Michelangelo Antonioni’s brilliant 1962 film The Eclipse (often called L’Eclisse, even though it’s in Italian) features a memorable scene inside the Rome Stock Exchange. The trading floor falls silent to mark the death of a broker. For a moment, the noise evaporates, and the gravity of the occasion is acknowledged. “A minute here costs billions,” whispers an impatient Piero, played Alain Delon, to Vittoria, played by Monica Vitti. And then — as if on cue — the silence collapses into pandemonium, with traders shouting, scrambling, and jostling as if nothing had happened.
Life inside an investment bank often works the same way. Every few years management unveils a new structure, halts business as usual for a moment of solemn announcement, and proclaims a fresh start. But the silence never lasts. Soon the familiar commotion resumes, only this time under a different reporting line or a freshly branded division.
One year senior leadership decides to combine equity and debt capital markets into a single, newly minted “financing solutions” team. The next year they are separated again to emphasise specialist expertise and to reflect the reality that although both operate in capital markets origination, they function as very different businesses with distinct cultures. At the same time, junior and mid-level bankers may be shifted out of sector coverage groups into a generalist pool, only to be reassigned back when workloads rise.
The organisation chart is never fixed for long. It is in constant motion, malleable and contingent. Management treats reporting lines and group boundaries as variables to be tested, adjusted and tested again, rather like Claudio Ranieri, the football manager who is famously forever tinkering with formations and team selection.
When the changes are announced, the official justification is always framed as strategic. Bank leaders brief the key trade publications such as GlobalCapital to say that the new arrangement promises to break down silos, sharpen client coverage, create a more agile institution, yada yada, yada. Each change is presented as a breakthrough of Edisonian proportions that will generate revenue growth and enhance client support.
The bank’s internal structure acts as a weathervane, shifting to whichever direction revenues appear strongest
In reality, the drivers are usually more prosaic. Two forces dominate: market conditions and internal politics. For example, a downturn in M&A would reduce the need for personnel, and so juniors are redeployed to other areas. A burst of IPO activity would send bodies back into equity capital markets. The bank’s internal structure acts as a weathervane, shifting to whichever direction revenues appear strongest.
Just as important are the politics of senior hires and departures. The arrival of a high profile banker from a rival often comes with the mandate to build a team, which requires moving people and adjusting reporting lines.
When a rainmaker leaves, the land grab for their clients and internal influence can trigger a wholesale reshuffle. Strategy often serves as a convenient label for what is at heart a redrawing of the internal power map. It is like the investment banking equivalent of 19th century global powers drawing lines on maps to parcel up colonial territory, with a similar neglect of local dynamics, cultural fit, and long-term strategic consequences.
For junior and mid-level staff, this revolving door of structures creates a culture of constant adjustment. They must learn how to explain their role (and advertise their contributions) to a new boss, interpret shifting priorities, and adapt to the informal, unwritten rules of the nouveau régime.
The great expectations of efficiency gains or revenue synergies usually prove elusive. At best, a few small savings are achieved. More commonly, time and energy are diverted away from client work and consumed by the need to find and curry favour in the new set-up.
The paradox lies in the gap between the scale of the announcement and the limited effect on day-to-day business. Once the all-staff memo has circulated and the trade press has moved on, the work continues almost unchanged. Analysts still build models, associates still babysit pitch books, VPs still manage both upwards and downwards, and managing directors still beg clients for mandates. The new structure quickly settles into routine, only to be disrupted again a few years later when the cycle repeats.
What reorganisations really expose is the dual nature of investment banks. On the one hand, they are profit-driven institutions that demand efficiency, revenue growth and client service. On the other hand, they are human organisations, filled with ambition, rivalry, ego, cronyism, and factionalism. A reorganisation is a ritualised act designed to bridge these two realities. It is an attempt to impose order on a chaotic system riven by personalities and politics, while maintaining the veneer of corporate coherence and strategic sobriety.
Reorganisations are neither inherently good nor bad. They are not purges, purgatories, or pathways to salvation. They are simply a recurring feature of investment banking life, and anyone working in the industry learns soon enough that they’re something to accept and adapt to rather than resist.
Which is why Antonioni’s scene still resonates. The reorganisation, like the stock exchange’s silence, is a symbolic act — a pause that pretends to mark a profound transformation, but quickly gives way to the same clamour, the same scramble, the same human dramas as before.
In both cases the ritual serves a purpose: it flatters participants with the sense that they are bearing witness to history, when in fact they are watching continuity in disguise. The structure changes, but the game does not.