Morgan Stanley Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said on Saturday that the government definitely needs to raise taxes on the rich to address its budget deficit. "The wealthiest can afford to pay more in taxes. That's a part of the deal,” she told an Economist “World 2012” summit. "I don't know anyone that doesn't agree with that," Porat said. "The wealth disparity between the lowest and the highest continues to expand,... Read more

Financial services businesses continue to be at risk for heavy downsizing activity—although job cuts are still well below the “recession high” of 2008, says global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Financial firms announced 1,681 job cuts in November, bringing the year-to-date total for the sector to 56,191, Challenger, Gray announced in a press release. That's up 162 percent from 21,430 financial cuts by this point a year ago, says the... Read more

Here it is, one of those tried-and-true interview questions you’ve been waiting for: “Tell me about one or two of your greatest weaknesses.” It’s a sticky question because you can easily end up coming across as either unrealistically superior (“Weaknesses, really? Let me think…”) or embarrassingly cliché (“I have to admit, I’m a terrible perfectionist”). Simply posing as an overachiever when asked about your shortcomings will usually come across as insincere... Read more

No wonder so many Asian students are traveling to the U.S. to tackle local MBA programs. Those professionals taking home $60,000 per annum pre-MBA might expect to walk away with $200,000 within five years of completing a top-echelon MBA, according to the latest reports. Last year, 2,000 Asian students traveled to Western Europe to enhance their business knowledge, and thousands more took off to Australia and the United States, according to... Read more

Could missing your company’s holiday bash bust your career? Probably not, but many company managers and recruitment experts want you there anyway. Sixty-six percent of senior finance managers responding to a new U.S. poll by staffing firm OfficeTeam actually disagree with the notion that it’s “an unwritten rule that employees should make an appearance at the holiday party.” That leaves 34 percent of finance executives who indicated that showing up at... Read more

Having hired Wells Fargo executive Susan Traver to lead its new high net worth advice-giving and private banking effort in Washington, D.C., BNY Mellon Wealth Management is finalizing plans to increase its staff there by a total of 10 or more professionals, says a company official. The firm’s newest wealth management office is in the process of moving from Bethesda, Md., to a larger space on H Street. Here, it... Read more

At a time when technology hires continue to be in demand at many banks, Wells Fargo & Co. is planning to cut technology and operations jobs by year-end in an effort to eliminate more than $1.5 billion of quarterly operating expenses. Most of the cuts are likely to fall in the bank’s technology hubs in Charlotte, North Carolina and Scottsdale, Arizona, as well as Minneapolis and San Francisco. A server management group... Read more

As independent advice giving firms seek to firm up their succession-planning efforts, experienced advisors who join forces with these companies should have broader ownership opportunities going forward. “Pure” Registered Independent Advisors (RIAs), as well as dually registered advisors affiliated with broker dealers, are increasingly bringing in seasoned people and “test driving them” for a possible ownership fit, observes Scott Smith, associate director at Cerulli Associates in Boston. You need five to 10... Read more

President Barack Obama today signed a bill into law that provides tax credits to companies hiring unemployed veterans. The tax breaks range from $5,600 to $9,600 with the size of the credit based on the worker's salary and how long the worker was unemployed. The Senate and House each passed the bill unanimously earlier this month. The legislation comes at a time when financial firms are increasingly hiring veterans via... Read more

TD Bank is expanding its corporate operations and headcount at the bank's campus on Interstate 85 in Greenville, SC, pledging to create more than 1,400 new jobs here in the next three to five years and using state-of-the-art, green technology for the facility. TD Bank will also add more than 200 new positions in Lexington, SC, TD Bank said. It is one of the largest job announcements in the state... Read more

Can it be possible that with so many trained professionals seeking positions these days in finance, employers can’t find the right talent for the jobs they want to fill? That's what a new survey claims, and the reasons most often cited are "lack of hard or technical skills" and "lack of experience" on the part of potential candidates. A 2011 ManpowerGroup survey reports that in the U.S., Canada and Latin America,... Read more

At a time when financial firms are increasingly hiring veterans, one corporate finance-focused broker-dealer is concentrating on securing financial services jobs for those who’ve been injured on duty—often significantly so. Founded in 2008, Drexel Hamilton is a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) with offices on Wall Street and Philadelphia. The company’s chairman and CEO, Lawrence K. Doll, is a former U.S. Marine, Vietnam Vet and the recipient of... Read more

With the recent influx of banks looking to hire veterans, including JPMorgan Chase and its participation in the 100,000 Jobs Mission, vets have been looking to start a career in the financial markets. When Credit Suisse held an event designed to introduce the firm to war veterans seeking jobs, representatives from investment banking and other parts of the firm showed up to discuss career opportunities within their own particular areas... Read more

About three-quarters of advisory firms surveyed recently said they plan to hire new employees this year, and of those hiring, 41 percent said that they’ll be filling new positions, up from 30 percent seeking to hire for new slots last year. According to a recent study of hundreds of wealth management organizations, the biggest emphasis will be on expanding the ranks of firms’ advisory teams. Technical specialists that support an “expanded value... Read more

Christine K. Jahnke is a Washington, D.C.-based speech coach who prepped Michelle Obama for her first international speech as First Lady before the International Olympic Committee in 2009. Practicing beforehand, she noticed that "the First Lady’s posture appeared a bit slumped in the shoulders,” Jahnke writes in her new book, The Well-Spoken Woman, which draws upon her 20 years of experience helping both men and women to “stand and deliver,”... Read more

The market for IT professionals is head and shoulders above that of other U.S. industries and has a “natural” unemployment rate of under 5 percent, a new report from Pace University shows. IT professionals focused on finance could realize still greater opportunities, Farrokh Hormozi told eFinancialCareers. Hormozi is a Pace economist, as well as the school’s public administration chair. One new trend, he says, involves financial advice-givers wanting to tap social media... Read more

Fixed income traders will be hardest hit by declining year-end incentive payouts this year, says compensation consultant Johnson Associates. The New York-based firm reports today that for the second time in four years, Wall Street professionals can expect to receive sharply lower year-end incentive pay as compared to the previous year. Johnson Associates’ third quarter compensation analysis shows that cash bonuses and equity pay will decline by an average 20 percent to... Read more

The largest wirehouses will be “trimming off” their least productive advisors and offering many others retirement packages over the next five years, Scott Smith, a Cerulli associate director told eFinancialCareers today. That’s why Cerulli believes headcount at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo Advisors and UBS AG will decline by some 6,800 advisors by 2016. The number of advisors employed by the four financial advisory films... Read more

When it comes to handing out raises these days, companies are being downright stingy, but employers may be a lot more flexible than you’d expect when it comes to helping you repay your debt, a former Labor Department official and president of an educational organization for young Americans tells eFinancialCareers. The group—Arlington, Va.- based Generation Opportunity—recently issued survey results showing that young Americans today are delaying major financial and life... Read more

Middle-market investment bank FBR Capital Markets—which may be getting ready to cut as much as 35 percent of its workforce—has suffered from straying from its financial institutions group (FIG) roots and from trying to expand prematurely into fixed income, a recruiter told eFinancialCareers. “FBR, going back to its beginnings, was very financial services-focused,” observes veteran recruiter Richard Lipstein of Boyden Global Executive Search in New York. But it experimented heavily in different... Read more