Matt Levine, Columnist

Relationships, Fees and Genius

Also covered interest parity, truth and fiction in the Enchanted Forest, and a Shkreli parody-squared.

June 10, 2016 at 1:00 PM UTC

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

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Fees.

One popular story about investment banking is that back in the good old days, investment banks were partnerships built on relationships, making their money by putting the clients first and giving them good advice. Then they succumbed to the lure of trading, went public, and became more short-term, transactional and conflicted, pursuing profits for themselves rather than the best interests of their clients. And now we are in sort of a post-modern phase in which boutique banks are trying to go back to the good old days of giving unconflicted advice to grateful clients.