How many CEOs have felt like saying to some securities analyst, “Okay, hotshot, if you think you know so much about running the company, why don’t you try it?” Well, Steve Girsky is doing just that. The veteran Morgan Stanley auto analyst, perennially chosen by investors as the best in his sector in this magazine’s All-America Research Team rankings, has joined General Motors to help CEO Rick Wagoner and CFO John Devine rescue the troubled carmaker.
“I had spent a long time on the sell side, and the time was right to do something different,” says Girsky, 43, who joined GM as a special adviser on August 1. As an analyst, Girsky harshly criticized the company, urging it to lay off workers, shut plants and get rid of poorly performing brands to better compete with foreign rivals.
Girsky had considered joining a hedge fund or other money manager -- a career shift made by many brokerage firm analysts. But when Devine approached him last year about a position at GM, Girsky decided that playing a role in what may be a historic transformation of the U.S. auto industry was too appealing to pass up.
“Is it the most lucrative thing financially that I can do?” asks Girsky, who spent 18 years as an analyst, starting at Paine Webber. “No. But it has the potential to be very rewarding in other ways. This is a very unique time for both the auto industry and General Motors.”
It’s also a critical time for Wall Street research, beleaguered since the tech stock collapse and the $1.4 billion settlement between big brokerage firms and regulators over alleged conflicts of interest. Equity research is no longer one of the most glamorous or high-paying occupations in finance, a sobering fact that has prompted many of its most seasoned practitioners to decamp in recent years. Girsky is nonetheless sanguine about his old profession’s prospects.
“There will always be value for an expert in an industry,” he says. “The question now is, Who values it and how much is it worth? That always goes up and down over time.”
