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Anshu Jain brings in another MD at Cantor Fitzgerald

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A new Jain army is beginning to form at Cantor Fitzgerald. Since the former Deutsche Bank CEO joined as present in January, senior names have been flocking towards the U.S brokerage firm.

The latest recruit is Medha Chadha, a former Credit Suisse investment banker who has just signed up to Cantor as a managing director and head of equity capital markets syndicate.

Jain was brought in “drive the firm’s momentum as it enters the next phase of growth”, according to its CEO Howard Lutnik, and Cantor has been hovering up senior bankers since the beginning of this year.

After Jain’s appointment, the FT suggested that the main focus would be on pushing into prime brokerage and fixed income trading. So far, significant hires include Greg Dabal, who moved from Credit Suisse as and MD in prime brokerage, Pascal Bandelier, who joined as global head of equities from Credit Suisse and Keith Babbitt, the new head of securities lending who came from Knight Capital.

Chadha worked at Credit Suisse in New York for her entire investment banking career, having joined as a analyst in 2004. She also has an MBA from Columbia University.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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Why headhunters are now gathering around these Asian bankers

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Big takeovers in Asian private banking are typically a bonanza for headhunters, who seek to poach disgruntled bankers away from newly merged firms.

As we’ve reported, Standard Chartered has a “blank cheque” to hire more ex-Barclays relationship managers from Bank of Singapore, the firm that bought Barclays’ Asian wealth unit last year.

Now former ABN AMRO private bankers are being tapped up. They’ve been fielding more calls from headhunters since moving to LGT earlier this month, when the Liechtenstein bank concluded its takeover of ABN’s wealth operations in Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai.

“Headhunters are definitely busy talking to them,” says Liu San Li, a former Coutts private banker, now client director in private wealth management at search firm EMA Partners in Singapore.

“The biggest concern for ABN bankers is the LGT brand – many Asian clients have hardly heard of Liechtenstein the country, let alone LGT. By comparison, even though it’s not tier-one, ABN has been a well-known brand in Asia for decades,” says Liu.

“So some RMs might have to move to better known banks. They won’t have a choice if their Asian clients just aren’t comfortable with LGT,” he adds. “To overcome this, they need to educate their clients about LGT – and most of the information about it is actually positive.”

Some ABN bankers may also find it hard to cope with LGT’s more “aggressive” business model, says former Merrill Lynch private banker Rahul Sen, now head of wealth management at search firm The Omerta Group.

“ABN AMRO was a slow-moving firm and wasn’t assertive in its business development. Ex-ABN bankers now will have to perform better than they have been recently,” says Sen. “They’re up against a bank that’s keen to grow in Asia.”

Senior ABN bankers will need to improve their return on assets at LGT, he adds. “Because ABN wasn’t aggressive in Asia, the older RMs got complacent. Now that they’re part of an aggressive bank, they’ll be required to improve their revenues. This will need a change in mindset.”

LGT employed 106 relationship managers in Asia last year and the ABN takeover has reportedly almost doubled its headcount.

While Julius Bear and Standard Chartered may be first in line to poach some of its new recruits, “all private banks” – apart from Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan, which only serve ultra-high net worth clients – will be interested in them, says Liu.

But despite the potential problems around brand recognition and revenue targets that we’ve highlighted, poaching from LGT won’t be straightforward.

“The best part of private banking M&As is that client assets move over relatively seamlessly. And LGT is known to carry out mergers well since it bought HSBC’s Swiss wealth business in 2014,” says Sen.

The ex-ABN bankers worked over the May 1 public holiday in Singapore and Hong Kong to ensure client assets and trade positions were properly migrated over, he adds. “So while LGT’s systems and the culture will take time to absorb, they have been earning revenue from day one.”

Sen says there are few duplicate clients in the merged bank because ABN managed a slightly lower segment of clients (the bulk of them had investable assets of $1m to $5m; whereas LGT typically goes after larger AUMs).

“About 90% of ABN’s bankers have moved to LGT. It’s a decent-sized bank and also has an open-skies policy – bankers can serve clients across markets,” says Sen. “There could be some exits because of the merger, but overall LGT is a good bank, especially for the more entrepreneurial RMs.”


Image credit: EzumeImages, Getty

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Morning Coffee: The most important ex-banker in the world (maybe). Hedge fund managers scrape by on $390m

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Centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron is officially the bold new face who stopped populism succeeding in France, overcoming far right candidate Marine Le Pen to the presidency barely a year after forming his own political party En Marche!. Even more impressively, he’s a former banker who managed to win over the French public.

He did, of course, join Rothschild in 2008 aged 30 having previously worked as a civil servant. If outgoing (and incredibly unpopular) president François Holland was a failed journalist, Macron was – by some accounts – a pretty decent banker. He did, of course, ‘merely’ work for Rothschild, and was told by friends: “You’re conscious that banking is not any kind of job? And Rothschild not any kind of bank?”. Macron, however, had a “gift for empathy” among banking clients, and was known for asking around when he didn’t understand something rather than, say, looking it up.

Macron was known for getting amongst the crowds during his campaign to confront his critics head on. In banking, he gained a reputation for always saying “thank you” and relying on his intelligence to muddle through. Empathy, according to senior bankers, is the secret to getting ahead in banking – it clearly also helps if you’re confronting angry punters on the campaign trail. He defeated Le Pen by 65.5% to 34.5%, according to the latest results available at the time of writing.

Traders have been working through the night at Barclays, UBS, BNP Paribas, Société Générale, HSBC and Bank of America Merrill Lynch and extra staff have been drafted in to cover the election aftermath, according to The Telegraph. Macron’s election is likely to bolster markets in the short-term – more of a sign of relief than a jump for joy – but Bloomberg suggests that he’s faces an uphill struggle achieving genuine economic growth in the long-term.

More immediately, Paris is suddenly back on the map as a location for relocating banking jobs from London. The political instability surrounding France – and the possibility of a far right, inward looking president – has meant that Paris has been pushed the edge of the Brexit conversation. In recent months more firms have mentioned the possibility of moving to Luxembourg than Paris. Suddenly, dislocated French traders could be eyeing a move home.

There may be merely a ‘handful’ of hedge fund billionaires, but most in this exclusive list are getting richer. Hedge funders are the only financiers to be given their own category in the Sunday Times Rich List (private equity, anyone?). Top of the pile is Bluecrest Capital Management CEO Michael Platt, who according to the ranking brought in a cool £300m ($390m) last year. This is, of course, a phenomenal amount of money, but is around half the £600m Platt made in 2015. Still, it’s around twice the earnings of his nearest rival – David Harding, CEO of quant hedge fund Winton Capital Management. Alan Howard, co-founder of Brevan Howard, lost £460m in 2015, but managed to stem the losses this year. Crispin Odey, who heads up Odey Asset Management, and his wife Nichola Pease lost £125m.

Platt’s hedge fund has only been managing his own money and that of its employees since December last year. Maybe this is the way to go.

