eFC Briefing: Crowded Niches

Boutique banks face a shakeout. Don't be too quick to write off "the old Wall Street," a top law firm's chief says. SEC refines its approach to fraud.

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Is the bloom off the boutique banking boom already? A few months ago jumping ship from your bulge bracket firm seemed like a good idea given TARP was a drag on bonuses. But Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley aren't going down without a fight and might be paying back TARP money sooner than expected. Factor in the ever larger number of boutiques fighting over the remaining M&A, trading and restructuring work, and it's clear not everyone is going to survive, points out Breakingviews' Jeffrey Goldfarb.

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After the dust settles, the new Wall Street may end up looking a lot like the old Wall Street. H. Rodgin Cohen, chairman of law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, opined, "the system will look more like what preceded the current environment than many people seem to believe," adding he is "far from convinced there was something inherently wrong with the system."

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The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into a more specialized approach for combating fraud. In a departure from past practices, the agency wants to set up teams of specialists who bring in-depth knowledge of different areas of the business to their work, thus making it "more smart, more swift and more successful," in the words of enforcement chief Robert Khuzami.

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Are top female executives in finance more motivated by "soft" factors like respect, pride, meaning and purpose, than their male counterparts? Data covering five top financial firms shows 54 percent of women in top jobs are considering leaving their positions, compared with just 22 percent of men. Most of the female executives planned to shift to other sectors - especially non-profits.

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Citigroup has asked the Treasury Department for permission to pay bonuses to a number of key employees as it confronts with a threatened exodus of talent from its energy-trading unit. Citi wants to end pay restrictions at the unit, Phibro, which as earned hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for the firm.

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Is control over social media content inexorably migrating from individuals toward the companies they work for? The past two months produced a blizzard of stories about social media's limitations and downsides. eFinancialCareers News' Jon Jacobs concludes that what's published in online venues such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter will turn increasingly corporate. For everyone who isn't a full-time entrepreneur or independent contractor, social media tools will gradually morph from extensions of your personal brand into extensions of your job - which is to say, extensions of your employer's brand.