Bankers Quotations

Investment banking is not a business; it is a personal service where bankers work hand in hand with their clients. And it is a service that must not simply be about making bigger and bigger deals that reap rewards for only a small group of executives.

With a group of bankers I always had the feeling that success was measured by the extent one gave nothing away.

As an investment banker, I'm in the cross-flow of information and the changes that are taking place in capital markets.

Greed has increasingly become a virtue among Wall Street bankers and corporate CEOs in the U.S. Nowhere else in the world do CEOs insist on receiving compensation as high compared to what their employees earn.

If you are afraid to fail, then you should go and become a banker.

A banker who is allowed to borrow money at X and loan it out at X plus Y will just go crazy and do too much of it if the civilization doesn't have rules that prevent it.

Having worked at four separate Wall Street firms, having seen a variety of talent at those places, and having competed against Goldman as a banker, one thing you have to be struck by is the power of their recruiting.

When the word 'morality' comes up in connection with economics, income distribution and financial stability are usually the issues. Is it moral for rich countries to use such a high proportion of the world's resources or for investment bankers to earn large bonuses?

The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing.

Is there anyone I wouldn't take as a client? Well, I'd never represent a banker.

We don't think of ourselves as a regional investment bank. We think of ourselves as merchant bankers with clients all over the country.

Of course, bankers were always interested in making money. But when bankers had clients, they bore some responsibility for the clients' welfare.

I'm from a family of bankers and businessmen, and here I am, the artist, the black sheep.

The Congress has had an uneasy relationship with banks and bankers since Alexander Hamilton. It took the United States until 1913 to set up a central bank. The Federal Reserve earned its hard-won independence over years of effort.

Over the years, many in the public have become numb to news of financial corruption, partly because too many of these stories involve banker-on-banker crime.

The politicians think the journalists have power, the journalists think bankers have power, bankers think lawyers have power. The truth is, nobody has power.

Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I'm angry about bankers. About the government.

There are few industries as defiantly opaque as shipping. Even offshore bankers have not developed a system as intricately elusive as the flag of convenience, under which ships can fly the flag of a state that has nothing to do with its owner, cargo, crew, or route.

Movie stars today are as greedy for additional kids as bankers are for bonuses. It's the new badge of authenticity.

Merchandise from Wal-Mart has become as ubiquitous as the water supply. Yet, still, the company is rebuked and reviled by anyone claiming a social conscience and is lambasted by legislators as if its bad behavior places it somewhere between investment bankers and the Taliban.

I hesitate to deposit money in a bank. I am afraid I shall never dare to take it out again

I went to the bank and proposed that they lend money to the poor people. The bankers almost fell over.

Nationalization would likely mean wiping out the big banks' managements and shareholders. It's because that reckoning has mostly been avoided so far that those bankers may be the Americans in the greatest denial of all.

Most business schools are geared toward churning out investment bankers and management consultants.

During the dot-com days, one could take just about any company public and reap fortunes. All you had to do was to make sky-high projections for growth, say you were in the Internet space, and go along with unscrupulous investment bankers and their analysts.

Banking types should take their cue from Gordon Gekko. Or pick the best-looking banker in their firm and copy him.

We are Americans. We - we - we are - we are doctors. We are investment bankers. We are taxi drivers. We are store keepers. We are lawyers. We are - we are part of the fabric of America. And the way that America today treats its Muslims is being watched by over a billion Muslims worldwide.

Central bankers got it right in the United States in 1987 when they avoided deflationary pressures as well as serious trouble in the banking system.

Harlem is not a playground for rich bankers and consultants. It's got students of all colors. It's got old people who keep history and tell tall tales.

My father was a banker, but he was an independent spirit. He was a very good pianist and very much into music.

There are definitely more bankers sitting on the fence this year when it comes to the state of the national economy. There appears to be much indecision about how things will fall out in 2006 with such important things, such as gas prices and the housing bubble, still so uncertain.

We've asked investment bankers to assist with the review, but that doesn't mean we're putting it up for sale. We're exploring every option, from status quo to complete sale and everything in between.

There are only seven movie stars in the world whose name alone will induce American bankers to lend money for movie productions, and the only woman on the list is Ingrid Bergman.

Why is it that all wars are won by bankers?

Since I've become a central banker, I've learned to mumble with great incoherence. If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.

The last duty of a central banker is to tell the public the truth.

I do not think you can trust bankers to control themselves. They are like heroin addicts.

Why is it possible to rescue S&L buccaneers in the early '90s and provide guidance to levered Wall Street investment bankers during the 1998 long-term capital management crisis, yet throw 2 million homeowners to the wolves in 2007?

