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An informal glance of the year just past Years from now, a finance historian or a research analyst looking back at 2013 won't have a clever moniker for the notable financial events of the year.  The year was eventful, but may not even deserve a whole chapter in finance history. And perhaps that's a good thing. It wasn't like 1987, 1994, 1998, 2008, years that conjure memories of crises, crashes, volatility, and uncertainty. The year 2013 was not one of turmoil.  Markets behaved well. We saw equity upswings of the likes of the mid-2000's and mid-1990's, even while old hands suggested a bubble is near and we shouldn't get accustomed to double-digit percentage stock-market increases. The fury and hoopla over BitCoins , that arcane, macabre digital currency, didn't rise to the surface until late 2013.  That, in fact, could be the bubble that bursts in 2014, and let's hope that damage won't cause debilitating financial ripples around the world. The year 2...

Volcker's rules: Any day now Three years have elapsed since regulators proposed new regulation to restrict proprietary trading at banks (more specifically, depositary financial institutions).   Three years of discussion, debate, rule-writing and re-writing, dissension, lobbying, and procrastination.  And now the new rule, better known as the Volcker Rule and named for former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, who first proposed limits on bank trading during the crisis, has reached a point of no return.   Regulators--the SEC, FDIC, OCC, CFTC and the Federal Reserve--have promised to sign off before mid-December. Banks aren't surprised. They aren't caught off guard. They knew an old era of gun-slinging, wild, volatile, frantic, but overwhelmingly profitable proprietary trading at the major banks was coming to an end.   While regulators and their lawyers sequestered themselves for years to write hundreds and hundreds of pages of rules, banks tried to push back and ...

The $13 billion: It can handle it. A question has lingered for much of the past week, one that hasn't been asked often out loud or asked pointedly. Is $13 billion a lot of money for JPMorgan Chase?  Will it crush the bank's growth plans and business opportunities in the periods to come? Will it strangle a banking empire and cause it to retreat into a shadow of its post-crisis self? Announced in business headlines everywhere, the $13 billion is the total amount in the bank's settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, all related to the bank's mortgage-securitization business in the 2000's and the businesses it inherited from its acquisitions of Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual.  The government claims JPMorgan and affiliates improperly and unfairly structured mortgage securities, leading to billions in losses to investors who had purchased the securities. The settlement puts an end to one chapter in the bank's efforts escape the mortgage nightmare of that ...

CFN hosted its annual webinar to launch interview season Most MBA students today, including Consortium students across the country, will argue there is no one segmented part of the calendar for "recruiting season."  Every aspect and experience of business school is "recruiting season," from the time students declare their intentions to attend a certain school until graduation. Every day, not just a few weeks in the fall, MBA students contemplate where they want to be and what they should do to secure the right job. Students today, and their career-advisory specialists on campus, say there is seldom a time when an MBA student is not absorbed in thought about information interviews, mentors, alumni connections, career choices, or a specific post that awaits after graduation. Nonetheless, late fall usually signals the formal start of interviews:  information interviews,  first rounds, lottery interviews, interviews earned from being selected by companies, second rounds...

Goldman Sachs announced this week that it had instituted ways to improve the work experience of analysts (in its BA program) and reduce the number of hours they work each week. It's the lore of investment banking to hear stories of analysts and MBA associates, too, who work long hours that stretch through the weekend and through holidays and vacation time. Goldman acknowledges that it is missing out on some top talent, when recruits have selected other finance jobs or industries because of work-life-balance issues. Talented BA's and MBA's will express an interest in corporate finance, will have the aptitude and drive to work on deals and with important clients, but, as Goldman sees it, they back out and accept offers elsewhere. And they may whisper to Goldman and other major banks that it wasn't about the compensation.  Thus, they choose pathways that take them to the shorter hours and better lifestyles offered by hedge funds, smaller boutique firms, and the f...

Cornell's Johnson School: Ready, set, network, interview When recruiting season rolls around, MBA students in finance (including Consortium students in finance around the country) toss the books on the shelves and roll out the details of a game plan to secure a job for the summer or for full-time employment after graduation. Student sentiments always seem the same year after year.  They never realize how much time, energy, effort, focus, and discipline the process entails.  Often recruiting season is launched right in the middle of midterms and just before first-semester exam season. MBA students rejoice in the chance to dream of the opportunities presented to them and the chance to drift smoothly into a wonderful job in an ideal industry, making substantial impact, having meaningful experiences, and accumulating their fair share of sums of money.  That's summer-time luxury.  When recruiting season starts, the real world smacks right in the face.  There is time,...

Billions and billions in cash, still In corporate-finance circles,  Apple presented a delightful dilemma in much of 2012.  What should it do with its billions of cash, sitting on the balance sheet, earning paltry returns in safe markets, causing restlessness among shareholders who felt entitled to special dividends to get access to it? Should it use cash to repurchase some stock, a few shareholders pressed? Shareholder activists clamored for cash pay-outs and even devised ingenious financial maneuverings and new equity instruments to get to it.  The current generation of Apple managers, with Tim Cook at the helm as CEO, grew up with Steve Jobs' abhorrence of debt markets and his clinging to a security blanket of hoarded cash if only to endure tough times. Apple has often countered--in carefully worded ways--that much of the cash it maintains appears in foreign subsidiaries, cash that couldn't be efficiently repatriated back to the U.S. into the hands of shareholders with...