Revenge of the Wall Street Nerds: Street Whispers

If there's anyone who may be poised to translate time as an executive on Wall Street into success building a more Main Street-focused financial firm, it would be Sean Healey of asset manager Affiliated Managers (AMG).

After cutting his teeth working alongside J.C. Flowers at Goldman Sachs as an adviser helping banks out of the savings & loan crisis, Healey moved on to AMG in 1994. Under Healy's leadership the asset manager's taken minority stakes in secretive hedge funds like AQR Capital Management and BlueMountain Capita and it's recently purchased mutual fund giant Yacktman Asset Management.

The heads of private equity giants KKR (KKR), Apollo Global Management (APO) and The Blackstone Group (BX) all earned their stripes and built buyout skills working in the investment banking units of Wall Street mainstays before breaking out to master the art of the buyout. Now, those firms are snapping up hedge-fund like investment funds, in a push into some businesses now prohibited at Wall Street banks in the wake of the post-crisis regulations.

Meanwhile some CEO's who were at the helm of Wall Street titans at the height of the crisis have moved onto other corners of finance. John Thain, the former Goldman Sachs executive, who led Merrill Lynch's sale to Bank of America in 2008 now runs commercial and middle market lender CIT Group (CIT). Recently, CIT's been speculated as a potential takeover candidate for Wells Fargo (WFC) and its also been mentioned as a buyer of parts of Ally Financial.

While Pandit's sudden resignation from Citigroup on Tuesday certainly is a another sign of the changing shape of Wall Street in the wake of the crisis, there are still plenty of financial firms for investors to look at if they want management with a Wall Street pedigree.

For more on investment banking earnings, see why Goldman Sachs could fall off of the fiscal cliff . Also see why the bank may grow by shrinking.

See why Bank of America's CEO should follow Pandit for more on Wall Street management change.

Follow @agara2004

-- Written by Antoine Gara in New York

« First ‹ Previous 1 2