Hello and welcome.

I'm Patrick Curtis, your host and Chief Monkey, and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast.

Join me as I talk to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members

to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general.

Let's get to it.

In this episode, Ken Margolis, partner of Castle Placement, walks us through his 30-year finance

career. We learned how he quickly moved from Audit at Arthur Anderson back in the 80s to

structured finance with Solomon Brothers as his

first client. How Credit Suisse, then First Boston, made him an offer. He couldn't refuse to jump

ship. How he survived multiple crises and layoffs and why he ended up transitioning to Merrill in

1999. Listen to hear about his long, successful run there, all the different groups he worked in,

what he liked best, and why right before the great financial crisis, he decided to leave

and set up his own business.

Enjoy.

All right, Ken, welcome to the Wall Street Oasis podcast.

Thank you. So it'd be great if you could

just give the listeners a short summary of your bio. My bio is very long because I'm very old,

but I graduated from college in 1985. I went to the State University in New York at Albany.

Out of school, I joined Arthur Anderson, which back then was a big aid accounting firm.

Now there are no more big aids, a big four.

I worked there for six years, left there as a manager.

Did a variety of things, but perhaps we'll go into that a little bit more.

...