It's hard to imagine that a banker who represents multimillionaires would be anything but professional - but a top executive at a leading global bank thinks that's precisely the wealth management industry's problem.

"There is so much mediocrity in the industry we have to raise the bar here," said Gerard Aquilina, vice chairman of Barclays Wealth, at the Reuters Global Wealth Management Summit in Geneva.

    To Aquilina's way of thinking, private bankers need the same "institutional rigor" as investment bankers in the way they operate. To this end the bank is looking to pursue only top-quality hires.

"Our strategy is not to be the hoover that comes and hires willy-nilly, we want to be much more selective," said Aquilina -- perhaps an ironic view given Barclays acquired thousands of investment bankers from the ashes of the fallen Lehman Brothers last year.

    But he and his colleagues are so sure of their position that he said they are working on developing MBA-level courses with some unnamed top universities on private banking, especially as they see fewer and fewer interns turning up their noses at the prospect of a three-month rotation in the private banking shop.

    They're not alone, either. Alexander Classen, head of EMEA wealth management for Morgan Stanley, said his firm too was seeing more and more people turn up to recruiting presentations on college campuses, whereas at one time they would have summarily shunned the private bankers for the investment banking sessions.

Things may have changed since then, but private banks may still have their work cut out if they want to attract talent early. After all, as Aquilina himself admitted, "There are not many people at eighteen who say, 'Hey Dad, I want to be a private banker'. Most people just fall into it."

The demise of Lehman Brothers a year ago sparked a collapse in financial market confidence and set of a series of reactions that have spread hardship into the four corners of the globe.

Reuters News has charted the key events and their impact in "Times of Crisis" -- a major new multimedia production on Reuters.com. (See it here.)

We'd like to add the experiences of Reuters readers. So, if you or your family have been affected by the events of the past year then use the comments section below to share your story.

U.S. investors have started to go shopping abroad for assets for the first time year.

According to UBS, the proportion of mutual funds’ portfolios held in foreign assets rose to 24.5 percent in May from the 23 percent level they kept until then.

From 2002-2008 U.S. mutual funds sharply increased their exposure to  overseas assets, going as high as 26 percent in mid-2008 from 12.5 percent. After the collapse of Lehman Brothers they have cut back to 23 percent.

“U.S. investors have begun to return to overseas markets as risk assets recovered in Q2 2009. This has undermined the dollar. But if market sentiment becomes risk averse again in H2 2009 then US investors are likely to curb their dollar diversification once more,” the Swiss bank says in a note.

Greedy bankers are routinely blamed for the credit crisis but one British-based poll of -- well, financiers -- spreads the blame more widely.

Gary Jenkins, head of fixed income research at Evolution Securities, wanted a more specific scapegoat and ran a poll of about 200 mostly fund managers and investors asking them to pick their credit crisis culprit. Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was the clear winner, picking up 35
percent of the votes. He has been widely criticised over the past year for low interest rate policies that helped fuel the credit boom.

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton also figured quite prominently with about 10 percent of  votes, and British prime minister Gordon Brown got quite a few.

Some bankers were singled out, including Fred Goodwin, former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland and Richard Fuld, the head of collapsed Lehman Brothers.

In a related article in Euroweek, Jenkins also had a unique culprit -- Bill Gates of Microsoft. None of the maths behind structured credit could be done without spreadsheets like Excel, Jenkins reckons.

So who do you think is to blame?

(Reuters photo: Kevin Lamarque)

The mood in the asset management industry is ”very cautious, very realistic but not pessimistic” after the financial industry’s “Chernobyl” of Lehman Brothers collapse, according to Europe’s fund industry chief.

Peter De Proft, director general of the European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) told the Reuters Funds Summit, that the mood was now more optimistic.  At least, certainly more so than  4-5 months ago.

Lehman Brothers, though, was Chernobyl. ”Boom, it was the atomic bomb,” De Proft said, adding that many in the financial industry, including asset managers, appeared “shell-shocked” at the time.

Now he sees more optimism and backs it up with preliminary EFAMA data showing net inflows into investment funds  in January, reversing the trend of outflows seen in the last quarter of 2008. Not huge, but positive, he says. February, meanwhile, was “presumably positive or break-even.”

But De Proft was under no illusion that it will take time for investors to venture back in big time. Then again, if you were a fund manager, what else could you bee but optimistic?

(Reuters photo: Andrew Winning)

Attention Wall Street whistleblowers: your banking job might be at risk, but here’s your shot at Hollywood stardom.

The Academy Award-winning filmmaker is looking for “brave” financial industry insiders to help him make his next film which will focus on the financial crisis – or what Moore calls “the biggest swindle in American history.”

“Based on those who have already contacted me, I believe there are a number of you who know “the real deal” about the abuses that have been happening. You have information that the American people need to hear, “ Moore said on his website.

