http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/upshot/wall-street-is-back-almost-as-big-as-ever.html?referrer=
Major investment banks have raised their standard base salary this spring for recent college graduates to $85,000, the first rise after five years in which the salaries hovered near $70,000.
At the complex in Lower Manhattan formerly known as the World Financial Center, the vacancy rate — which soared to 41 percent after Merrill Lynch consolidated offices after the financial crisis — is now less than 5 percent.
And in a return of high-stakes deal-making, large American companies executed more mergers and acquisitions last year than they did the year before the global financial crisis, earning huge fees for their Wall Street advisers in the process.
Seven years after a crisis that shook Wall Street to its core, the financial sector’s economic imprint has largely recovered. The number of people working in the securities business nationally has returned to 2007 levels, as has the gap between the compensation of Wall Street workers and that of everyone else. The financial sector as a whole is reporting profits that are as large a share of the overall economy as in the early 2000s and more than double their average level over the 70 years ended in 1999.
The recovery of the biggest banks is not total. Executives of top banks complain of expansive new regulations that have led them to shed businesses and shrink their balance sheets, potentially hindering their ability to help financial markets weather any new tremors, as JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, recently warned. The biggest pay packages for executives are rarer now, and Wall Street firms also face sharp competition from Silicon Valley for the brightest young workers. But overall measures of the financial sector’s role in the economy suggest that — even as some individual firms and former Wall Street titans have been on their heels — the financial industry as a whole is nearly as large as it has ever been.
Major investment banks have raised their standard base salary this spring for recent college graduates to $85,000, the first rise after five years in which the salaries hovered near $70,000.
At the complex in Lower Manhattan formerly known as the World Financial Center, the vacancy rate — which soared to 41 percent after Merrill Lynch consolidated offices after the financial crisis — is now less than 5 percent.
And in a return of high-stakes deal-making, large American companies executed more mergers and acquisitions last year than they did the year before the global financial crisis, earning huge fees for their Wall Street advisers in the process.
Seven years after a crisis that shook Wall Street to its core, the financial sector’s economic imprint has largely recovered. The number of people working in the securities business nationally has returned to 2007 levels, as has the gap between the compensation of Wall Street workers and that of everyone else. The financial sector as a whole is reporting profits that are as large a share of the overall economy as in the early 2000s and more than double their average level over the 70 years ended in 1999.
The recovery of the biggest banks is not total. Executives of top banks complain of expansive new regulations that have led them to shed businesses and shrink their balance sheets, potentially hindering their ability to help financial markets weather any new tremors, as JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, recently warned. The biggest pay packages for executives are rarer now, and Wall Street firms also face sharp competition from Silicon Valley for the brightest young workers. But overall measures of the financial sector’s role in the economy suggest that — even as some individual firms and former Wall Street titans have been on their heels — the financial industry as a whole is nearly as large as it has ever been.
