STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 23 December 2013

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22. Secret Handshakes Greet Frat Brothers on Wall Street

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-23/secret-handshakes-greet-frat-brothers-on-wall-street.html

Conor Hails, head of the University of Pennsylvania’s Sigma Chi chapter, was in a Philadelphia hotel ballroom last month for a Barclays Plc (BARC) recruiting reception. A friend pointed out a banker from their fraternity. Hails, 20, approached with a secret handshake.

“We exchanged a grip, and he said, ‘Every Sigma Chi gets a business card,’” Hails recalled. “We’re trying to create Sigma Chi on Wall Street, a little fraternity on Wall Street.”

As students vie for 2014 internships in an industry where 22-year-olds can make more than $100,000 a year, interviews with three dozen fraternity members showed a network whose Wall Street alumni guide resumes to the tops of stacks, reveal interview questions with recommended answers, offer applicants secret mottoes and support chapters facing crackdowns.

That’s one reason men continue to dominate on Wall Street, where no woman has run a big bank. General Motors Co. (GM) announced Dec. 10 it would make Mary Barra the auto industry’s first female chief executive officer, the same day research firm Catalyst Inc. showed women holding about one in eight executive roles in U.S. finance.