All that mattered was that the glowing girl had brought them to him - the investment bankers, the bond specialists, the commission-brokers, and the stock-rollers.

"It was a crackerjack presentation, and we were getting a great response, but no one was calling up to buy bonds," says one of the Salomon former junk bond specialists.

"I'm sitting here with one of our high-yield bond specialists, who thinks Southland bonds are cheap," I continued.

Leavitt became a bond specialist, and was later one of the partners in charge of the company.

Mr. El-Erian, 47, is not well known on Wall Street outside the small world of bond specialists.

Pimco, the bond specialist in Newport Beach, Calif., has more $687.1 billion under management.

The bridegroom is a bond specialist in the private client group of RBC Dain Rauscher, a securities brokerage in Manhattan.

Last month they got that choice, though, a few months after Twentieth Century took over the Benham Group of mutual funds, a bond specialist.

Despite its reputation as a bond specialist, Long-Term Capital had an estimated $6.5 billion in the stock market.

The five men sprawled in the sloppy office sipping from Styrofoam coffee cups were municipal bond specialists.