Meanwhile:

“He benefited from an amazingly perfect alignment of the stars.” (Financial Times)

Brexit will see “low thousands” of jobs lost, rather than a “great move”, says the City of London’s new policy chief (Reuters)

The effects of Brexit will take four years, says Lloyds of London boss (The Times)

Blankfein on Brexit: “It will stall, it might backtrack a bit, it just depends on a lot of things about which we are uncertain and I know there isn’t certainty at the moment.” (BBC)

’50 Cent’, the investor buying insurance against a financial meltdown, is actually a British fund manager (Financial Times)

£80k ($104k): The new benchmark for being rich, according to the Labour Party (Telegraph)

Jes Staley is on a final warning (The Times)

Citigroup analysts can take a year out working for a non-profit organisation for 60% of their pay (Economist)

The second quarter is slowing (Financial Times)

HSBC’s Samir Assaf said the first quarter of last year was “not normal”, so comparisons should not be made about the supposedly stellar Q1 this year (Financial News)

“You get these bonus cheques, but there’s no way you can use the money, only maybe when you retire. I’ve spoken to so many people over the years and all they want to do is open a pub in Cornwall. But they never do because they never have enough money.” (Observer)

Never be yourself at work, because your real self could change tomorrow (BBC)

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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Brand Britain post-Brexit

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Maybe the Brexiteers didn’t expect to win the referendum in June 2016. To quote from the confusingly-titled iconic Brit film, The Italian Job, maybe they “only meant to blow the bloody doors off”. Possibly they didn’t intend to shatter the whole edifice: they fled the scene so fast it’s hard to know. No matter. In uncertainty, as everybody knows, there is opportunity. And for Brand Britain to grasp this opportunity, it cannot afford the British habits of self-deprecation and ambivalence. Brands need to know what they’re about. And behave accordingly.

I don’t know how Britain will emerge from Brexit – who does – but I do know that it could help to look at it from a brand-building perspective. I have a 3Bs framework for this: aligning business, brand and behaviour. Maybe if Britain learns from corporate experience, it can avoid becoming a nation of Bregretters.

Seize the moment

With the world watching, attempts to shape Britain’s brand will have a disproportionate impact, amplified internationally by the press and social media. That opportunity won’t last for ever. The British government can help people reconnect with their identity, reframe the values that define the culture, and position Britain’s role in Europe and the wider world for a new era. Political leaders should not get caught up in short-term posturing on the terms of Brexit – or its £60 billion price tag. This behaviour will reflect on Brand Britain. Rather than think of it as a cost, it should be seen as an investment. The European Union (EU) is not the only one listening and Brand Britain is a far greater prize at stake. Ultimately, brands are about identity and emotions. And, without empathy, Brexit may well have the same chilling effect of the separation of the British Isles from continental Europe following the last glacial period.

So let’s look at corporate brands for inspiration on how it could and should be done.

A branded house or a house of brands?

What is the national brand in question anyway? Brexit is an abbreviation for “British exit” where “British” refers to the people of the United Kingdom, which includes Great Britain – comprising England, Scotland and Wales – and Northern Ireland. As such, the UK is not a branded house like London Business School (LBS). Rather, it is a house of brands such as Unilever that owns power brands such as Dove, Axe (or Lynx), Lipton and Knorr, to name just a few. Unilever is also the world’s leading ice-cream maker, with brands such as Magnum, Carte D’Or, and Solero that are part of the Heartbrand, and Ben & Jerry’s that is not. Unilever’s Global Chief Marketing Officer, Keith Weed’s views on the repositioning of their brand can be usefully applied and can be heard in an interview I carried out with him here.

The brand architecture is complex, but purposeful. Brands such as Carte D’Or and Solero have a different functional positioning – sharing and refreshment, respectively – but are united under the Heartbrand’s umbrella positioning of “euphoric fun”. This aims to turn Carte D’Or’s sharing into a much more active “bonding” and Solero’s refreshment into an emotional “uplift”. Furthermore, Unilever’s corporate brand has the purpose of “adding vitality to life”, which for example, drives product development into lower-sugar ice creams.

Britishness too is a layered identity. Think of the UK as Unilever, Great Britain as the Heartbrand – with England as Magnum, Scotland as Carte D’Or, and Wales as Solero – and Northern Ireland as Ben & Jerry’s. And, of course, each comes in different flavours, just like London, the Lake District and Cumbria are all English yet different. Britishness is layered on much older identities of being English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh, which continue to resist a homogenised British identity. People differ in the degree to which they consider themselves as English versus British, for example, with some rejecting either aspect entirely. And it gets even more complicated when considering the EU: Remainers might add a dollop of Europeanness to their identity, which surely is a concept entirely foreign to the identity of most Brexiteers.

Business: British brand DNA

These complex concepts must be defined when it comes to establishing the ‘B’ for “business” in my 3B branding framework, whether for a company or a nation. William Hesketh Lever, founder of Lever Brothers, defined the purpose for Sunlight Soap in Victorian England in the 1890s: “to make cleanliness commonplace; to lessen work for women; to foster health and contribute to personal attractiveness, that life may be more enjoyable and rewarding for the people who use our products”. These ideas still guide Unilever’s business, brands and behaviours today.

But what is the identity-defining purpose of a nation? A nation is a body of people of a particular territory, united by common heritage, history, culture, or language. And to (re)define the British brand, one must deep dive into its DNA, values, culture, key moments in history and the iconic people that continued to shape it.

The British national identity finds its roots at least as far back as Magna Carta in1215, still an important symbol of liberty today. Britishness has political and moral foundations, such as tolerance, meritocracy and freedom of expression. It is an identity formally established with creation of the unified Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707, when England and Scotland agreed “a hostile merger”. What was the purpose of this union? What led to its expansion to include Wales and Ireland later on? Or the demerger of the Republic of Ireland in 1922?

Purpose and identity are closely linked, and the notion of Britishness was strengthened during the Napoleonic wars, when it was one defined primarily by virtue of not being French or Catholic. A more pragmatic purpose was the growth and wealth creation of the British Empire, one that cemented the union. Money is also part of the Brexit equation, but the Remainers missed a vital ingredient by ignoring the role that identity played during the vote. And the government is in danger of playing a short game by focusing on the uncertain economics of Brexit without understanding the vital long-term implications of a strong British identity. The Brexiteers certainly knew how to play up historic identity battles with the Continent and the otherness of immigrants to fuel patriotism. Identity is a powerful card being played around the world, and the UK government ignore it at their own peril – not just with respect to the UK’s role in the world, but the union itself.

To redefine Brand Britain, it is worth looking at what accompanied the Empire’s planting of the Union Jack across the globe: tea, tubs, sanitation, obscure sports and churches, as well as a love-hate relationship to Britishness. In making its mark in the world, the UK has needed a range of soft skills: persuasiveness, diplomacy, creativity, ingenuity. These are skills that Brexit Britain should consider rediscovering and using to their maximum potential.

Mass immigration to the UK from the Commonwealth after the British Nationality Act 1948, and from all over the world since, has created an eclectic and vibrant expression and experience of cultural life exemplified in London. More than 250 languages are spoken in the capital, which has the largest non-white population of any European city. The UK’s membership in the European Economic Community in 1973 and European Union since 1993 has left indelible traces of Europeanness on the British identity.

Akin to how corporate brand identities are established, it’s instructive to look at who the British celebrate as the best examples of themselves. In November 2002, a BBC poll of more than a million people identified their greatest Britons of all time. Winston Churchill topped the chart, with engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel in second place and Princess Diana in third. The list included artists, writers, royalty, scientists, explorers, military giants and, of course, a Beatle.

As the list illustrates, Britain has long been a hotbed of innovation, with major contributions to global culture, literature and the arts. Brits contributed to world-changing inventions in global communications (electronic telegraph, telephone, worldwide web), the media (photography, television), industry (cement, stainless steel, spinning frame, steam engine, electric motor), and even the humble toothbrush. Its education system at all levels is envied and has been copied around the world. One should also explore what people think when they see a product is “Made in Britain” and how perceptions differ from the same product labelled as “Made in Germany” or as “Made in China”.

But a brand is not simply a laundry list of all possible ingredients that make up its DNA. As the British film producer and director Alfred Hitchcock has observed: “If you confuse the audience, they cannot emote.” And, in the end, this is an emotional and not just intellectual exercise. The genes of the DNA ingredients need to be boiled down and fit together as a coherent whole.

Brand: who is it for?

