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It’s a tough time to be a very senior cash equities salesperson who’s out of the market. If you’re a mid-ranking electronic equities salesperson or trader who’s in a job, however, you’re in luck. Banks are hiring.

Both Citi and J.P. Morgan have recently made director and executive director-level additions to their electronic teams in London.

Citi is understood to have hired Joseph Sidibe, a highly experienced electronic equities trading from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Sidibe had been at BAML 10 years, after joining from State Street in 2007. BAML confirmed his exit although Citi didn’t respond to a query about his arrival. Sidibe’s said to be on gardening leave and is expected to join in London office in the coming months.

J.P. Morgan pulled a director out of BAML. It’s just hired Nikki Acton, a director and BAML’s head of international electronic sales in New York. Acton’s joining as an executive director and head of global liquidity solutions in J.P. Morgan’s New York office.

The moves come as various banks strengthen their electronic trading capabilities ahead of MiFID II and in response to rising equities revenues and squeezed and margins. As we reported earlier this month, Barclays is said to be rethinking its U.S. equities trading business and has brought in John Neary, former head of equities trading for the Americas to consult on the project. Joe MeCane, Barclays’ former head of electronic equities quit for Citadel Securities a few weeks ago, leaving a hole at the top of the business, which has been problematic for the British bank ever since the dark pool scandal of 2014.

One headhunter who covers electronic equities trading in London says UBS and Goldman are also looking to strengthen their teams. “Electronic trading is still an area of growth,” he says.

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The private equity and venture capital firm Vista Equity Partners acquired financial services technology company D+H and merged it with its portfolio company Misys earlier this month. It claims that the combined entity – rebranded as Finastra – is now the third-largest ‘fintech’ company in the world.

With around 10,000 employees across offices in 42 countries, surely there will be redundancies – there always seem to be opportunities to cut costs by trimming headcount after a merger or acquisition. Despite the fact that it will take some time to figure out the exact structure of the combined firm, Finastra is currently hiring in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and across Europe and Asia-Pacific.

The company says it wants to hire people in sales, ideally with banking experience, finance, legal, IT support and human resources.

Above all, Finastra is recruiting software developers to work on its open Fusion software architecture and cloud ecosystems.

Finastra partners with a number of universities and attends on-campus events across the globe and has a number of internship and graduate programs in place – in fact, the firm’s goal is for 60% of new hires each year to be at the graduate level. A high proportion of its graduate hires work in software development.

Each year, Finastra gets around 114,000 applications and the firm has hired around 2,400 people over the last year, not counting internal moves – meaning just 2% of applicants got a job offer.

Historically, the core recruiting focus of both Misys and D+H was on attracting candidates with expertise in programming languages such as C++ and Java. However, Finastra wants to evolve its technology stack and move towards a more dynamic, cloud-ready IT environment, so it increasingly wants to hire Maven, Sonar and Jenkins developers. Finastra says that those platforms allow higher architectural flexibility compared to C++ and the right balance between adding features in-house and enabling a customizable “Platform as a Service” model. The firm is sill hiring Java programmers as well.

Banks deciding between buy vs. build

Martin Häring began his career at Sun Microsystems, which sold computers, software and IT services and that created the Java programming language. After working there for more than a decade, Oracle acquired the company and Häring jumped to Akamai Technologies, a cloud services provider. In 2013, he became the chief marketing officer of Misys, and he was promoted to the CMO of Finastra earlier this month.

Häring says that Misys and D+H are complementary, with only 10% to 15% overlap from a product standpoint. The reason is that Misys clients are mostly tier-one, two and three banks – it claims to work with 48 of the 50 biggest banks worldwide – whereas D+H mainly serves tier-four and five institutions, primarily community banks and credit unions.

While his department hires demand generation, field marketing, corporate marketing and communications professionals without financial services experience, Finastra requires solutions and product marketing professionals to have experience working in the financial sector, preferably for a bank.

“You can’t create good marketing if you don’t know the personas you are marketing to, so we look to hire people coming from banks or other financial services companies, or who have been analysts covering the financial services sector and are deep experts,” Häring says.

He believes that the current competition between fintech firms and traditional banks is unnecessary.

“If you’re smart, open a platform and let fintechs integrate seamlessly with your apps to create new innovation,” Häring says. “Banks that believe in closed proprietary software will fall behind – innovation happens outside of the banks and they need to leverage this.”

Moving to a more open software development model would also mean that banks would employ fewer in-house developers and data analytics professionals.

“In the past, banks had a huge tendency to build it themselves over past 10 or 15 years – banks have huge development departments, some with more than 10,000 developers, but since the breakdown in 2008, now cost is something they need to dial down on,” Häring said. “They’re feeling huge cost and margin pressures, and many can’t afford to have so many in-house developers and vendors, so they’re consolidating vendors and their own development efforts.

“In every industry, 95% of innovation is happening outside of your company, and if you don’t leverage that, you’re missing the trick,” he said. “Do you really want to trust that your 5% is what you really need, or would you like to look outside at fintechs and [independent] developers to create innovation on your behalf?

“The demand for faster time to market and cost cutting drives banks toward buy and away from build.”
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Housing is a huge topic in London. The city is famously expensive and the Grenfell Tower tragedy has served to highlight the inadequacy of its accommodation for the least advantaged. If you’re an intern an investment bank you’re already one of the privileged few, but you’ll also have 10 to 12 weeks in which living quarters are going to be the last thing on your mind. So, where do you stay when work finally ends?

