Credit Suisse traders keep rockin’ through firings

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The lead singer of aged inventory spent last year looking for a job after cutbacks at Credit Suisse Group AG. Three other members of the same band, formed by mortgage-bond traders at the bank, no longer work there.

The group has kept playing, belting out covers of U2’s ‘Vertigo’ and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Gimme Three Steps’ even as members have been shaken by the financial collapse. Front-man Allen Oppici, 45, and saxophonist Jason Weyeneth, 30, are now working elsewhere on Wall Street, trumpeter Mike Marriott retired, and vocalist Carla Lynne Hall, 41, has changed careers.

“It’s the music that keeps us together,” Marriott, 46, said from his vacation home in Naples, Florida. “The fact that I’m hanging out at the beach and a lot of guys have left the firm hasn’t diminished our desire to play together.”

Aged Inventory, named for a bond that sits in a trading book for more than 60 days, is one of three acts with talent from mortgage-bond dealers playing in New York at Refi Rock, a financial-industry charity fundraiser that has expanded to twice a year from annually.

“It’s great when all these people work so hard and then you can go to an event like this and look at your coworker up on stage and for a minute, they’re a rock star,” said organiser Russell Middleton, 47, a mortgage-bond trader who ended up at JPMorgan Securities Inc after losing his job twice since 2007.

More than 183,700 Wall Street workers have been fired in the past two years amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, according to Bloomberg data.

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