Do the Journal Clutch

Three Business School finance experts yesterday told a group of Wall Street Journal-clutching alumni that rapid, major changes in capital markets including merger-mania and growing global integration have significantly altered the money profession in the past 10 years.

Jay O. Light, chairman of the finance area at the B-School, said, "Things are quite different now than 10 years ago--the structure of markets is changing rapidly," during the seminar "Current Developments in Capital Markets."

"It's the program traders," Light said, accounting for quick changes in stock prices at the end of the trading day. "They are the new gnomes of Zurich."

Light told the predominantly pin-stripe-clad crowd of about 300, "I think we ain't seen nothing yet."

"We in the United States have to come to grips with the fact that we are not the 'sun' around which [all others] revolve," said Samuel L. Hayes, III, Schiff Professor of Investment Banking.

Hayes said that a global market for capital is evolving rapidly. He described the Euromarket as "a market of money that is like satellite debris circling the Earth."

"In 1986, the Euromarket and interconnected national markets are on the way to becoming the 'sun' around which we all orbit," Hayes said.

Robert R. Glauber '61, chairman of the advanced management program for senior executives, delivered the last of the 30-minute talks on trends in corporate mergers and takeovers.

"Those of you who read the business pages must know something is wrong," he said of the recently increasing number of corporate mergers.

"Mergers and takeovers have become a standard tool of corporate strategy. [They] are a very flexible set of tools," he said.

Glauber added, "There are as many reasons [for mergers and takeovers] as there are mergers."