Why did the investment bank begin firing employees by sacking their top quant and head of risk management?

Why did the investment bank begin firing employees by sacking their top quant and head of risk management? - Illustration of debtor with hands tied with rope against cross symbolizing dependence on credit against green background

In Margin Call (2011), Eric Dale is portrayed as a very competent quantitative analyst (and engineer "by trade") with 20-years experience in the firm. He seems to have come up with his own novel predictive model for the volatility of the firm's asset prices. And his model seems to outperform the existing ones--that's how the firm starts realizing what's going on, the night after his dismissal. (Maybe he should publish that model in a peer-reviewed journal, after losing his job!)

But even without considering his above-average competence, as he himself says: "Head of risk management does not seem the natural place to start cutting jobs."

So why did they do it to him in the first round of dismissals?



Best Answer

Head of risk management does not seem the natural place to start cutting jobs.

Risk management is a cost center rather than a profit center. That is, it doesn't make the company any money in the present, even though arguably it keeps the company from loosing money in the future. Depending on the culture of the company they may be regarded as just so much dead weight imposed by government regulation.

To draw an exaggerated picture, the more cowboy-ish traders, who until just before the start of the movie had been making money hand over fist for the company, hate risk management. That's because they sometimes kill totally awesome trades that would generate huge bonuses. They can do their own risk management, thank you very much. In a company dominated by aggressive traders, risk management would be viewed as a natural place to cut in a downturn.




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Who fired Eric Dale in margin call?

Eric Dale was the former Head of Risk Management. Although he was in the movie the least, he is the most important character. In one of the first scene of the movie, Lauren Bratberg fired him, disconnected his cell phone, packed up his belongings and had him escorted out of the firms building by security.

Is Margin call a true story?

The film is therefore inspired by the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 and by Lehman Brothers, which filed for bankruptcy in 2008. To confirm the reference, the name of the CEO in the film \u2013 John Tuld \u2013 closely resembles that of the real CEO of Lehman, Dick Fuld.



Margin Call (2011) - Senior Partners Emergency Meeting [HD 1080p] (Re-Upload / Audio Fixed)




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