“I’m a 2nd year IBD analyst at Goldman Sachs. This is the reality”

May 12, 2017, 3:27 am

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When James Trant got the offer to join the analyst program at Goldman Sachs, he wasn’t sure what to expect. “I was absolutely delighted, but also slightly apprehensive,” he says. “There are lots of misconceptions about the firm. People would say, “Well done!”, but also, “Good luck””

Goldman Sachs came out as the ideal place to work among the students we surveyed. This is testimony to the strength of bank’s brand among young people, who ranked Goldman highly for pay and challenging work. But with popularity and brand ubiquity come an element of notoriety. “There’s a misconception that Goldman has a brutal culture,” says Trant. “In fact, it’s a much more open culture than people realize. When I arrived, what really struck me was how down-to-earth people here are – not at all flashy or egotistical.”

Trant started out in Goldman’s investment management division before switching to investment banking last year. He now works in the firm’s consumer, retail, healthcare and real estate team. This kind of cross-divisional move in the first few years at Goldman isn’t standard, but can happen. “I decided I wanted to move across to banking and started meeting a lot of people internally from last January,” says Trant. “I moved in the summer.”

Trant says young people want to work for Goldman Sachs because of its reputation for excellence. “Young, ambitious people want opportunities. Goldman Sachs will provide that. They will push you and challenge you in new ways that put you outside your comfort zone.” Goldman people may be down-to-earth and non-egotistical, but Trant says they’re also highly driven: “Everyone you work with here is incredibly motivated. The pace of work is very fast – people expect things quickly, and to a high standard. It can be tough, but it’s also very rewarding. When you’re at university, you want to work for the best places and Goldman Sachs offers the best opportunities in finance. ”

As an analyst in the investment banking division, Trant has benefited from the measures Goldman’s taken to make life better for its young people. Every week, he’s compelled to stop work at 9pm on a Friday – irrespective of whether he’s staffed on a live M&A deal. He’ll also get promoted to associate earlier than before: Goldman’s analyst program now lasts two years instead of three.

“Before I moved into the investment banking division, I was a bit skeptical that I’d get Saturdays off – I thought there would always be exceptions, but it’s something that’s taken really seriously. I haven’t worked a single Saturday since joining in August. It makes a real difference – I leave on Friday at a decent time and go out for a few drinks. Saturday is then usually brunch, going to the gym and watching sport.

“People like to avoid working Sundays at all costs if possible,” adds Trant. “I sometimes come in or login from home for a few hours to take the pressure off on a Monday. It’s personal preference. I probably do some work two Sundays a month on average, depending on the project.”

The so-called “Saturday rule” and “accelerated analyst program” are the hallmarks of Goldman’s new approach to its most junior staff, but Trant says there are also elements which have been less well-discussed. One is Goldman’s attempt to make the job more interesting…The other is the new system of continuous feedback which allows for appraisal of everyone on a project- including vice presidents and (we assume), managing directors.

“There’s a lot of emphasis on using technology to make things more automated,” he says. “As a result, we spend less time on PowerPoint and more time on interesting work. It means we get less bogged down in nitty gritty things and have more time for making strategic contributions.”

More interestingly though, Goldman’s new appraisal system (known as OngoingFeedback360+) allows juniors to flag situations where senior staff have overworked juniors through project mismanagement. In this sense, it’s similar to an initiative introduced by Barclays in 2014. “After every project, we have the opportunity to rate how things went in terms of efficiency and whether everything ran smoothly. People tend to be very honest about this,” says Trant.

And if you want to work for Goldman too? Trant suggests you set aside any misconceptions and “go for it.” “It’s a challenging environment but you will be working alongside some really driven and motivated people. I’ve made some real and genuine friendships and haven’t looked back since joining.”

Needless to say, getting into the firm isn’t easy – only 4% of internship applicants get a place. Trant says you need to be very considered at the application stage; “Really think about your application. Goldman Sachs doesn’t put you through numerical tests or assessment centres when it’s hiring you. There’s far more emphasis on your cover letter and interview. You need to really understand the firm and think about why you’d be a great fit.”

“My interviews at Goldman Sachs were more like a free-flowing conversation than a tick box exercise,” he concludes. “One of the best pieces of advice I had during the process was from a GS interview. He told me to be myself, to relax and go for it. I’d agree: This is a great place to work. What have you got to lose?”

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Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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Recalling a decade of chaos at Barclays’ investment bank

May 12, 2017, 5:05 am

≫ Next: The J.P. Morgan analyst on a mission to curb 20-something election apathy

≪ Previous: “I’m a 2nd year IBD analyst at Goldman Sachs. This is the reality”

Barclays is hiring again! Headhunters of the world may want to give Tim Throsby, the new(ish) head of its investment bank a call. As we were first to report yesterday, Throsby has now taken personal control of Barclays’ investment bank. He’s already hired in BAML’s head of rates sales in London and a Goldman FX MD in New York, and reportedly wants to hire 50 to 100 people more.

Barclays likes to point to the steadiness of revenues in its fixed income trading business. This may be true, but the strategy in its investment bank is anything but. In the past decade, Barclays’ investment bank has been on a roller coaster of expansion and retraction, as evinced by the history below. All banks go through big changes, but Barclays’ has been through more than most. With luck, Throsby’s new growth plan won’t just be another phase in the cycle.

April 2008: Growth!

Back in 2008, when the financial crisis was still in its relative infancy, then-Barclays CEO Bob Diamond stood up and made a presentation at the 2008 Morgan Stanley European Banks Conference. In those days, Barclays as a whole was generating a 20% return on equity (ROE) and Bob said the investment bank was contributing a lot of this. Business was booming. Barclay’s FX sales and trading revenues grew 60% in 2007. Rates revenues grew 70%. Bob said that Barclays was very well positioned for the future and that the bank planned to ‘scale up’ in commodities, which was benefiting from “a compound annual growth rate in excess of 75%”.

September 2008: Crisis, but Barclays’ is still fine. Massive hiring in equities

Four months later, the financial crisis was on. Barclays acquired Lehman on September 16th 2008. Eight days earlier, Bob Diamond made a presentation at the Lehman Brothers financial conference. There, he declared that markets were more challenging than they’d been for 25 years, but that Barclays Capital was doing ok: it was winning market share, it was still profitable. There was a “flight to quality across the industry,” said Bob, implying that this flight was to Barclays. Clients were “showing their appreciation” and giving Barclays more business, he added. Diamond concluded that: “Markets will continue to be challenging but we believe our model, combined with our focus on driving performance, place us in a strong position to take advantage of opportunities.”

It was around this time that Barclays began some massive hiring for its equities business in Europe and Asia. Acquiring Lehman gave Barclays a fully-formed equities business in the U.S. and between autumn 2008 and March 2009 Barclays supplemented this with 210 front office equities staff in London, continental Europe and Japan, and another 250 to support them.

March 2009: Growth! (Thanks to Lehman). Continued huge hiring in equities

By March 2009, Barclays had had six months to digest Lehman Brothers. It was all going well, said Bob Diamond at the Morgan Stanley Financial Services Conference that month. “We believe the new competitive environment and our integration with Lehman will offer us opportunities to grow revenue and return through winning market share, adding new capabilities, and bringing these to an even larger client base,” declared Diamond. Growth opportunities for Barclays in FX and commodities were “tremendous,” he said. Barclays was, “building the U.S. business” and “expanding the global Barclays Capital franchise.”

As 2009 progressed, Barclays made around another 300 hires in equities in Europe and Asia.

June 2009: Growing in Asia!

Three months later, Barclays Capital was still going for growth, with an emphasis on international domination. With established businesses in the U.S. and the UK, this meant conquering the rest of Europe and Asia. At the Barclays investor seminar New York, Bob Diamond and Jerry Del Missier, its former chief operating officer, said the bank wanted to be a top three performer in all its business lines. This would mean investing across fixed income, currencies and commodities in Asia Pacific, along with equities and origination and advisory banking.

Del Missier said Barclays planned to create, “top tier equities and M&A businesses in Europe and Asia over the next three years.” In Asia, the bank would focus on Japan initially, said Del Missier, “then building out selectively market by market in a way that’s aligned with the opportunities.” Barclays had already hired 600 people in Europe and Asia since the end of 2008, he added.

