New York Magazine asked several “Notable New Yorkers,” “What do you do for inner peace?” The following weighed in:
—Craig Finn, singer of the Hold Steady
—Mario Batali, chef
—Jean-Georges Vongerichten, chef
—Isiah Thomas, Knicks coach
—Mason Rees, senior hedge-fund director, Bear Stearns
—Yoko Ono, artist
—Jonathan Groff, star of Spring Awakening
—Nora Ephron, writer
What, John Carney, journalist, wasn’t available? (Oh…right). As someone (notable) noted, “Ah, New York mag. So taken by the phrase “hedge fund” that anyone involved in one (or in this case, the servicing of one) is ‘notable’.” (Not that this guy isn’t in the same league as Yoko Ono or Isiah Thomas, but Nora Ephron? Seriously now, the woman wrote When Harry Met Sally for Christ’s sake. When Harry Met Sally! Mario Batali we’ll give you, sure, but not Nora Ephron. When Mason Rees fakes an orgasm for Billy Crystal, then we’ll talk.)
What Do You Do for Inner Peace? [NYM]

Did you, at one time, work in finance, but find that your job didn’t quite “jive” with your proclivities for: sleeping more than two hours a night, and if possible, not at your desk? The tremors produced by large amounts of coffee to those of cocaine? Swapping bodily fluids with someone you actually enjoy spending time with, and not the night cleaning lady, just because your schedules coincide so well? (Not that those two are necessarily mutually exclusive, but you get what we’re trying to say). Did your inability to reconcile these things cause you to quit your post at [circle one: Lehman, Goldman, J.T. Marlin], and spend your days glazing bowls at your local Color Me Mine? Now, you can go back and work a whopping fifteen fewer hours a week in exchange for a 50% pay cut and your dignity. You’re excited, we know.

[Melissa Eisenstat worked 70-hour weeks and spent 70 percent of her time on the road. Then she quit her job to play the cello. Then she realized she was better with numbers than the upright violin.] Eisenstat reentered the workforce through a Lehman Brothers program called Encore. She now works a less manic 55 hours a week and doesn’t travel, but makes about half her former seven-figure salary in her new, less exalted role as a VP in the equity-research group. “It’s about keeping my sanity,” she says.
Sanity, of course, has never been part of the bargain when it comes to working on Wall Street – until now. Following Lehman’s lead, Goldman Sachs launched its own return-to-work recruitment program, called New Directions, last May. And J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank have similar programs in the works.
Eschewing its longtime balance-is-for-wimps mindset, the Street is having a kinder, gentler HR moment. Lehman chief diversity officer Anne Erni, who created Encore, speaks to the value of inviting back mid-career executives: “They hit the ground running, with a greater degree of maturity. It’s easier to retool than train for judgment and experience.”

Of course, you’ll have to be comfortable associating with something that intentionally sounds like a senior citizen’s program, or a place to go for your substance abuse problem (“Encore,” “New Beginnings,” “Sparkling Meadows,” “Incontinence”), but just consider life as a faux-banker practice for your eventual life as a retired faux-person in Boca.
A kinder, gentler Lehman Brothers [Fortune via DealBook]

This video purports to show how “Russian i-bankers and their asset-management clients party it up after a capital markets conference in Moscow.” We can’t speak for its authenticity except to say that this is exactly what we imagine a party of Russian i-bankers would look like.

Year-end bonuses are for peons. Real BSDs get fees direct, personally at the closing. Like Michael Lynch.
From TheStreet.Com:

The former Goldman Sachs investment banker scored quite a coup when the Reader’s Digest board decided to put itself up for sale last year.
Reader’s Digest didn’t just retain Lynch’s former employer to find a buyer for the publishing company. In a highly unusual move, it also hired Lynch to hold its hand in the sale process.
Now Lynch stands to pocket a $2.75 million advisory fee, assuming Reader’s Digest shareholders approve a proposed $1.6 billion buyout by private equity investors led by Ripplewood Holdings and Merrill Lynch. That fee comes on top of the $11 million fee being raked in by Goldman Sachs.

Reader’s Digest Fee for All [TheStreet.Com]

People Moves: New York Board of Trade CEO dies [Financial News]

DealBook manages to read something pretty and hopeful in this story of a JP Morgan Chase analyst who works 120 hours per week. Frankly, we just don’t see it.

How does a harried investment banker send love notes? By BlackBerry, of course.
For Charlie Asfour, an investment banking analyst with J.P. Morgan Chase, the tender, digital message was this: “Will you be my steady girl?” The BlackBerry holder on the receiving end, Rebecca McFarland, apparently said yes — because the two are getting married, as The New York Observer reports in its latest installment of The Love Beat.
The column offers a glimmer of hope for junior investment bankers everywhere, who might reasonably wonder how they are supposed to drum up a romantic life given the notoriously long hours they are expected to work.

An Investment Banking Love Story [DealBook]
Countdown to Bliss [New York Observer]