What is happening within Investment Banking?
Rik: If you’re asking me whether there are investment banking positions open today, the answer is yes. But they’re mostly at smaller firms. Boutique/independent firms see this as their time to acquire new talent. They don’t have any of the risk or capital problems that the big firms do. The small firms now own the wealth creation model. It will be hard for the big banks to keep the best talent. You can earn substantially more money and the work can be more interesting. However, given how Investment Banking has developed in the last 20 years, a lot of the people who have grown up in these years are in fact not capable of doing independent work. Some will drift to the corporate side. But there isn’t a market for thousands of them. My guess is the investment banking population will shrink by 60-70% over the next two years. What will some of the bankers do? They’ll probably set up investment groups of their own, start their own investment banking boutiques, or reinvent themselves and move