March 2010: Invincibility and growth in Asia

Nine months on, Bob Diamond stood up at the Morgan Stanley Financial Conference and said Barclays Capital was capable of growing and generating profits no matter what. “There’s been a consistent pattern of operating through almost any cycle, of interest rates, credit spreads, volatility, M&A activity, equity markets, inflation. It pretty much doesn’t matter,” crowed Bob. “We can execute through the cycle and through various market conditions and I think one of the things that’s highlighted here is there has never been a reporting period with a loss for Barclays Capital.”

Such was the strength of Barclays Capital, that Diamond said it could generate returns of 15%-20% across the cycle. This was nothing to do with prop trading, he insisted: “This business has been built on an incredibly powerful client franchise.”

Hiring was still happening in Asia. “We’re 80% to 85% done in Europe and over 50% done in Asia,” Bob said.

September 2010: Becoming a preeminent global investment bank

In September 2010, Bob Diamond appeared at the Barclays Capital investment banking conference and said Barclays’ mission was, “to be the premier global investment bank.” Barclays wanted to be the top three in each of the areas in which it operated, reiterated Diamond. However, there was also some creeping talk on cost cutting, leverage reduction and capital optimization. “Since 2007, our core tier one capital ratio has strengthened from 4.7% to 10%. And our adjusted gross leverage has been reduced from the low 30s to 20x,” said Bob.

June 2011: Continued growth in Asia

At the June 2011, investor seminar Rich Ricci and Jerry Del Missier cut Bob Diamond’s 15%-20% ROE target to a mere 15% on a Basel 3 basis. Barclays was using its existing capabilities to drive revenues while optimizing costs, said Richi and Del Missier. Asia was still it.

November 2011: Cost cutting everywhere

By late 2011, the cost cutting mantra was gaining ground. Rich Ricci came to the UBS Financial Services Conference and said Barclays was, “eliminating duplication and integrating management, support functions and infrastructure wherever possible.” It was also moving to lower cost locations and cutting risk weighted assets dramatically. Structured credit exposures were down 60% since 2009.

Revenues were falling, but Ricci insisted Barclays wasn’t doing too badly. “Our performance in the third quarter was resilient relative to peers, and there are several clear signs that our franchise is strong and healthy,” he said. ” The 15% year-on year decline in third-quarter revenues we saw in Barclays Capital was less than half the decline of our peers, who saw an average decrease of 39%. And our quarter on quarter decline of 22% was again half that of our peers, who declined 40% on average.”

In Asia, Ricci said things were still bubbling merrily along. “We’ve nearly completed our Asia Pacific build-out, with India and Taiwan live as at the end of August, and Korea on track to go live in Q1 next year.”

March 2012: Unreasonable bullishness

In March 2012, Bob Diamond was at the Morgan Stanley European financial services conference. Net income at Barclays’ investment bank had fallen 20% the previous year, but you would never have known. Bob extolled Barclays’ achievements: it was top three in M&A in the UK and the US, the equities business was involved in each of the top five IPOs globally (including the top IPOs in Japan and India), the fixed income unit was number one globally, with a market share of 11%. Etc. etc.

Incongruously, Diamond also introduced the sudden notion of “citizenship,” with whole slides devoted to this. “We’re committed, quite simply, because our ability to be good citizens is critical to creating long term value for shareholders. This is not philanthropy – it’s about delivering real commercial benefits in a way that also creates value for society,” he said.

September 2012: Bob’s gone, Project Mango is on

Diamond left Barclays on July 3rd 2012. In September, Rich Ricci, his successor as head of the investment bank stood up and made his ‘Project Mango’ presentation at Barclays’ Global Financial Services Conference. Ricci was characteristically bullish.

Barclays’ investment bank had historically “outperformed”, said Ricci. It had been driven by a “force of incremental improvement”. Fifteen years ago BarCap was a mere sterling house, now it was a, “premier full-service global firm.” The fixed income business was, “one of the best flow platforms in the industry, built to last, over many years of relentless client focus.”

Asia was still important. “Only the strongest global franchises will be able to provide a consistent core offering in all three geographic regions,” said Ricci. “And Barclays is among a handful of organisations in that group.”

There was also a little tiny bit about cutting costs.

November 2013: Pulling back from fixed income trading

Rich Ricci was retired from Barclays in April 2013. In November 2013, Eric Bommensath, a French fixed income trader, and then co-chief executive of the investment bank, came to the Nomura financial services conference. Ricci’s portrait of a resilient investment bank was replaced by a tale of cost cutting and retrenchment. There was the first mention of capital-intensive “exit quadrant” businesses which Barclays intended to extricate itself from altogether. Bommensath also pointed to the removal of 750 front office jobs from the investment bank earlier that year, along with the concept of ‘efficiency through automation and simplification.’ But Barclays’ investment bank was still in a position of strength, Bommensath insisted.

February 2014: Small cuts by ‘automating processes’

By 2014, Bommensath was gone. Retail banker Antony Jenkins had been made CEO in 2012 and Jenkins was starting to find his feet. In Barclays’ annual report they said the bank planned to make £350m of annual cost savings by 2015 by automating processes. Barclays increased its investment banking headcount by 600 in 2013 and Jenkins promised to put an end to costly hires: no more managing directors or directors would be recruited in 2014.

May 2014: Huge layoffs, pulling back from Asia and continental Europe

A May 2014 presentation by Jenkins marked the sorry end to the policy of non-invasive cost-cutting. Jenkins said Barclays would be cutting 7,000 people from its investment bank (28% of its total staff). Henceforth, Barclays would be focused on the UK and the U.S. Asia would be pared back, as would the continental European businesses Barclays had built only a few years before. Capital intensive areas of the fixed income business would be closed.

“The investment bank consumes too much capital,” said Jenkins. “It doesn’t generate returns for shareholders and is too large as a percentage of the group. It’s an unacceptable drag on returns for clients…Currently the investment banking is too exposed to volatility in FICC and the group is too exposed to volatility in the investment bank.”

Physical commodities, once a big growth area at Barclays were exited. Jenkins said the bank would focus on products which could drive strong returns. These were: credit and equities, short dated G10 rates, spot FX, swaps and derivatives. Emerging markets, another former favourite were shunted into the ‘exit quadrant’, now renamed as the ‘non-core investment bank’.

In future, Jenkins said Barclays’ investment bank would be structured as per the slide below. There would be a far greater emphasis on ‘advisory bankers’, careful cost control and a big push to increase returns by reducing costs. The ROE target was cut 12%+.

**March 2016: Jes Staley’s strategy for a transatlantic investment bank focused on investment banking and sales and trading**

The next big change came in March last year when Jes Staley, the CEO who replaced Jenkins in December 2015 announced his own strategy for Barclays. We’ve summarized Staley’s strategy here, but fundamentally it amounted to a renewed emphasis on the investment bank as a transatlantic entity and to an insistence that the advisory businesses (M&A, ECM and DCM) should take precedence over sales and trading.

This was followed by continued layoffs in Asia and the closure of the bank’s Asian equities unit, which it was building up on a few years previously.

Staley imposed an “indefinite hiring freeze” shortly after his arrival. However, as 2016 continued, he started hiring-in big names from J.P. Morgan, most notably Tim Throsby, an equities man credited with building up the U.S. bank’s equities sales and trading business.

2017: Throsby takes control, hits the hiring button

Tim Throsby was made CEO of Barclays’ investment bank in January 2017. In May 2017, Throsby took personal control of Barclays’ under-performing U.S. markets business and announced up to 100 new hires. Barclays is going for growth again. Long may it last.

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Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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The J.P. Morgan analyst on a mission to curb 20-something election apathy

May 12, 2017, 6:15 am

≫ Next: An ex-Goldman associate just set up her own San Francisco-based advisory boutique

≪ Previous: Recalling a decade of chaos at Barclays’ investment bank

The youth of the UK are more apathetic about politics than any other demographic. Alexander Cairns, a student at Coventry University who is set to join J.P. Morgan’s investment bank in September, is on a mission to change that.

As Theresa May’s Conservatives gear up for an expected landslide on the snap general election on 8 June, just 42% of people aged 18-24 are set to vote, according to YouGov figures. Despite the fact that young people are largely anti-Brexit – voting 75% in favour of Remain in the EU referendum –Cairns believes that most young people still struggled to relate politics to their every day lives.

