Does a recession mean lay-offs or is it a time to snag laterals? Your view probably depends on your place in the firm hierarchy, says Ben Hallman Ryan Rettmann left Thacher Proffitt & Wood in the nick of time. Last March, not long before the subprime crash paralysed the debt markets, the first-year structured finance associate moved to Chicago’s Kirkland & Ellis. At Thacher Proffitt, he had been working on securities backed by home mortgages, a niche that was dead in the water by the end of summer. At Kirkland, he took a job working on auto-loan securitisations, a considerably healthier asset class.
Rettmann was not prescient, just in love. He and his new wife had decided to leave New York and settle in Chicago, where he lined up the Kirkland interview after one phone call.
