Did Investment Bankers Really Do Anything Wrong?

Earnings, IPOs, and the like

from the depends-on-how-you-look-at-it dept

A good look at the investigations currently underway looking at some of the shadier investment banking moves in pushing IPOs. We’ve discussed a number of these before, but this article suggests that not much about what was done was really bad. At best it could be summed up by saying that the bankers were greedy (which comes as a surprise to only those who have never met an investment banker). The SEC is suggesting that the smaller individual investors were duped by these practices into losing their hard earned money. The article points out, correctly, that there was enough hype out there that these individual investors were easily being duped without the aid of investment bankers. It’s not as though without the tie-ins and other kick back measures everyone would have ignored the internet craze. Maybe the SEC should be investigated the media instead for creating the hype.