John Mack stood up and began to speak. He was the guest
speaker at a breakfast last month for fellow Duke University alumni
working in financial services. About 100 of them were there to hear
the CSFB chief executive, including senior bankers from rival
firms.
It was mid-July, and Mack was about to celebrate his first
anniversary at CSFB. It had been a tough year as he worked to
overcome the mess of regulatory, cultural and expense management
problems left behind by his predecessor, Allen Wheat. Mack has had
a lot of success sorting them out, but if any of his audience were
expecting him to talk up the previous 12 months, they were in for a
shock.
He painted a grim picture of investment banking: there was little
sign of a quick turnround in the big-ticket business; salaries,
already under pressure, would have to come down more; the sell-side
analyst would have...