The modern suburb is the product of the car, the five-day week, and the "bankers' hours" of the masses.

The benefit of appointing a hawkish central banker is the increased inflation-fighting credibility that such an appointment brings.

The economic repercussions of a stock market crash depend less on the severity of the crash itself than on the response of economic policymakers, particularly central bankers.

I'd be bored to death if I spent all my time with other businesspeople, bankers and lawyers.

I am not embarrassed to be a banker. I am not embarrassed to be in business.

Everyone needs a small-town banker. Especially in a big town.

The fact is that these bankers and traders are taking claims of wealth out of the system; they are not doing any productive work.

There is considerable appetite for specialist advice delivered by dedicated senior bankers who have no product conflicts.

This quarter's disappointing net loss occurred during one of the most severe global market dislocations in the post-World War II period, ... Equity markets declined, risk premiums in debt markets widened, and investment banking activity slowed markedly. Bankers Trust sustained significant losses in emerging market debt, high-yield debt and in our equity holdings.

The printing presses of the state treasuries cranked out reams of paper currency- showing wise kinds and blissful martyrs- while bankers wept and peasants starved.

Bankers regard research as most dangerous a thing that makes banking hazardous due to the rapid changes it brings about in industry.

I don't have any particular expertise-I've never been a banker or an investment banker. But I did see an evolution in the system that I thought was problematic.

Many community bankers have charged that we are going to open branches around the country. That simply isn't true.

Some central bankers perhaps are not seeing growth as strong as the survey data suggest.

Obama came in and gave $700 billion to the bankers off the top as opposed to giving $700 billion to the poor.

Now you have the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve all with the same interest-rate policy, and that's very positive. It's a strong indication that global central bankers will contain inflation and not necessarily choke off economic activity, which has been a big concern here.

New services reflect the changing demographics of bank customers and banks' are adopting new strategies for retaining core deposits. The first baby boomers will turn 65 in 2011, and by 2030, one in five Americans is expected to be 65 or older. Add the trend toward increased equity ownership, and it's hardly surprising that more than half of the bankers expect to offer brokerage services (61%) and half will offer mutual funds (50%) in the next three years.

I would eventually leave the business in 1999 to work full-time as a writer, but during the previous decade, I would advise French businessmen on how to succeed in Germany; tell Americans what to do in Eastern Europe; show the Spanish how to become more like the Americans. I spent one particularly haunting year advising bankers in Mexico.

I come from a family of bankers and lawyers, and they joked that they can't believe I'm the one that gets to go to the White House.

If bankers become overly conservative in response to past lending mistakes - or if examiners force such behavior - it will hurt bankers' own long-term interests and the economy in general.

If we think about the fundamentals, global growth is still good, business confidence is generally rising, inflation is close to target in most countries, central bankers are not talking aggressively.

Have the manager of your bank call your creditors and their bankers to find out what's going on,

History tells us that the Fed has always overshot its tightening goal. Central bankers like to know the cork is firmly implanted in the bottle so that the inflation genie doesn't sneak out.

History tells us that the Fed has always overshot its tightening goal -- central bankers like to know the cork is firmly implanted in the bottle so that the inflation genie doesn't sneak out. The worst thing a central bank can do when fighting inflation is fall behind the curve. Therefore, we are fairly comfortable with our Street-high estimate.

It appears to us that bankers were more interested in pocketing their fees than protecting their clients.

It has been a good year for many Denver merger and acquisition professionals. Many private equity firms have made and exited good investments, and are having success raising their next funds, while investment bankers are helping broker many deals. It's a hot and competitive market right now. Additionally, the first baby boomers turned age 60 in 2005. We are beginning the early stages of what is projected to be the greatest wave of business transition in U.S. history over the next decade.

Risks remain and uncertainty is on the rise, this was in substance the message of G7 finance ministers and central bankers this weekend, ... Even if global economic growth remains solid, it is suffering from high oil prices, U.S. deficits and the rise of protectionism.

I thought it was going to be a model bill for the country. The bankers are scared to death of it. And frankly, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

M&A is not going to be enough to carry the day for investment bankers as far as earnings go.

We can only hope that the Goldman Sachs investment bankers who are advising the board are providing you with the same advice. Why should a company's shareholders have to run a proxy contest to convince its board to do the right thing?

You know, Greenwich Village was the traditional bohemia of New York. I wish I could say that was entirely true now. It's, uh... changed. It's now got, God help us, investment bankers and journalists, but it's still a very beautiful part of New York.

