After ‘Dishonorable Discharge,’ Blodget Muses About a Comeback on Wall St.

Henry Blodget is known these days for editing Business Insider, the online news outlet. But he first gained renown as a Wall Street stock analyst who fell from grace after the dot-com boom.

And now, despite a lifetime ban from the securities industry, it seems Mr. Blodget may be thinking about a return some day.

“Ten years ago, I got what amounted to a dishonorable discharge from the industry, and I’ve always been ashamed of that,” Mr. Blodget told The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta by e-mail, according to a profile published on Monday. “At some point, if it seems appropriate, I would like to explore the possibility of being reinstated.”

It is not clear exactly what Mr. Blodget means, and he also says, “I think it’s unlikely that I would ever work on Wall Street again, even if it were just up to me.”

The comment comes at the end of an article on Mr. Blodget’s role at Business Insider, where he writes about the industry he once covered as an analyst. This reinvention as a business journalist has raised eyebrows on Wall Street, Mr. Auletta writes, with one unidentified executive saying he did not trust Mr. Blodget.

His downfall came with the collapse of the Internet bubble. In 2003, after leaving Merrill Lynch, Mr. Blodget agreed to pay $4 million to settle accusations that he privately disparaged companies that he promoted in public. That deal included a lifetime ban from the industry by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But Mr. Blodget has found success in his new venture, drawing millions of readers to Business Insider’s particular brand of journalism and attracting millions of dollars from venture capitalists.

There is even speculation that a sale might be in the site’s future. “I expect that someday Business Insider will be acquired by someone,” an unidentified board member told Mr. Auletta.

As Mr. Auletta notes, other Wall Streeters have overcome lifetime bans, though it does not happen often.

In 2006, the S.E.C. set aside a lifetime ban for the investment banker Frank P. Quattrone, after a federal appeals court overturned an earlier conviction on obstruction of justice charges. In that case, the S.E.C. said the regulator that imposed the ban had violated its own rules.