The answer, according many of the interns we’ve spoken to, is “with your parents”. A surprisingly high number of investment banks’ summer analysts in London are either Londoners or from the London suburbs – and as is typical of the new cost-conscious attitude among young bankers, they’re not about to spend their money on rent.

“I’m just living at home and commuting in and out,” one typical intern tells us. “It’s much easier that way. A lot of interns do this now.”

European interns clearly don’t have this option. However, banks will help, to a degree.

Banks in London don’t actually arrange accommodation for their summer analysts. This level of provision is reserved for spring interns, who are typically first year university students and considered less able to fend for themselves. By the time you’re a second or third year student and a summer analyst, you’re expected to make your own arrangements, which banks will subsidize.

Some banks are more generous than others. At Barclays, for example, summer analysts are given £2k ($2.6k) to cover accommodation during their nine week internships (graduates at Barclays are offered £6k to get settled when they join full-time). Elsewhere, the rate varies between £1k and £2k. Interns aren’t obliged to spend this money on living costs – those who stay with their parents are able to save it up or spend it on a post-internship holiday (hence the incentive to linger at home).

When interns live in rented accommodation, banks usually provide a reference and act as the guarantor of their rent. Favourite banking intern hangouts include Liberty Court in Clerkenwell or Claredale House in London’s Bethnal Green. Claredale boasts its popularity with interns at UBS, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Ernst & Young, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and Barclays Capital and charges from £171 to £183 a week. (It was here that Bank of America intern Moritz Erhardt was staying when he died in 2014). Interns with more money, or a more generous living allowance, are more likely to choose Pure City London. Based in the Barbican and costing from £265 to £470 a week, Pure City tells us it has interns from “all industries” staying during the summer months.

Although you might blow all your allowance – and maybe more – paying for accommodation instead of staying in your childhood bedroom, interns who’ve splashed out say it’s worth it. “If you want to be in the office at 6.30am or 7am and you’re living an hour away with your parents, you’re going to need to get up at 4.30am,” says one. “You’re going to have a long commute and a lack of sleep, and neither will help you secure a long term job.”

As for the social scene in the intern accommodation, there is none: “Most people come back to their apartment/room and sleep,” one intern says.

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David Waill, the head of leveraged loan management at Deutsche Bank, has taken the well-trodden path towards private equity late on in his career.

Waill, who spent 18 years at Deutsche Bank, has just joined private equity firm Benefit Street Partners in New York as a managing director.

Investment banks’ leveraged finance divisions are prime hunting grounds for private equity firms, but most bankers make the move at analyst or associate level. A buy-side move is far more rare at the senior end of the career ladder, but Waill has made the switch after 28 years in investment banking.

Benefit Street Partners is a $13bn credit manager that offers leveraged loans, high yield, structured credit and commercial real estate debt. It has around 70 employees and is part of private equity firm Providence Equity.

Waill worked at Deutsche Bank for 18 years, having joined from Merrill Lynch in 1999, where he was also a managing director. He started at Merrill Lynch in 1989 after completing an MBA at New York University.

There’s been an unusual amount of movement among senior leverage finance bankers this year. This week, Toby Ali, the co-head of leveraged finance at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in EMEA, left to join Citigroup. Simon Francis, who previously worked at Credit Suisse, was also hired by Citigroup as co-head of leveraged finance earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Ray Doody, the had of EMEA leveraged finance at J.P. Morgan, left in January and turned up as HSBC’s head of leveraged and acquisition finance.

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Most industries are struggling to find data science expertise, but Wall Street especially has particularly keen to hire in this area. Data has always been a big part of the finance industry, and over the last few years, top financial services firms have ramped up their spending, investing millions of dollars to recruit and train data scientists.

The skills you need to become a data scientist at a bank or hedge fund

There are constant debates about how to become a data scientist – whether to study data science, mathematics or statistics in a university, try to teach yourself or attend a boot camp. No matter how you decide to proceed, you must learn some skills one way or another in order to get hired and have a successful career.

Most people who want to have a career in data science have a background in math. Basic algebra, statistics and calculus form the foundation for understanding this field. In addition, it’s recommended that you learn C++, Java and Python or at least have a basic understanding of those programming languages. Most data scientists suggest being fluent in Python, and if you’ve already mastered those languages, then learn R, PHP, C or JavaScript.

Data scientists typically have a certain specialty and tend to take online courses or attend boot camps to become proficient in data mining, data munging, data analysis and machine learning. Different industries have different needs for data scientists and their respective specialties. Those who know they want to work on Wall Street can narrow their studies a bit; however, the finance industry seems to be recruiting pretty much anyone who specializes in data science.

How Wall Street deploys data scientists

Data science teams are relatively new at most Wall Street firms, which means whoever wants to work as a data scientist in a financial company must be a leader. A data scientist in finance is still a new, yet highly sought-after position, so someone that understands how to harness big data in a financial setting and with the ability to hire and manage a team is a dream candidate for these big firms.

Banks and financial institutions have the cash flow to hire a data science team, but many lack the knowledge and understanding of what exactly they need. Plus, Wall Street firms are in competition with each other to create better algorithms to make trades and build out highly functioning technology, making the desire to find a strong team even more immediate. That means the right candidates can expect a bidding war for their services.

Information security

Security on Wall Street is a top concern, so companies are moving data scientists onto teams that solve issues such as cyber security breaches and identity theft. Data scientists can create algorithms to detect uncommon behavior and alert the necessary parties. Furthermore, data scientists are applying machine learning concepts, so these algorithms constantly learn and improve. These teams are being tasked with improving models that detect malicious behavior company-wide. From internal threats to customer security, data and machine learning is improving safety.

