Dick Bove Exemplified Banking Analysts’ Longevity
Shareholders benefit when veterans stick around to scrutinize companies.
Dick Bove is hanging up his banking analyst boots at the age of 83.
Photographer: Jin Lee/Bloomberg
Banking analysts are a grizzled bunch. Against the trend of “juniorization” that has seen the average age across research departments fall, those who scrutinize the banking industry are clinging on. When JPMorgan Chase & Co hosted its quarterly earnings call earlier this month, the median time on the job among those asking the questions was 26 years. For seven of them, it was their hundredth-plus such call.
Last week, one of the industry’s eldest representatives decided to call it quits. Dick Bove started out in retail sales in the late 1960s and began covering banks for Wertheim & Co, now part of Citigroup Inc., a decade later. Aged 83, he most recently worked at Odeon Capital Group LLC, having covered the sector at no fewer than 15 different institutions. “These firms kept going bankrupt,” he told me last week, “so that meant you had to keep hopping.”