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To: Bill Harmond who wrote (147114)	9/8/2002 4:47:55 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

What a bunch of whiners and they brought it upon themselves. "Morgan Stanley, for example, recently dismissed about 20 managing directors in its investment banking operation. In July, FleetBoston Financial shut down Robertson Stephens — an investment bank based in San Francisco that helped finance the technological revolution in Silicon Valley — after failing to find a buyer. The Charles Schwab Corporation, which prides itself on the loyalty of its employees, is considering more job cuts after eliminating 27 percent of its staff in less than two years. "To me, it's been a year from hell," said Thomas W. Jones, the chairman and chief executive of Citigroup's global investment management division. "It's been an incredibly difficult year, starting with Sept. 11 and all of the trauma associated with it, relocating many of our people, the really negative equity market environment, not to mention angry customers who have lost a lot of money." Mr. Jones's annus horribilis started when he followed 1,200 employees of his division out of their headquarters in 7 World Trade Center hours before it burned and collapsed. Since then, they have regrouped in offices around Manhattan and in Stamford, Conn., but remain unsettled. Mr. Jones has been running the business from temporary quarters in the Citicorp Center on Lexington Avenue in Midtown, but he will soon move to new offices in Citigroup's headquarters nearby, on Park Avenue. Citigroup itself, the biggest financial services company in the world, has tumbled into a cauldron of troubles that have tarnished the once-shimmering reputation of its chairman and chief executive, Sanford I. Weill. Weighed down by fears of the company's liability in scores of investor lawsuits, Citigroup's stock price has dropped 35.7 percent this year, to $30.28. "This has been a lousy period to go through," Mr. Weill said at an investors' conference in New York on Friday. He said some of the firm's actions might look inappropriate in hindsight, but, he added, "Nothing has come to anybody's attention that we have done anything illegal." Like Mr. Weill, Mr. Komansky asserted that the finger-pointing at Wall Street had gone too far and had become counterproductive. "It's devastating to the professionals in this business to have to go through one after another of these issues," he said. WHETHER or not the intense scrutiny is deserved, it is being felt. Morale and self-esteem on Wall Street are depressingly low, said Alan M. Johnson, managing director of Johnson Associates, a pay consulting firm." nytimes.com