But to create a compelling brand, the DNA is not enough. One has to consider the voice of the target audiences, whose attitudes and behaviours the brand should ultimately affect. It is an exercise at small scale with the Red Arrows as part of our MBA programme’s London Business Experience immersion. The Red Arrows know who they are, but in order to be a force for stimulating UK economic growth – their new remit of their air shows when travelling the world – they need to understand the goals of their different audience members, and then marry these insights up with what their DNA has to offer. To do so, you have to look for a universal insight that unites, rather than differentiates these audiences. Unilever has many audiences ranging from their own employees to regulators, communities, investors, customers and consumers. But they all can relate to their corporate purpose.

The second ‘B’ for brand therefore marries the DNA with target stakeholder insights: from businesses, immigrants, tourists, students, governments, not to mention its own citizens. For whom, in the long-term, should the brand be crafted? What are their goals? In what ways can Britain and Britishness authentically relate to these? While the brand message can be articulated in different ways to different stakeholders, the brand idea must have a consistent and coherent voice. External stakeholders too have different goals: Brexit affects them in different ways. The remaining 27 EU members will certainly feel different about Brexit than non-EU countries, who see new opportunities in a more independent UK.

Starting internally may well be the way to go: finding common ground for a nation divided. London stands apart from most of England, and Northern Ireland and Scotland voted to remain. It is therefore important to not get seduced by the notion of trying to forge a new Britishness around the identity of the Brexiteers. Exit polls and regional voting patterns suggest that they were, on average, older and less educated than the Remainers. Also, as the polling organisation YouGov showed, the brands preferred by voters differed substantially, even when correcting for demographic factors. Those who voted to leave were most loyal to traditional and warm brands like HP Sauce, Sky News, PG Tips and Richmond Sausages; whereas those voting Remain favoured more progressive and innovative brands like the BBC, Spotify, Virgin Trains and Twitter. This is no value judgement but a call to look at what unites rather than what divides them.

Behaviour: what are the moments that matter?

Whatever brand idea is created at the overlap of the DNA and audience insight, this is only the design of the brand strategy – one that needs a plan to be successfully executed. This is where the third ‘B’ for behaviour comes in, and it presents probably the biggest challenge – for business or nation alike. This is not about the big campaign. This is about the thousands of behaviours that add up. Take Southwest airlines. They are not just cheap, but their brand promise to weary travellers is that it will be a cheerful experience. And their people exhibit true missionary zeal, with constant smiles and creative in-flight announcements. This is not the 4 Ps of marketing – product, price, place and promotion – but the Southwest’s 3 Ps of “people, personal and personalities” that are at the heart of its branding efforts. All of its people processes are dedicated to attracting, selecting, developing and rewarding the hardworking “Fun-LUVing Attitude” that is one of its core values. All this so that its people can deliver fun moments-that-matter.

And Southwest is an example not too far-fetched for Brand Britain to learn from. Think of all the touchpoints that a migrant, foreign student, tourist or business traveller has. From acquiring a visa (something millions more will likely have to do post-Brexit) to arriving at an airport such as Heathrow, there are thousands of experiences that will shape people’s perceptions of this nation. When Glasgow wanted to improve its image, city leaders worked with taxi drivers. These moments all matter. And there are usually humans behind them.

What’s crucial, of course, is that leaders themselves behave in line with the identity: this is where Britain needs to take stock quickly, or else lose this opportunity. Because your people are more likely to follow your example than your carefully-crafted words. Similarly, in Brexit Britain, though the Brexiteers insisted they did not want to keep out migrants who worked and paid tax, their message is interpreted bluntly by many who hear it. But building a strong brand is not just about avoiding missteps or misperceptions. It is about behaving positively in brand consistent ways, and the government is in desperate need of a brand playbook at this critical time.

Nader Tavassoli is Professor of Marketing at London Business School, where he founded the Walpole Luxury Management Programme, as well as non-executive chairman of The Brand Inside.

These two Goldman Sachs and Deutsche M&A MDs have just made big career changes

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Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank have lost senior investment bankers focused on the retail sector, who have just made the leap into corporate development and investment roles.

Michael Casey, the head of EMEA retail investment banking at Goldman Sachs, left the bank after nearly 14 years earlier this month and has just joined L1 Retail as a senior investment partner. L1 Retail has $3bn in assets to invest in retail businesses, and is one part of the LetterOne investment group which has Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman as its chairman. Edward Eisler, the Goldman Sachs partner turned philanthropist and hedge fund manager, is also on its board.

Meanwhile, Steven Varlakhov, a managing director in Deutsche Bank’s consumer and retail investment banking division, has also quit. He joined Associated British Foods as head of corporate development and M&A earlier this month. Varlakhov spent nearly 16 years working at Deutsche, having joined its graduate scheme as an intern conversion in 2001.

Varlakhov joins the growing ranks of senior bankers making the leap to the buy-side or going into corporate development roles, although more recently more TMT bankers have made the move across to internet or software companies to head up their M&A business.

Less usual is Casey’s move across to the buy-side after reaching the senior ranks in investment banking. More recently, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan have been losing analysts and associates to private equity firms instead.

However, Andrew Armstrong, a managing director in credit sales at Goldman Sachs, who spent his entire career on the sell-side, moved to distressed debt fund Castlelake Partners earlier this month.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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“I would now leave the City of London for Paris”

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The City of London is a city of French bankers. Graduates from top French schools have long been the brainpower behind the City’s supremacy in structured products and are now helping to create the new generation of risk management systems and artificial intelligence products.

Antonin Jullier, Citi’s London-based global head of equity sales is a graduate of France’s Ecole Polytechnique, as is Sam Wisnia, Deutsche Bank’s head of fixed income structuring and strategic analytics. Pierre Demartines, a director in Blackrock’s data science unit is a graduate of the Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble. The list goes on.

Now that one of their own is in the Elysee Palace will these storied French bankers who’ve helped make the City what it is want to go home again? For some at least, the answer is yes.

“I would go back to France now, yes,” says one French salesman at Goldman Sachs in London, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Macron is very European focused and this is a good signal for both political and fiscal stability.”

“This is just a reminder for us of the other – Brexit – vote,” says a French managing director at a Swiss bank in London. “You have one country inviting us home and the other that’s sadly pushing us out! The energy in France from Macron’s election is something we crave and it’s something that that’s been sorely missing in London lately.”

Although Frankfurt has latterly emerged as banks’ preferred location of any front office jobs which move from London after Brexit, Paris – together with Amsterdam – regularly ranks as bankers’ preferred place to live. The French capital has already been luring banks with favourable tax rates for expats. Macron himself has said he wants “banks, talents, researchers, academics” to move to France after Brexit. So far, however, only HSBC has articulated a plan to move markets staff to Paris, and this is only because it already has a large Paris-based subsidiary with a trading floor. Other banks, like Goldman Sachs, have indicated that only French relationship staff will move to the French capital.

Macron’s arrival could hasten some of these plans. “Having Macron as president will kick-start the relocation of our French sales team and probably some of the Benelux coverage too,” says one Credit Suisse salesman. “Our Paris-based managers are saying yes to any salespeople who want to relocate to Paris after these elections. We’re expecting announcements in June and relocation early next year.”

Plenty of French bankers are not preparing to pack up and go soon though. “I’m delighted with today’s result but it is unlikely to make me want to move back to France, to be honest,” says one MD at Credit Suisse. “Personally, this changes nothing for me,” agrees a salesman at RBC. “Life is better for us in London,” says a former Credit Suisse banker and private equity professional. “We like the dynamism of the city, the fact that it’s a real cultural melting pot and the feeling that there’s no limit here.”

“Success is viewed well in London and it inspires everyone which drives people higher,” he adds. “If you want to have an accomplished career in finance, there’s no better place in Europe than London.” One French educated Italian banker who’s worked in both London and Paris says Paris is simply far more parochial’ “When I was in France the market was all pretty much “french.” In London, it’s just a completely different feeling.”

