IB/EB History
I wanna know which firms dominated investment banking from the 1950s-1990s. Morgan Stanley, GS, and Salomon IPO'ed between the 80s and 90s, and I think this is when a clear separation between BBs and boutiques started to emerge as the bigger boutiques (with a focus on trading as well) became full on public investment banks.
But many of these BBs today started off essentially as boutiques too and I wanna know which firms were seen as the EB's prior to the emergence of BBs. I know back in the 80s/90s there were also firms like Wasserstein Perella and DLJ and Drexel Burnham. Nowadays PJT/Blackstone, Lazard, and Evercore are seen as the top EBs. I think only a few firms have managed to be on top since the 50s, like Goldman. If you have experience in banking prior to 90s, please share which firms were on the biggest deals or had the best reputation back in the day. Like how was Lazard (I know Lazard had some BSDs back in the day, something about how they started the M&A thing back in the 60s) seen back in the 70s? I just want to learn more about the history of IB.
Investment banks in their current form are actually a pretty recent creation. M&A advisory wasn't even a business line at what we now call BB's (or their predecessor orgs) until like the 1970s.
Yeah I always find this fact interesting. Makes me wonder if they might not be around for too much longer...
House of Morgan and The Warburgs are a good books outlining the history of some of the major banks and the families that created them.
I will write two substantive posts on the post-war history of Wall Street and City of London when I get some time. This is a topic of real interest to me, and I think its always helpful to know how we got to where we got to.
curious to see what you post later, unless you're trolling us
I have not forgotten about this, just quite busy. but I will do it at some point
What I want to know is how they made do without excel and ppt. I would think not having those actually sped up the process and cut out a lot of the unnecessary hoop jumping work.
From speaking to my profs, it seems like they actually did some things by hand, eg. doing a DCF by hand.
That's what I figured
I just asked one of my MD's (was an Analyst in the early 80's). Apparently all presentations were typed up (in black and white originally) on typewriters then proofread for mistakes. Models were done by hand (using a calculator and before that a slide rule) on "spreadsheet paper" then given to a typist. They then started using a groundbreaking program that used a computer (note: not PC so not user friendly) that was "what you see is what you get." This allowed you to do the work on the computer and then print it to paper.
I believe that First Boston was considered the premier investment bank in the 70s and 80s. Can anyone verify this?
financial history book (Originally Posted: 05/21/2007)
Anyone who can recommend a book on financial history book with insightful analysis?
The House of Morgan by Ron Chernow. Long, but interesting insight into wall street history (through the perspective of JP Morgan).
A great new book "The last tychoons-the secret history of lazard".
"Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk" is a wonderful little number...it traces the development of high finance from its humble beginnings in religion (i.e. ancient Egyptian priests trying to forecast when exactly the gods would flood the Nile) through to ancient Persian gamblers who posed them selves the challenge for winning games of chance
http://www.amazon.com/Against-Gods-Remarkable-Story-Risk/dp/0471295639
The author (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_L._Bernstein) has a CV rivaled only by his aptitude for prose
He's written quite a few texts on financial history (as well as mainstream texts like "The Portable MBA in Investment")...but personally, I'm more interested in financial futurism :-)
a history of interest rates by homer (i think) is a good read
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