30 | Special RepoRt: Banking & Finance Buffalo Business first | novemBer 9 - 15, 2012bizjournals.com/buffalo

You’ve heard about the advantages of working with AXA Advisors, LLC.Now put them to work for your practice.

If you are an independent agent or broker, AXA Advisors Buff alo branch is looking to work with you. With a simple brokerage agreement, you can place business through us. AXA Advisors has a lot to off er to help you enhance your practice: Access to a wide array of protection and retirement products through various carriers. A dedicated management and branch staff ready to support you with your administrative needs

related to product placement and processing as well as advanced case design. Dedicated and responsive underwriting.

No wonder more and more independent producers are turning to us for the product mix to help meet clients’ needs. As the Executive Vice President and the Branch Manager of our Buff alo offi ce, I invite you to have a more in-depth dialogue about how you can become a part of our winning team of professionals and help take your business to the next level. Please contact me at your earliest convenience at:

Lou NucherenoExecutive Vice PresidentAXA Advisors, LLC325 Essjay Road, Suite 308Williamsville, NY 14221(716) 626-2507louis.nuchereno@axa-advisors.comwww.buff alo.axa-advisors.com

Securities off ered through AXA Advisors, LLC (NY, NY 212-314-4600), member FINRA, SIPC. Annuity and insurance products off ered through AXA Network, LLC and its insurance agency subsidiaries. GE-62107 (10/12)

Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc owns the certification marks CFP, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER TM and federally registered CFP (with flame design) in the U.S., which it awards to individuals who successfully complete CFP Board’s initial and ongoing certification requirements.Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC, its affiliates and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney Financial Advisors do not provide tax or legal advice. Individuals should consult their tax advisor for matters involving taxation and tax planning and their attorney for matters involving trust and estate planning and other legal matters. © 2012 Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC. Member SIPC GP11-01363P-NO9/11 6797935 MAR004 10/11

Left to right standing: Katie Tutak, Anthony Cipolla, Michele Holbrook, Meghan Borowiak, Maria Payssa, Jessica Roach Left to right sitting: Eric Rickan, Fred Rickan, Brent Rickan.

You know how to make money. We know how to help you keep it.

The Cipolla Rickan Group at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney

Fred RickanBranch Manager

Senior Vice PresidentWealth Advisor

Anthony J. CipollaSenior Vice President

International Wealth SpecialistWealth Advisor

Jessica L. Roach, CFP® CIMA®Vice President

Financial AdvisorChartered Retirement Planning CounselorSM

Michele O. HolbrookRelationship Manager

Meghan BorowiakRelationship Manager

Eric RickanFinancial Advisor

Brent RickankFinancial Advisor

Maria M. PayssaSenior Client Sevice Associate

Kathryn TutakResistered Client Service Associate

716.631.4646450 Essjay Road

Williamsville, NY 14221

With wealth comes great responsibility. Every dollar should be cared for, nurtured and preserved. In other words, your wealth must be managed. As Financial Advisors, we have the experience and resources to assist in managing the many facets of your financial world-from investments and risk management to estate planning. By working together, we can create a detailed wealth plan to help protect and grow your wealth.

By Dan Minerdminer@bizjournals | 716-541-1616

Locally operated banks have strong con-nections to Western New York colleges, with the two sides working together on a num-ber of different levels and officials reporting a fruitful collaboration for all involved.

Students get the jobs, banks get the tal-ent and colleges get to say they made it all happen.

“We have a number of things going on,” said Michael Skowronski, corporate relations developer at Niagara University. “Finance is a great field to be in right now.”

From intense on-campus recruiting to internships to direct involvement in college curriculum, a range of schools described to Business First the ways in which the walls between academic and professional lives get broken down in the financial world.

At NU, students take place in manage-ment development programs at M&T Bank and First Niagara – they do so at several of the local colleges – and the banks take place in the school’s employers-in-residence pro-gram and on-campus recruitment.

“We try to get these folks on campus as much as we can,” Skowronski said.

The University at Buffalo takes part in CitiGroup’s Yield Book internship program. The program provides data and analysis for the fixed-income market, and one or two master’s students are chosen for a summer internship in New York City each year. In return, Citi requires the school to incorpo-rate Yield Book into its curriculum.

“The students who take the course are in high demand because there are so few experts in fixed-income securities,” said Joseph Ogden, UB professor of finance.

M&T also works with UB on a fellowship for master’s in business students. It involves an internship and a chance to interview for the bank’s prestigious executive associate

program, said Gwen Appelbaum, assistant dean of the UB School of Management. She also directs the Career Resource Center.

UB alumni are active in discussing career opportunities with students and the univer-sity also features co-curricular programs to help students understand what it’s like to work at banks.

“Everything we do is to make sure stu-dents are ready to hit the ground running,” Appelbaum said.

Buffalo State College’s Computer Infor-mation Systems Department has had a long relationship with M&T, with students interning at the bank and often being hired after graduation, said William Lin, chair of the department. Students often have a long relationship with the bank by the time they’re hired, he said.

“M&T is a large regional organization and beyond, and they have everything going in technology that you can imagine,” Lin said. “It’s not just the latest and greatest but also older systems that need maintenance and skills.”

Canisius College runs a program, the Golden Griffin Fund, from which students are “hotly recruited” by local banks, said Richard Wall, interim vice president for aca-demic affairs.

The Golden Griffin Fund is for finance majors or MBA students concentrating in finance, Wall said, and acts as a sub-adviser to Canisius’ endowment. Students do intensive research and analysis on individual compa-nies and then form proposals on whether they should be added to the portfolio.

“They come to campus and provide spon-sorships for events, invite us to their place and talk about the areas they’re recruiting from,” Wall said. “We feel very good that we’ve put together a program that’s sophis-ticated and that students can immediately start their careers in positions of responsi-bility.”

Banks create strong ties with college programs

Poll: Most small-business owners favor higher taxes on the wealthy

More than half of small-business owners think raising taxes on high-income Ameri-cans is necessary given the federal govern-ment’s debt crisis.

That’s according to a poll conducted for Small Business Majority, a Democratic-leaning organization, by Greenberg Quin-lan Rosner, a Democratic polling firm. But before you dismiss these findings as parti-san, note this: 47 percent of the 500 small- business owners interviewed identified themselves as Republicans vs. 35 percent who identified themselves as Democrats. (These totals include independents who lean toward one party or the other.)

The poll is timely for two reasons: What to do about tax rates for the Top 2 percent of income earners was a major issue in the presidential campaign; and Congress will have to make a decision on what to do about tax rates when it returns to Wash-ington after the election. If it does nothing, taxes will go up for everyone Jan. 1.

Republicans have made small businesses their central argument as to why raising

tax rates for households making more than $250,000 a year is a bad idea. Profits at most small businesses flow through to the own-ers for tax purposes, so raising individual income tax rates would mean higher taxes for the most successful small businesses – the ones most likely to hire additional work-ers if the government would just keep its greedy hands out of their pockets. At least that’s what Republicans contend.

The Small Business Majority poll, how-ever, found that only 39 percent of small-business owners agree that raising taxes on high-income Americans means raising taxes on job creators. The poll found that 52 percent agree that given the government’s huge budget deficit, taxes should be raised on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.

A study conducted earlier this year by Ernst & Young for the National Federation of Inde-pendent Business concluded that raising taxes on higher-income Americans would lead to 710,000 fewer jobs being created. This study found that 900,000 business owners are in the top two income tax brackets.