In the few months he has before beginning a career as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan, Cairns is trying raise £10k for an initiative aimed at encouraging as many of the 900,000 18-24 year olds currently not registered to vote in the UK to get more involved.

“Most people I know didn’t vote in the 2017 local elections, or indeed for Brexit, and the fact is that most 18-24 years are not at all engaged with politics,” he says. “The challenge is relating the issues to their every day lives, and key to that is ensuring that they have the right information.”

He’s just set up a Crowd Funding page to encourage the Youth vote by informing them about the issue that affect them and, potentially, create a ‘youth manifesto’ to engage 18-24 year olds on the things that matter to them. So far, political apathy is evident – just £100 of the target has been raised.

It’s remains to be seen whether the UK’s decision to leave the European Union will be beneficial or harmful for the country in the long-term. However, one thing is sure – Brexit is bad for any students with ambitions to work in investment banking.

Theresa May’s snap election is expected to give her legitimacy to push through the Brexit vote, as her “strong and stable” mantra is meant to reflect. But investment banks are unlikely to wait around for a deal to be agreed – current estimates suggest that at least 9,000 jobs in investment banks will be heading out of London as the UK removes itself from the EU.

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Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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An ex-Goldman associate just set up her own San Francisco-based advisory boutique

May 12, 2017, 6:52 am

≫ Next: Ex-Apple coder and Fidelity VP launched fintech firm that feeds data-hungry traders

≪ Previous: The J.P. Morgan analyst on a mission to curb 20-something election apathy

Setting up your very own boutique advisory firm used to be the province of extremely senior, extremely seasoned investment bankers. ThinPJT Partners, the advisory firm set up by Paul J. Taubman, the veteran Morgan Stanley dealmaker in 2013, or Robey Warshaw, the London-based boutique founded by Simon Robey, Morgan Stanley’s former head of investment banking in the UK. But what if you can’t wait that long? What if you want to set up your advisory boutique two years after your MBA and with 22 months’ experience working at Goldman Sachs?

Katerina Barilov is that person. Despite considerably less experience than is normal for a boutique founder, she’s just set up ‘Sparkplug capital’ in San Francisco. Specialized in robotics, AI, machine learning, autonomous tech, and sensors (specifically smart camera development), Sparkplug’s aim is to help, ‘early stage companies realize transformational ideas in highly complex and regulated industries such as transportation, natural resources, and aerospace and defense.’

This isn’t Barilov’s first job since leaving Goldman after nearly two years in March. Her LinkedIn profile suggests she spent March and April working in business development for Blackbird Air, a budget private flight company. It’s not clear whether she’s still working there while getting Sparkplug off the ground.

Barilov isn’t the first ex-Goldman junior to shortcut the long and arduous process of climbing the hierarchy in an investment bank before setting out on your own. As we reported last week, Stuart Smith, a former associate in Goldman’s natural resources division, also quit after 22 months and set up his own Houston-based private equity fund.

What’s going on? Are today’s young bankers less patient than their predecessors? Or can they simply see opportunities that they don’t want to miss? Banks have complained about the problems retaining today’s juniors, although research also suggests that many are steady and conscientious types that don’t want to job-hop as much as Millennial caricatures imply.

Either way, it’s worth invoking Steven Schwartzmann’s warning again. “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,” the founder of private equity fund Blackstone told MBA students last year.

Sometimes patience is a virtue.

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Ex-Apple coder and Fidelity VP launched fintech firm that feeds data-hungry traders

May 12, 2017, 7:29 am

≫ Next: How RBS quietly became great at trading again

≪ Previous: An ex-Goldman associate just set up her own San Francisco-based advisory boutique

In the hypercompetitive world of trading, everyone is looking for an edge, from quants with data science PhDs and market makers who operate at microsecond speeds to fundamental investors who want to determine the optimal timeframe to put a position on. A new breed of business-to-business fintech firms has cropped up to meet that demand, providing other potential landing spots for tech-savvy traders, developers and data scientists looking for their next position.

Barry Star is the CEO of Wall Street Horizon, a data and software provider specializing in trader-oriented information about corporate events such as earnings releases, conference calls, board meetings, stock splits and dividends. His firm currently has about 25 staff and he expects that number it to continue to grow.

“Our team primarily includes client-facing staffers, technologists and researchers, who use both our proprietary technology as well as high-touch methods to uncover and verify the more than 40 datasets that we track,” Star said. “For the research staff, we look for individuals who are both precise and resourceful in their approach.

“For example, one of our longtime researchers was a medical transcriber before we hired her, largely because she had to be incredibly detail-oriented in that role, and she’s been a star for us for close to ten years now,” he said.

From management consulting to Apple and then from Fidelity to fintech

After beginning his career in management consulting, specializing in the strategic use of information technology, Star joined Apple as a software developer.

“I wrote software for the first Apple computers, selling disks that I carried around in little plastic baggies and was at Apple when Steve Jobs rolled out the first Mac computer,” he says.

Star went on to work as a vice president at Fidelity Investments for five years.

“I created two large business for Fidelity – the first being the Fidelity OnLine Xpress, the first PC-based online retail brokerage for clients in the market,” he said. “I was then asked by the Chairman to start the RIA business, then called Advisor Resource Group, which remains one of the fastest-growing parts of Fidelity today.”

Star left to become the CEO of Star Development Group and then founded OneCore Financial Network – an online banking service for small business “about 15 years ahead of its time” in 1998 – and Wall Street Horizon in 2003.

“I founded OneCore in the height of the dot-com boom, and raised $40m from the likes of CMGI [now ModusLink Global Solutions], Merrill Lynch and Paine Webber [which was acquired by UBS in 2000],” Star said. “OneCore was another step along the way for me.

“Probably the biggest lesson it taught me was that most of the time for an entrepreneur, you’re much better off trying to solve people’s problems, no matter how seemingly unglamorous they might be, rather than trying to perpetually chase the next big thing,” he said.

OneCore going under in 2001 led Star to start Wall Street Horizon based on the premise that traders, market makers and institutional investors had demand for event data. The firm tracks more than 40 different event types and provides both forward-looking and historical dataset for events such as earnings dates, dividend dates, options expiration dates, splits, spinoffs and investor-related conferences.

“Event dates are volatility events, so the common denominator for our client base is any investor who’s looking to get visibility into approaching volatility so they can capitalize on it or avoid it,” Star said.

“Options traders in particular find value in our data since contracts that have priced in an expected date can go a bit haywire, at least temporarily, if it unexpectedly changes and crosses an expiration date,” he said.
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How RBS quietly became great at trading again

May 12, 2017, 10:33 am

≫ Next: Five people you need to know at Chinese banks in Singapore

≪ Previous: Ex-Apple coder and Fidelity VP launched fintech firm that feeds data-hungry traders

Say it quietly, particularly if you happen to be in the vicinity of an irate British tax payer: RBS is back. Rebranded as NatWest Markets to comply with UK ringfencing regulations, its traders had an exceptional first quarter. Those in the know say this was no coincidence.

Although RBS is supposed to be cutting a crazy 14,000 out of 18,000 jobs in its investment bank between 2015 and 2019, it’s also been hiring. And those strategic hires – mostly made two years ago, are only now coming to fruition.

The way those in the know tell it, RBS’s rehabilitation began in 2013 when it hired Kieran Higgins from Nomura as head of fixed income trading for EMEA. A seasoned fixed income trader, 45 year-old Higgins set about recruiting in EMEA. Some of the key moves took place two years later, when David Henness joined from Bank of America Merrill Lynch as head of European and Asian rates trading and Peter Duenas-Brkovich joined from Nomura as the head of EMEA credit trading. RBS’s resurgence means it’s able to attract big names in London again: Mark Deniston, a former Goldman sterling swaps trader who’d been working for Brevan Howard, joined this January.

It’s in the U.S. however, that RBS’s fixed income trading business has undergone the biggest transformation. Whilst Higgins was hiring in London, senior staff were leaving in the U.S. 2015 saw the departure of Michael Lyublinsky, RBS’s U.S. -based head of trading for Brevan Howard, and Richard Volpe, the bank’s global head of dollar interest rates for Nomura.

RBS set about hiring in a new generation of trading staff in their wake.

