In The Black: Vault's Finance Careers Blog

Dimon To Replace Geithner?

With unemployment and the federal deficit surging, and economic recovery in the U.S. moving slower than anticipated, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s name has been kicked around as a possible replacement for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. According to the New York Post, Dimon, who achieved “rock-star status” during the recession thanks to keeping his firm afloat and then some while others floundered, is ready and willing to step up as Secretary should he get the call from the White House.

AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

BofA’s (Never-ending) Search For A New CEO

Finding a new chief to succeed retiring CEO Kenny Lewis is becoming much more difficult than Bank of America’s board initially anticipated. The board’s short list stretched into a long list, and the names on the long list have either publicly taken themselves out of the running or privately turned down the post. It seems the only man or woman for the job (and the only one who wants it) is the outgoing CEO himself, Kenny Lewis.

Despite Their Firms Going Under, Bear and Lehman Execs Made A Killing

Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers executives suffered financially due to their firms both collapsing, right?

Wrong, says a new study by Harvard. And in fact, according to the study from that school in Boston, bigwigs like Jimmy Midnight Toker Cayne and Tricky Dick I Won't Get Fuld Again pocketed millions if not billions, thanks to stock sales and big-time bonuses doled out before both banks burned out.

AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

Bill Gates On Wall Street Pay; Morgan Stanley Pays Up

If you still haven’t made a decision as to whether or not investment bankers are overpaid, this might help you come to one: Bill Gates, the wealthiest dude on Earth, believes that Wall Street bankers are rolling in too much dough.

Speaking of which, Morgan Stanley is offering a lot of bread to financial advisors in an attempt to entice them to hop aboard its big Morgan Stanley brokerage ship.

Not Guilty Verdict: Great For Ex- Bear Stearns Execs But Not So Great For Uncle Sam

It’s been a lucky week if you used to work for the firm formerly in business and known as Bear. First, its ex-head of strategy pulled down nearly $2 million in the World Series of Poker, and then yesterday, the two hedge fund managers infamously charged with having touted their investments while knowing full well they were at the bottom of a full toilet bowl were found not guilty by a jury in a federal court in Crooklyn, New York.

The prosecution, which relied heavily on email correspondence, failed to provide a convincing case against the undynamic duo, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, thus hurting the government’s future prospects of convicting others charged in connection with the subprime crisis as well as those charged in connection with the recent monstrous insider trading probe involving Raj Raj’s Galleon Group.