The sons of Salomon

Send us Fan MailSalomon Brothers is back. One of the most storied names of 1980s Wall Street, immortalised in Michael Lewis’s book Liar’s Poker is a registered trademark once again and is planning to get into the financial markets.Travelers Group swallowed up the original Salomon Brothers in 1998, a firm which merged with Citi in the same year. Citigroup finally dropped the Salomon brand — by then Salomon Smith Barney — 19 years ago.  There are some people around the capital markets today who worked at this legendary firm though, as the years go by, more people will have learned about it through books like Lewis’s than through encounters with its former staff. So what is behind the revival?This week on the podcast we look into who is behind the venture and what they might do with the business. We also ask which famous but defunct City or Wall Street brands might be next.We also discuss the Bank of England’s plans to unwind corporate quantitative easing and the bond market’s reaction to it. We also examine how the rest of the primary bond market is adjusting to a world where interest rates are almost certainly on their way up for the long term — a set of circumstances that a whole generation of capital markets practitioners, just like working in a world where Salomon Brothers exists, has not experienced before.