eFinancialCareers

CFA, CPA or MBA?

An eFC user asks: To break into New York's top financial institutions, would a candidate do better to pursue the CFA designation, a CPA certification, or an MBA degree? What do you think is the op ...

38 comments

Does the Election Matter For Your Job?

As the U.S. presidential campaign enters its home stretch, economic and financial problems are in the public spotlight as perhaps never before. With the housing slump and the threat of bank failur ...

16 comments

Would You Work For Eliot Spitzer?

Would you take a job in Eliot Spitzer's new real estate investment fund? A New York newspaper reported recently that the deposed governor and former New York State Attorney General sounded out alli ...

15 comments

Should U.S. Nationalize Banks?

Propping them up with taxpayer-funded capital injections didn't help enough, it seems. Now there's growing talk (from both major political parties) about nationalizing the most troubled of the big ban ...

14 comments

Is the Downturn Past its Midpoint? Or Only Beginning?

Depending which manifestation you look at, the credit crunch has raged anywhere from three to 18 months. Is the tide about to turn? Housing has been correcting for more than a year. Financial marke ...

11 comments

What If You Had to Return Your Bonus?

How (if at all) would your life change if Congress or your employer insists you give back your 2008 bonus (or at least, 90 percent of it)? When we posed this question in early February in a variet ...

11 comments

Taking the Alpha Out of Finance

Would the world be better off if most financiers weren't such alpha types? Do we really need our bankers to be among the smartest, best-educated people around? Or, would society as a whole make out ...

10 comments

More Heat Over Degrees; Flextime on Deck?

The value of a lower-tier MBA degree and the CFA versus MBA debate continue to generate pointed comments from readers. The potential downside of “work-life balance” might turn into the next flashpoin ...

9 comments

Fresh Opinions About CFA

The recent legal threat to CFA exams in India - which are now back on track for June 3 - drew a fresh string of comments from our users. So did our item standing out in an interview. Read more - and ...

9 comments

Do Ph.D.s Make Better Traders?

What is the real value of a Ph.D. on a trading desk, a reader wonders. Perhaps inspired by the animated discussion of the role of quants in trading that appeared in our earlier debate thread devote ...

9 comments

What If You Had to Return Your Bonus?

How (if at all) would your life change if you had to give back your 2008 bonus? Various elected officials are exploring "every possible legal means and otherwise" (Sen. Dodd's wording) for forcing ...

8 comments

Debate: MDs Most at Risk of Cutbacks?

Are MDs most likely to get the chop if layoffs take hold? Brad Hintz, analyst at Sanford Bernstein, thinks so. In a separate Guest Comment on eFC today, Hintz, who’s also a former CFO of Lehman and ...

8 comments

Can a Banker's Behavior Ever Be Private?

Is there such a thing as a private sphere of away-from-work behavior that bosses should be forced to ignore – forced by law, if necessary - even if they don't like it? Or does any egg on a high-le ...

7 comments

AIG: When is a Contract Not a Contract?

AIG (hold your nose) committed to pay a total of $450 million in retention incentives to hundreds of employees in its Financial Products unit that sold the credit default swaps that brought the firm t ...

7 comments

eFC Readers See 'Red Meat' in Latest CFA Story

Hunting for answers to a question posed by readers' heated responses to a previous eFC story, we walked into a bullfight. Assessing the Value of the CFA Charter Readers' comments about

Is Tailoring Your Resume Like Cooking the Books?

Many career counselors and headhunters advise candidates to modify their presentations to fit the specific needs of employers whose openings they seek. But some in the industry feel that re-positio ...

6 comments

Is It Rational to Hire Failed Firms' Casualties?

One (admittedly minor) consolation for financial professionals whose jobs may be erased by a forced merger or bankruptcy, is the absence of the sort of stigma that used to attach to employees of recen ...

6 comments