Where else could they go?

Posted by Marc Hodak on March 10, 2009 under Uncategorized | Read the First Comment

Remember the withering criticism of retention awards for the Smith Barney brokers?  You can get reminders here, here, here, …

The gist of the critiques was nothing so sophisticated as the need to actually retain people.  It was more on the order of grunts about “greed,” “pay for failure,” and “taxpayer theft,” etc.

At the higher end of this discussion were comments like this:

Where the heck are they going to go, if no bonuses (excuse me, rewards) are paid? I am talking about the “great” talent of Wall St that created such a nice and once-in-a-lifetime crisis. OK, some will leave, whatever. Most won’t. We are in a deep recession and even such “great” talent may not find alternatives easy.

So, how big of a retention risk did Smith Barney really have?  Well, this big.  SB has lost hundreds of brokers, to UBS, Wachovia, Raymond James, Oppenheimer, etc.–539 financial advisors so far this year.  The ones they lost included the best-performing, and relatively best rewarded people.  Most of the ones who remain had gotten no retention awards.  They will get used to that as they find themselves working for a government entity.