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Live chat: Rebuilding Wall Street

Thomson Reuters, Evercore Partners, and Korn/Ferry, the world’s largest executive search firm, have teamed up to deliver a live online forum that discusses where Wall Street is headed. Will it return to its former self or has the landscape changed forever? If you’re a financial services professional, join us here on Feb. 3 at 10 am. The panel is waiting for your questions. Leave them in the comments below and we’ll answer them on the day.

Our panel includes: Jane Gladstone, senior managing director, Evercore Partners; Alan Guarino, global sector leader, fintech & electronic trading, Korn/Ferry; and Dan Wilchins – editor-in-charge of Reuters’ coverage of U.S. banks and insurance companies.

Big isn’t always better for brokers

Beaten-down brokers are weighing the benefits of staying at Wall Street mammoths Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch in a time when even the big guys aren’t so safe anymore. Turns out, well-established firms are still attractive to many brokers even as some decide to break ties altogether to set up their own shop.

“Merrill advisors are looking at the prospect of working for Ken Lewis and Bank of America and fear they will find themselves in a cost-cutting mentality,” says Howard Diamond, CEO of Diamond Consultants, a New Jersey-based financial services recruiter.

But avoiding a job loss might be harder than simply switching firms. The U.N.’s International Labour Organization said on Monday that an estimated 20 million jobs will disappear by the end of next year as the financial crisis swirls.  Think you’re next? Consult the Wall Street Journal’s handy “Five signs you may be on the layoff list” for more clues.

Brokers set up shop on their own

NEW YORK (Reuters) – In a typical week, Scott Dell’Orfano, executive vice president of Fidelity’s Institutional Wealth Service, would meet with three or four teams of financial advisers coming into his Boston office.

But on a recent rainy Wednesday, he met with four groups before noon.

More brokers are considering moving from a big brokerage house to set up their own shop and aligning themselves with a custodial firm such as Fidelity, the big mutual fund firm.

While the adviser teams — numbering anywhere from three to a dozen — are just kicking the tires and considering whether to leave a big firm for greener pastures, the number of visits has intensified lately.

“We have been seeing a trend in top producers researching and setting up their own shop in what three years ago was a fairly unknown space — that being the RIA (Registered Independent Adviser) model,” Dell’Orfano said.

Fidelity said last week that 55 “breakaway brokers” — a term used to describe advisers or brokers leaving a large company to set up independent shops — selected the company as the custodian for their newly established independent firms during the first six months of 2008.

The newly independent firms brought more than $7 billion in assets through July 1, more than double the assets from new breakaway clients during all of 2007, according to Fidelity.