“The Death of Corporate Reputation”  says yes and explains why.

The author, Jonathan Macey, provides three answers. The first is that clients increasingly value individuals who work within investment banks or accountancy firms more than they do the firms themselves. Select employees remain valuable even when the firms they work for implode, as was the case with certain partners at Arthur Andersen, an audit firm that went bust in 2002.

Second, for the most sophisticated edge of finance, firms are now often less important to clients than the customized products they merely assemble for buyers seeking results, such as the ability to hedge a particular risk. Firms used to use their reputation to become architects of deals; now they are just assemblers, and that has changed their culture.

Last, and perhaps most important, a vast profusion of laws, regulations and direct government interventions has provided a substitute for reputation, albeit a toxic and inadequate one. This is obvious in the case of deposit insurance, which ensures that Americans can now afford to be indifferent about the solvency of the institutions that hold their money. But it is increasingly true in other areas of finance as well. Requirements for ratings and audits, for instance, are now set by regulation, not the market, and an entire new federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, has been created to expand this approach in retail finance.  Is American Finance Broken