Furthermore, data scientists are applying machine learning concepts so that the algorithms they create constantly learn and improve. These teams are being tasked with improving models that detect malicious behavior company-wide. From internal threats to customer security, data and machine learning is improving firms’ safety and reducing reputational risk.

Those interested in financial risk management or cyber security should focus on machine learning models and frameworks, such as Mahout, predictive analytics and UNIX tools.

Research and development (R&D)

R&D in finance is another area where Wall Street needs data scientists. Companies can create financial indicators through unstructured text, so they use data scientists for text mining. Scientists collect text and analyze the content and its sentiment to produce market indicators.

Data is used in pricing and risk assessment as well through machine learning algorithms that can aggregate price estimates, assign a value and understand discrepancies based on the market.

R&D is a broad category in financial firms, but those interested should study machine learning.

Data science is infiltrating Wall Street

There are many other avenues individuals can go down to grab a data science job on Wall Street. Data scientists are constantly evolving, as certain elements of the industry become automated and new techniques arise. Large Wall Street firms are hiring quickly to build robust data science teams to maintain their competitive position in the market and improve their technology infrastructure.

However, data science teams are new concepts; therefore, individuals taking on that role at a bank or hedge fund must be able to evolve and adapt to structural changes. Machine learning is a highly in-demand skill for Wall Street, so those that want to secure a place in finance can smartly invest in learning new algorithms and techniques in that field. That said, there is still a need for more basic skills as well.

Eventually, data science knowledge will become the norm among Wall Street staff, but for now, it will help to separate you from the pack during your job search.

Vivian Zhang is the founder and CTO of the NYC Data Science Academy, an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University and the co-founder of SupStat Analytics and the NYC Open Data meetup. She is a former bio-statistician and scientific programmer at the Brown University Center for Statistical Sciences.
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Are Deutsche Bank’s dire bonuses for 2016 finally driving people away? After insisting that staff turnover was no greater than usual in the first quarter, DB seems to have lost more than its fair share of senior in the past week. David Waill, the U.S. head of leveraged loan management, has just joined a private equity fund. Jim McCrindle, a director in U.S. FX sales, is understood to have left for BAML. Matthew Geh, a senior European technology banker has left for J.P. Morgan. And chief economist Joe LaVorgna has absconded to “elsewhere.”

Those who haven’t left have been bought back. One of Deutsche’s most senior U.S. traders was understood to be on the cusp of joining Barclays this week, but has seemingly been offered a big inducement to stick around instead. Deutsche insiders talk of massive buybacks whenever significant people try to escape: a director in the London investment bank reportedly achieved a 35% hike in his salary plus a guaranteed bonus; a managing director in Sam Wisnia’s macro business was allegedly bid-back $3m after earning $1.5m last year.

Nonetheless, people are leaving and Deutsche Bank is hiring – both for replacement and for growth. Some of those hires have raised eyebrows on the Street. While Deutsche Bank itself counts as a second tier bank, several of its recent recruits have come from organizations considerably lower down the hierarchy.

Take, for example, the recent senior additions to Deutsche’s U.S. healthcare team – from BMO Capital Markets and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Or Garret Rowan, who joined as a loans trader from US bank. Or Jonathan Rose, who joined as head of metals and mining in the Americas, also from BMO.

“Deutsche Bank always used to hire from the creme de la creme,” comments one observer, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s like they can’t get those people any more,” she adds.

Deutsche Bank declined to comment for this article. However, it would be wrong to suggest that the bank is only able to hire from less prestigious firms. This week alone it’s announced the addition of Bill White from Citi as head of U.S. life sciences and Jeff Vergamini from J.P. Morgan as an MD in M&A. Robin Rousseau from Goldman Sachs is joining in September as head of M&A in EMEA. And Angus Yang from Citi is joining soon as head of prime brokerage in Asia.

Nonetheless, headhunters suggest it’s easier to get into DB than it was and that the bank has opened its doors to recruits from rivals who wouldn’t previously have been granted admission. One of those recruits is Jacob Bourne, who joined from Scotiabank at the height of Deutsche’s troubles in October 2016. Bourne is head of U.S. inflation trading at DB – the business which reportedly made a $60m loss earlier this year.

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Chinese banks already dominate equity capital markets hiring in Hong Kong. Now they’re ramping up their recruitment in debt capital markets, too.

“Compared with last year, I’m seeing an increase in requirements for DCM candidates in Hong Kong, with Chinese Banks doing the majority of the hiring here,” says Sandeep Mohanan, manager of front-office financial services at recruiters Morgan McKinley.

There’s a catch, however. Chinese banks in Hong Kong are recruiting mainly at associate to junior vice president level – “senior bankers are still in low demand”, says Mohanan.

CITIC Securities, China Construction Bank, China Securities, CICC, ICBC, Haitong Securities, Bank of China, and Guotai Junan are looking for DCM staff, say headhunters. The firms all feature in the top-10 banks for local currency Asian DCM so far this year, according to Dealogic.

Junior DCM execution teams at Chinese Banks are now being bulked up “mainly to cope with an extremely high workload”, adds Ed Goh, principal consultant in sales and trading at recruiters Selby Jennings in Hong Kong.

Mainland banks are taking advantage of debt-fuelled overseas acquisitions by Chinese companies and the increased use of bonds issued in the RMB currency.

“Headcount growth in Hong Kong among established Western banks has remained tepid relative to that of their Chinese counterparts,” says Goh. “There are now a larger number of Chinese houses in Hong Kong who have been able to get in on DCM mandates.”

