As we mentioned a while back, part of my training as a new Dealbreaker editor involves getting a CFA charter so that I can use past returns to guarantee future results. To that end, I’ve signed up for the December Level I exam. Thanks for all of your helpful advice on studying, by the way – I didn’t get to read all of them, but I’ll just go ahead and assume that the overall gist was “read every hundredth page of the books, guess C when in doubt, and drink heavily before, during and after the exam.”
Nonetheless I did get the books last week, so I opened them up to see what I’m getting myself into. Study Session 1 is ethics. Coming from a job on Wall Street, this was all new to me. I was particularly interested to see the CFA’s a refreshingly straightforward fiduciary standard in its code of ethics:
Members and Candidates have a duty of loyalty to their clients and must act with reasonable care and exercise prudent judgment. Members and Candidates must act for the benefit of their clients and place their clients’ interests before their employer’s or their own interests.
This is higher than the standard applicable to brokers in the U.S., who are subject only to a suitability requirement, which says that they “must make recommendations that are suitable for customers based on their financial situation, needs and goals.” It’s not entirely clear what this means: it clearly means “don’t put 100% of an elderly widow’s portfolio into SinoForest stock,” but other than that it provides pretty wide latitude. It certainly doesn’t require brokers to find the best products for their clients, or to put the client’s interests above the firm’s – which means that brokers can push worse products that make them more money, rather than better products that make them less, as long as the worse products are still “suitable.” (Registered investment advisers, and sometimes big firm brokers, are subject to fiduciary standards, and there are efforts afoot to apply them to all broker-dealers all the time – but as of now there’s still a two-tiered standard.
I thought of all this in reading reports about Sallie Krawcheck’s departure from Merrill Lynch. As John Carney reports, Krawcheck fought to keep eat-what-you-kill compensation for the brokers and “had a reputation as a defender of client interests, resisting pushes from other parts of the bank to twist the arms of brokers to put their clients into other bank products.”
That was a big deal for the brokers – both the money and the independence. As Josh Brown sums up in his great take on Krawcheck’s departure:
Sallie couldn’t change the fact that the brokers have no interest in peddling bank products or making referrals to other divisions within the slimeball supermarket. She also couldn’t change the fact that the clients are wise to game as well and that they are not very excited about having their retirement accounts be “synergized” either.
Sallie couldn’t change the fact that the jig is up, and everyone knows that Merrill Lynch’s fiduciary responsibility is to the shareholders of Bank of America first and the clients second.
So how should we take the news that the new head of wealth management is a “products guy” who has “negative charisma”?
More importantly, with Krawcheck out the biggest name on BofA’s bench (behind the “most unqualified CEO in all of corporate America,” so, y’know, keep an eye on that bench) is Tom Montag, who achieved immortal fame at Goldman Sachs by calling the Timberwolf CDO “one shitty deal” in an email.
Montag grew up on a trading floor, where the legal standard for client trades is suitability. To oversimplify a bit, the job of a sales and trading division is to sell products to counterparties that make the firm the most money possible without being outright frauds. (Or, failing that, while being outright frauds.) As a trader, of course his thoughts on Timberwolf were “I’m glad we sold that shitty deal to our customers” – but that’s not the reaction that someone who thinks like a fiduciary would have.
But Montag’s promotion and Krawcheck’s demotion/dismissal is a pretty good symbol of where BofA is headed. As Felix Salmon puts it, “if you’re a wealth manager at Merrill Lynch or US Trust, you’re working for your clients first, and your clients are not going to be happy if they think that you’re ultimately working for BofA’s shareholders.” With Tom Montag in charge, there won’t be much doubt about that.
As a CFA™ Candidate® – and ipso facto a booster of the fiduciary standard and the rest of the code of ethics that I fully intend to read between now and December 3 – I hereby shake my head disapprovingly at this. But realistically I can’t get that upset about the marginalization of retail wealth advisors. There is a real mystery about what value traditional investment advisers offer to retail clients (maybe it’s products). Perhaps I’ll find out the answer as I diligently read the six volumes of CFA curriculum – or perhaps the whole notion of taking a percentage of assets to tell clients to diversify is not entirely consistent with fiduciary duties.
So I sympathize with Brian Moynihan’s apparent move away from Merrill’s retail advisory tradition. And I look forward to watching Tom Montag finish the job.
What a woman. Call me Sallie. That is, if you don't mind sitting at the children's table and getting the occasional lamp lobbed your way
-G. Soros
too damn long
Matt,
2 Questions:
1)Is your CFA exam employer sponsored? (Bess, feel free to answer since Matt never replies to the comments).
