经济学人68:回到原点的银行 Bank to square one

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　　商业；商业精英；回到原点的银行；

　　Ken¹ Moelis believes that small is beautiful when it comes to investment banking²；

　　肯·莫里斯认为对于投行来说“做小”是件好事；

　　The first investment bank where Ken Moelis worked—Drexel, Burnham, Lambert—failed spectacularly. Another former employer, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ), was bought by a bigger rival. The most recent, UBS, is now on government life-support. During his 25-year career in investment banking, in short, Mr Moelis has seen it all. Over that period investment banks have evolved from staid partnerships³ into huge, publicly traded conglomerates⁴ before stumbling, and in some cases collapsing⁵, last year. But Mr Moelis has survived the upheaval⁶, and come up with some ideas about how investment banking could be improved along the way. He is now trying to put them into practice at the bank he founded in 2007, Moelis & Company.

　　肯.莫里斯工作过的第一家银行Drexel, Burnham, Lambert壮烈地倒下了。另外几家老雇主Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette也被更大的对手收购。最近，瑞银集团也靠政府支持维生。在25年的投行生涯中，莫里斯，简单地说，见证了这个全过程。在这期间，在去年投行业受挫，甚至彻底崩溃之前，他们从一种稳健的伙伴发展成为巨大的，公开交易的混业经营体。但是莫里斯经受住了巨变的考验，并且对如何改进投行业有了一些想法。现在他试图把这些想法在他2007年创办的莫里斯公司付诸实践。

　　Mr Moelis started out in the Beverly Hills office of Drexel, where he worked with Michael Milken, the “junk-bond king” who was later jailed for fraud. They raised money for cable-television channels and mega-casinos in Las Vegas—both innovative⁸ new businesses at the time—with fabled⁹ entrepreneurs such as Ted⁷ Turner and Steve Wynn. Mr Milken’s belief that a small bank with great ideas could shake the establishment made an impression on the young Mr Moelis, despite Drexel’s subsequent collapse¹⁰. Over the course of his career, he says, he concluded that banking conglomerates were too unwieldy to look after clients or employees properly—one reason why he left DLJ in 2000 when it merged¹¹ with Credit Suisse. Nonetheless, a few months later Mr Moelis agreed to join UBS, another big Swiss bank, to build up its American investment-banking unit. And build he did. It quickly became a leader in almost every branch of the business, from mergers¹² and acquisitions (M&A) to share offerings.

　　莫里斯的事业始于比利弗山的德雷克塞尔办公室，和他共事的是“垃圾债券之王”——迈克尔.米尔肯，该人后来因为欺诈而入狱。他们和超级企业家诸如特德?特纳（译者注：CNN的创始人）和史蒂夫?韦恩（拉斯韦加斯赌场巨子）一起，为有线电视频道和拉斯维加斯的超级赌场这两个在当时属于领新的行业筹资蓄款。尽管德雷克塞尔后来倒闭了，但是米尔肯认为有着好思路的小银行能够撼动大机构的观点，给年轻的莫里斯留下了深刻的印象。在他的职业生涯中，他得出这样的结论：银行的混业经营使得不便于恰当地服务客户和员工，这也是他在2000年DLJ兼并瑞士信贷后离开的原因之一。尽管如此，莫里斯还是在几个月以后同意加入另一个瑞士银行巨头——瑞银集团，来组建它的美国投资银行部门。他也的确这样做了，随后瑞银的投行部门成为这个商业领域从合并收购到配股几乎所有业务的龙头。

　　That was not enough for Mr Moelis, who says he still felt uncomfortable at such a big bank. In early 2007, despite the worsening economic outlook, he left to set up a bank of his own. A day after opening Moelis & Company he won the job of advising Hilton Hotels on a $26 billion takeover bid from Blackstone Group—one of the biggest deals of the buy-out boom. As the recession took hold, demand grew for the impartial¹³ advice that “boutique” banks offered but that the giants, with their myriad¹⁴ customers and huge proprietary¹⁵-trading operations, struggle to provide.

　　但是这些对于莫里斯远远不够，这样一个大银行里他还是觉得不舒服。在2007年初，尽管经济前景不乐观，他依然选择离开并创建自己的银行。在开业后的第一天，莫里斯赢得了希尔顿酒店从黑石集团260亿美元的收购要约——买断热潮中最大的一笔交易。随着经济衰退的确立，对“精品”银行的中立意见的需求增加，但是那些有着众多顾客和巨额自营交易（译者注：公司为赚取直接收益，而不是佣金的交易。具体来说，指公司决定通过直接市场交易，而不是通过赚取处理买卖的佣金而获利）的投行巨头们却很难提供。

　　Indeed, big banks’ share of the world’s M&A business so far this year is five percentage points lower than it was last year. Boutique banks, by contrast, have won their highest share ever, at 15%. Both long-established small outfits¹⁶ such as Rothschild and Lazard, and newer ones such as Evercore Partners, have seen their business expand. But Moelis & Company made the biggest splash, briefly¹⁷ becoming one of the top ten banks in the M&A business in America. Mr Moelis’s firm helped Anheuser-Busch, an American brewer¹⁸, sell itself for $52 billion to Inbev of Belgium, and helped Yahoo!, an internet portal, see off a takeover bid from Microsoft, a software giant.

