Mr. Fisher, like Mr. Morgan, defuses crises by bringing famously competitive Wall Street executives together in one room.
State banks will shelter behind anti-competitive walls as, supposedly, they get themselves into trimmer shape.
Amaranth says its compensation is competitive with Wall Street and with other hedge funds.
Mr. Dimon said in a conference call that compensation increases for investment bankers were necessary to keep the company competitive on Wall Street.
He said William Blair has been able to be more competitive with Wall Street's heavyweights within its sweet spot of small-cap growth stocks.
"We were pretty competitive then," Mrs. Walls said.
With regulatory, legal, and competitive challenges abroad, Wall Street firms looking for the deal from Ipanema may need more than Rosetta Stone and a smile.
An American who infused an ancient, Quaker-founded British institution with the highly paid, highly competitive ethos of Wall Street investment banking, he was described by Lord Mandelson, then the business secretary, as "the unacceptable face of banking".
"The downgrades will change the competitive dynamics of Wall Street," said Mr. Gulberg, who said JPMorgan had been steadily increasing its market share in important businesses over the last several years.
John J. Mack, the chief executive of First Boston, has made Mr. Ogunlesi's first priority reconfiguring the investment bank's cost structure so that it is more competitive with other Wall Street firms, the executives said.
Here sits and seethes a former collegiate free safety, bullish enough to win tryouts with 13 National Football League teams before bowing out unbowed and applying his competitive edge to Wall Street, a Mack truck masquerading as the guy in the gray flannel suit.
