Taking a brief respite from the world of CDS/CDO's I want to reflect on what is really meant when someone is described as having a "Gung-ho" leadership style.
Apparently this unofficial motto of the US Marine Corps stems from a bastardisation of the Chinese "Gongye Hezhoushe" which initially was Gong He and became Gung Ho meaning "work together" and morphed into "Can Do".
Now in my 30 years involvement with Wall Street my experience tells me that anyone who is either described or describes themselves as "Gung Ho" has generally been an accident waiting to happen. Dick Fuld is my best example, and not surprisingly he, like Jasjit Bhattal, are both of Lehman Brothers.
So when I hear that Nomura has promoted Mr. Bhattal to the Board and given him responsibility for a new wholesale banking unit that includes investment banking, equities trading and other non-retail activities my first thought is to buy the stock-he will walk over corpses to achieve success-and be ready to dump the stock when his time runs out and we find that the there are so many corpses that that the closet is no longer big enough to hide them all.
Gung Ho works in the Marines, and perhaps in contact sports, but the "win at any cost" mentality will eventually get tripped up in the world of international finance, as assuredly as night follows day.
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