Insiders say that as many as 30-40 new traders have been added at RBS’s Stamford Connecticut in recent years. They include the likes of Mark Donlon, a former Citi managing director, who joined as head of global swaps trading in May 2015. Donlon was accompanied by fellow Citi MD James O’Malley, who joined as head of U.S. rates sales. The same year, RBS hired Alan Mittleman as head of rates trading. Mittleman joined from SocGen, but his pedigree was Credit Suisse and before that, Bear Stearns.

The suggestion is that these hires are only now coming to fruition. – After making big pronouncements on job cuts whilst quietly hiring senior talent, RBS’s trading business is now roaring back to life. “They’ve rebuilt themselves,” says one headhunter, speaking off the record. “Slowly and steadily, they’ve hired in some very good people on both sides of the Atlantic.”

RBS’s success is something Barclays might want to note. The other British investment bank is back in expansionary mode with an eye to addressing its travails in the U.S. rates market. RBS seems to have got there first.

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Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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Photo credit: RBS by Sam Badeo is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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Five people you need to know at Chinese banks in Singapore

May 14, 2017, 10:55 am

≫ Next: What finance and accounting staff really earn at Hong Kong banks in 2017

≪ Previous: How RBS quietly became great at trading again

Chinese banks don’t dominate investment banking in Southeast Asia in the same way as they now do in North Asia – but they are hiring in Singapore, say recruiters.

And new players are entering the market. Shanghai Pudong Development Bank opened an office in Singapore in April, becoming the eighth Chinese bank to have a branch in the Republic.

What kind of people are mainland banks employing in their Singaporean front-offices? We looked through online public profiles to find a few examples.

Stephen Ng,CEO, CICC Singapore

China International Capital Corporation has been in Singapore since 1995 and Ng has been at the helm for the past seven years. After graduating from NUS in 1991 with an engineering degree, Ng spent the first four years of his career as a systems engineer at Hewlett-Packard according to his online profile. He then completed an MBA at the University of Michigan, followed by a 12-year stint at Goldman Sachs, where he worked in Singapore, Taipei and Hong Kong and rose to executive director level. Ng spent about a year as an ED at ICAP in Hong Kong before returning to Singapore with CICC.

Jolene Tan, assistant general manager, China CITIC Bank International

Tan joined CITIC in June 2016 after 16 years in the Singapore banking sector. She began her career at Citi and moved to Bank of America in 2004, where she became head of the global-treasury, interest-rates derivatives and bonds-trading desk. Tan also spend almost seven years at RBS, latterly as a senior director and head of treasury and money markets, according to her public profile. In her free time, Tan is team lead for volunteering functions and national competitions at Singapore Gymnastics.

Raj Chawla, managing director – CFO / COO Asia, ICBC Standard Bank

Like Tan, Chawla came on board last June. He was previously COO for Asia at Mercuria Energy Trading. Chawla spent 16 years at J.P. Morgan – he joined in New York in 1999, became COO for North America commodities, and then moved to Singapore and Shanghai as commodities COO for Asia Pacific and China respectively. Chawla started his career as a copper options trader at the New York Mercantile Exchange before moving to BNP Paribas and Mizuho in NYC.

Clarence Chong, head of investment banking, Bank of China

Chong has been with Bank of China in Singapore since 2015 and leads its business across capital markets and corporate finance advisory. He has several years’ experience in Southeast Asian investment banking, most recently at Maybank, where he focused on “origination and structuring of debt and equity transactions across banking products and asset classes”. From 2011 to 2013 Chong was an ECM specialist at Religare Capital Markets, according to his online public profile. He holds a Masters in Corporate Finance from EDHEC Business School.

Lionel Lee, AVP, investment banking, China Construction Bank

While most of their senior front-office staff joined Chinese banks in Singapore after long stints at Western firms, mainland institutions could also provide a platform to fast track the careers of younger professionals. Lee is a case in point. He has risen to AVP level a mere three years after graduating with a BSc in Management Sciences from LSE. Lee’s first job was in bond origination at OCBC, according to his public profile.

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Image credit: MasterLu, Getty

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What finance and accounting staff really earn at Hong Kong banks in 2017

May 14, 2017, 11:00 am

≫ Next: Morning Coffee: Bad news for traders as 2017 unravels. Goldman luminaries party till the early hours

≪ Previous: Five people you need to know at Chinese banks in Singapore

If you’re a banking sector accountant in Hong Kong looking for a new job or promotion, it’s useful to know what sort of salary you should be aiming for.

We’ve reviewed 2017 pay surveys from three recruitment agencies in Hong Kong across six key accounting functions within global investment banks: financial control, internal audit, management reporting, product control, regulatory reporting, and tax.

We’ve then averaged out the numbers to produce the salary table below, which covers five seniority ranks from analyst to director.

Of the six accounting-related jobs, internal audit is the best to work in if you want a high senior salary across all levels. VPs earn HK$1,388k (US$178k) a year on average and directors take home HK$1,620k (US$208k).

The internal audit function is still experiencing strong hiring coupled with skill shortages, Sharad Chawla, former APAC head of audit for J.P. Morgan, told us earlier this year.

“A lot of banks are expanding their audit teams to include more subject-matter experts – experienced internal auditors or professionals from other business units with specific expertise in a certain product,” says Paula King, chief operating officer, Hong Kong, at recruiters Ambition. “Salary increments for changing jobs in audit in Hong Kong are typically 18% to 30%.”

Average regulatory reporting salaries are comparatively low at the senior end, but the gap may be bridged over the next few years.

King says 15% to 25% increases are already on offer if you move banks. “Most of the banks are increasing headcount to their HKMA regulatory reporting teams to support the tightening reporting requirements,” she adds.

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Image credit: South_agency, Getty

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Morning Coffee: Bad news for traders as 2017 unravels. Goldman luminaries party till the early hours

May 15, 2017, 12:57 am

≫ Next: Counting the ways in which the Labour Party wants to tax the City of London

≪ Previous: What finance and accounting staff really earn at Hong Kong banks in 2017

Total trading revenues for the five largest U.S. investment banks exceeded $21.3bn in the first quart of this year – around 15% higher than the previous and year-ago quarters. In fact, this was the best period for these banks in terms of total trading revenues since Q1 2014 – with J.P. Morgan leading the way. However, that positive momentum is already winding down and by some measures has started moving in the wrong direction.

Corporate-debt trading volumes dropped 20.4% in April from the prior quarter, with that month’s credit-trading volumes coming in lower than those in the month a year earlier. Since the end of the first quarter, company-bond trading has fallen 16% to $23.7bn a day on average, below the daily average of $25.2bn in the same period last year, according to Bloomberg.

The trading volumes of other types of debt, such as municipal bonds, Treasury and agency-backed mortgage-backed securities markets, have also dropped off, part and parcel of the lack of volatility, suddenly slowing corporate-debt issuance and growing fears of investor complacency.

This reduction in trading implies that the largest banks can expect significantly less robust earnings at their bond-trading units compared to recent months. Debt-trading revenues are a classically fickle stream of business for the biggest banks, and the great first-quarter bond boom appears to be starting to fade.

Traders might be better off taking their summer vacation early while the low volatility persists, putting a few hedges in place to ensure peace of mind while they’re sipping cocktails while lounging poolside.

Separately, for Goldman Sachs partners past and present, this past weekend was all about Woody.

Current and former Goldman executives congregated at the steak-and-game restaurant 34 Mayfair in London to say goodbye to Michael “Woody” Sherwood, the co-chief executive of the bank’s international business who is “retiring” at age 51.

Top New York-based Goldmanites made the trip across the pond, including CEO Lloyd Blankfein and presidents Harvey Schwartz and David Solomon. During an interview with the BBC a few hours earlier, Blankfein warned that the City “will stall” due to the risks of Brexit.

The celebratory dinner was organized by Woody’s former co-head Richard Gnodde and ex-Goldman stars like Jim “BRICS” O’Neill and Peter Weinberg, founder of M&A boutique Perella Weinberg Partners, were among the 40-plus people who attended, according to the Financial Times.

When it was time for the after-party, Woody led half a dozen or so Goldmanites around the corner to Loulou’s, the glamorous nightclub beneath Mayfair members’ club 5 Hertford Street that has been known to attract models and Hollywood stars, where the bankers lived it up until the wee hours.

Despite promises not to talk shop, inevitably they ended up chewing the fat about the reshuffle in the bank’s investment banking division, the biggest in at least a decade – Goldman promoted Gregg Lemkau and Marc Nachmann as two new co-heads of investment banking and relieved another co-head, Richard Gnodde, of the title.