The practice of central bankers wearing their hearts on their sleeves is disingenuous or damaging to economic prospects.

We are delighted to officially enter three dynamic Florida markets through the acquisition of First Florida. First Florida has a team of talented bankers and investment experts who are empowered to deliver financial solutions and make local decisions that best suit their customers' needs. Through our partnership with First Florida, we can increase the resources of the local bank so they can offer even more robust products and services to both commercial and retail consumers in these rapidly growing markets.

Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker.

Bankers, nepotists, contracts and talkies: on four fingers one may count the leeches which have sucked a young and vigorous industry into paresis.

The question you need to ask yourself is, why would a bank be pitching you this product at this time? The obvious answer is that bankers believe rates will rise in the future. Getting you out of a fixed loan and into a variable one helps ensure profitability on your account.

We were surprised that bankers and accountants came up so high. I really expected lawyers, maybe television producers and radio announcers (to rank high). In my experiences, they're pretty bad.

The recovery is proceeding, but gradually, and that's actually healthy. It's the kind of recovery central bankers dream of -- gradual, not explosive, and therefore long-lasting and sustainable.

You have to wonder how the auditors and investment bankers could have missed so many 11th-hour deals involving hundreds of millions of dollars at a time.

Very often central bankers don't want to give a very clear message because they want to convey the uncertainty, and they tend to use this rather strange language.

We are very pleased to hire these qualified individuals to fill much needed positions in our growing Bank. With recent announcements of several bank acquisitions in this market, we're taking advantage of a number of opportunities to attract and hire very seasoned bankers who can help move us get to the next level of becoming the premier business bank in Nevada.

Books are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

Community banks are generally doing quite well, and I expect that good performance to continue. Neither bankers nor their supervisors should become complacent.

Commercial lending is a very competitive market for banks. To compete effectively and win, bankers need commercial credit tools that help them to simultaneously develop deep relationships with their customers and manage risk to their organizations. That's precisely the power behind our Optimist and Portfolio Strategist software solutions. Our products are designed to enhance financial communications between banker and customer and assist in positioning the banker as a trusted financial advisor. On the risk management side, these solutions enable a banker to diagnose customers who are showing signs of deterioration, closely monitor changes in their performance, and implement corrective action early on to save problem loans.

Do they want to spin out to the public and lay off some of the risk on the film side on the investors? ... A lot of bankers have been recommending they do that and they've resisted.

There's actually been very little buzz on this one. With the other deals, the bankers were leaking information out on seemingly a daily basis to drive up the price. With this, nothing.

There's not much for IPO investors or bankers to get excited about.

The word 'fraud' will be in some of the documents that are the settlement documents, ... I believe very deeply that at its root what was going on with the analysts and the investment bankers was probably the largest fraud ever committed upon the investing public.

The risk assessments provide bankers with more flexibility to tailor security measures to better safeguard their customers . . . than would a mandate from regulators,

The SEC is launching more investigations into more big companies than ever before, ... The list of targets includes plenty of Fortune 500 players, including Bankers Trust, Cendant, Waste Management and W. R. Grace.

The targets of $600 to $625 are more and more a reality and mostly justified as concerns on inflation, geopolitical pressures in the Middle East and now with rates at comfortable levels, central bankers are stuck in a rock and a hard place.

Running a credit-card portfolio is a banking business. Retailers make lousy bankers ... so receivables tend to be inert in their hands.

Despite their concern about retaining core deposits, few bankers plan to change their tactics for funding growth.

Banks are concerned that there's a new breed of credit union evolving that's not the credit union of old. As long as it's fair competition and public policy hasn't skewed the marketplace, bankers are happy to compete with anyone.

Bankers Trust generated broad-based improvement in both revenue and profitability in the first quarter. Bankers Trust nearly doubled investment banking profit from a year ago.

Bankers know that wind loans can be good loans. There just isn't that much knowledge about how to structure them.

Bankers have lost a lot of time and they're putting out the deals they want and need to work. Next week is a really amazing week.

Bankers feel pressure to keep up with the Joneses...but you do deals when you can do them.

Bankers face a wide spectrum of businesses that are fighting for these deposits. Other banks, credit unions, brokerage firms, mutual fund companies and Internet banks are all looking to capture the same depositor dollars.

This is obviously very good news but this might be treated with a certain amount of caution as Fed bankers did not know that oil would go to $72 a barrel when they made these comments.

This is positive in the sense that central bankers believe the global economy is strong enough to raise rates to contain inflation.

They're up against the wall. If the bankers decide not to play ball, Qwest could be in bankruptcy later this year.