2) If you do make it to level IV, will Bess give you time off to attend CFA sleepaway camp?
2b) if yes, can we make sure that there will be somebody available to put charts & graphs up here while you're busy with color war?
MBA Oath > CFA Ethics Standards > Registered Investment Advisor's Fiduciary Obligations > Broker's right to fill your ass with suitably shitty dynamite financial products guaranteed to turn that balloon knot of yours into a moon crater
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
only dumb ex-banker monkeys would study ethics in september
-CFA Institute President
1) yes
2) yes
2b) yes
one more question. is it true matt gets paid by the word?
The post isn't too long; your attention span is too short. Probably along with other things.
–Matt's Mom
We can put that check in a money market mutual fund. Then we will reinvest the earnings into foreign currency accounts with compounding interest aaannnnddd it’s gone…
Sorry I expanded this story. I feel asleep………………………
Shouldn't Bess have reputation score of at least 10,000?
Matt, can you tell us the circumstances surrounding your departure at GS?
Also, how do you plan to parlay this decidely youth oriented / snarky Dealbreaker position into future financial services employment? Do you plan to "BLF" – "blog for life", or do think that the site's stories about cum filled water bottles, anus embedded felt tip markers, and Taco Bell hook ups will resonate with the recruiters at KKR and / or Carlyle?
I mean, are you on autopilot with a trust fund, or is your mother biting her tongue, wringing her hands, and worrying that you're simply living for the moment – throwing career caution to the wind in favor of blogging and dating the 5"8 shiksa with the heart shaped ass and the forearm cursive script tattoo?
Seriously. What's your five year plan, bro?
No wonder all the volume dried up in the black market estrogen supplement market………..
-Ping
Matt,
You've shown the ability to add qualitative reading on industry trends, to your quantitavie capabilities.
Keep up the great work!
Dad
Get a fucking life.
22, as are most people that I know who read it.
“decidely [sic] youth oriented”
I’m 42. All of the colleagues/friends I have in the industry who read DB are over the age of 35. Don’t presume to know jack about the readership.
“snarky”
Please come up with a more hackneyed way of describing the site.
“the 5″8 shiksa with the heart shaped ass and the forearm cursive script tattoo”
You’ve left this comment before. It was no less creepy the 10 other times.
In sum, kill yourself.
Kill yourself
Did Sallie receive Garden Leave status before departing? If so, is it possible that BAC will be paying her legal bills to sue the bank for relief (in essence defending itself against a lawsuit from itself), which would be the last possible combination of available lawsuits not already filed.
He quit, which is why GS was able to enforce gardening leave. Are you a retard or do you just play one in the comments section?
TMLDR and NotZHEnoughDR
"part of my training as a new Dealbreaker editor involves getting a CFA charter so that I can use past returns to guarantee future results."
You can now never get the letters. Give up now.
-CFA Level IV Camp Attendee
"Blog For Life" would be "BFL" not "BLF."
Just Sayin'.
99 is Gretzky, that's even better.
Yes. She really needs it. Otherwise no one would know who she is.
Matt, can you tell us the circumstances surrounding your departure at GS?
They hired some male model-type who kept hitting on me.
Matt– FYI, by far the best thing about studying for the CFA (any level) is that *nobody* expects you *anywhere*, so you can feel free to show up to things, or not, but definitely try your hand at skeeving around the city alone for a little bit. It's more fun than you might think.
The comments are so stupid. Are you guys retarded?
Ethics? Is that like ethnics?
Much of the CFA (Can't Fix/Fuck Analysts) exam is based on hearsay I come up with while daydreaming about VIX straddles.
- stupid gamma guy
No, we aren't retarded. We are all exceptionally well educated. Thanks for asking, though.
I thought you weren't allowed to think about straddles anymore, Nick.
Agreed. I stopped reading at "ethics."
retarded <> uneducated.
But we ain't that dumb neither
Do you know how educated I am?!?!
And putting these great educations to great use…..
I think the reputation score algorithm was written to be intuitively inaccurate.
Yes? Now what?
talk about a site jumping the shark…….just sayin
Matt,
Dude, you're talking about the CFO of Citi from 2004-2007. Virtually everything that blew up on Citi's balance sheet (and off-balance sheet) was put there on Krawcheck's watch. For this performance, she keeps getting rewarded with plum jobs and out-sized severance.
Dim down the adoration a litte: you might just glimpse reality.