The economy is ruining Christmas on Wall Street. First they get their bonuses taken away, now they can't even get drunk in designer tuxedos at the company Christmas party. Morgan Stanley cancelled its holiday party this year, as did Barclays, UBS...

In September, I wrote about a wealth management team I walked through the service-loyalty-revenue nexus drill. If you recall, this team was composed of three advisors (partners) who lost four affluent clients at a projected value of $1.2 million...

Think You're Smart? Try these brainteasers that recruiters use in actual job interviews. THIS MONTH'S CONTEST A financial services firm has 10 employees. Although no one wants to divulge his or her individual salary, they all agree it would be...

Dean Bell has joined independent broker/dealer Leonard & Company as a senior vice president of investments. Before joining Leonard, Bell served as a branch manager for Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley's newly created Retail Banking Group will be...

Apparently Andrew Cuomo isn't a no gifts kind of birthday boy. At the New York Attorney General's 51st birthday and fundraising bash early this month, guests were asked to contribute at least $1,000 to his campaign race for attorney general or...

Last month, as Wall Street was melting down and the global stock markets were crashing, I gave my parents some investing advice: I told them to invest in U.S. real estate investment trusts (REITs). Talk about the strength of one's convictions: I...

As head of Citigroup's Private Bank, John Longley has to pull off one of the more vexingly stubborn organizational challenges of the modern financial era: getting private bankers and financial advisors to cooperate and help one another, to work...

While Merrill Lynch and Wachovia Securities' respective mergers might recall Frankenstein, Morgan Stanley's transformation brings to mind a Park Avenue afternoon facelift. This year, although Morgan Stanley's overall score (7.1) was down from last...

Clients who have children heading off to college next year and beyond are facing a convergence of events that will drastically reduce the typical family's ability to cover those higher education expenses. Most of the clients' myriad sources of...

The Baltic Dry Index, which tracks the cost of shipping goods and commodities like coal and iron ore around the globe, has fallen to six-year lows in recent weeks, and is off over 90 percent from its highs in May of this year. The index, seen as a...