Anything For You All: The Wall Street bankers who feast during recessions say there's a 'smell in the air'

May 25, 2018

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"We're all feeling like where we were back in 2007"

At an earnings call in April, an analyst pressed bank CEO Ken Moelis on his rosy outlook for his firm's restructuring business — the corner of Wall Street known for advising companies with messy books veering toward bankruptcy.

On the surface, market conditions are showing few signs of distress. The economies in the US and throughout the developed world are growing, the stock market has been upbeat despite fits of volatility, and corporate default rates remain low and are projected to fall further in 2018 and beyond.

"I do think we're all feeling like where we were back in 2007," Bill Derrough, the cohead of recapitalization and restructuring at Moelis & Co., told Business Insider. "There was sort of a smell in the air; there were some crazy deals getting done. You just knew it was a matter of time."

Business Insider spoke with several top restructuring bankers who were all buoyant on the outlook for their industry, in part because of disconcerting trends facing debt-burdened companies but also because of how the business has changed since the last financial crisis.

How to get ahead in finance

How can you climb the ranks at the big bank at a young age?

"You have to be relentless in the pursuit of your goals," says Oli Harris, who at 29 is JPMorgan's head of crypto strategy.

Harris is one of the people featured on Business Insider's UK Fintech 35 under 35, a list showcasing the best young talent in the industry. Before his crypto role, he ran the bank's "In Residence" program, which found promising fintech startups for JPMorgan to work with.

"I love the ability to be the bridge between JPMorgan and the fintech world and actually seeing tangible outcomes of the partnerships we do with companies," Harris said. Read more from our interview with Harris here.

Elsewhere in crypto news, Kraken, the cryptocurrency exchange, has brought in a legal heavyweight to help it navigate through the murky regulatory environment for bitcoin, people familiar with the hire tell Business Insider.

The "scariest number" in finance right now

13.4 million. That's the number of hires into the financial-services industry since 2009, filled with people who may never have worked during a major economic or market crash.

For David Rosenberg, Gluskin Sheff's chief economist, this is the "scariest number of them all."

Here's why.

Why Comcast wants Fox

Disney wants Fox to help it kill Netflix. But what exactly does Comcast want with Fox?

Late last year, when Disney made its bold attempt to acquire a suite of 21st Century Fox assets, its motivation seemed crystal clear: It wanted to bolster its collection of intellectual property for its coming direct-to-consumer streaming service (i.e., the would-be Netflix killer). Add the X-Men and "Avatar" to "Star Wars" and Mickey, and you've really got something, the thinking goes.

Less clear, perhaps, is why the pay-TV titan Comcast wants Fox, whose assets include a TV studio and the FX cable network. Business Insider talked to two media-industry experts to attempt to shed light on this would-be deal.

Here's our story.

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