The coked up kind? But seriously: we're ten minutes into the Frontline documentary on the Bank of Amerillwide deal (which you should watch if you've got an hour in the middle of the day to spare, and who doesn't). Andrew Ross Sorkin has just described Bank of America (pre-MER ingestion) thusly: "They're sharks...but they're not Wall Street sharks...it's a different type of uh, of...of sea these people are swimming in." Somebody help me out here.
Update: We called up Charlie Gasparino, who's also featured in the documentary, to see if he knew what kind of shark a Bank of America shark would be. Sayeth CG: "I love Andrew Sorkin, I think he's a great reporter, but I didn't get the shark comment. Sharks don't get bullied into doing one day of due diligence. Sharks don't assume billions of dollar of losses on their books. Sharks don't agree to outlandish executive pay." (Chaz also told us, when asked if he had an other issues with the show, "I thought they softpedalled John Thain's statements on Merrill's finances over the year, and what they did to the market.")
Bank Of America Doesn't Understand That Junior Mistmakers Are Special
If it did, the BAC would be treating its li'l bankers as though they were individuals with unique talents rather than lumping them together and calling them all by the same name. Anyway, here are a few more details about Brian Moynihan et al's plan (announced yesterday) to fire a bunch of senior people and bus teams of junior employees around wherever they're needed to pick up the slack. From the front lines: "Worord is BofA will merge junior banker resources into several broad "superpods" across the bank. Appears to affect analysts, associates, and some VPs. Also some rumors that the juniors making up the superpods might be co-located. Essentially they just became that much more interchangeable and replaceable and commodified. Politics and turf battles here between groups are pretty bad as it is...this is only going to make it 5000x worse."