So, you want to work on Wall Street?

Black Enterprise, Oct, 1996

KNOWING WHO'S REACHED THE TOP MEANS little if you don't know how to get there yourself. With that in mind, BLACK ENTERPRISE invited four managing directors from four major investment banking firms to a private dinner to discuss the myths and realities of life the Street for black professionals.

To ensure a candid, detailed and honest discourse, we kept the group small and assured them anonymity. Thus, the names you'll read below are fictitious, but their stories and opinions are as real as it gets.

BE: Characterize Wall Street's commitment to bringing African Americans into line positions on the Street.

CHARLES DEAN: The firms are tripping over themselves to create awareness, particularly with the kids coming right out of college. But the attitude is that once we make the opportunity available to you, we've done our part, and now it's incumbent upon you to navigate the waters that will get you to managing director in eight or 10 years.

RICHARD SHEPHERD: We all recruit at historically black schools now, and are enamored of SEO [Sponsor for Educational Opportunity Investment Program, which targets promising minority students for Wall Street slots; 212-979-2040], which is a tremendous feeder to the Street. But SEO is so good that it hasn't forced these firms to be more creative. They've had success in hiring and are very happy with the universe of people that they get [through SEO], so they tend to go back to that well. It was correctly stated that at the 22-year-old level, there's a lot of enthusiasm. But what about the 32-year-old level? When I look at the numbers of people ascending up to director's and managing director's positions, they pale compared with the numbers who come in and either don't make it or opt to leave.

CRAIG IVY: Some of it's statistical. You're recruiting at historically black colleges for such a short period of time, and a lot of the mentoring networks are established through the alma mater. So when a young Duke recruit comes in who happens to be Caucasian, there's typically a huge network of people [from his college] who've been there for 10 or 12 years. There aren't too many Howard graduates who have had that opportunity, so for them the uphill battle is much tougher.

DEAN: I don't care what color you are, the chances are you're not going to make it to the top.

SHEPHERD: The pyramid is naturally narrower at the top. That's just the nature of the industry.

IVY: But again, some things are statistically apparent. For instance, I'll bet you that less than 7% of the managing directors at your firm are black.

DEAN: Much less than 7%. There are three.

ALLEN THOMAS: At my firm we're 2%.

DEAN: We're just three, as in one, two, three.

IVY: At some firms, it's less than half a percent.

THOMAS: Things don't change unless people really want them to change. It's almost a culture shock that must take place in some of these firms to really adopt what is right. My firm has basically bought into diversity but has been deficient in executing it. We have to, and for the same reasons that the municipal markets accelerated black people into that field: because a lot of the mayors, like Andrew Young, said, 'Don't send any white people down here to do my deals. I want to see people of colon' Look at some of the major pension funds that we look to for business. They not only have black people helping to make the major investment decisions, but they're also helping decide how and where to raise money. Look at the boards of directors of major corporations and universities, and look internationally. You can't very well present a lily white face in some of the developing countries.

IVY: The question we are all asking is, How much progress has been made? I can't sit down and give you the numbers and tell you a precise answer. But I would deduce that not much has been made, even with all of the so-called enthusiasm.

DEAN: Progress has been made but it's nothing to brag about.

THOMAS: Wall Street went through a dip cycle where a lot of people got laid off. But now, we're exploding in terms of growth. That has brought more people on a producing line but the attendant increase of minorities on Wall Street isn't there.

SHEPHERD: On a percentage basis, it's been dismal.

THOMAS: On a percentage basis, our firm has gone down.

IVY: The biggest problems originate from the chairman's office, frankly, or close to the chairman's office. I'll give you a story. There was a period when the chairman of my firm reached down and took an interest in a mentoring relationship with me, and suddenly there was a whole lot more mentoring going on with other black professionals at the firm. This wasn't just a case of coming around the desk every five weeks and saying, How are you doing? This was what really happens in a full mentoring relationship: it's both inside and outside the office, teaching life lessons, teaching business lessons. When he left the firm, there was still a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of talk about diversity and committees. But there weren't as many mentoring relationships between the top office and people of color down the chain. Eventually, there was a notable lowering of the enthusiasm about the whole diversity effort. So I think that the commitment has to be expressed at the very top. It can't just be talking and building committees--