Banking boutiques put money where their mouths are

New York

PERELLA Weinberg and Tudor, Pickering, Holt just sent a clear message to their clients: Do as we do, not merely as we say. The two financial advisory boutiques announced plans to join forces on Monday, in defiance of a number of broader norms and forces that might otherwise suggest it's a terrible idea.

For a start, they announced the deal less than a week after the seismic ascension of Donald Trump to be the next American president shifted the world's geopolitical tectonic plates. The energy sector in which Tudor Pickering trades has been reeling from the slide in oil prices. And nearly all convention and history dictates that combining investment-banking firms never works out well.