Meanwhile:

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has the Volcker Rule squarely in his sights. (Bloomberg)

The U.K.’s Labour Party has proposed a financial transaction tax on derivatives trades, bond sales and market makers. (FT)

J.P. Morgan is buying property and will be creating jobs in Dublin thanks to – you guessed it – Brexit. (The Irish Times)

Deloitte’s “apprenticeship model” – hiring thousands of entry-level employees at the bottom of the pyramid to do grunt work expectating that most of them will bust their asses, then leave after they’ve learned a thing or two – is under serious threat from artificial intelligence. (Quartz)

Bank of America will unveil an artificially intelligent digital assistant named Erica, a chatbot that customers can communicate with through voice or text message via the bank’s mobile app, the first of various uses for AI that it is testing. (WSJ)

Bank of America Merrill Lynch will stop paying the big upfront bonuses that Wall Street brokerages have long used to lure talent, ending a costly practice following a similar move by UBS, which could lead competitors like Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo to end the practice as well. (Reuters)

Barclays CEO Jes Staley, who’s dealing with an avalanche of criticism for trying to find out the identity of a whistle-blower, responded to emails from an impostor pretending to be Chairman John McFarlane. (FT)

Recently fired FBI director James Comey found Bridgewater Associates’ culture difficult when he worked there, admitting that he was initially taken aback at being questioned aggressively by hot-shot juniors, although he did part on good terms with Ray Dalio. (New York Times)

Tipping point: The number of market indexes now exceeds the number of U.S. stocks. (Bloomberg)

This is what it’s like to work for Facebook’s technology team in Boston (a video). (Bloomberg)

Get yourself a head transplant. (Discover Magazine)

Follow @danbutchrwrites

Photo credit: Monopoly by TaxRebate.org.uk is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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Counting the ways in which the Labour Party wants to tax the City of London

May 15, 2017, 4:18 am

≫ Next: Some of HSBC’s most senior investment bankers have just teamed up for new private equity firm

≪ Previous: Morning Coffee: Bad news for traders as 2017 unravels. Goldman luminaries party till the early hours

If you still believe in opinion polls, the British Labour Party’s plans to raise revenue by taxing the City of London are entirely hypothetical – the polls suggest Labour’s not going to win anyway. If you’re skeptical of the pollsters, or interested in the tenor of the underlying debate, though, the Labour Party’s plans should be of interest. They suggest that banker-bashing is alive and well, in a fiscal sense at least.

The City of London already pays around £71bn a year in tax or 11.5% of the UK tax take according to the City UK. Our estimates suggest that this would rise by at least £10bn in direct taxes if the Labour Party were in power – and by more if taxation of private healthcare and private schooling is added in.

Combined with the uncertainty of Brexit, this may be another reason why demand for banking staff in London is seasonally low: recruiters say banks in the City are delaying hiring decisions while they to see how the election pans out.

A proposed tax on incomes in excess of £80k: expected to raise £4.5bn a year

Labour wants to raise £4.5bn a year by increasing the rate of marginal taxation on incomes above £80k. The new higher rate hasn’t been specified, but the Financial Times has calculated that raising £4.5bn would require a five percentage point rise in the tax rate, leading to a tax rate of 45% on incomes above this level.

150,000 people in the UK earn in excess of £80k. They’re not all in the City of London, but as the map below from Britain’s Office of National Statistics shows, it’s in London where the highest earners (marked by dark purple) are to be found and in the City of London and Mayfair in particular. As we noted previously, even new graduates earn around £70k in their first year of an M&A job at a top bank. Earlier, McDonnell called for anyone earning over £1m to publish their tax returns. There are thousands of people in this category working for U.S. banks in London alone.

Labour’s income tax policy has been criticized for ignoring the distribution of wealth, which is the key source of inequality in the UK today. While an income of £70k will put you in the top 5% of earners, you’d need net wealth totaling £1.5m to fall into the top 5% of UK asset holders.

ONS earnings map

A proposed “Robin Hood” Financial Transaction Tax: expected to raise £4.7bn to £5.6bn a year

Separately, Labour shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said yesterday that he wants to levy a tax on financial transactions. McDonnell is proposing an FF rate of 0.2% of the value of transactions for banks and other finance companies and 0.5% for non-financial businesses.

The EU has its own proposal to introduce a financial transaction tax, which is expected to be ready in draft form by the middle of this year. However, the EU’s proposal is to tax shares at 0.1% and derivatives at 0.01%. The Labour Party’s tax is therefore between two and 50 times higher than the EU’s, which doesn’t bode well when banks are debating where to locate trading floors after Brexit and already facing potentially higher costs from splitting their European operations.

A proposed increase in corporation tax from 19% to 26% (for the whole economy): expected to raise up to £19.4bn a year.

Labour’s proposed seven percentage point increase in corporation tax wouldn’t only impact the City, but it may well impact the City disproportionately. The thing is that UK banks with profits in excess of £25m already pay a corporation tax rate that’s eight percentage points higher than the economy as a whole , at 27%. Is Labour therefore proposing to hike this by another seven percentage points to 33%? This has not been clarified. However, there was previously talk – absent from the manifesto – of increasing corporation tax more steeply for companies with a high proportion of high earning staff, a policy which would hit banks hardest.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies notes that even if the UK’s rate of corporation tax is hiked to 26%, it will still be below the rates in France and Germany (at 34% and 30% respectively). At 33%, however, banks in the UK would have their profits taxed on a par with banks in Paris.

VAT on private school fees and increased tax on medical insurance

Higher school fees and more expensive medical insurance won’t impact the City directly, but they will impact City employees’ pockets. Labour wants to add VAT to school fees – a hike of 20% and to raise insurance premium tax on private healthcare by eight percentage points from 12% to 20%.

VAT on school fees will be used to fund free school meals for primary children. Higher tax on private healthcare will be used to fund free hospital parking.

A possible increase in the bank levy

Will the Labour Party also want to increase the bank levy? In January 2017, John McDonnell criticized the Conservative government’s policy of cutting the levy and hiking corporation tax. Would a Labour government hike corporation tax and hike the bank levy? Watch this space.

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Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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Photo credit: John McDonnell by Garry Knight is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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Some of HSBC’s most senior investment bankers have just teamed up for new private equity firm

May 15, 2017, 4:49 am

≫ Next: Deutsche’s new mission to make its bankers feel HAPPY

≪ Previous: Counting the ways in which the Labour Party wants to tax the City of London

James Simpson, the former co-head of advisory for EMEA at HSBC, has just teamed up with the bank’s ex-global head of financial sponsors to launch a private equity boutique in Mayfair.

Simpson is co-founder of DuCanon Capital Partners along with Matteo Canonaco, the former head of financial sponsors, sovereign wealth funds and IPC coverage at HSBC.

Canonaco left HSBC in June 2015 to launch his own venture, and started DuCanon in January 2016. Simpson joined the new venture in March, having left his role at HSBC in November last year.

DuCanon describes itself as “an advisory firm focused on delivering private and alternative capital solutions to support strategic events”. It’s based in Hay Hill in London’s Mayfair and has yet to either register with Companies House, or receive approval on the Financial Conduct Authority register. Simpson didn’t respond to requests for further comment.

Simpson joined HSBC in July 2014 from UBS where he head of financial sponsors and latterly focused on private equity clients. At HSBC he was managing a team of around 120 bankers. He spent 18 years at UBS in various senior roles. Canonaco, meanwhile, joined HSBC from Lazard in 2004 and spent 11 years at the bank before leaving in 2015 to go it alone.

Since the installation of former Goldman Sachs banker Matthew Westerman as head of HSBC’s global banking division in May last year, its investment bank has undergone some sweeping changes.

John Crompton, its head of corporate finance in London, is currently on sabbatical after leaving in June as did Florian Fautz, global head of M&A and Charles Spencer, its head of mid-market origination for the UK and Ireland.

HSBC announced plans to cut 100 senior investment banking jobs in January, alongside introducing a “much harsher” year end review and system that monitors how investment bankers spend their time.

Maybe senior bankers are therefore deciding that they’re better off using their skills under their own steam. It’s certainly a broader trend among senior investment bankers – Peter Bell, the former head of UK M&A at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, launched his own corporate finance boutique Cardean Bell in November and Andrew Kass, an MD in Deutsche Bank’s internet investment banking team, started a boutique called Blackwatch Advisors earlier this year.

