New York, Nov. 24: Exuberance made a comeback this year at Mr Josh Koplewicz’s annual Halloween party. More than 1,000 people packed into a 6,000-square-foot space at the Good Units night club in Manhattan, a substantially larger crowd than in the last several years. The open bar was sponsored by Russian Standard vodka, and Mr Koplewicz, an investment analyst at Goldman Sachs, was able to snag a big headliner: the hip-hop star Lil’ Kim, who performed dressed in a black cat costume.
The scene was more extravagant in September, at a 50th birthday party in Hong Kong for Brian Brille, the head of Bank of America Asia Pacific. Mr. Brille, who is well known on the New York social scene, wore a gray Hugh Hefner-esque jacket. Women dressed like Playmates, with feather boas and satin ears, danced behind a pink silk screen.
Two years after the onset of the financial crisis, the stock market is recovering and Wall Street’s moneyed elite are breathing easier again. And this means in some cases they are spending again — at times cautiously, but sometimes with a familiar swagger.
It’s true that firms scaled back the corporate excesses, like fancy retreats and private jets, for which they were vilified as a brutal recession gripped the country. Many of those constraints remain in place, like flying commercial on business trips, or more limited private car service for employees.
But when it comes to personal indulgences, there are signs that the wallets are beginning to open up. Traders and executives say that jobs seem much more secure. Businesses whose fortunes ebb and flow with the financial markets are thriving again.
“Wall Street is back spending as much if not more than before,” said the New York dermatologic surgeon Dr Francesca J. Fusco, whose business is booming again after a difficult few years.
Christie’s auction house says investors from the financial world who fell out of the bidding market during the 2008 credit crisis are “pouring” back in.
Expensive restaurants report a pickup in bookings. At the Porter House restaurant in the Time Warner Center across from Central Park, the head chef, Mr Michael Lomonaco, says business is up about 10 percent over a year ago and “people are starting to shake off what happened.”
Real estate agents say Wall Street executives have already begun lining up rentals in the Hamptons for next summer. Ms Dolly Lenz of Prudential Douglas Elliman said the bidding this year was “hotter and heavier” than previous years. “There is passion that I haven’t seen in a while,” she said, and added her clients, mostly from from Wall Street, were afraid to lose out. Ms Lenz said, just recently she had three people bidding more than $400,000 for a summer rental in Southampton.
Compensation on Wall Street this year will not be much higher than 2009, but may even be lower. So the change in attitude appears more a matter of confidence and security than income.
In 2008, even on a good trading day, he said, he and other traders were reluctant to go out for a drink after work, uncertain if they were going to keep their job.