The Wall Street banks obviously have their swagger back as evidenced by their CEOs’ plans to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. According to Christine Harper in her Bloomberg article entitled “Wall Street Partying in Davos as Bankers Overcome Crisis Angst,” concerns over compensation and regulation have receded, and the focus will be back to wooing clients, winning business, and, of course, partying.
Despite this year’s Davos theme of “Shared Norms for a New Reality,” the old reality is back, according to the article.
“They’re out there to make money for shareholders and trying to do that the best way they can under a system they helped design,” Simon Johnson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and a Bloomberg News columnist, was quoted as saying. “We’re just going through the same cycle again with pretty much the same incentives and power structures. Why would one expect anything different?”
“Last year there were a lot of conversations about who to blame, how to blame them, and how to re-jigger the industry,” Yury Spektorov, a Moscow-based partner in Bain & Co.’s mergers and acquisitions practice, was quoted as saying. “It’s not a hot topic anymore. Some people probably learned their lessons, some probably didn’t, but they will discuss how to move forward.”
“There will always be client meetings, that’s what they’re there to do, so absolutely they’ll be doing that,” Chenevix-Trench, 59, who co-founded London-based African Century Group, which invests in sub-Saharan Africa, was quoted as saying. Still, he added, “we’ve not solved this conundrum of bankers making hay when the times are good and taxpayers picking up the tab when times are bad, and that model, everyone’s got to look at it very carefully.”
J. Boyd Page, the senior partner at Page Perry, an Atlanta-based law firm, observed: “Wall Street is returning to the days of wine and roses. Let’s all just pray that it’s not a bigger bender than last time.”
Page Perry has over 125 years collective experience representing institutional and individual investors in securities-related litigation and arbitration all over the country. While past results are not indicative of future success, Page Perry’s attorneys have recovered over $1,000,000 for clients on more than 40 occasions.