“I don’t think Paris will ever become Europe´s financial centre,” says a French analyst at Morgan Stanley. “France will stay the same, with its strong syndicates and employees’ protection. This is not something that is not valued by the banking industry.”

Macron could change this, but maybe not much and clearly not immediately. Much depends on the shape of Brexit. Much also depends on the outcome of legislative elections in June and the efficacy and stability of the French government. As J.P. Morgan’s banking analysts noted last year, moving operations out of London isn’t just about people but capital, and with hundreds of billions at stake U.S. banks will want new European locations to be as stable as they can be.


Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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The real reason why (almost) no one ever leaves SocGen?

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Emmanuel Macron may be good for Paris’s chances as a financial centre but he doesn’t seem much good for SocGen’s share price. Stock in the French bank is down 3% this morning to approximately the same level it was at before SocGen revealed its strong trading performance last week. But if people aren’t leaving SocGen, it’s not because they’re waiting for stock tied up in deferred bonuses to pick-up. – It’s because they can’t. They’re tied in.

While most other banks in the City of London have a three-month notice period for staff who quit, SocGen’s notice period is five months. This has been the case for senior traders since at least 2006, but headhunters say the French bank extended the policy to apply to everyone in 2012 and has begun policing it more ruthlessly of late.

“SocGen’s the only bank with this long notice period for everyone down to analysts and associates,” says one fixed income headhunter, speaking on condition of anonymity “Not even BNP Paribas has a five-month wait. It always becomes an issue when banks are trying to hire from SocGen.”

As originally conceived, SocGen’s policy was intended to stop its senior trading talent leaving. The French bank has long been a nursery for excellent financial mathematicians, who make the most of its training before leaving for higher paid roles at American and other European banks.

This year, however, headhunters say the ubiquity of SocGen’s long notice periods have had the effect of tying-in disaffected juniors. “SocGen didn’t pay well in the last bonus round. And nor did they pay well in the two bonus rounds previous to that,” says the headhunter. “The strict retention period has turned into a way of locking people in after paying below market.”

Although SocGen’s made some big hires in the U.S., it’s also in the process of cutting €220m in costs from its investment bank and might therefore welcome voluntary exits of expensive senior staff. Niamh Whooley, its director of equity research for equity, social and governance investing left last month. Pierre Kervella, its former head of delta one trading and deputy head of securities finance left in November. Maxime Kahn, one of its top traders and a former head of equity flow trading, left last September. Kahn is thought to be joining a hedge fund, but has yet to resurface. Kervella and Kahn’s LinkedIn profiles both say they’re on gardening leave  – but this has been going on for seven and nine months respectively.


Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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Photo credit: red lock by darwin Bell is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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A Goldman Sachs associate quit and set up his own private equity fund

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Remember when Blackstone founder Steven Schwarzman cautioned Harvard MBAs against thinking they could go it alone after a few years working for someone else? One Goldman associate didn’t get that message.

Stuart Smith, an associate covering natural resources in Goldman’s Houston-based investment banking division, has just left to set up “Southern Creek Capital.” He worked for Goldman for precisely 22 months.

Smith didn’t respond to our comment on his motivation for leaving. Nor did he explain what Southern Creek invests in. His LinkedIn profile says he’s the co-founder and managing partner of Southern Creek, which was set up in April. The other founder remains a mystery.

It’s normal for junior investment bankers to leave and join private equity companies.  Analysts typically quit after two to three years. This is one reason banks like Goldman Sachs have sought to address juniors’ working hours in an effort to retain staff. It’s less normal for junior bankers to leave and start investment ventures of their very own.

Smith might argue that he has an MBA to help him along his way. He graduated from Duke University’s Fuquaa School of Business in 2015. He might also argue that spending four and a half years in the U.S. army, during two of which he was working as a sniper.

Even so, Schwarzman’s warning sounds ominous. “I have begged, literally begged — I’ve had people come over to my house on Saturday — and begged them not to do that [go it alone], because they’re going to destroy their careers, because they’re not old enough yet, they can’t raise enough money yet, they don’t have enough credibility,” he told the MBAs. Instead of running after premature glories, Schwarzman told the Harvard class to, “match between your maturity, your timing and that great market opportunity.”

Maybe Smith thinks this triad has come early for him?


Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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Photo credit: What’s Next? by sean hobson is licensed under CC BY 2.0.


The 10 banks technology professionals want to work for

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Technology professionals in investment banks are the new Masters of the Universe. Sort of. Technology is creeping into every facet of investment banking, from trading to advisory work and equity research. In theory, those who write code hold the trump cards, and banks are working harder to attract and retain them.

We asked nearly 500 technology professionals which financial services-focused tech firms they’d like to work for. Their answers were clear: Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. The banks tied for the top spot in 2017 eFinancialCareers Ideal Employer rankings among technology professionals, easily beating Bank of America Merrill Lynch which finished third. In fact, the only firm that beat J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs among tech professionals was Google – which finished third in the overall rankings.

J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are arguably the biggest employers of technologists in investment banking. 25% of Goldman’s employees now work in technology, or around 9,000 people, while J.P. Morgan has 10,000 technologists working for its investment bank alone globally  – and 40,000 across the bank.


J.P. Morgan spent $9.6bn on technology last year, and Goldman is estimated to have a tech budget of over $3bn. The focus at both firms has been about getting people with tech skills through the door. Goldman said that 37% of its new analysts last year came from science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) backgrounds. Even if they’re not going directly into technology roles, they want their new hires to be more quantitative.

Technology’s influence is creeping across banking, reaching into areas previously sheltered from the march towards digitisation – the investment banking division. J.P. Morgan has recently rolled out a programme called the Emerging Opportunities Engine, which uses machine learning to allow its equity capital markets bankers to find clients most in needs of follow-on equity offerings. Its investment bank chief information officer Lori Beer told us that the bank was “beginning to look at using machine learning within our advisory business”.

Meanwhile, Goldman has recently elevated Marty Chavez from CIO to CFO. He said in a recent speech that there are some elements of the investment banking process that are “begging to be automated”. Meanwhile, the bank has also started a project called Data Lake, which allows clients to interact automatically with the bank without ever having to speak to a salesman. Anyone who acts as a middle man to relay information to clients could soon be replaced by an application programme interface, he said. Chavez said that it was “redesigning the whole company around APIs”.

The implications for front office staff are not great. Chavez said that 600 equity traders in 2000 at Goldman were reduced to just two people today, replaced by algorithms supported by around 200 computer engineers.

Big investment banks take the opportunity to promote themselves as “technology companies” at every opportunity and have been revamping to appeal to technology professionals used to cool office space and agile working environments. J.P. Morgan’s office on 5 Manhattan West in New York is a hipster paradise – offering snooker tables, mini-markets and stations to play guitar.

But maybe technologists want more than football tables. Only 34% and 29% of techies who selected Goldman or J.P. Morgan respectively as their employer of choice suggested that perks were important to them, and 36% said they expected them from working for the banks.

Instead, the big draw for technologists to investment banking is pay. 89% of people who chose J.P. Morgan said a good salary was important to them, while 82% of those wanting to join Goldman said the same. 70% expected a high salary at J.P. Morgan, while 82% who voted for Goldman Sachs said the same.

Interestingly, technologists also said that they desired a big bonus to work in banking. Despite their elevated status in investment banks, technologists still receive much smaller bonuses than most front office staff. It’s here they face stiff competition from big tech firms – Facebook paid an average of $188k for each of its 17,048 employees.

Tech pros are also less accepting of burning the midnight oil. While investment bankers begrudgingly accepted working long hours as part of the job, tech workers were much less likely to take it. 64% of those who voted for J.P. Morgan said that manageable working hours were important to them, but just 34% expected them at the bank. At Goldman, just 11% of respondents thought they’d have manageable working hours, but 61% of technologists wanting to work for the bank said they wanted them.

