The Wall Street Job Report

Let’s rank where the big Wall Street banks and behemoths belong for this week, from the best buzz to the worst. One guess as to who is at the bottom of heap this week.

1.Goldman Sachs – Last Week #1: Goldman Sachs’ traders only lost money on one day in the first quarter of 2012, Bloomberg News reports. This is an improvement from the 17 days of trading losses in the previous quarter. A total of 57 percent of Goldman’s money comes from trading.

2. Deutsche Bank – Last Week #6: Later this month, Josef Ackermann will leave his spot of CEO of the iconic German banking institution and be replaced by two co-CEOs — Anshu Jain and Juergen Fitschen. Jain is of Indian descent, which is quite progressive for a company that has been an integral part of German life for 140 years. The International Business Times says that Jain’s new job is a “testament to a globalized economy.”

3. Credit Suisse – Last Week #7: The firm announced its new alternatives fund, the Credit Suisse Liquid Alternative Fund. The fund is set to mimic the Dow Jones Credit Suisse Hedge Fund Index.  The company also revealed that Antonio Quintella, the head of its Americas division, would be moving on to run a different unit.

4. Citigroup – Last Week #2: Fox Business reports that Citigroup’s stock has declined 16.6% in value in the last two months, and went down in value 4.2% on Friday. Of course, not all of that is their fault. (Ahem, cough, JP Morgan Chase.)

5. Wells Fargo – Last Week #5: The company got some flak after they fired longtime customer service employee Yolanda Quesada after they discovered in a recent background check that she had two shoplifting convictions from 40 years ago. However, in the bank’s defense, their hands are tied. As they noted in a statement to the Los Angeles Times, federal banking law prohibits banks from “hiring or continuing the employment of any person who we know has a criminal record involving dishonesty or breach of trust.”

6. Morgan Stanley – Last Week #8: While the company is waiting to hear if Moody’s will downgrade its credit rating, it is changing the way it does business, like moving derivatives trades into its banking unit. Meanwhile, it could also face collateral damage due to shenanigans from a certain other big bank (hint: rhymes with A.C. Organ Lace!)

7. Credit Agricole – Last Week #10: It’s official – the company revealed that its profit in the first quarter of 2012 dropped 75%, thanks to its exposure to Greece. This was no surprise, given how tied up the bank is with Greece’s finances.

8. Royal Bank of Scotland – Last Week #9: The bank announced it was going to axe 500 jobs in the Netherlands, or 26% of their staff in the country, due to financial cost-cutting.

9. Bank of America – Last Week #3: In any other week, BofA would be ranked dead last. After all, as the Washington Post reported, the company faced hundreds of protestors outside its annual shareholders meeting in Charlotte, NC that got so heated that four people were arrested. And inside the meeting, the angry shareholders were arguably even more vociferous, taking BofA to task at the microphone on everything from their foreclosure practices to payday loans. But Brian T. Moynihan and the bank he runs get a relative pass this week, thanks to…

10. J.P. Morgan Chase – Last Week  #4: Jamie Dimon, the so-called “King of Wall Street,” and Chase may not just have the most negative buzz for the week, but for the year, thanks to those $2 billion+ worth of trading shenanigans. The issues with the so-called “London whale” also single-handedly resuscitated financial reform legislation like Dodd-Frank and its Volcker rule. Ironically, Dimon was one of the biggest Wall Street voices speaking against such financial reform. So much for that.

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Lisa Swan is a Feature Writer for the Compliance Exchange and the Wall Street Job Report. She is also a columnist for The Faster Times and a blogger for Subway Squawkers. Her work has also appeared in the New York Daily News, Yahoo Sports, Huffington Post and the books Graphical Player 2011 and Graphical Player 2010.

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