“Global banks have mainly just been replacing people who leave, while Chinese banks continue to grow in size on the back of a strong pipeline of deals. They’re also building sales and distribution teams in Hong Kong or are planning to hire credit traders to market make secondary flows,” adds Goh.

Can you move from an international bank to a Chinese one in DCM? Not often.

“Most of the recent DCM hires have been cannibalistic in nature, with Chinese banks preferring to recruit from fellow competitors because cultural fit, familiarity with platforms, and the ability to hit the ground running are extremely important to them,” says Goh.
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Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation has recruited a Standard Chartered director as its new Asia head of technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) investment banking.

Vishesh Gupta, who moved to SMBC last month in Singapore, has risen rapidly up the ranks in TMT, currently one of the most in-demand sectors within Asian investment banking.

He has landed a regional head-of role just nine years after starting his banking career.

Gupta joined Stan Chart in Singapore in October 2012 and covered TMT across Southeast Asia. Before that he spent four and a half years a J.P. Morgan, first as a telecom and media equity research analyst in Hong Kong, and then as a lead analyst, latterly based in Singapore.

TMT is the “one bright spot” in Asia in terms of investment banking sectors, says Yvette Kwan, a former APAC investment banking COO at UBS, now a partner at finance consultancy Quinlan & Associates. TMT companies have been expanding in Singapore. They were the second-largest contributor in the country’s office lease market in 2015 and 2016, according to a CBRE report.

This is not the only recent senior job move in Asian TMT banking. Last month Piyush Gupta, Deutsche Bank’s head of TMT for Southeast Asia and India, joined tech-focused VC firm Sequoia Capital in Singapore as head of strategic development.

And in April, Randy Gelber moved to UBS in Hong Kong as its new APAC TMT head. Gelber was previously at SMBC, but not in Vishesh Gupta’s current role – he was head of Americas investment banking, based in New York.

For the past two years, several TMT specialists have been hired into business development roles at Chinese technology giants. James Mitchell, chief strategy officer at Tencent, was formerly head of communications, media and entertainment research at Goldman Sachs in New York. Catherine Liu, the head of strategy at internet services provider Qihoo 360, previously led Credit Suisse’s technology coverage in China.

A similar trend is starting to take hold in Singapore. As we reported yesterday, Southeast Asian technology unicorns Grab, Sea, Tokopedia, Traveloka, and Go-Jek now want to hire junior to mid-level TMT bankers from global banks in the Republic.

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The gender compensation gap in financial services is well-documented, and it appears that it also extends to the Big Four professional services firms.

Female auditors and accountants who work at PwC in the U.K. earn 14% less than their male counterparts on average and get significantly smaller bonuses – 40% smaller, in fact, according to data provided by the firm.

Why would PwC spill the beans on that fact? It was following the law. It’s only the 19th U.K. company to comply with new British government rules requiring organizations to disclose wage differences between men and women, the Financial Times reported. The goal is to call attention to workplace inequality in the hopes of eventually ending it.

The professional services firm has more than 19,000 U.K .workers, and it is one of the largest businesses to join the British government’s mandatory “gender pay gap” register of public and private companies with at least 250 employees.

Men make up 61% of the top quartile and 53% of the upper middle quartile for pay at PwC. Just 160 of the firm’s partners are women compared to 938 male partners. Women make up 54% of the lower middle and 53% of the lower wage quartiles.

So what’s the explanation for the discrepancy in compensation? PwC told the FT that its female workers were paid less because there were “more men in senior higher-paid roles and more women in junior and administrative roles.” Out of 938 partners at PWC, just 160 are women. By comparison. there are 1,651 female “support staff” compared with 411 male. If you’re wondering who occupies the most menial jobs in finance, therefore, the answer is clear: it’s the women.

Separately, the biggest banks in the world all passed The Federal Reserve’s stress tests, potentially dampening pressure to break them up and freeing up capital. However, bankers hoping for a piece of the pie in the form of a raise may be disappointed.

The Fed told large banks that they have enough capital reserves, and many – including J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America – rushed to announce plans for stock buybacks and to boost dividends for their shareholders. Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley also announced stock buybacks. Soon after, they added more than $25bn in market value.

That shows how banks are desperately trying to generate investor interest – even though many of them are still struggling to meet profitability targets and the shares of some are trading below book value, according to Bloomberg.

Bankers are counting on President Donald Trump to ease rules forcing banks to reduce risk-taking and increase internal controls, which took a toll on revenue and caused costs to balloon. In addition, Jay Clayton, the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said he’s going to introduce rulemaking initiatives to boost IPOs, which will benefit banks.

The annual review is a key piece of the Fed’s strategy to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis and taxpayer-funded bailouts. Firms demonstrated that they have enough capital to handle turmoil, such as surging unemployment, a sharp drop in housing prices or an extended stock slump, per Bloomberg. That led the Fed to say that they can proceed with payouts to shareholders.

This is all good news. Predictably, however, employees aren’t getting a look-in. As conditions improve, it’s all about rewarding shareholders. Staff are at the very back of the queue.

