The Return of the Gentlemen?

Everyone who pays any attention to banking knows that the big story of the last generation knows that the dominant story is the one about the rise of the trading desk, and its denizen, the trader. Everybody knows about traders: they're a bunch of animals. They eat cheap food from takeout, they play crude and lewd practical jokes, and they scratch themselves. They're not gentlemen. Comes now Robert Teitelman from TheDeal, who gets paid to watch (link):

Cayne's ouster signals a shift in power on Wall Street

Jimmy Cayne. Gone. Grant Kvalheim. Boom. Warren Spector. History. The guys from Citi. Gardening. The Merrill boys. Decimated. The credit crunch has done a lot of damage on Wall Street to CEO ranks, but the real destruction is taking place in a group that had been rising politically since the '90s: the trading and fixed-income crowd.

Wall Street firms have traditionally swung between control by the advisory crowd and the trading desks. But over the last few years, it began to look as if the bankers might prove to be a permanent minority, particularly after markets whiz Lloyd Blankfein replaced Hank Paulson, former banker, atop Goldman, Sachs & Co.

The argument went that the firms were increasingly trading for their own books, whether as prop traders or buyout investors, and since they made the bulk of the money, they got the bulk of the power. True, there were lots of deals to advise on, but there was also lots of competition, particularly from the boutiques, and constant pressure on fees. Banking as a percentage of total revenues kept falling, particularly at firms like Goldman and Morgan Stanley (run by John Mack, fixed income), which had once been pure advisory shops.

Then came the mortgage mess. Goldman may get through it, thanks to its trading triumphs, but senior mortgage types are falling everywhere else and the succession pictures at many firms now have to be redrawn. Every firm, of course, is unique, but the fact that Alan Schwartz, an investment banker, now runs feisty Bear, Stearns & Co. is one telling indicator that times are changing. - Robert Teitelman

Okay, granted, the antonym of "trader" is not necessarily "gentleman," but it might be a start.