The new breed

What are the defining traits that good investment bankers share? Energy, creativity, entrepreneurship, willingness and ability to take risk, the strength of intelligence to form independent views of the world and the courage to back them: all traits that tend to be driven out of people when they become institutionalized within large organizations under cynical leaders. Everyone toiling at the coalface in a large bank should take lessons from the stories that follow of those who have quit to set up on their own. There's never been a better time to do it.