Finance shops, taking a cue from savvy panhandlers worldwide, are soliciting the wealthy.

Credit Suisse plans to hire 200 for its wealth-management unit this year, bringing its stable to 4,000. It was shopping for 300, but has scaled back plans as competitors jumped into the space.

This is the kind of money a shop can put behind an initiative when it has about one-third of the world's billionaires on its client list.

Meanwhile, BNP Paribas is also investing in the affluent. Specifically, the firm plans to hire 10 wealth managers in Germany over the next two years.

And the London Borough of Harrow, a government authority, has hired three more managers to oversee its pension holdings after it booted UBS off of the business.

Budding Hedges
Big banks like Deutsche and Credit Suisse are also hiring in expectation of new business from a crop of startup hedge funds. Asia, in particular, is looking fertile. (WSJ)

Speaking of Deutsche
The German bank has added four pros in securities lending to its New York stable. (BusinessWire)

More Soup for You
More IPOs lead to more jobs. Simple as that. See who is hiring. (FINS)

Oh Canada
Royal Bank of Canada, the largest Canuck bank, is restructuring employee compensation. Some changes: managing directors will have to own a quota of shares in the bank, RBC will look at how employees reached their results when it comes to bonuses, and compensation will be deferred. (GlobeandMail.com)

PE DOA?
PE firms are due for some shrinking, according to buyout veteran Guy Hands. "It was just too easy," Hands told Andrew Ross Sorkin, specifically criticizing the industry standard 2% fee structure. What will the future look like for PE? Hands thinks that it will pan out like VC circa 2001. (NYT)

Stubborn Bulls
Do companies that spend more on training do better? At least one researcher says so and has done the studies to prove it. She says the finance industry, however, still isn't getting the message. (WorkforceManagement)

Fare Thee Well
Wells Fargo & Co. chairman Dick Kovacevich will step down effective January 1. Current chief executive John Stumpf will replace him. (Reuters)

A Spouse or a Paycheck?
The crummy job market has more couples living apart for work. Peter Kinney, for example, signed up for a one-year stint with the Army in Baghdad when he was laid off from AIG. About half of married households in the U.S. have two careers. (WSJ)

Trader to Waiter
Scott Gould made the change by choice. Evacuating the WTC on Sept. 11 prompted a lot of such life-altering decisions. (WSJ)

Capitalism: A Love Story
The spoiler on Michael Moore's new film. Does blasting capitalism ring hollow when premiered in "the Morgan Stanley Lobby" at Lincoln Center? (WSJ)

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