Reassuringly for banks, however, technologists do view them as interesting places to work. Tech companies are viewed as being at the heart of innovation, but banks are not seen as entirely unexciting places to work. 64% of technologists voting for J.P. Morgan said they expected challenging or interesting work, and 68% of respondents who chose Goldman Sachs said the same.

Click here for the complete 2017 eFinancialCareers Ideal Employer rankings.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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Financial services organisations are “waking up” to finding talent through open source

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Symphony, the Google-backed chat tool touted as the “Bloomberg Killer” has the backing of the vast majority of investment banks – Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Jefferies, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Nomura and Wells Fargo have all invested – and it now has big asset managers like BlackRock and Citadel.

While the secure cloud-based chat tool gets most of the headlines, there’s a sister, non-profit organisation called the Symphony Software Foundation, which promotes open-source software collaboration and is quietly capturing the attention of financial services organisations by uncovering coding talent. Gabriele Columbro, an executive director at the firm, says that open source development creates opportunities for developers that just wouldn’t be there otherwise.

“If I’m right that financial services like all the other industries is finally waking up to open source as the winning way of doing software, by showing what you can do and having your code out there is great exposure,” Columbro said. “You can break through the walls of a world that is very much siloed.

“Banks would love to collaborate with other smart people at other firms, but they cannot even collaborate within their firm in other departments,” he said. “By doing open-source software development, you will have visibility that you wouldn’t have if you were just working at a single company.”

Open source helped Columbro with his career, he says. He started at the bottom of the ladder as a developer, creating enterprise-grade software based on open-source technologies before getting promoted product strategy consultant. After his employer was acquired by a larger firm in the enterprise content management (ECM) space, he continued to rise up the ranks, from middle management into product management, spearheading the creation of a software development kit.

All the while, Columbro was active as a volunteer for the Apache Software Foundation, a community of developers that undertake freely available enterprise-grade open-source software projects. That paved the way for him to be hired as the ED of the Symphony Software Foundation in December 2015.

“I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t become an Apache Committer and started developing open source years ago, which added value by encouraging developers’ participation in the foundation,” he said. “It’s also good for the sponsoring firms to be in an open-source foundation, because it shows existing talent and potential talent that it’s a better place to be a developer.”

The Symphony Software Foundation focuses on outreach to developers and hosts events such as hackathons and webinars.

Financial services executives have woken up

The old-school financial services industry has been slow to embrace open-source technology, largely due to compliance concerns, as well as the fear that competitors might steal their “secret sauce.” However, that is changing.

“Financial services is actually waking up to what many other industries have already identified and leveraged successfully as a technology strategy, strategic investment and collaborating in the open by means of open source,” Columbro said.

“Financial services was lagging in embracing open collaboration, but the foundation is proof that even financial services firms have realized that collaborating on common elements gives you a strategic advantage in cost savings and innovation rather than competing,” he said.

Banks see messaging and collaboration between employees as an area that is very critical to their business, and that necessitates some degree of front-, middle- and back-office integration.

“It’s not only messaging, but also an app store, which is a way for users to select what types of apps they want to see on their desktops a la carte and provide level playing field for large financial services firms, vendors and startups,” he said. “We see a lot of differentiation on fundamentally similar pieces of code and offerings.

“Ultimately, lower margins and cost innovation pressure driven by fintech played a key role in firms embracing an evolutionary collaborative strategy of open-source software development.”

Photo credit: Juan Garcia Aunion/GettyImages
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“HR like me should stop banging on about internal mobility in Asian banking”

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I work at a big American bank in Singapore (you may have read my previous blogs) and for the past year or so my team has been trying to encourage more ‘internal mobility’ within the firm.

We want more staff to make career changes into functions like risk and audit. And when we need to relocate people from overseas into Singapore, we’d much rather move existing employees than make costlier and riskier external hires.

The trouble is, however, that many employees feel distinctly uncomfortable about revealing their real careers aspirations to their bosses. And despite our mobility push, many of our managers aren’t exactly happy to hear that their staff what to move teams.

So instead of constantly banging on about our immediate internal-mobility vacancies, HR should make it easier for staff to have these initial discussions with their managers.

In the meantime, if you’re a banker wanting an internal move, you need to take matters into your own hands and decide whether to tell your manager that you ultimately want to quit their team.

Should you be that honest when it could backfire and affect your relations with your current manager? The bad news is that only you can make this decision – don’t trust this one to your friends or family. The good news is that you can solve this dilemma by asking yourself a few key questions:

How have I performed over the past two years?

This question is pretty easy. If you’ve been killing it at work and your boss agrees (via your performance appraisals), you’re in a good position to ask them for career advice without much fear of repercussions. If you haven’t been towing the line, it’s not a good time to have this potentially difficult chat – shelve the discussion for a later stage.

Are my career aspirations realistic?

If you don’t have realistic aspirations, don’t bother talking to your boss about them – it’s not worth the risk. I’m not saying forget about a move from the back to the front office if that’s what you really want; I’m just saying be aware of the current environment in your bank and the job market generally.

So don’t sit down with your boss and say simply “I want to move into X area”. That’s not going to cut it. Ask yourself the question beforehand: “How do my career aspirations fit into where my bank is going?”. If your interest is in wealth management and this is an growth area for the bank, your chances of moving are higher, so a chat with your manager is certainly on the cards.

Am I presenting my boss with a problem or a solution?

As an experienced people manager myself, I really like it when someone in my team brings me a scenario that they have applied a good amount of thought to already. In other words, they aren’t just dropping a bomb on me. If, for example, you are keen on moving into a project role, what have you already done to prepare yourself for this move?

Have you completed a relevant project manager course? Have you networked internally and are therefore aware of existing opportunities within the bank? Are you willing to take a pay cut to make the move? Are you happy to wait for the right role, as long as there is a level of commitment from the bank? Taking this kind of initiative illustrates that you are thinking like a problem solver rather than just another person who wants something for nothing. Your boss is therefore much less likely to be annoyed by your desire to chat about a move.

Does HR at your bank support internal moves?

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but internal mobility is a top priority for a lot of banks (not just mine) in Asia at the moment. A lot of them even have dedicated teams of people in human resources focusing on facilitating internal moves for staff.

Take a look at the existing opportunities and let your boss know how they relate to what you are looking to do. Most importantly, do this with an open mind. If your aspirations are very focused on one particular role in the bank, it’s going to be harder for them to help you. If you’re open to hearing about other options, you will probably find that there are way more opportunities than you initially thought.

Is the timing really right for this type of chat?

Once again, you will need to use your own good judgement here. If the bank has only just announced a round of redundancies, this may not be the best time to be having this kind of honest discussion. It may seem obvious, but by paying attention to what’s happening more broadly within the bank, you illustrate a level of maturity that your boss will appreciate.

Overall, if you ask the questions above, a career chat shouldn’t put you on the wrong side of your boss. It’s important that they are aware of where you see yourself going in the future so that they can help you get there. If they don’t know, how can they help? You will probably find that not only will they be quite supportive, they will probably be able to offer you advice and tips on how to get to where you want to go.

The author works for a US bank in Singapore. He has been recruiting in the banking industry in Asia – in both agencies and in-house – for more than 10 years.


Image credit: mrdoomits, Getty

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DBS hires ex-cop and “best candidate in Asia” for group-head job

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DBS has recruited a leading PwC partner – and former senior police officer – as its group head of financial crime.

In one of the most important new hires for DBS so far this year, veteran compliance specialist Chris Wilson has joined the bank at managing director level.

Wilson started his career in 1981 in the Merseyside Police in the UK, before moving to Bermuda in 1986 for a four-year stint as a detective constable. Between 1990 and 1999 he worked for the Hong Kong Police, latterly as a detective senior inspector, according to his online public profile.

He then broke into the finance sector as an associate at J.P. Morgan in New York and returned to Bermuda in 2001 to head up compliance for local firm Bank of Butterfield.