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Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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Deutsche’s new mission to make its bankers feel HAPPY

May 15, 2017, 6:23 am

≫ Next: Guy Hands’ Terra Firma has made a major new hire from Nomura

≪ Previous: Some of HSBC’s most senior investment bankers have just teamed up for new private equity firm

There have been intimations of disgruntlement at Deutsche Bank. Ever since the bank withheld 2016 performance bonuses for mid-ranking and senior staff, people there have been a bit peevish. They have been leaving. Deutsche has been trying to persuade them to stay with offers of more money, bigger job titles and a promise that the “fun” is coming back.

Now, it seems that Deutsche may be trying a different approach. Employees at the bank in London say Deutsche has begun plastering the office with posters extolling them to feel all warm and fuzzy about the work they do there.

“The offices, lifts, turnstiles, lobby are plastered with adverts urging us to share the positive contributions we’ve been making,” says one employee. “The Winchester House lobby [of DB’s London office] has got a massive hashtag shaped screen saying ‘#PositiveImpact’ which directs us to an internal campaign page.”

The idea is that DB bankers will go to the bank’s internal page and add details of the good work they’ve been doing. A Deutsche Bank spokesman said, “Our new brand campaign focuses on how employees at Deutsche Bank are supporting their clients every day and are striving to deliver a positive impact to society in many ways.” Initially the campaign is for internal eyes only, but from autumn details of the positivity will be shared externally.

Handelsblatt reported last week that the new “#PositiveImpact” brand message is replacing the old “Passion to Perform” tagline. When translated into German, “Passion to Perform,” was unfortunately susceptible of transformation into, “Performance that will make you suffer.”

So far so good, except that some Deutsche Bankers see something else afoot in the new campaign. DB will soon conduct its annual employee satisfaction survey, the results to which will be released around July. Last year, the results were miserable, with fewer than 50% of people saying they felt proud to work there. By focusing on all the positive social improvements and client support undertaken by its employees, DB may be hoping to increase their enthusiasm while the survey’s taking place. And why not? It’s the kind of thing that worked for PWC.

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Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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Photo credit: Deutsche Bank Annual Media Conference / Jahresmedienkonferenz 2017 by Deutsche Bank is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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Guy Hands’ Terra Firma has made a major new hire from Nomura

May 15, 2017, 7:16 am

≫ Next: If you want to work for a hedge fund, you should really be at this pool party on Wednesday evening

≪ Previous: Deutsche’s new mission to make its bankers feel HAPPY

A former managing director at Nomura, who’s been out of banking for nearly two years, has just re-emerged in a senior role at Guy Hands’ Terra Firma.

Martin Bates, who was previously head of spread product sales for EMEA at Nomura, has just signed up to Terra Firma as investor relations director with responsibility for UK and European coverage. A Terra Firma spokesperson confirmed his appointment.

He’ll report into Paul Spillane, head of investor relations. Terra Firma has been bolstering its investor relations team as it prepares to raise capital again after nearly a decade sitting on dry powder. It hired Cathy Johnson, who previously worked for hedge fund Chenavari Investment Managers, as an investor relations director in August last year.

Bates has held various senior roles in the City, initially joining Morgan Stanley in 1992 before moving on to a managing director role at Bear Stearns in 2003 and then Royal Bank of Scotland in 2006. However, Bates left Nomura in 2015 for personal reasons and has now decided to return to financial services.

Before joining Nomura in 2013, Bates was head of credit sales at Lloyds Banking Group.

Terra Firma told us that it was “delighted to have such a seasoned professional join the team”.

Investor relations is also increasingly providing a new vocation for investment bankers looking for a change. Rick Lawrence, an executive director in the financial sponsors group at Goldman Sachs, joined PE firm Montagu Private Equity as investor relations director, while Morgan Stanley VP Owen Price joined Cybg Plc, the holding company that owns Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank in the UK, as a director in investor relations in March.

Terra Firma, meanwhile, has been hiring. It brought in 11 new people as it prepares to spend up to €1bn in capital, according to Financial News.

Despite making some recent senior hires whose background is in investment banking, founder Guy Hands said in January that Terra Firma has slashed graduate salaries by 50% – to £35k – and eliminated bonuses in order to dissuade those applicants with “short-term aims” who might also have tried to break into Goldman Sachs.

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Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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If you want to work for a hedge fund, you should really be at this pool party on Wednesday evening

May 15, 2017, 8:10 am

≫ Next: How I increased my pay 25x during 18 years in finance

≪ Previous: Guy Hands’ Terra Firma has made a major new hire from Nomura

If you aspire to work for the alternative asset management industry, there is really only one place to be this week: the Sky Bridge Alternatives Conference (SALT Conference) in Las Vegas. The annual hedge fund hoedown starts tomorrow and finishes Friday.

Attendees have historically been indulged with scantily clad women on stilts playing violins. This year they’ll be treated to Duran Duran as well as a “conversation” with former UK Prime Minister David Cameron and a discussion on the future of American politics with Jeb Bush.

The primary purpose of SALT, however, is networking. And the best place for networking during the conference is by the pool in the Bellagio Hotel. It’s here that attendees will schmooze along to the Gypsy Kings on Wednesday evening. It’s also here that they’ll participate in the after-party on Friday.

If you’re trying to inveigle your way into a hedge fund job, the Bellagio pool is therefore probably the place to do it. There are around 430 investment firms attending SALT this year and many of their representatives will be getting down by the water in two days’ time. The only bad news is that tickets cost $9k+. At this stage, they are also completely sold out. Maybe next year?

Meanwhile, here we have a shot taken by the Bellagio pool at a previous SALT event.

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Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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How I increased my pay 25x during 18 years in finance

May 15, 2017, 9:27 am

≫ Next: What recruiters in SG and HK can’t stand seeing in bankers’ cover letters

≪ Previous: If you want to work for a hedge fund, you should really be at this pool party on Wednesday evening

I’ve been in finance for 18 years. I worked my way up to become managing director at a leading U.S. investment bank and I now work in funds. If you play your finance career correctly, your pay can increase exponentially. After 18 years, I’m now earning 25 times more than when I started.

Not everyone achieves this kind of parabolic lift though. If you want to do it, you need to play the game correctly. This is how I did it.

I saw the bigger picture

When you’re working in finance, it can be easy to become greedy. I’ve seen many young guys make the mistake of becoming overly zealous about the next big sale. They focus on quick wins and in doing so they lose perspective.

When you’re in this industry, success isn’t just about the “next thing”. Sure, reaching a short-term goal is going to make you feel good. But what’s more important is to focus on the goals of the firm and the goals of the industry as a whole.

Only long-term goals are going to bring you lasting success. If you think ahead and start laying the ground for the next task before your boss even assigns it and if you start finishing projects before you are asked to, you will go far. When I realized this, my career started taking off and I made VP at 28.

We had a saying that proved to be true time and time again: “You have to do the job for a year before they give you the title.”

The key to promotions is to show your bosses you can excel at that next role, before you even get there. You must learn to think independently, to prioritise the company’s needs, and most important of all, be confident in your abilities.

I asked for criticism

Everyone makes mistakes. You’re not going to be perfect. If you make a mistake, don’t take it to heart and beat yourself up over it. This isn’t going to get you anywhere.

Learn from it.

Constructive criticism is not something to be ashamed of. Receiving some not-so-great feedback on a project does not mean you’re awful at your job. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get fired and it doesn’t mean your co-workers are laughing at you. Be resilient.

Believe me, nothing can ruin a career faster than taking criticism personally. So, don’t be afraid to ask others for their opinion before they offer it. This shows true desire to improve, and that will get you far.

I welcomed change

Finance is a fast-moving industry. Change is continual and ubiquitous. Being adaptable will set you apart from others. Remember that nothing is permanent. You need to be on the lookout for new opportunities within the company.

When you work on Wall Street you are always learning. It’s one of the things you’ll learn to love about the industry. You are constantly expanding your horizons, constantly growing, constantly challenging yourself. If you’re not the kind of person who’s adaptive to change, this probably isn’t the career for you.

If you’re not searching for new opportunities, you’re probably never going to move up within your company. This means your income’s not going see much of a change as well. You’re going to remain stagnant. Without change, it’s impossible to increase your earnings.

