Paging Sherman McCoy

From Bloomberg:

Eat-What-You-Kill Bond Traders Rise From Wall Street Wreckage
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.
“I don’t mean to dance on anybody’s graves here, but it’s just this incredible opportunity to reassemble a securities firm that does business the right way,” said Lee Fensterstock, chief executive officer of one of the firms, Broadpoint Securities Group Inc. in New York. “That business is going to lead with brain as opposed to capital. We’re not planning to run big balance sheets or big leveraged positions.”

Posted by on March 24th, 2009 at 9:58 am


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