Wilson took on his first two senior Asian finance roles at UBS (regional money laundering prevention officer) and GE Money (regional head of AML) in 2004 and 2006 respectively, according to his profile.

He joined Deloitte as a partner and AML leader for China in 2008 and then moved to PwC in 2015 as a partner in its Hong Kong forensic services team, focused on AML, sanctions and financial crime.

Wilson’s experience makes him “arguably the best compliance candidate in Asia”, says one headhunter we spoke to.

“I’ve come across pretty much every regional head of financial crime and there’s nobody who comes close to matching his 26-years-plus of experience,” adds another recruiter, Pathay Singh, managing director of The Compliance Grid in Hong Kong.

“And even if someone in the region had that tenure, they couldn’t beat his mix of enforcement, banking and consulting exposure. DBS couldn’t find a safer pair of hands anywhere,” adds Singh.

Wilson faces a difficult workload at DBS. “A head of financial crime has to be a jack of all trades and a master of all trades,” says former J.P. Morgan APAC head of audit Sharad Chawla, now managing director of G.R.A.C.E. Recruitment in Singapore.

“They have to be technically strong and a great people manager, and have a comprehensive knowledge of various industries, regulatory environments, and market trends across the globe,” he says.

One of the main challenges faced by department heads in financial crime in Asia is a shortage of candidates and fierce competition for talent when they need to expand their teams, says Chawla.

“They also have increasingly complex financial structures and more easily accessible global financial markets to watch over. And they need to improve awareness of FC-related risks and responsibilities among staff throughout the bank,” he adds.


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Morning Coffee: The prime age for receiving a big promotion at Goldman Sachs. Seasoned trader was doing it all wrong

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Goldman Sachs has rejigged a few things. In a move billed as ‘the biggest change to its investment banking division’ (IBD) for a decade, Goldman has promoted two new people and now has three co-heads of IBD in much the same way that it has three co-heads of its securities division.

The two new co-heads are Gregg Lemkau, a former co-head of Goldman’s global M&A business, and Marc Nachmann, a little-known German banker based in the U.S. who was head of Goldman’s financing group. The other co-head is John Waldron, who was promoted in 2014. 

Now, this may be mere coincidence, but we note that all these co-heads were of roughly similar age when they got the shoulder-tap. Waldrom was 45 when it happened two years ago. Nachmann was 46 when it happened yesterday. Lemkau was 47. Could it be that these are the golden years for elevation to the High Table if you work in IBD at Goldman Sachs?

Maybe, except most 46 year-old Goldman M&A bankers clearly don’t get the call. If you’re waiting on tenterhooks, the Wall Street Journal has spotted a leading indicator suggesting you’re tipped for greatness: you’ll get promoted to the management committee first of all. This is, “often a sign of bigger roles to come,” pronounces the WSJ, noting that Lemkau and Nachmann were added to the management committee back in 2015.

Separately, imagine building a reputation as a brilliant but fallible active trader, only to retire and realize there’s a far easier way to manage money. This is what happened to Victor Haghani, a former Salomon Brothers and Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) fixed income trader, who’s finally figured out that passive investing is best. These days, 55 year-old Haghani is far more zen than his “aggressive young” self and correspondingly keen to proselytize about the benefits of index tracking. “I don’t know what is going to happen next year or the year after,” he tells the Financial Times. “But now, knowing how I want to invest over a very long horizon is actually the easier part.” Traders on Twitter suggest Haghani simply decided that he was rich enough already.

Meanwhile:

Nomura just hired hired Fred Jallot from Citi as head of its global markets division in Europe. Jallot was head of Citi’s credit trading for EMEA. (Financial News) 

Big banks are planning to move 9,000 jobs from London to continental Europe in the next two years. (Reuters) 

Had Marine Le Pen won the French election, 30 companies who are allegedly preparing to move to France after Brexit would not have done so. (Reuters) 

How I went from zero to San Francisco software engineer in 12 months. (Medium) 

You can’t multi-task, you can do rapid tasks sequentially. (Guardian)

Speed-dating for economists. (NPR) 

Your boss is not more stressed than you. (Vice) 


Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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I was stuck as an AVP but became a senior leader in Asian banking. Here’s how

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In 2012 Johnston Lo was working as a broker at one of the world’s leading banks, HSBC, and had got to assistant vice president level.

But despite his early success in banking, he’d also reached what he describes as a “bottleneck” in his career. “I was skilled enough to perform my day job, I had enough clients, and I was already an AVP in my team,” says Lo.

“Yet I was also stuck at this mid-level. If I’d stayed in the same firm, further promotions would have become more difficult,” he explains. “While my experience was good, it wasn’t enough to step into a senior leadership role.”

Johnston realised that to get ahead he needed to further improve his leadership skills. And after researching potential qualifications, he decided to enrol in the MBA programme at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“CUHK’s MBA stood out because it has both an Asian and international focus to its teaching and because it aims to produce the next generation of Asian leaders,” says Lo. “After talking to CUHK alumni, I knew it would allow me to meet new people and get new perspectives on management. It would take me out of my comfort zone and help get me a senior leadership job.”

The MBA lived up to Lo’s expectations. He used his new leadership skills to move into a completely different working environment (at Bank of China International), at a higher rank (he’s now an associate director).

But Lo’s leadership talents were put to the test even before he got into the classroom at CUHK. He first met his MBA cohort on an Outward Bound course – a week of tough problem solving and muddy outdoor adventure in Hong Kong’s New Territories.

“Put into small groups, we’d take turns to be leaders on different assignments. Using maps and compasses to that extent was a completely new and exciting experience,” says Lo. “One night there was a midnight trek from base camp to a check point – if you went the wrong way, you had to start over. It was leadership and teamworking under pressure.”

Lo says that at Outward Bound he began to learn some of the leadership skills that would be reinforced during the CUHK modules. “For example, we had to adjust our leadership styles to suit different individuals because the group was very mixed. We had people from several industries and from countries as diverse as China, the US and Finland.”

It was a similar experience when Lo was working in equally diverse case study groups at CUHK. “The MBA teaches you to become an all-round leader who can face different types of colleagues in different types of workplaces,” says Lo.

“It makes you more open minded when dealing with new people and coping with change as a leader. These elements to leadership are vital in an industry which is evolving as rapidly as Asian banking,” he adds.

Lo says the MBA helped him to make a smoother transition into his job at BOCI. “Compared to a Western bank, it’s very different in its organisational structure and company culture. But my MBA had already taught me to be flexible in order to handle this change.”

He now has a “tool kit” of leadership techniques that he believes will put him on the path for continued success in the Asian finance sector.

“If you’re leading people with a similar amount of experience as you, for example, you could use a ‘partnership approach’, in which you often ask for their opinions. They won’t help you as much if you give direct commands,” says Lo.

Alongside working with peers in case study groups, CUHK students also hone their leadership expertise during lectures.

“The faculty comes from all over the world and are specialists in their fields, including investment banking. They share practical experience of leadership, not just textbook knowledge,” says Lo. “They also invite current business people to provide real-time experiences of leadership challenges.”

CUHK offers an Asia-focused leadership development module on its MBA programme, which aims to make students more aware of their own strengths and weaknesses as managers, so they can lead people more effectively in the workplace.

The school’s emphasis on leadership is infused throughout the MBA. “For example, I took a module on salesmanship and sales management, and the professor told us that successful leaders all have good sales skills, even those not in client-facing roles,” says Lo.

“To be a leader you must be able to sell ideas within your bank. If you see a good investment opportunity, for example, you must get the buy-in of others in your team,” he adds.

Lo improved his leadership skills by trial and error during the MBA. “Compared to being at work, CUHK is a much safer environment in which to learn. Case study groups allow you to make mistakes and learn from them, without the negative financial consequences you’d get at a bank.”