Meanwhile:

Evercore Partners is adding Paul Stefanick, a top industrials banker and the ex-head of Deutsche Bank’s Wall Street operations, as a senior executive, the latest move in its ongoing hiring spree. (WSJ)

An ex-Salomon Brothers banker and the former head of investment banking at Barclays, Tom King, has joined the board of healthcare M&A boutique Leerink Partners. (Reuters)

Faced with uncertainty, banking CEOs in London are wondering whether to accelerate plans to move operations into the E.U. (WSJ)

The U.K. is threatening Ireland over its use of Brexit in its pitch to attract jobs. (The Telegraph)

This woman went from CFO of an auto-parts manufacturer to an analyst, then an EY auditor and now an HSBC portfolio manager whose $1.3bn small-cap fund is so popular that she’s had to stop accepting new investments. (Bloomberg)

Pine River Capital Management will spin off a nearly $2bn government bond-trading fund into a stand-alone firm. (WSJ)

Ex-Lehman Brothers banker Giles Coppel, the head of trading at Brevan Howard’s New York office since 2012, is launching his own hedge fund with $200m from his former employer. Talk about leaving on good terms. (Business Insider)

A 33-year-old credit trader from the $7bn (soon-to-be-defunct) hedge fund Eton Park is raising $200m-plus to open his own firm. (Reuters)

Some feel that the first modern financial crisis took place in 1997. (Bloomberg)

“These days we don’t hire MBAs. If you want to get into trading study math, not finance.” (CB Insights)

Should financial services firms let their employees work remotely? It’s complicated. (Bloomberg)
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Since Nadir Mehadji left his job in hedge fund sales at Barclays in 2015, he’s been indulging his creative side. He’s a semi-professional photographer, he’s advising creative agencies on how they thing about design, and also teaching himself coding and machine learning techniques to better position himself for any potential return to an increasingly automated financial sector.

Mehadji has been on both sides of the fence – working with high-earning investment bankers in London and Singapore and more creative types who are much less concerned about money. But, he says, there’s a common theme – both don’t have much of an idea about how to handle their own personal finances.

“Just because you work in banking, doesn’t mean that you’re able to make the best of your own finances,” he says. “Most people are specialists in one area – bonds, commodities, M&A– and having a comprehensive approach to investing is a different skill entirely.”

To the man on the street, financial markets remain intimidatingly complex, he says. “The majority of creative people I’ve worked with since leaving banking tend to invest in one thing – the house they live in,” he says. “They’re among the smartest people I know. But investing is seen as risky and complex, so the thought of learning how to make the most of their money is intimidating.”

Mehadji believes he’s come up with a creative solution to help both parties – he’s written an illustrated book that aims to guide people through the complex world of investing and shake-up the “stuffy” world of finance textbooks.

The Cat and the Banker is a 21-chapter illustrated tale of a moggy called Socrates who inherits some money from his uncle. He’s advised to contact a financial adviser – a ‘banker’ called Catsby – who tells him that if he merely lets the money sit in his bank account, inflation will slowly erode its value.

What follows is a story that guides readers through different investment types – stocks, bonds, commodities, property, currencies – as well as how each relates to the ‘real world’. Catsby also explains to Socrates the concept of leverage, managing risk through diversification of investments, liquidity and reaching the ‘magic number’ of 69.

There’s even a splash of real-life drama – Catsby is fired after his bank is acquired by a rival, and an unscrupulous new financial adviser tries to flog complex financial products to Socrates.

Mehadji’s financial services background has helped the way he’s approached the book. He hasn’t just written it and started searching for a publisher. Instead, he’s created a webpage testing the appetite for the book, where readers can pre-order the story and pay between $21 and $1,500 to get the project off the ground.

So far, he’s halfway through his target of 1,000 pre-ordered books, and has received over $10,500 in funding. The most interest, he tells us, has come from other financial services professionals.

“Some bankers don’t fully understand the products they sell,” says Mehadji. “Many bankers also don’t know how to invest their own bonuses well. It’s a complex area, and most investment guides are dry textbooks – I wanted to see if there was an appetite for something more fun.”

In the pre-crisis glory days, financial services professionals would climb their way up the career, ladder, amass big bonuses and then retire in their 30s. Leaving the industry rich after a decade or so is an increasingly elusive dream. Banking still pays better than most professions, but bonuses have been shrinking and most people leave with an ambition to start a second career, rather than to sip cocktails on a beach.

Making the most of their money is therefore increasingly important, believes Mehadji.

“Paradoxically, many bankers are risk averse,” he says. “There’s an increasing number who want to change careers, but they are fearful of what might come next. Pay is shrinking, and it’s no longer easy to retire early. Being able to make the most of your money is really important, even for finance professionals.”

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It’s happened again: another associate at Goldman Sachs has left for a far bigger title at the helm of a fund on the buy-side.

The latest junior to evacuate Goldman is Jorge Suarez de Lezo, a former associate in Goldman Sachs’ M&A financial institutions group (FIG) in London. Suarez de Lezo just left Goldman’s London office after nearly four years, and is off to become managing director of a venture capital firm in Spain.

The precise name of this VC firm is unclear and Suarez de Lezo didn’t respond to our request for clarification. The implication is that Suarez de Lezo is founding a fund of his own. If so, he’s not alone: Stuart Smith, an associate at Goldman’s Houston office left after 22 months in May and set up “Southern Creek Capital”.

Now may be an auspicious time for a Spanish-born Goldman Sachs associate to move home and start a venture capital fund. The Spanish venture capital market is one of the most under-invested in Europe and new funds raised rose nearly 50% in 2016. There’s also Brexit looming on the horizon, as a discouragement to talented European nationals who might otherwise have stayed in London.

Goldman, meanwhile, has been doing its best to discourage its juniors from leaving for more interesting jobs elsewhere. The bank began fast-tracking people through its analyst programme in 2015 and is now making its analysts into associates after two years instead of the traditional three. Suarez de Lezo, however, joined Goldman as an associate in 2013 after completing an MBA at Columbia Business School. After four years at that level, he clearly thought it was time for something else instead.

