“Pay is down in a healthy market—that just tells you how much competition there really is,” Alan Johnson, managing director of Johnson Associates, said in an interview. “We’re clearly in the new normal.”
Banks have faced muted capital markets results in recent quarters amid uncertainty around geopolitics and interest rates. The industry’s healthy third quarter is unlikely to counteract the worst first half in a decade for Wall Street’s trading desks, particularly because the last three months of the year tend to be weak, Johnson said.
Crain’s New York Business / November 12, 2019