The banks synonymous with Wall Street trading are leaning into wealth management. This isn’t exactly a revelation, nor an abrupt shift, but certainly, it is delivering some news like Goldman's $750m purchase of wealth manager United Capital.
This puts Goldman and Morgan Stanley in a tough spot. They’re not well positioned to immediately compete with Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. in catering to the banking needs of Main Street. At the same time, the bank executives have to feel pressure to limit the quarter-to-quarter fluctuations that are at the mercy of the whims of the global markets.