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In around a month, the new generation of juniors will arrive to join the analyst classes at investment banks. They might come with ideas about how their banking careers will evolve, but if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from 18 years in finance, it’s this: nothing goes to plan.

Back in the early days, I didn’t think I even had what it took to fit in on Wall Street. I remember spending weekends researching my next career, convinced Wall Street wasn’t for me.

I was a shy nerd, I spoke with an accent, and I became a lonely cubicle slave, working hours on end. I wouldn’t speak in meetings because I figured who was I to be saying anything. When it came to bonus time, I just accepted whatever they paid me, happy with whatever scraps came my way.

I never expected to be where I am today. Along the way, I’ve made more mistakes than I care to admit and I’ve seen every single successful person I know do much the same.

Back in the early days, I thought mistakes were something to be ashamed of. I wanted to be the best and the fastest at everything. For example, when I was new to Wall Street, my boss gave me a project to be completed by the end of the day. I rushed through, proud of how quickly I was getting it finished. I handed it to my boss, waiting for my pat on the back. As it turned out, I had messed the whole thing up.

I was so focused on getting it done that I had completely missed the point.

I learned the hard way – quite a few times – to slow down and see the big picture. Now I tell all the new recruits to: “Try to figure out the substance of what you are doing and what makes your client happy, rather than the very specific, narrow task you have been asked to do”.

Finance is also an industry where things can change, fast. Just because you’re in a dark place one year, don’t assume you won’t catch a lucky break the next.

For example, I spent many years at Lehman Brothers in New York. While I was there, I was forced to change roles internally as my career was going nowhere. It was one of the lowest points of my career. And then, just one year later, I was hired by Goldman Sachs! Three years after that, I was made MD. It still amazes me how quickly things turn around.

Never assume that unexpected (good) things won’t happen when you work in finance.

You might want the security of a planned future, but you don’t have to have a plan for everything. Once you can let go and acknowledge this, you’ll get much further. I’ve seen so many young guys make the mistake of being in a huge rush for success. Finance careers don’t work like that. You’ll screw up – it’s inevitable. You may also feel out of your depth. What’s important is that you keep trying.

Over time, I learnt that you only get what you ask for and I learnt that if you want to excel, you have to treat every day like an interview. I learnt that no one really knows what they are doing, and that we are our own worst critic. I learnt to trust myself and stop sweating the small stuff and start building the systems and habits that have changed my life.

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

Meanwhile:

Evercore Partners hired Paul Stefanick, the ex-head of global corporate and investment banking at Deutsche Bank and the ex-head of global M&A at Merrill Lynch, as senior managing director. (Reuters)

Traders who fled banks for hedge funds are on their way back to Wall Street banks. Why? Many macro funds just don’t make much money anymore. (Bloomberg)

Stephan Feldgoise, the co-head of the M&A group in the Americas at Goldman, is retiring at age 46. (WSJ)

Gary Cohn accepted a massive pay cut to join the Trump administration. (Bloomberg)

The head of the top regulator of Wall Street stock brokerages will earn $1m for his first full year on the job, less than its last CEO. (WSJ)

Finance job creation has grown just 0.7% since the financial crisis compared to total private-sector employment gains during that period of 6.6%, a symptom of a wholesale restructuring of how financial services are provided. (Bloomberg)

Morgan Stanley Investment Management senior portfolio manager Marco Spaltro is readying the launch of a new global macro hedge fund firm, Newfin Capital. (HFMWeek)

How does Renaissance Technologies do it? 🤔 (Bloomberg)

From the first moment you walk into a room people are making judgments about how much they like you, so try these tricks to make yourself effortlessly charming. (BBC)

Peruse the J.P. Morgan Reading List Collection 2017, featuring books that Jamie Dimon claims to have read…or at least skimmed. (J.P. Morgan)
Follow @danbutchrwrites

Photo credit: Bloomberg by Roman Kruglov is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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Around this time last year, Chintan Joshi was co-heading Nomura’s banks equity research unit. After the bank closed its cash equities business in April 2016 he joined Mediobanca for a brief eight-month stint. Now, after three months out, he’s leapt across to the buy-side.

Joshi is now senior equity analyst at Abaco Asset Management, a $1bn hedge fund that primarily invests in European financial stocks. This is his sweet spot – he previously co-headed the banks research within Nomura’s now defunct European equity research team, and led its coverage of UK banks.

As we reported previously, after Nomura’s sudden closure of its European cash equities business, Joshi landed a role as an equity researcher on UK and European banks at Mediobanca, but the role lasted just 8 months. Before this, he spent close to eight years at the Japanese bank, having moved across from Lehman Brothers following Nomura’s acquisition of its European business in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

Abaco is a small outfit in the UK – it has just six employees registered with the Financial Conduct Authority. It paid its investment management staff £4.4m, according to the Pillar 3 disclosure in its 2016 accounts released in April. Its highest paid partner received £1.2m.

As well as Joshi, Abaco hired Gary Lee, an analyst at KBW focused on UK insurance, as an analyst in June.

Joshi is one of the few highly-regarded analysts within Nomura’s disbanded equity research team to make the move to the buy-side.

Jon Peace, the other co-head of equity research at Nomura, joined Credit Suisse as a managing director covering investment banks and French banks. David Hayes, who focused on consumer goods at Nomura, joined Bank of America Merrill Lynch as a managing director.