I went for it

In closing, don’t be afraid to ask your bosses for what you want. There’s no shame in asking for a raise or a promotion. I’ve found that for the most part, you need to vocalize what you want.

You can’t assume that people know what’s important to you. So go communicate your needs and wants and what you’re prepared to achieve them. No one can guess what you want. It’s your responsibility to own your career.

Put together a business plan for your life and career. Relentlessly execute it. Then watch the money roll in.

The author is a former Goldman Sachs managing director and blogger at the site What I Learnt on Wall Street.

Follow @MadameButcher
Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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What recruiters in SG and HK can’t stand seeing in bankers’ cover letters

May 15, 2017, 10:24 am

≫ Next: Meet the Singapore interns making apps, not coffee, at SCB, DBS and OCBC

≪ Previous: How I increased my pay 25x during 18 years in finance

In the current job market in Singapore and Hong Kong, finance recruiters are typically facing no shortage of applications for each vacancy. As a result, they’re looking for any excuse to whittle down their candidate pile – don’t let your cover letter give them one.

While a great cover letter won’t, on its own merits, convince a recruiter to recommend you for an interview, a poor one could jeopardise your entire candidacy.

Here’s what banking-sector recruiters in Singapore and Hong Kong don’t like seeing in cover letters.

Too long!

This is possibly the worst mistake made by candidates writing cover letters for banking jobs in Asia. “Asian markets are very dynamic and recruiters tend to be very busy; we just don’t need a lengthy cover letter,” says Eunice Ng, director of talent acquisition at headhunters Avanza Consulting in Hong Kong.

Too short!

Don’t take it to the other extreme – “I attach my CV for your consideration” doesn’t constitute a cover letter. “In contrast to Western markets, too many applicants in Asia use the cover letter just to enclose their CV, with less emphasis on convincing the hiring manager about their application,” says Matthieu Imbert-Bouchard, managing director of recruiters Robert Half in Singapore.

Don’t introduce yourself in your cover letter

Too many candidates in Asia write cover letters as though they are a general introduction to themselves and their career – a friendly “hello” to a recruiter. “Forget the introduction – the cover letter should instead address why you’d be right for the role,” says Stanley Teo, a director at Profile Search & Selection in Singapore.

Get to the point

Identify the main reason you are right for the job and spell it out in the first two sentences. “Here in Asia recruiters have to read through a prodigious number of applications so it’s essential to get straight to the point,” says Jay Abeyasinghe, an associate director of financial services at recruiters Morgan McKinley in Singapore.

Don’t overlook gaps in your career

If you’ve taken time out for study, travel or anything else, your cover letter is the place to (briefly) explain these employment gaps. “Be honest about any potential concern and turn the situation to your favour by describing how your skills have stayed relevant,” says Imbert-Bouchard from Robert Half.

Shout about your soft skills in your cover letter

Banks in Asia are placing more emphasis on achieving a match between a candidate’s personality and their own workplace culture. If there’s a particular soft skill or personality trait that you think is relevant for a particular bank, highlight it in your cover letter rather than in your (achievements-focused) resume, advises Imbert-Bouchard.

Don’t say you’re a team player

Avoid making your soft skills too generalist: recruiters will think you’ve just sent them a standard letter. “Generic cover letters are the worst and are redundant as I can just read the stuff off your CV,” says Angela Kuek, director of search firm The Meyer Consulting Group in Singapore. “Use specific examples and talk about your unique selling points. Everyone says they’re good communicators or good team players – make yours different,” adds Ben Batten, country general manager of recruitment firm Volt in Singapore.

Don’t duplicate

Remember, you’re pitching your suitability for the role, not simply listing random skills already on your resume. “Duplicating information which is on your CV isn’t a good idea and is unlikely to be read by recruiters,” says Abeyasinghe from Morgan McKinley. “So keep to the point and use a cover letter primarily to address specific issues which the CV hasn’t touched on.”

Don’t show off in your cover letter

Resist the temptation to show off or, worse, embellish the truth in a way you felt unable to do within the formulaic confines of a CV template. “Some cover letters simply come across as a hefty piece of bragging and this doesn’t reflect well on the candidate,” says Abeyasinghe. “If you apply for a sales role and have never done sales in your career, please don’t say you have a ‘sales track record’ just to get the attention of the recruiter,” says Teo from Profile.

Don’t dumb down your cover letter because you’re applying via a recruiter

“There shouldn’t be much difference between a cover letter sent to a recruiter versus one sent directly to a bank”, says Imbert-Bouchar from Robert Half.

Follow @simonmortlock

Image credit: Getty

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Meet the Singapore interns making apps, not coffee, at SCB, DBS and OCBC

May 15, 2017, 10:33 am

≫ Next: Morning Coffee: Goldman Sachs’ secret hoard of talented 20 year-olds. RBC hiring senior bankers

≪ Previous: What recruiters in SG and HK can’t stand seeing in bankers’ cover letters

Forget spending your internship making coffee and proofreading pitch books. This year, three of the largest banks in Singapore – Standard Chartered, DBS and OCBC – are hiring students into technology and innovation-focused internships that allow them to tackle real business challenges.

DBS took on 24 penultimate-year students into its UNI.CORN internship this month. Over the next 12 weeks they will conceptualise, test and develop prototypes to address “problems” faced by the firm.

Similarly, 26 students have just joined OCBC’s six-month-long FRANKpreneurship scheme. Using cloud-based applications from Google and Adobe, they will also try to find innovation solutions to tasks assigned to them by the bank.

Stan Chart, meanwhile, announced earlier in May that it is teaming up with NUS to offer new internships to “promising students” enrolled in the university’s Information Systems and Business Analytics degrees.

While these initiatives may provide students with a more enjoyable intern experience, they are also designed to address a serious shortage of candidates for graduate-level technology and digital-banking jobs in Singapore.

“We don’t have enough technology graduates in Singapore – banks should have been doing this earlier,” says Samantha Ding, associate director of technology at Kerry Consulting. “But these internships are focused on innovation and digital transformation, where there’s a growing need for talent, so it’s good that banks now have concrete plans to groom graduates.”

As in other markets, banks in Singapore are increasingly competing with technology firms for graduate talent. “Younger people who consider themselves pure technologists still prefer to work for tech companies rather than banks,” says Vince Natteri, director of search firm Pinpoint Asia.

Natteri believes, however, that the “threat from fintech firms” is motivating the banks to offer innovation-focused internships.

“Younger technologists are more attracted to start-ups now than in the recent past because they think the environment will suit them better – banks are the places where older people work,” says Natteri. “But by having innovation-focused internships, banks are speaking directly to a younger audience. Packaging them into their normal summer internship programme wouldn’t have the same appeal.”

“The duration of the internships enables teams to go through several iterations of their tech-enabled business solutions, in the same way that a lean start-up would innovate,” adds Jon Scheele, a former senior manager of research and innovation at ANZ in Singapore, who now runs a fintech consultancy.

The DBS and OCBC internships culminate in students demonstrating their prototypes to senior managers, in a similar fashion to a fintech start-up trying to pitch its products to a bank.

Banks in Singapore are also trying to encourage students from across disciplines to move into various jobs in digital banking, not all of which require coding skills. The DBS and OCBC initiatives are therefore open to people who aren’t studying computer science.

“This is to help address the multi-disciplinary nature of today’s business challenges in banking, and to adopt agile ways of working,” says Scheele. “Banks recognise that the skunkworks model – a separate innovation unit independent from the rest of the firm – has its limitations. The emphasis is now more on interdependence with other departments to encourage collaboration across the bank.”

But will these internships actually increase the talent pool when banks come to recruit graduates?

“This is a long-term play, not an immediate solution,” says Ding from Kerry. “But special care has been put into their design to make them attractive and encourage people to apply back for full-time positions. I believe they will ultimately bring tremendous benefits as they show a commitment to innovation.”

“Once banks can combine their image of being stable tech employers with the excitement of a start-up environment, they should become more appealing to young people. The main problem with fintech firms is that they’re considered unstable and risky. Banks need to use this to their advantage,” says Natteri from Pinpoint Asia.

The internships are at least already proving popular with students. DBS and OCBC received about 1,000 and 500 applications respectively for their 2017 intakes.