CUHK students still need to work hard if they want to develop their leadership abilities, says Lo. “If you’re in charge of a group, you have to know all the materials in advance, so you can set the right direction when you lead. Most of your team members will be managers themselves, so you’ll want to be as prepared as possible.”

Being able to foster a culture of teamworking is an important part of any leadership project at CUHK, says Lo.

“One of the best things about my MBA is that I worked so closely with my classmates and have kept in touch with many of them since we graduated. My Outward Bound group still meets for regular dinners. The friendships you form at CUHK last for many years – and as you rise up the ranks as a leader, you can always call on someone for advice.”

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HSBC hires Brexit programme director as banks begin to unravel technology

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As investment banks look to move parts of their UK operations to the Continent after Brexit, there’s one huge task that they’re beginning to hire for – technology.

HSBC has just brought in Henrik Petersson as a managing director and Brexit programme director. He spent the past two years as a managing partner at PlanExecute, which consults with organisations on change, HR and transformation projects. Previously, he was chief information officer for strategy and architecture at Standard Bank in Johannesburg.

Headhunters suggest that large financial services organisations are now in the market for senior professionals to lead the technology risk management projects related to Brexit. Fidelity Investments recently moved Fleur Hodgkinson, a programme director in its propositions group, into the role of programme director for Brexit and regulatory change. Headhunters suggest that BNY Mellon is also hiring in this area.

“If you’re an MD working in risk management, expect a call,” says one IT headhunter. “Some of these jobs are in London, but a lot are also in Frankfurt, which is a hard sell.”

“It’s a bit like the Y2K projects at the turn of the century,” says Paul Bennie, managing director of IT headhunters Bennie MacLean. “It’s not a job you’re going to be doing the job in perpetuity, so what comes next?”

Investment banks rolling out contingency plans to move jobs out of the UK after Brexit. Current estimates put that figure at 9,000, but these are not all front office employees. As Deutsche Bank’s chief regulatory officer Sylvie Matherat said earlier this month – the bank could shift 4,000 jobs out of London, and client facing staff are matched on a ratio of 1:1 by risk management employees. Then there’s compliance, technology and back office functions.

Unravelling investment banks’ sprawling technology infrastructure that crosses asset classes and geographies is no easy task.

“If a bank decides to move one part of its trading business to Continental Europe, it opens a whole can of worms for technology,” says Bennie. “Banks need to think of the regulatory impact, the risk implications, whether they need to shut one part of the system down or migrate another. It’s a huge task.”

The result, says Bennie, is that banks are turning to either senior technologists who have worked on cross-asset class technology systems, or people who worked on large transformation projects on a consultancy basis.

“They’re not going to hire, say, a former CIO of equities. They need to be able to see the whole picture,” he says.

Banks are hiring at the top of the tree for these Brexit roles, but are also bringing in business analysts and project managers. Predominantly, these are contract roles, and banks are currently offering between £600-700 a day for these roles.

There are examples of former senior banking professionals setting themselves up for lucrative Brexit-related consultancy gigs. James Read, the former head of asset management compliance for EMEA at Macquarie, left in August and has set up his own firm called Brexit Compliance.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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Citigroup demonstrates near impossibility of getting AI job in finance

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So you’re thinking of getting a job in artificial intelligence (AI) in financial services? Good luck with that. Even the big banks employ next to no one in their AI teams.

Speaking at today’s AI Summit in London, Berkan Sesen, VP and global data analytics at Citi said his team comprises two people, or maybe three. That’s three people in an organization that employs 231,000 people in total and 10,000+ in its institutional clients (ICG) group.

Sesen’s small team is tasked with the application of machine learning to marketing making, particularly for CDS trades. He joined Citi as an algorithmic trading quant in 2013, but his system has yet to be implemented. “It’s still not in production but will happen soon,” he told attendees this morning. “We are living in a transformational period in terms of machine intelligence.”

And if you still want to get into AI? Expertise in speech recognition will help. Sesen said AI systems used in finance are increasingly reliant on the Markov model, a stochastic model typically employed in speech recognition programmes and used to represent randomly changing systems. “Hedge funds, systematic trading houses and banks all use Markov,” Sesen said.

Sesen himself started out as a specialist in biomedicine, working for the NHS after completing a PhD in artificial intelligence and medical informatics at Oxford University. From there, he jumped in finance at Citi.


Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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This female engineer rose up the ranks at Goldman Sachs to become a tech MD

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What do technologists need to know to position themselves for a career at Goldman Sachs? There are many potential paths to take, but it pays off to stay nimble and ready to apply your skill set where it is most needed.

Case in point, Miruna Stratan joined Goldman Sachs after earning a degree in communications and electrical engineering at Bucharest Polytechnic University in Romania and a graduate degree in telecommunications from the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.

During Stratan’s 18-year career at Goldman, she has worn many hats, overseeing the development of new infrastructure across the firm, including the bank’s external cloud access platform, cloud desktop and remote-access function. In addition, she serves on several internal committees and external advisory councils that focus on cloud technologies.

“The evolution of cloud security solutions, particularly related to software and infrastructure, have had an immense effect on our industry, and I think in the next few years this will continue to be a key area of focus,” Stratan said.

“These security initiatives, in addition to platform-as-a-service offerings, will enable firms across the sector to build an accessible data platform in the public cloud,” she said.

Most recently, Stratan served as the chief technology officer of workplace platforms while also holding product development and management roles. Prior to that, she was responsible for global network architecture and design and global network products development.

“Over the course of my career, I developed an expertise in technology infrastructure engineering by working on data-center products across both the compute storage and networking space,” Stratan said.

“Through this work, I helped drive the firm’s global data-center architecture and strategy, and also managed our vendor relationships in this sector,” she said.

“I began my career at Goldman Sachs developing technology solutions for the firm’s banking business, before specializing in technology infrastructure.”

Career turning points

To continue earning promotions to move up the ladder, it helps to earn accolades. To do so, you will have to get past bumps in the road and overcome challenges along the way.

“Over the last 18 years at Goldman Sachs, I’ve taken on several new lateral roles,” Stratan said. “These were difficult moves to make, because I had to prove to my new team members and managers that I was capable of delivering a strong work product time and again, even though I had been working at the firm in other capacities.

“While it’s difficult to be exposed to a different environment or be assigned to an existing project you have no background on, working on new technologies and teams ultimately served as some of my best learning experiences and allowed me to broaden my network internally,” she said.

In 2014, Stratan was named a Technology Fellow, a distinction that recognizes individuals across the firm who exhibit the strongest engineering and architectural talent. In 2015, she was promoted to managing director.

“It’s also been exciting to develop expertise in new, emerging technologies, and work directly with leading industry vendors, to improve not only the firm’s internal technology platforms, but also be able to influence important industry shifts to open infrastructure platforms and cloud security,” Stratan said.

“My work, alongside my team, has helped transform our business into a data-driven model through applied technology,” she said.

STEM star

Stratan’s father – a physicist – was one of her early role models. He encouraged her to study engineering because he was convinced that the computer and communications era was in its early stages and that there were tremendous opportunities in that space.

“When I first started with the firm, I expected that I would eventually become more of a business analyst rather than a technical expert,” Stratan said. “But, I was quite surprised by the depth of the technology stack, as well as by the ability to influence the business model through technical solutions, and therefore continued on this path as my career progressed.”

Techies need to be able to communicate effectively with non-techies

What are some lessons Stratan has learned over the years as it relates to career success?

“I’ve learned the importance of communication, from highlighting the great work you’ve done on a particular project to explaining the rationale behind taking a project in a new direction,” Stratan said.

“Communicating effectively allows you to strengthen your presence on a team, as other team members understand clearly what you’re working on, while also allowing you to share your vision and goals with others,” she said.

“While developing a great technical solution is key, communicating how you were able to do so is just as important.”