Joshi’s move across to the buy-side may prove to be wise. Investment banks are under increasing pressure to improve their research output as MiFID II regulation requires them to ‘unbundle’ costs from other trading charges.

Most banks have been willing to hire top-ranked analysts – although this status is no guarantee of employability – and recent studies suggest that maintaining large research teams covering multiple sectors is increasingly unsustainable.

Quinlan Associates, the consultancy set up by the former head of equities strategy for Asia-Pacific Benjamin Quinlan, released research last week suggesting that large investment banks’ research teams could lose $240m by 2020, and that it would be increasingly difficult to justify maintaining large in-house teams.

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Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

Image: Getty Images

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You might not want to leave London for Frankfurt or Paris or Dublin in response to Brexit, but if the opportunity to emigrate arises, you should seize it. Particularly if you happen to be an associate or vice president.

As banks prepare to shift a vanguard of staff out of London and into the European Union before Brexit bites in 2020, bankers say the juniors who arrive in the new European offices early on will be granted a significant opportunity to get ahead.

“The people banks move because of Brexit will be the ones who are young, flexible and willing to go wherever the bank sends them,” predicts an executive director in the markets business at a major U.S. bank. “Yes, banks are going to need to move some senior people to sign off risk, but there won’t be many,” she adds. “It’s just too expensive to move a lot of senior traders and their families.”

Goldman Sachs has already indicated its intention of moving 200 people to Frankfurt by an unspecified date in the future. As we noted previously, the U.S. bank’s German business is short on managing directors, but Goldman may choose to shift senior vice presidents and executive directors to Germany, rather than pay expensive relocation fees for senior U.K. staff.

Moving to Frankfurt in the first wave will bring huge career advantages predicts the ED: “Once the bank realizes that you’re a flexible person who can work across different markets, you’re likely to get promoted more quickly. You can also forge a niche for yourself as someone who can operate in the new market structure.”

London juniors who don’t get moved internally can always apply externally for new Brexit-related jobs in Frankfurt. Banking headhunters in Germany said they’re expecting banks to boost local headcount by both shifting existing staff across from London and by hiring new people on the ground. “We expect that 50% or maybe more of the new jobs in Frankfurt will be filled by hires made here in Germany,” says Nils Wilm, managing director of Bankenwelt Executive Search. He adds that there are already signs that the German market is opening up to non-German speakers: “Last week, we filled banking audit positions with non-German speaking Russians who spoke English.”

For the moment, German headhunters say there’s little sign of Brexit boosting recruitment. But this is expected to change soon. “We think the jobs will come in the third and fourth quarter of this year and early next year,” says Wilm. “We’ve already seen banks making preparations with risk and compliance hires.”

Carola Hansen at Frankfurt recruiter Brownian Motion agrees that Brexit-driven hiring is expected to start at the end of this year and to persist into 2018. Hansen says Frankfurt has an ample supply of risk and compliance professionals, many of whom are currently working for the Big Four accounting firms in Germany. Sales and trading talent, however, is more likely to be moved from London. “A lot of banks had traders in Frankfurt in the past, but they made them redundant or moved them to London in 2009 and 2010. It will be a question of moving some people back again.”

Hansen says forward thinking London-based juniors are already plotting their moves. “Now, I get 20-25 calls every week from people in London who want to move to Frankfurt. Before Brexit became an issue I had 1-3.”

London traders and salespeople who emigrate to Germany could be in for a pleasant surprise. “Logically, it’s a paradise for banks here,” says Stefan Mueller at consulting firm DGWA Financial Engineering. “Frankfurt is in the middle of Europe. It has a huge and nearby airport and a perfect train system and everything runs on time.”

Mueller predicts that banks will use the transhumance of markets jobs from London to Frankfurt to cut pay. “Banks are going to get rid of the senior people who were paid £300k in London and replace them with more junior people earning €150k in Frankfurt.”

Cost aside, Mueller says there’s another reason banks will struggle to transfer senior staff with families to Frankfurt: schooling. “My kids go to the European School RheinMain in Frankfurt. The school has already received approaches from all the major banks to see if they have 50+ places for London bankers’ children from 2018 and 2019. It’s the same for all private schools, but these schools are already over-subscribed. Those places don’t exist.”

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Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

““

Going from Nomura’s London investment banking division (IBD) to IBD at Goldman Sachs would count as an achievement. The Japanese bank ranked outside the top ten for M&A fees in Europe in the first half of this year according to Dealogic, while Goldman ranked third. It’s impressive, therefore, that a Nomura London analyst has not only moved across to Goldman, but moved into one of the U.S. bank’s most popular teams.

Yaajan Govindia, an analyst who spent just 12 months at Nomura after graduating from the London School of Economics, has just joined Goldman’s alternative investments and manager selection (AIMS) private equity (PE) group in London. The group provides Goldman’s clients with advice relating to investment in private equity funds, including due diligence on PE fund managers, portfolio construction, risk management, and liquidity solutions.

Plenty of Goldman’s own analysts might like to shift internally into this group themselves. Govindia, however, has beaten them to it. The move is likely to leave him well placed to move to the buy-side in future, particularly to a fund of private equity funds which allocates money across the private equity industry.

Govindia’s move underscores the resilience of junior banking careers. He joined Nomura in 2016 after competing an internship at Deutsche Bank the previous summer. Although Nomura isn’t typically considered a top tier (or even a second tier) investment bank, his time at the Japanese bank hasn’t precluded a move to Goldman. Just because you don’t join a top tier bank out of university, you shouldn’t therefore give up on that aspiration. Of course, it probably helps that Govindia achieved a first class degree in economics from the LSE and graduated one of the top in his class.

