Merger won’t insure united workforce
TEXT OF STORY
Steve Chiotakis: Any time two things — people, chemicals, banks — get together,
there’s always a chance they won’t mix. The Wall Street Journal reported this week about a ruckus over at Nomura Holdings, which bought part of Lehman Brothers. Now Nomura appears to have offended some of its new employees when it trained women bankers to serve tea and wear their hair a certain way. Marketplace’s Amy Scott reports that for merged financial institutions, cultural differences can cause some uneasy withdrawals.
Amy Scott: Culture clashes don’t just happen in international mergers.
Danny Sarch is a Wall Street recruiter. He told me about one guy who went through a merger. He tangled with a new boss over how to prepare a spreadsheet.
Danny Sarch: There are little things that are just the pebble in somebody’s shoe that create this crescendo of annoyances.
Take the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch deal. The so-called “Wal-Mart of banks” has struggled to absorb Merrill’s thundering herd of brokers. Sarch says one of the key differences is pay.
Sarch: Merrill Lynch’s people, from the trading areas to the sales people, are used to essentially eating what they kill, meaning if you perform x, you know you’re going to get paid y. And typically at a commercial bank, it’s just not as simple as that.
That’s made Sarch’s job as a headhunter a little easier. He’s hired to lure Wall Street rainmakers to competing firms. As the annoyances pile up, he says people are more willing to jump ship.
In New York, I’m Amy Scott for Marketplace.
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