Veteran broker departures shift $133 billion client assets in 2012

English: Crowd gathering on Wall Street after the stock market crash of October 1929. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Ashley Lau – Brokerages saw top advisers depart in droves last year and shift $132.5 billion in client assets with them, a Reuters tally shows, creating headaches for some Wall Street banks.

Signing bonuses for top advisers are now around 350 percent of the broker’s annual revenue, with 180 to 200 percent offered upfront, said Tom Lewis, a New Jersey-based lawyer for Stark & Stark. An adviser who generates about $1 million in annual revenue might receive as much as $2 million on day one from a rival firm. more> http://tinyurl.com/bhunzyf

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The Widening Divide Between Wall Street and Washington

“View in Wall Street from Corner of Broadway”, New York. Engraving from Eighty Years’ Progress of the United States (Hartford, Connecticut, 1867). Although the original title says corner of Broadway it is the corner of Broad Street. At that time the Broad Street was called Broad Way Street. http://oldstreets.com/index.asp?letter=B (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Rana Foroohar – Wall Street, which bets on the future for a living, seems sure that Washington will come up with a solution. While investors are worried about last minute brinksmanship, the consensus has been that the stock plunge that would surely result is “hardly the holiday gift legislators will want to deliver to their constituents,” as one major bank put it.

But Washington exists on a different planet than Wall Street and that planet has different laws of gravity. The first law is that while finance is global, politics is local. Wall Street looks at Europe and sees what three years of delays and half measures in dealing with the Eurozone budget crisis has wrought — another recession. Surely, the thinking goes, leaders in Washington won’t let that happen here. more> http://tinyurl.com/d2935aj

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Planning for the “fiscal cliff”

By David Randall – Nearly three weeks after the U.S. election, Wall Street remains focused on politics.

With little change in the balance of power in Washington heading toward the so-called fiscal cliff, economists warn that more than $500 billion in spending cuts and tax increases that Congress passed in the wake of 2011′s debt ceiling debate – which will gradually take effect starting in January – could send the U.S. economy back into recession.

Payroll taxes will increase to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent; dividends will once again be taxed as ordinary income; and estates worth more than $1 million will now be taxed at 55 percent. Currently, only estates worth more than $5.12 million are taxed, at a rate of 35 percent. more> http://tinyurl.com/ch23bp7

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