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Amy Butte, 35
Chief strategic officer
CSFB financial services division
These days, most wall street analysts are derided as overly positive, poor stock pickers or even lying cheats. Not Amy Butte, who has been saying “sell” since the beginning of her career.
In early 2000, as an analyst for Bear Stearns, Ms. Butte told a group of her superiors and colleagues that she was going to rate brokerage firm Knight Trading Group “unattractive,” the equivalent of a “sell.” Stunned, a meeting participant asked if she had misspoke. Ms. Butte said she was rating Knight unattractive or not at all. The colleague backed off, and shortly after, Knight’s stock began to plummet.
“I have never been called shy,” she says.
Knight Trading was one of many correct calls for Ms. Butte, whose resolve and accuracy have made her one of the leading women on Wall Street. Last year, Credit Suisse First Boston tapped Ms. Butte to be the chief financial officer and chief strategic officer of its financial services division.
It was Rockefeller Center, though, and not a great love for stocks, that steered Ms. Butte to Wall Street. As a child on a holiday trip to New York, the Detroit native was awestruck by the Christmas tree. She resolved to make it in the Big Apple.
Following studies at Yale University, she sold financial software to Wall Street firms, but decided she would rather be an investment banker than sell to them. She landed a job with Merrill Lynch & Co. after graduating from Harvard Business School.
“I told her that Wall Street, for which male chauvinism is a hallmark, would be an uphill battle,” says Samuel Hayes, one of Ms. Butte’s professors at Harvard. “But she has been able to succeed on their terms.”