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Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

““

If you’re interning in an investment bank this summer, you’re probably prepared to work some long hours. You’re probably also fine with working 70 hours or so each week given that you will be earning a pro-rated version of full time analysts’ salaries that’s likely to be around £4k ($5.2k) in the front office. But how would you feel if you were doing an internship in finance whilst being paid nothing at all?

This is the way of the world at Tobin & Company Investment Banking Group LLC, a mid-market investment banking boutique in Charlotte, North Carolina, which takes on banking interns and analysts pays them zero in return for the opportunity to gain actual deal experience and embellish their résumés.

The company, which was founded in 2001 by Justine Tobin, a former Bank of America MD and Goldman Sachs associate, makes no attempt to hide its business model. “We teach people how to work, how to excel, about the investment banking industry. It’s not about studying and taking tests. It’s about doing,” Tobin tells us. Is this akin to an unpaid internship? “It is,” she says.

Despite the absence of pay, Tobin & Co. doesn’t take just anyone. It interviews all its hires and has recruited around four interns this summer. The company offers both summer and winter internships along with an unpaid “analyst program” typically lasting six to eight months, or until analysts find jobs elsewhere. 10 people are usually hired onto the analyst program each year and participants get to, ‘build financial models and Excel worksheets, update pitch books and write offering documents for multiple clients.’

Far from being exploitative of its young trainees, Tobin says the company has a mission to make the world a better place. The goal of the company’s program is to, “help change the world of investment banking. Or just the global work world in general,” she tells us. “We train people to be better, kinder, more ethical investment bankers. Our interns go out in to the work world and hopefully make a positive impact for the rest of their working lives with the help of the training that they received at Tobin.”

Do Tobin’s juniors agree? None of them responded to our invitation to comment for this article (although one said Justine wouldn’t want analysts talking to reporters). However, Tobin has dubious reviews on Glassdoor (two with one star and one extremely sycophantic review with five stars) and has long been disparaged on the Wall Street Oasis forums.

This could simply be bad feeling from anonymous ex-employees though. Tobin herself says 90% of her unpaid analysts go on to secure full time jobs in finance and that those who don’t go into things like the Peace Corps, tech, or the U.S. army. “We think that these outcomes are just as powerful as the ones in the world of finance. Some of our interns learn that they don’t like investment banking, or even finance, by working with us, and choose another field based on what they learned here,” she says.

Although Wall Street Oasis claims that Tobin juniors rarely get to work on live deals, Tobin’s own Twitter account suggests there is some action to be had there. Tobin & Co tweeted that a client, Roberts Properties, made an offer for Brookside Apartments LLC on June 28, for example. Prior to that, it Tweeted that it closed a deal in June 2016.

Nonetheless, some of Tobin’s ex-analysts are certainly employed at major banks. Tobin & Co. boasts a big list of companies who hire its trainees. However, we only count around 17 ex-Tobinites currently at well known organizations on LinkedIn, including someone at Goldman Sachs, someone at UBS and someone at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Wells Fargo seems to be one Tobin’s biggest employers. Is that worth giving up your summer for free? Maybe.

Follow @MadameButcher
Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

Photo credit: Wendy in the Wheel by Carrie Cizauskas is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

““

As investment banks invest ever more into automation, getting the right person at the top of technology is increasingly important.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which has been losing senior technologists over the course of the past 12 months, has just lost another – this time to UBS.

Neil Boston is the Swiss bank’s new head of investment banking technology and UK regional lead. He joined the bank in June after a near two-year stint at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Boston joined BAML in July 2015 as head of FX technology. By the time he left in June, however, he was head of FX technology, global co-head of markets e-trading technology and EMEA head of technology for fixed income currencies and commodities (FICC).

Boston’s role at UBS will encompass a broader range of responsibilities across the investment bank, which reflects his depth of experience. He spent seven years at Citi before moving to BAML and held various senior roles including head of FX and chief technical architect within its options technology team.

UBS confirmed the appointment.

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Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

Image: Getty Images

““

J.P. Morgan and Citi are adding directors to electronic equities teams

Newly merged, rebranded fintech giant hasn’t stopped hiring

Banks deciding between buy vs. build

Frugal banking interns save money, stay with parents

Deutsche Bank’s head of leveraged loan management has just switched to the buy-side

Data scientists are in demand on Wall Street. Here’s what you need to know to land a job

The skills you need to become a data scientist at a bank or hedge fund

How Wall Street deploys data scientists

Information security

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Data science is infiltrating Wall Street

Why has Deutsche Bank been hiring from 4th tier rivals?

Chinese banks now dominate Hong Kong capital markets hiring

SMBC has just hired a new head of Asia TMT from Stan Chart

Morning Coffee: Here’s who really occupies the worst jobs in finance. Banks make it rain but not to boost pay

Meet the ex-Barclays VP with a fun solution to helping bankers retire early

Goldman Sachs associate quits to become MD of venture capital firm

I went from being a lonely cubicle slave to an MD at a top bank

This top BAML DCM banker has just turned up at new fintech firm

HSBC hires head of equities for Southeast Asia

Morning Coffee: Bloomberg pays more than J.P. Morgan. Why your banking job is more secure than you think

Meanwhile:

Nomura’s former co-head of banks research has just taken a job at this tiny hedge fund

Brexit is a once in a generation opportunity for a big promotion

Goldman Sachs just hired a Nomura analyst into its PE group

Are these the most exploited juniors in finance?

UBS has just poached a top technologist from Bank of America Merrill Lynch

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