insurance giant. Goldman is reaping fees from helping AIG unload billion of dollars worth of assets in an attempt to return the roughly $182 billion the insurer borrowed from average folk.

After giving free markets a bad name, investment banks are turning to religion. These guys really have no shame. They pose as free marketeers when every penny they make is propped up by government, and now they want to invoke the good words in the Bible to justify their scamming. IB's are now hitting the churches of London, before they divvy up this year's loot. It is an attempt to do what they do best, confuse great truths with their scams. Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer John Varley stood at the wooden lectern in St. Martin-in-the- Fields on London’s Trafalgar...

The fall of Bear Stearns Bearing all Mar 5th 2009 From The Economist print edition A new book analyses how the near-collapse of Bear Stearns, exactly a year ago, marked the moment when Wall Street was knocked to its senses THE bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 will probably go down as the single most spectacular event in the humbling of Wall Street. But it was the near-collapse of Bear Stearns, six months earlier, that first exposed the fragility of America’s seemingly mighty investment banks, perched atop mountains of debt and dangerously reliant on short-term funding. And it was...

That would be the BEST long-term solution for this credit crisis. Let the damn thing collapse. That way capitalism will do it's job of clearing the fraudulent and foolish out of the system, leaving it in much healthier shape in the long run. In 1929 people were jumping out of windows. That sobering sight went a long way to impose discipline and responsibility on others. As a result, we had 50+ years of sane markets, sane credit strategies, and sane investment strategies. It's time to see people jumping out of windows again, so today's players will have discipline and responsibility...

Top money managers earn such huge incomes that even when their compensation is mixed with the much lower pay of clerks, secretaries and others, the average pay in investment banking is 10 times that of all private sector jobs, new government data shows. Investment banking paid an average weekly wage of $8,367, compared with $841 for all private sector jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in a routine report issued Thursday. The report also showed how far ahead hedge fund managers are of other investment bankers in making money. In Fairfield County, Conn., home to many hedge funds, the...

Seattle investment bank Cascadia Capital has been on a growth tear in the past two years, structuring more than a dozen acquisitions and helping privately held companies such as Speakeasy, World Wide Packets and Integrated Healthcare Systems attract large rounds of venture capital financing. But Chief Executive Michael Butler, who co-founded Cascadia in 1999 after returning from Wall Street gigs at Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley, believes more opportunity lies ahead. And much of that opportunity, he said, is overseas. That's why the 44-year-old investment banker recently hired Scot Land, a veteran Seattle venture capitalist who previously backed companies such...

<p>Investment banks are poised to make a killing off California's fiscal crisis after voters Tuesday approved an unprecedented plan to sell $15 billion in deficit bonds.</p> <p>The bond offering - which will be the largest issuance of municipal bonds in U.S. history - was put before voters by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature in part to cover a multibillion-dollar budget gap with debt to be paid back over the next decade.</p>