Looming tax hikes, slow IPO scene spur debt run-up to fund big dividend payouts.

With active ETF manager WisdomTree Investments set to go public, Jonathan Steinberg is taking aim at a big target: the $12 trillion mutual fund industry and its tens of billions in annual management fees.

Goldman Sachs is target No. 1 for activist investors looking to shake up corporate boards now that the Securities and Exchange Commission has made it easier for shareholders to nominate directors.

Every day the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. trading desk opened for business last year, the odds were even that would it make more than $100 million.

For months, banking industry lobbyists have been fighting to weaken federal legislation that threatens to make Wall Street a less lucrative place. A report from Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. gives an indication of how high the stakes are.

On Nov. 4, a day after she turned 75, Value Line Inc. Chief Executive Jean Bernhard Buttner got a most unhappy birthday present from the federal government.

Morgan Stanley's next chief executive, James Gorman, said Tuesday that he will focus on strengthening his firm's investment banking and trading business while acknowledging he has little experience in those arenas.

From the wreckage of last year's financial calamity, a new power elite is starting to emerge. These players, each in their own way capitalizing on the distress of rivals, are some of the new era's Kings of Wall Street.

It looks as if the title of best-paid chief executive on Wall Street belongs to money manager Mario Gabelli, who took home an impressive $46 million last year.

He’s Uncle Sam’s favorite money manager. Laurence Fink, founder of BlackRock Inc., gets a call pretty much whenever the federal government needs help cleaning up the latest financial mess.

Warning that economy will remain in dismal shape for “a while,” Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman urged people against buying real estate — even at seemingly depressed prices.