The big squeeze

摘要

Even by its own notoriously cyclical standards, investment banking has been on a stomach-churning ride in the past five years. After an apparently golden age, with quarter after quarter of record profits, came the bursting of the debt bubble, a deluge of red ink and bail-outs; then, last year, firms bounced back obscenely quickly thanks to record trading profits. Now they are being squeezed once more, and this time the slump may last.