In job interviews, it’s important for candidates to show they have strong technical capabilities, but are also able to work effectively with others to develop innovative solutions, Stratan said.

In addition, she feels that curiosity and the ability to learn quickly are quite important.

“Asking candidates to describe how they solved a problem in their past jobs or internships is very eye-opening and indicates how they would likely perform in a new role,” Stratan said. “These questions allow you to go into deeper and deeper levels of detail to really understand how the candidate thinks.”

Build internal and external networks

Stratan echoed advice for female bankers from fellow Goldman MD Alison Mass: If you want to make it to the top, act like you deserve to be there. Also, seek out strong mentors.

“As a woman technologist I felt intimidated early on in my career – at times I was one of the only women in the room,” Stratan said. “It’s important to build your network both internally and externally to identify mentors and sponsors that will support you and offer guidance, giving you the confidence to excel in your career and overcame the initial intimidation I first experienced.”

Stratan encourages woman technologists to participate in external initiatives that they find rewarding. For example, she has attended and spoken at the Grace Hopper Conference, which is one of the largest technical conferences for women in computing. She has also taken part in Lesbians Who Code conferences, which brings together members and allies of the LGBT community that are passionate about technology.

“Participating in these external initiatives allows me to broaden my network and learn about new industry trends, which I then share with my team,” Stratan said.

View the complete 2017 Ideal Employer Global Rankings

Photo courtesy of Goldman Sachs
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Jefferies has just poached UBS’s top internet analyst

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If you want to escape the storm surrounding equity research, it helps to be highly-ranked and to cover a sector that’s in demand.

Tech analysts remain highly sought-after and Jefferies is the latest bank to poach a senior researcher. It’s just hired Brent Thill, a senior tech analyst at UBS, as a managing director and head of internet research based across its San Francisco and New York offices.

Thill also led UBS’s software research team in the U.S, which was ranked number one by Institutional Investor magazine.

Jefferies has been hiring, in both the U.S. and London, and research has been a big focus – both in the senior ranks and among juniors. However, it also has some gaps to fill.

Brad Zelnick, who spent three years as a managing director in software research at Jefferies in New York, jumped to Credit Suisse in April.

Top analysts who cover software and internet companies remain in demand despite the general reduction in equity research headcount. But they’re also being hired by the companies they cover.

Earlier this month, Edward Hill-Wood, managing director and head of European internet research at Morgan Stanley, left the bank to join media firm Naspers as head of investor relations.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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A Swedish private equity fund is hiring juniors from Goldman and Deutsche

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If you want to move out of investment banking and into private equity, you might also want to investigate Swedish private equity group EQT partners. It appears to be hiring from banks in London, for positions in the City and in Stockholm.

EQT’s recent recruits include Kerstin Fürntrath, a former analyst on Deutsche Bank’s leveraged debt capital markets team, and Jessica Ahlén, a former investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs. Fürntrath joins in the UK, Ahlén in Sweden. Both joined this month.

As is increasingly the case, both women quit banking very soon after joining. Fürntrath was at Deutsche for a mere 10 months. Ahlén was at Goldman a mere 13 months, although both were summer analysts at the respective banks prior to joining full time.

From an ’employer branding’ perspective, EQT has plenty going for it. The fund specialises in sustainable and responsible investing and aims, for example, to become one of the leading investors in biosolids waste management solutions, thereby satisfying young employees’ need for “purpose”. With €22bn invested and €35bn in raised capital, it also has plenty of money and 290 investment advisory employees worldwide.

EQT also has an office in New York City, which it hired for last August and September, bringing on Jonathan Herskowitz (formerly an analyst at Credit Suisse), Tanvi Gupta, (formerly an analyst at BAML) and Marcus Risland (formerly an analyst at Morgan Stanley). This year it also poached Hunter Dougherty from Credit Suisse for its NY office in March.


Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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Here’s what you need to know about the CFA exam with less than a month to go

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Are you prepared for the June CFA exam? It’s less than a month away, so take a deep breath and work out how to best use your time and energy from now until exam day.

Stephen Horan, managing director of credentialing at the CFA Institute who formerly worked in the financial services industry and as a professor of finance, leads the development of the CFA Institute’s education programs, including the CFA Program. He agrees with the bare minimum of 300 hours of study to pass each of the three levels of the CFA exam line.

“Generally that’s what it takes for candidates to be successful, so you have to start early, create a schedule and a study plan and stick to them,” Horan said. “Presuming that’s been the case, it’s continuing on that and, when we’re about a month away, what you want to be able to do is start to wrap up your first curriculum run-through and revisions, because you want to leave time for practice exams.”

Here are Horan’s tips for getting through the exams.

Take mocks

There are plenty of mock exams online, either through the CFA Institute or one of the many companies that provide training for the qualification.

“A mock exam is going to surface the areas where you’re relatively weak, whereas if you just pick out some practice questions, you risk going to the areas that you’re comfortable with rather than the ones you really need to work on,” Horan said. “It simulates the natural test-taking experience – it is intended to replicate the actual exam as much as possible, right down to the two three-hour sessions.

“Once you know what your areas of weakness are, you can drill back down into practice questions in that particular area,” he said.

Harumi Urata-Thompson, the chief operating officer of the New York Society for Security Analysts (NYSSA), suggests taking a mock exam exactly one week before the date of the actual exam.

“That will give you a feel for the stamina and the pacing you’ll need,” she said. “At each level, you know what types of problems you will have to answer, and your performance on the mock exam will let you know if you have to review certain topics more than others.”

Get the right prep 

While other materials and courses may help, it’s important to realize that everything you will see on the exam comes directly from the curriculum that the CFA Institute provides. Look at the exam prep materials and study tips on the institute’s website thoroughly.

“We recommend private test prep for people who respond to live instruction, and we have a list of recommended instructors, but it’s not necessary,” Horan said. “Candidates should be able to study and pass the exam based solely on the curriculum that we give them, which is the best place to get inside the head of the question writer.

“That said, sometimes candidates benefit from getting a different perspective on the material and live instruction, and we absolutely encourage candidates who want to study that way to do it,” he said.

Don’t poo-poo the ethics section

Get the ethics portion of the exam right, because it can make or break your chances of passing the CFA exam.

“Ethics is important to becoming an investment professional – we take this seriously,” Horan said. “The ethics section is not based on the candidate’s intuitive sense of right and wrong – rather, questions are based on what the CFA institute’s code and standards say and how they might be applied to behavior in various situations.

“Try to take your own sense of right and wrong out of it, which is important because it can make the difference between passing and failing,” he said. “If candidates do well on ethics who would have been just short of a passing score based on the rest of the exam will pass and candidates who would have passed just barely based on the rest of the exam will fail if they bomb the ethics portion.”

Don’t try to cram until all hours the night before

Prioritize a good night’s sleep the night before the exam rather than staying up late studying.

“Do something relaxing almost all day, and don’t go out and party or cram too late,” Horan said. “The actual exam ends up being an endurance event, with two three-hour sessions, so if you go into it tired or drained because you were pulling an all-nighter, you’d really be doing yourself a disservice.

“See if you can go to the test center at some point before the day of the exam to get the lay of the land, figure out the best route to the test center, get a feel for where you can park and where you will eat lunch,” he said. “It provides a sense of comfort if you’ve been there before, because you don’t want to have to make small incremental decisions on things you haven’t experienced yet on the day of the exam.”

Sweat the small stuff

Some people are more organized than others, and Urata-Thompson stresses the need to think through details in advance, even if they seem insignificant.

For example, make sure you have the right calculators, double-check your tickets, make sure not to write anything on your tickets, and either pack your lunch the night before or scope out a lunch spot within walking distance of the exam center in advance.

Also, plan on the exam center being either too hot or too cold – usually it’s too cold, Urata-Thompson said.

Photo credit: demaerre/GettyImages
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