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I respectfully disagree with using the Chinese Wall (only a little bit though). Seems like it would work in general, but I believe there are groups that sit on

• tmsh 17y ago
  Good point. Like you say there are those who oversee both sides. It is inherently problematic to have anyone oversee both sides.... But people always assume that the worse case scenario is that if the sell side gets screwed, well that means some corporations (which are clients on the buy side) have dumped stocks on some poor, unsuspecting semi-wealthy retirees. Or if the buy side gets screwed, some investment adviser has leaked information to one of his or her clients about a company's new issue of shares or something. But where the American public gets screwed is in the case where financial instruments are developed that, like the occasional large-scale computer bug, get into some sort of perfect storm / infinite loop. The markets have a way of dealing with that though, but they can't deal with it when the sell-side is attached to the buy-side -- and can't be afforded to fail. Anyway, just thoughts off the top of my head. Lots of people interpret buy side / sell side in different ways. But there is definitely a tendency to overlook how these banks are structured. The structure is not all that complicated, but of course it's not really in the bank's interest to analyze and fix it -- not unless you have a very long-term interest in the health of the industry or something.