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Where Are The Cros Pink Slips

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Oct 12 2007 12:00am EDT

Where are the CROs' Pink Slips?

Rick Bookstaber makes a good point today. Across Wall Street, heads of fixed income have been losing their jobs in the wake of trading losses. Now these men had a job: to take on risk in the fixed-income markets. When those markets went screwy in July and August, risk became loss. But if you tell someone to take on risk, then it's a bit mean to hold that person responsible for doing just that. On the other hand, what has happened to the people who were meant to be overseeing that risk – the chief risk officers?

In the CRO job 99% of the days there is nothing going wrong. The only test you get of how well you are doing – short of pouring out risk reports and looking ponderous and prudent in meetings – is what happens to the firm during times of market crisis. Every few years something calamitous happens in the market; if the firm gets blown away, that suggests you did not do a very good job.

But how much power do most banks' CROs actually have? I suspect that most of them spend a lot of time measuring risk, but find it much harder, in practice, to actually mitigate risk, especially when the CEO is determined to "keep dancing".

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