Her recommendation of Merrill Lynch shares as a takeover play report-edly prompted a scolding from the firm’s CEO, Dave Komansky. And Butte , a member of this magazine’s All-America Research Team for the past two years , angered former Knight Securities chief Ken Pasternak when she slapped an “unattractive” rating on Knight shares in 2000. (They subsequently plunged 82 percent.) Now that Butte, 34, is leaving Bear to be chief financial officer and chief strategist for Credit Suisse First Boston’s financial services unit, some executives, like J.P. Morgan Chase vice chairman Don Layton, note that she may soon feel the sting of an analyst’s lash. “Don Layton called me, and he said, ,See, now you,re going to know what it’s like to be across the table from someone like you,,” Butte tells Institutional Investor. Butte will be working for Jeff Peek, the longtime Merrill executive who decamped last year to become vice chairman of CSFB’s financial services unit, which includes asset management, private client brokerage and clearing. Says Butte, “What better place to apply what I,ve learned as an analyst than in an organization where change is welcome, so it can have an impact?”
