The Street with no Wall
a recap of the 2009 Financial Services Immersion Program
In 1653, Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General of New Netherland, constructed a 12-foot-high stockade on the northern boundary of the New Amsterdam settlement to keep out the Lenape Indians, the New England colonists, and the British.
In 1699, the British tore down the wall. The name of the street, however, remained as the Wall Street. In 1792, 24 prominent brokers, speculators and merchants met under a buttonwood tree at the foot of the Wall Street and formalized their association with the Buttonwood Agreement. The association later evolved into the largest stock exchange in the world, the New York Stock Exchange.
My two-day financial services immersion program began with a visit to Citigroup after an early train-ride to Grand Central. At Citigroup Investment Banking Section, we were kindly greeted by Greg and Jane, both Vassar graduates. The encounter was informal, but engaging and valuable. The active conversation was a great appetizer for those who are hungry for a taste of investment banking. One of the most valuable lessons I learned was that it is not necessary to be a finance or economics major to pursue a career in investment banking: Jane, for example, majored in English at Vassar College, discovered her negotiation talent through selling cup cakes in New York, realized interest in cooperate law after interning with HSBC, and is now working for Paralegal at Citigroup.
With my stomach stuffed with a Swiss meatball Ragu hot wrap and a delicious parfait, we set out for a tour of the Museum of American Finance with the group. If you want to learn more about the financial crisis, there is a very helpful timeline provided by the museum. To me, the architecture of the building was as interesting as the exhibition: cantilevered marble staircase, enormous brass chandeliers, checkered marble floor, murals painted by J. Monroe Hewlett, all took me back to the 18th century in a mere of seconds.
Another quick subway ride, we found ourselves in the center of the hustle and bustle of the city, Times Square. Everything was as I remembered: endless streams of tourists, countless billboards of shows, and limitless neon lights. Well, almost everything. The 745 7 Ave silently embraced its new owner: in the world of finance, one day you are green, the other day you are blue. Barclays Capital now takes over most of the Lehman Brothers business and occupies its New York headquarters. We met a very diverse group of new analysts at Barclays Capital, who attended colleges ranging from Cornell, NYU to Middlebury and, of course Vassar (Dan Tan,'09).
The evening at the Yale Club was another delightful experience. After a lecture we sat down with a few wonderful Vassar graduates and an important guest, Debbie Treyz, who is the Head of Wealth Advisory and Fiduciary of J.P. Morgan, and thanks to her support and generosity, this Financial Immersion Program is able to carry on. Our visit to J.P. Morgan Private Wealth Management the morning after was one of the highlights of the program. It turns out that investment banking and wealth management share quite a bit in common. The excitement and tension of the visit could hardly be recreated with a few words, but consider the following questions (allow yourself 5 seconds before you answer each question):
1. What is the headline of today's Wall Street Journal?
2. What stocks do you think I should buy this year? Why?
3. And, tell me something I don't know about economics.
In order to succeed in the ever-changing and competitive world of business, you always need to be ready: this probably means that you may need to go to sleep with today's stock portfolio, or wake to the New York Times headlines, or give a convincing alternative when you know little about the answer, in front of a group of exceptionally acute minds.
Surrounded by stores like H&M, Zara, Express, Gap, Banana Republic and Bloomingdales, one could be easily be distracted and miss the Bloomberg Tower. Yet it takes only one visit for the building to remember you: the photo you take before going through the security of the building will be stored for years. The Bloomberg building was a piece of MoMA: large-scale light installations, eccentric sponge sofas, colorful fish tanks scattered around, numerous sculptures, Bloomberg museum displaying the evolution of its terminals… and did I mention those free food stations (imagine going to a store where you can grab everything on the shelf for free) on each floor? The working environment oozes color, exudes energy and sends out a tinge of ephemeral existence. In the blink of an eye, a piece of news loses its all value.
In a street with no walls, in a world with no barriers, there is unbounded opportunities and immense competition. Here is an African proverb that I read years ago but still motivates me today: “Every morning in Africa, an antelope wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion, or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest antelope, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or an antelope – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running”.
You might ask, why do I want this? Why should I be a lion or an antelope in Serengeti? Why would people want to go to investment banking? My answer is, at the end of the day, if you are a lion that captures a prey or an antelope that escapes the fastest lion, you survive.
There is nothing better than knowing that you have lived and you have survived.
For Now.