　　的确，截至目前大佬们在全世界并购和收购商业的市场份额下滑了5个百分点，而与之鲜明对比的“精品小投行”则赢得了史无前例的15%。无论是Rothschild 和Lazard这些设立已久的小机构还是诸如Evercore Partners这样的新机构，他们都看到了业务的迅速扩张。但莫里斯公司还是引发了最大的轰动，他曾暂时雄踞全美并购和收购业务前十名。莫里斯的公司帮助美国啤酒酿造商安海斯布希以520亿美元将自己出售给比利时的英博公司，帮助互联网门户雅虎抵制了软件巨头微软的收购。

　　In the immediate¹⁹ aftermath of the crisis, the big banks resembled patients coming down from ether to Mr Moelis: “Everyone awoke to find that profits generated from leverage²⁰ and casino-like bets made with the bank’s own capital were just illusions.” Small banks were able to win lucrative²¹ advisory²² mandates²³ and hire talented bankers from their dazed rivals. Mr Moelis picked up some big names, including Mark Aedy, a former star at Merrill Lynch. In less than two years he has expanded from ten employees in New York and Los Angeles to 230 in six different cities.

　　在金融危机的余波中，对于莫里斯来说那些大银行门就像刚从乙醚中苏醒的病人：“每个醒来发现，用银行自己的资本金来从杠杆交易和赌场般的交易中赚取利润只是幻想。”小投行可以赢得有利可图的咨询委托，并从晕头转向的对手那里雇到优秀的银行家。莫里斯列举了一些如雷贯耳的名字，包括美林的创始人Mark Aedy。在不到两年的时间里，他已经将在纽约和洛杉矶的10名雇员扩大到6个不同城市的230名雇员。

　　Although the sudden seizure²⁴ of the credit markets and the subsequent swoon of the economy afflicted²⁵ the titans of the industry most severely²⁶, it is now beginning to affect boutiques too, as mergers dry up. But Mr Moelis has already experienced such a drought, during the recession of the early 1990s, when he was head of investment banking at DLJ. At the time, rather than wait for M&A deals to return, he decided²⁷ to build expertise²⁸ in loan restructuring, to win business advising the many firms that were struggling with their debts. DLJ’s restructuring group became the market leader and Mr Moelis learned that “When you help a client in trouble, you have a client for life.” So he has repeated the trick at Moelis & Company as the economy has soured: restructuring now makes up half its business.

　　尽管信贷市场的休克和随后经济的晕厥曾经严重折麽了这个行业的巨头们，现在随着并购业务的枯竭，它也开始影响精品小投行。但是早在1990年代初期的衰退中，时任DLJ投行部门负责人的莫里斯就经历过这样的大旱。当时，与其干等着并购收购交易回暖，莫里斯决定在债务重组领域建立专家团队，通过为众多受困于债务的公司咨询来赢得生意。DLJ的重组团队成为市场的先导，莫里斯也学到了“当你在客户陷入麻烦的时候帮助了他，你就赢得了一个终身的客户。”因此在经济低迷的时候，他又在莫里斯公司旧计重演，目前重组占了公司业务的半壁江山。

　　Mr Moelis knows he will have to remain nimble while expanding his firm’s offerings. This week Moelis & Company announced the opening of an Australian office that will focus on Asian deals. Plans are also under way to underwrite securities and develop a trading platform. He hopes the latter move will address a shortcoming of many boutiques: their inability to access capital markets. Mr Moelis has also hired risk-advisory experts to help clients comb through the arcane²⁹ financial instruments (probably toxic) sitting on their books. But he is quick to point out that he will not do any proprietary trading or expand into other fields that could lead to conflicts of interest.

　　莫里斯深知在扩张业务的同时一定要保持机敏。这周莫里斯公司宣布在澳大利亚开设一家专注于亚洲业务的分支机构。他计划承销证券并开发一个交易平台。他希望后者能够应对许多小投行的不足：他们无法进入资本市场。莫里斯也雇佣了风险咨询管家来帮助客户梳理帐面上那些神秘的金融工具（可能也包括有毒证券）。但是他又迅速指出，他将不会做任何自营交易或者将业务扩展到那些可能导致利益冲突的领域。

　　Battle with the bulge³⁰

　　逐鹿群雄

　　Mr Moelis concedes that his firm is unlikely to keep growing so quickly. Just as the crisis provided an opportunity, the recovery is posing a threat as big banks recapitalize and prepare to wrest³¹ business back from the boutiques. Worse, talented bankers from fallen giants such as Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns are now setting up their own boutiques, further stiffening³² the competition. Moelis & Company fell to 82nd in the most recent M&A league tables. That decline, although offset³³ in part by restructuring work, shows how transient success in investment banking can be.

　　莫里斯承认他的公司不可能一直这样快速发展。正如危机提供了机会，复苏也给小投行带来威胁，那些大投行们重组资产后准备从小投行那里抢回生意。更糟糕的是，那些倒下的投行如雷曼兄弟和贝尔斯登里银行家们现在也在创办自己的小型投行，这更加剧了竞争。莫里斯公司在最近的并购收购排行榜中落到了第82位。这种下滑尽管可能部分由于重组业务，但是也显示了投行业的成功是多么短暂。

　　Mr Moelis has proved adept³⁴ at surviving crises, but the banks he has worked for have not all been so fortunate. Can he build a bank that will outlast³⁵ him? He is convinced that new ideas and agile³⁶ management will allow Moelis & Company to flourish. But his own career shows just how easily banks can come and go, in large part because bankers do too

　　莫里斯从金融危机中的幸存证明了他的老道，但是他所服务过的银行们却并不都那样幸运。他能够建立一个比他活得更久的银行么？他坚信新思路和管理的灵活性会使莫里斯公司蓬勃发展。但是他自己的职业生涯却显示了银行是多么容易转瞬即逝，而这多半是因为银行家也是这样做。

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