Look at the names below and see if you can find a common denominator.
Kidder Peabody & Co. Inc.
Drexel Burnham Lambert
Thomson McKinnon
Prudential Bache
Prudential Securities
A. G. Edwards & Sons, Inc.
First Union Securities
See a common thread? Probably not, but all of them, are names that are no longer in existence as brokerage firms. Amazing.
They are the names of every brokerage firm I was ever associated with, many names having changed while I was working in the same seat, wiith the same phone number, with the same manager.
Today it is about keeping your seat, selling the investment product de jour, global scale, trying to compete with the likes of BofA/Mother Merrill herself, keeping the compliance departments happy and trying to dish out the latest IPO that was no doubt the product of some private equity deal or venture deal in the fairly recent past. The liquidity out there is amazing and these firms trying to buy brokers and assets continues to make little sense for investors.
These deals aren't geared to make money for anyone except the honcho's at the brokerage firms.
And they are geared to separate the assets of the customers from the customer.
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