Читать книгу Conversations With Wall Street - Peter Ressler - Страница 4

This book began with discussions Peter and I had during the collapse of investment banks and former clients Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. After twelve years of working together as partners in our Wall Street executive search firm, which specialized in senior management for the fixed income (bond) markets, we had an up close and personal view of the market collapse. Not only did we see an industry on fire whose management teams we helped build, but also twelve years of building our own business was threatened. No one really knew what to expect as the markets crashed, firms folded, and the government stepped in, but the story unfolds through these pages as we saw the collapse progress. We documented the confusion and emotions this formerly stable and self-controlled industry felt as we experienced it.

We almost did not publish this book, debating for a year whether to ignore all of the things we heard and discussions we had on the self-destruction of the mortgage markets. In the beginning of the crisis, we were as horrified as anyone else. Just like the general public, we, along with many others in the finance world, were outraged and furious at colleagues who had damaged, if not destroyed, our livelihoods. As the anger simmered and the shock was absorbed, something entirely new and unexpected emerged: the human side of an industry viewed as heartbreaking at its best and savage at its worse. We weighed our discomfort with telling this story against a sense of greater purpose that it needed to be told. Ultimately, our mission is to educate those interested while helping heal the nation’s mounting distrust and contempt for the financial industry. Our goal is to bring a deeper understanding of how Wall Street works, stripped of its glamour for all the world to see. With that, we wish to inspire a sense of unity that might help prevent another crisis of this magnitude from occurring again.

This book actually began as the “Economy of Trust™ Ethics Program (EOT)” intended to help troubled investment banks and securities firms resolve the conflicts of interest that brought the industry to crisis. Prior to the collapse, ethics programs in finance (as one senior manager explained) amounted to two minute online surveys twice a year. In 2009, the big firms were keenly interested in the EOT program and asked us to develop training models for new recruits and adapt these for front-line producers. By 2010, as the government took the pressure off these firms, their interest in a comprehensive ethics program waned. Peter did present the EOT program at a friend’s smaller firm with great success; however, the industry began to shift back to business as usual.

In 2010, two high profile New York publishers expressed interest in the manuscript provided we “name names” of those whose stories we wished to tell. We explained printing the names would be antithetical to the book’s purpose of inspiring a deeper set of values and integrity in the world of high finance. The purpose of these pages is to shed light on the human side of the business in order to inspire necessary change. It took an innovative and mission-driven publisher, Fast Pencil, from the enlightened mecca of San Francisco, to give this book a home. They never once asked for the names, and from our first conversations with FP executives, they seemed to recognize the power in these pages.

The intention behind writing this book is not to compromise the industry or those in it, but instead to offer a more balanced view of how to resolve the issues. From our view across multiple firms, the system is deeply flawed and in dire need of repair. We try to offer an objective look at the market makers and see things as they saw them. Our firm belief is if those on the outside do not understand how the model works from the inside, we cannot resolve the existing problems. The industry is comprised of human beings of all different characters. Each has a role to play in the economy we depend on as a nation. The following pages are full of confidential and candid conversations by individuals who never intended these for public view. We respect their privacy and take their need for anonymity to heart. As such, we have gone to great lengths to protect the careers of our speakers and disguise their identities so they will not be exposed on our end. Each speaker has been given a pseudonym with personal details of their life altered slightly to mask their identities. The speakers come from a couple dozen firms, including the five former investment banks (Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley), hedge funds, private equity firms, and the largest U.S. and foreign commercial banks in the securities industry. The conversations took place with senior to mid-level producers who either moved the mortgage markets or supervised them.

These uncensored dialogs speak for themselves, revealing a world of finance that few ever get to see. These are told by a group of Wall Street market movers who collectively contributed to the greatest financial crisis of our time. They reveal heroes, villains, and those caught in the trap. Some were brave, some weak, and some were victims of a system that does not value human beings in its pursuit of almighty profits. Their combined message is one so profound that we believe it is essential for the wounded public to understand the crisis from their view in order to heal from the havoc of the last few years and perhaps begin to remake our system. This book is our effort to right the wrongs of those hurt by the debacle on Main Street and Wall Street. Our hope is that it will bring light to some of the darker corners of the world of money.

As a reader you will notice a remarkable absence of women speakers in these pages. That is because the upper levels of Wall Street are overwhelmingly male. In fact, the few women in the mortgage markets are disguised as men; otherwise, they would be immediately recognizable by their gender. Peter and I chose to write the book in his first person voice, for we felt going back and forth between us would be too distracting for the reader. The result is the blending of our voices, writing styles and thoughts.

The book is laid out with the intention of building momentum through the crisis. We begin with Peter’s early days in the industry and how the Wall Street mortgage markets progress through his eyes from the 1980s to the present. I joined as his partner in our search firm in 1996. I left the search business in 2008 in response to the growing financial crisis to start Good BusinessInternational, Inc. (Good-B), a new media company dedicated to “building better business for a better world.” As human capital experts, we were not directly working on the fixed income desks, but instead were interfacing with the human beings behind these markets at all the key firms. This gave us a remarkably advantageous view to place the pieces of the puzzle together.

The conversations detail the human struggle behind the market collapse. They lay out the foundation for the subprime mortgage markets, and how they worked from the view of market makers. You will learn how they spun out of control and why they could not stop the momentum—although many in the industry wished they could. The earlier chapters expose the problems preceding and during the crisis, while the later chapters offer solutions and possibilities for the future. All along the way, the market makers reveal the flaws in the system and how they believe these can be repaired. Our goal is to open debate about this dark moment in our history that continues to create economic suffering for many millions, lest our recent history be swept under the rug. It needs to be discussed, debated, and re-examined if we are to learn from our mistakes.

We wish to thank our wonderful agent Bill Gladstone who never gave up on us, our talented and wise friend and business associate Ann Graham, Fast Company pioneer Alan Webber who agreed to do the Foreword conceptually before the book was written, our friend and book marketing expert David Wilk, Steve, Bruce, Tracy and the wonderful crew at FastPencil Premier, our editor Steve Vendeland, our readers and friends Doug Rauch, Hadrien Coumans, Robert Sherman, Mark Sclafani, Louise Westfall, Mai Watts, and Peter LaCoux, and my team at Good Business. We thank Martin Rutte, the author of Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work, for his astute guidance and support. After reading the unedited manuscript, Martin declared he now sees Wall Street “with different eyes” and no longer feels overwhelmed by the enormity of fixing it. It is our hope that you, our readers, will feel that way too.

Monika Mitchell

Good Business International, Inc.

New York, New York