Page Perry

Mike Mayo, a banking analyst who has worked at six Wall Street firms and has a reputation for independence from the banks he covers,recently published a book that reveals the fundamental unreliability of Wall Street research recommendations. When Mayo started out on Wall Street, he says he called them as he saw them. But when his analysis was negative on a firm the firm cut back on business with his bank, and Mayo was penalized. In 1999, Mayo made a controversial call to sell bank stocks. Even though he was proven correct, he was fired by Credit Suisse in 2000. In 2002, he testified before Congressional committees about the conflicts of interest on Wall Street, and took his message to the media, but nothing changed. Ten big Banks paid over $1 billion to settlement analyst fraud charges in 2003. Then Wall Street returned to business as usual, and the system is still riddled with conflicts.