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Picking Up Where Bear Lays Off

Published: Apr 08, 2008

 Finance       
In recent days, with thousands of Bear Stearns employees preparing for the worst, the question of where will all the soon-to-be laid off Bear employees go has been a heavily reported topic.

Yesterday, Crain's New York Business provided a couple of answers, saying that two boutique investment banking boutiques—Jefferies and Stifel Nicolaus—are looking to hire Bear Stearns bankers and research analysts. And according to a Reuters piece yesterday, large investment and commercial banks as well as some hedge funds have also been interviewing Bear insiders.

Of course, it's not only current bankers at Bear and other Wall Street firms who have been affected by the layoffs caused by the credit crunch. College seniors have been forced to switch gears as well.

Today, a Wall Street Journal article quoted a couple of undergads who had wanted to pursue careers in banking but, due to the poor market for finance jobs, have decided to accept positions at consulting firms. Which might signal to a larger trend in the coming year of consulting beating banking as the career of choice of mathematically-minded students.

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