Follow @simonmortlock

Image credit: scyther5, Getty

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Morning Coffee: Goldman Sachs’ secret hoard of talented 20 year-olds. RBC hiring senior bankers

May 15, 2017, 10:28 pm

≫ Next: Fintech is about to become a big part of the CFA exams. This is what you should know

≪ Previous: Meet the Singapore interns making apps, not coffee, at SCB, DBS and OCBC

Investment banks have got a problem, and they know it. Their problem is that they really like to hire people from elite universities with elite extracurricular activities on their résumés, in whom their current staff can see their younger selves. – But these aren’t necessarily the best people for banks to be hiring. Their best recruits may actually be at third tier universities working part time in places like bubble tea shops.

Students at Baruch College, a public college in City University of New York are a case in point. While banks are out there flaunting their wares to elite students at Wharton, Harvard and MIT, the Wall Street Journal points out that it’s Baruch students who inconveniently keep winning at trading games. For example, last year, Baruch won first, second and third place at MIT’s annual trading face-off. Three months ago, they also won the Rotman International Trading Competition, beating students from Columbia and Carnegie Mellon.

As one Baruch professor points out, his college doesn’t attract typical finance types. – He says Baruch students are more likely to have spent their holidays selling bubble tea than completing internships. However, Baruch has an outstanding finance club which offers its students excellent training for trading careers. Some banks appear to have spotted this secret cache of talent: Goldman Sachs has 300 Baruch alumni currently listed in LinkedIn; ‘white shoe’ Morgan Stanley only has 30+. That’s a shame. Banks that only hire elites are missing out.

Separately, RBC has already hired 10 senior bankers in the U.S. this year. That’s impressive, but less than the 14 it hired by this time last year. The Canadian bank is fussy: “You can’t attain perfection. But I am always amazed by the lack of diligence that some other firms have when it comes to people. We do our diligence,” Blair Fleming, head of RBC Capital Markets in the U.S. tells Business Insider.

Meanwhile:

Not all jobs at Goldman Sachs are for ‘engineers’ and M&A bankers and sales-traders. The firm is also an employer of call center (centre if you’re in the UK) staff working for its Marcus retail banking brand. It seems there are up to 170 people in Goldman’s call center in Salt Lake City. (Salt Lake Tribune)

How to proceed when you lose your job at J.P. Morgan and earn a notorious nickname: learn to code and set up a website exonerating yourself. This is what ‘London Whale’ Bruno Iksil is busy with. (Financial News)

J.P. Morgan’s taken out a lease on a new Dublin office that will double its staff in Ireland to 1,000. (Guardian)

Clearing houses could stay in London after Brexit if they were regulated by the ECB. This kind of arrangement already exists with the U.S. (Bloomberg)

Oliver Wyman thinks Brexit will reduce banks return on equity by 5% in Europe. (Financial Times)

An ex-KKR director just set up a new investment firm called Moonlake Capital in London. (Financial News)

“I was unable to do any work, I had a Transatlantic flight.” (Bloomberg)

Long distance whispering is a thing: You can use ultrasound to beam your words to someone 30m away without anyone hearing what you said. (New Scientist)

Follow @MadameButcher
Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

“”

Photo credit: bubble tea – nw 23rd by mike krzeszak is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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Fintech is about to become a big part of the CFA exams. This is what you should know

May 16, 2017, 1:50 am

≫ Next: Barclays has just made a big new rates trading hire in the U.S.

≪ Previous: Morning Coffee: Goldman Sachs’ secret hoard of talented 20 year-olds. RBC hiring senior bankers

Get ready Chartered Financial Analyst candidates: fintech has hit the CFA exam, and it will only get bigger.

Machine learning, big data, robo-advisers – all of this is set to become part of the CFA exams from 2019. Currently, fintech is already part of the curriculum – integrated into other sectors of the exam – but it will be a subject in its own right within two years.

Fintech is a broad category, so in describing the landscape the CFA Institute groups it into four topic areas, according to Lisa Plaxco, the head of the CFA Program at the CFA Institute.

“We have a distributed model, so fintech sprinkled throughout the curriculum, rather than conflating different tech advances, we’ve grouped subjects by the topic areas that are most relevant,” she said.

The first category includes financial analysis, big data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and algorithmic trading.

“As a profession, we’ve been building models since the early 90s, but big data sets are very different from what we’ve studied historically and unstructured data has become more important as well,” Plaxco said.

The second area includes technology’s impact on portfolio management and private wealth management, including the use of roboadvisers.

“That is bigger news for the investment management industry in terms of their job security, but it has less impact on the average investor who is still making pretty simple portfolio management decisions,” Plaxco said. “We are seeing some move toward automation in the institutional space as well.”

The third category deals with how capital flows through the system, including peer-to-peer lending, shadow banking and crowdfunding. The fourth area includes market infrastructure, mobile payments, payment systems, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, blockchain for settlements, high-frequency trading and financial regulators’ use of technology.

“We’re still hearing loud and clear from the practice analysis that we do that how we treat the traditional quantitative material in the exams is still relevant, so this is additive, not replacing that,” said Plaxco.

The objective is to make sure level I candidates have an appreciation of what is fintech, its relevance for their careers, why do we care and how does it fit into market knowledge. Quant methods already appear heavily in level I and also factor into level II but drops out of level III, as the latter is much more about portfolio management and private wealth management. High-frequency and algorithmic trading we added to level II two years ago. Soon, fintech questions will span all three levels of the CFA exam more widely.

For example, the CFA Institute plans to focus on concepts such as co-integration, weighted regression and machine learning algorithms, as well as non-numeric and unstructured data.

“Fintech is already integrated widely into preexisting curriculum topics, but for the major topics where it makes sense, it would be integrated into the curriculum, calling out the fintech elements of trading, private wealth and quantitative methods,” Plaxco said. “For example, covering the criticality not just of building models but doing an assessment of the quality of algorithms, speaking to risks such as data mining and fitting a model that explains the past but does have explanatory power for the future.

In addition to beefing up the questions related to fintech and making its relevance explicit, the CFA will introduce new content with specific information about various fintech categories in a new series of introductory readings focused on increasing professionalism. The earliest it would come into the curriculum is 2019.

“We describe the investment management profession as it exists,” Plaxco said. “We’re not looking to judge whether something is a good trend or a bad trend – we’re not describing one approach as better than another.

“We’re simply recognizing that these types of strategies has risen to a point of prominence that it is appropriate to call them out in the curriculum,” she said.

David Schatsky is a managing director at Deloitte responsible for analyzing emerging technology and business trends such as quantum computing, robot process automation, augmented reality and virtual reality. He said it makes sense that the CFA Institute is placing a greater emphasis on fintech.

“Artificial intelligence is transforming every field, none more so than finance,” Schatsky said. “A growing number of tasks that previously only people could perform are now being done, and done well, by computers.
Follow @danbutchrwrites

Photo credit: imagedepotpro/GettyImages
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↧

Barclays has just made a big new rates trading hire in the U.S.

May 16, 2017, 3:26 am

≫ Next: An ED quit Goldman Sachs for a crowdfunding company

≪ Previous: Fintech is about to become a big part of the CFA exams. This is what you should know

Barclays’ build-out of its U.S. trading business has begun. It’s just poached the head of U.S. inflation trading from BNP Paribas to lead its business in New York.

Robert Tzucker has just joined Barclays as head of USD inflation trading after just over three years in a similar role at BNP Paribas.

This is Tzucker’s second spell at Barclays. He originally worked for the bank between August 2003 and April 2009. He started out in fixed income research at Barclays – having just completed an MBA at Carnegie Mellon University – but switched across to trading in 2006.

He’s a specialist in treasury inflation protected securities (TIPS), a derivative product designed to protect against negative affects of inflation, as well as other inflation-linked securities in the U.S. market.

Barclays has been shaking up its markets business. Last week it announced a flurry of new appointments, including installing its new head of the investment bank Tim Throsby at the top of its sales and trading operation, displacing global head of markets, Joe Corcoran.

However, Reuters also said that Barclays is about to starting hiring 50-100 people globally for its markets business with a focus on rates, foreign exchange and equities.

Jes Staley said during that bank’s Q1 investor call that the U.S. rates business was a particular poor performer and we understand that Barclays is keen to improve upon this. Expect more rates hires in New York in the coming weeks.

Follow @paultclarke

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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**March 2016: Jes Staley’s strategy for a transatlantic investment bank focused on investment banking and sales and trading**