He called on those working for banks, brokerage firms or insurance companies to “participate in the telling the greatest crime story ever told” by contacting him.

The director, who took on the gun lobby in Bowling for Columbine in 2002, the Bush administration in his controversial 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 and the U.S. healthcare system in his 2007 polemic Sicko, pledged to protect the identities of those who step forward.

Moore says the unnamed film – currently in production – will shed light on the “abuses” that have led to crisis, which has claimed Wall Street giants Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns and prompted a government bailout worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

“I just can’t say much right now. I’m sure you can understand why. One thing I can tell you is that you’re gonna like this movie when I’m done with it,” he says.

– By Sebastian Tong

In these troubled times, go back to basics.

Theo Zemek, AXA Investment Managers‘ global head of fixed income, says investors should adopt “Quaker investment policies” – sober and safe investment strategies that can be explained to their grandmothers.

“Anyone who utters the word ‘hedge’, after all these CDS (failures), ought to be taken out and be shot,” the 25-year markets veteran told a media briefing.

“This is the scariest market I’ve ever seen in 25 years. The world of complex instruments, credit guarantees… That world is very much an ancient history… It’s a darn tough market. Who is left standing among our counterparties?”

Zemek said she overheard commuters on the train discussing the new preference for simplicity in investment strategy and citing Goldman Sach’s chief global economist Jim O’Neill as saying: “Anyone who thinks they understand what’s going on is guaranteed to be an idiot.”

AXA IM’s parent company AXA said last week that it has a non-material equity interest and credit exposure in Lehman Brothers (collapsed) and AIG (bailed out).

“Dear readers, let us begin this week’s missive by acknowledging its partial incompleteness. For understandable considerations, there are some capital market situations that we cannot discuss. We thank all our readers for their support and look forward to continuing to provide you with timely analysis.”

This is how Lehman Brothers’ strategists began their last ever weekly research note, published on Saturday – only two days before the U.S. investment bank collapsed.

In the 146-page research, Lehman strategists argued that bonds are performing well in September thanks to rising risk aversion and financial institution uncertainties.

“September already shapes up as a splendid month for bonds, thanks to the usual seasonal elevation in risk apprehension accompanied by special amplification through financial institution uncertainties,” wrote strategists at Lehman.

Ironically, Institutional Investor magazine named Lehman Brothers as its top All-America fixed income research team for a ninth straight year on Tuesday.

“September has been a prosperous month for credit risk shorts,” Lehman strategists noted. “With third-quarter earnings for some financials coming out this week and the rest of major corporates over October, with the global economic outlook wilting, and with a hyper-risk sensitive capital market regime in effect, we will maintain our predilection toward short credit exposure.”

Little did they know that their own bank’s collapse would reinforce their argument. Investors dumped risky assets across the board, including equities and credit, sending government bonds sharply higher as Lehman filed for bankruptcy protection and Bank of America agreed to buy another Wall Street giant Merrill Lynch.

The Wall Street investment banking model is being tested. No, it’s broken. No, it’s been broken for a while and the bailout of Bear Stearns and the demise of Lehman show that it’s on the mend…

Views are coming in from across the spectrum as financial world commentators join the markets and try to piece together what the busy weekend on Wall Street will mean for stocks and the shape of the financial services industry.

Thestreet.com’s voluble Jim Cramer declares: “Nobody from the Fed has gotten ahead of this problem.” How can the Federal Reserve not cut interest rates “right now?”

Market strategist Barry Ritholtz, blogging in The Big Picture , says a cut “would be ill advised … Why on earth the FOMC would want to undue any of the work by Treasury with a rate cut? That is the current market bet, that a 25 or even 50 basis cut may occur at tomorrow’s Fed meeting.” The Fed should keep its powder dry, he concludes.

Arnold King at Econlog says he’s thinking about the Fed simply as the “the lender of last resort” today. He adds: “For the stock market, I’d say if it only drops 3 or 4 percent and stays open all day, I would count that as a win.”

Paul Kedrosky at Infectious Greed is on watch for signs of blaming the short-sellers. A “one-sided piece in today’s NY Times is a good example of something we are likely to see,” he says.

Calculated Risk pulled from a transcript from Bank of America’s CEO this morning on his expectation for a tough 2008-2009 in financial services and a key comment from Merrill’s John Thain, that “as we go forward, size is going to matter, so the ability to have a diversified stream of earnings, the ability to maintain high degrees of funding certainty are going to continue to be very important.”

And beyond New York, economics professor Greg Mankiw writes that he gives his introductory lecture at noon today for Harvard students and notes that he’d like to “thank all my friends on Wall Street for doing so much to spark interest in economic issues.”

What’s your view on what the Fed should or shouldn’t do next?