Trading places

AS NEW YORK’S lefty mayor Bill de Blasio likes to say, the Big Apple is a tale of two cities, one on the ups and one on the downs. It might surprise Mr de Blasio that this is true even of Wall Street. Large banks, hammered for their own failures and those of the government, are going through endless rounds of cost cuts and redundancies to pay for fines and ever more compliance. In contrast, a handful of smaller financial institutions, many created by refugees from big firms, are doing well.