Dwarf Tossing

About 35 pay-per-class studios have opened in Manhattan since March 2012, according to Anita Mirchandani, co-founder of Fitmapped, an app that helps users find workouts in New York and Los Angeles. SoulCycle, bought by Equinox Holdings Inc. in 2011, now has nine locations in New York.

The sessions fit entertainment budgets that banks have shrunk during the past decade to cut costs and after scandals at firms including Jefferies Group LLC.

That brokerage paid almost $10 million in sanctions in 2006 to settle regulatory claims that a salesman used his $1.5 million travel and entertainment budget to improperly woo mutual-fund employees. He allegedly spent $75,000 on a trader’s bachelor party in Miami, where the Wall Street Journal said someone hired a dwarf to let guests toss him. Jefferies, which didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing, promised to overhaul its policies.

Cocaine, Prostitutes

Turney Duff, a former hedge-fund trader, wrote in his book “The Buy Side” that some brokers around that time used to buy him cocaine and offer him prostitutes. A salesman’s job is to keep traders happy, since they determine who gets paid to buy and sell stocks for their funds, he said in a phone interview.

“If I wanted, I could have gone out every single night and not paid for a thing,” said Duff, who said he hadn’t heard of brokers taking traders to fitness classes. “You’re doing business with 50 or 100 people.”

Some bond salesmen, who requested anonymity because of company policies, said that the old way of entertaining is more effective. One said he suspects a co-worker uses client workouts as an excuse to leave the office early for triathlon training. A saleswoman, when told of the trend by a reporter, cursed and put down the phone to express her disbelief to colleagues. She said she prefers to take traders to Yankees games and then Sin City, a nearby strip club.

Grabbing Juice

Steve Starker, co-founder of BTIG LLC, says he spins four or five times a week at SoulCycle in Greenwich, Connecticut, the Upper East Side and in the Hamptons, sometimes with clients. The brokerage also sponsored a charity spinning class for clients earlier this year at Flywheel, Starker said in an e-mail.