Even with 'historically low' fees, the investment bankers are still screwing them.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/46190061

Let’s look at the internal economics of Morgan Stanley’s fees. Imagine it takes around 90 days from the time Morgan Stanley lands the lead role until the IPO. Working 15 hours a day every day — including weekends — Morgan Stanley would be charging a rate of more than $18,500 per hour. Let’s say that there are 30 people staffed to the deal — probably too high, but there are likely to be lots of lawyers in that number. That’s an hourly charge of $617 for each person.

In other words, a lot of the talk about the banks doing the deal for the sake of “prestige” is propaganda, meant to disguise the fact that the banks are making a ton of money off the deal.

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