Don’t write off Goldman Sachs. Yes, it may be lagging the pack this year. Yes, it may be coming off the back of a year when it cut more staff than usual. But it has a plan, and that plan is getting rid of the Volcker rule.

The Financial Times has interviewed a series of people familiar with the bank’s plans, and suggests that Goldman’s big issue for 2017, particularly now that it has former members of the firm in positions of power within the U.S. government, is rolling back the regulation that limits banks’ ability to trade off their own book. Gary Cohn, Goldman’s former number two is head of the national economic council, while Steven Mnuchin, who was previously its chief information officer, is Treasury Secretary.

Goldman is single-minded, suggests the FT. “Their single focus this year, more than any other bank, is the Volcker rule,” the Washington chief of another bank said. Dennis Kelleher of Better Markets, which advocates tougher regulation, added: “Goldman has always been the big swashbuckling trader that wants to take huge risks and huge leverage for the big score.”

Not that Goldman wants to come out directly and say it’s in favour of softer regulation for the banking sector, or that it wants to repeal rules that make it harder to take big risks. Its tactics are instead to toe the line of other financial institutions –  “whatever the industry view is, it has to be their view” – but one bank lobbyist claims Goldman “don’t play well with others. Unless there’s something they want and feel collectively they can do”. It’s currently showing a united front through trade group Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (Sifma).

Cohn has said: “Right now we’ve got this massive set of regulations built to regulate all banks as [if] they’re equal. We may be able to tailor regulations for different aspects of the financial markets and different aspects of the financial institutions.” Rival banks’ lobbyists have taken this as favoring non-universal banks, like Goldman.

Michael Barr of the University of Michigan, who helped craft Dodd-Frank at the Treasury department, says: “What the administration seems to mean is let’s return to prudential regulation focusing on banks — not the investment banks, holding companies, insurance companies or shadow banking activities. What they [officials] mean is let’s go back to the world we mostly had before the financial crisis.”

Separately, are you feeling that the ‘thrill’ has gone from your banking job? Do you trudge your way into work? If so, it may simply be down to your age. Research by recruiters Robert Half, featured in Bloomberg, suggests that workers over 35 are twice as likely to be unhappy in their jobs as younger workers. Once you hit 55 it gets worse – a third of the 2,000 people surveyed by said they didn’t feel appreciated and 16% said they had no friends at work.

In banking, there’s no shortage of people hitting 40 and then seeking a second career. Most tell us it’s because the industry has changed, or that they no longer feel challenged, or that they’re not earning as much money. But maybe, the spark has just gone.

Meanwhile: 

TD Securities is hiring 10 bond traders in its new Brexit hub in Dublin (Bloomberg)

Central Risk Book trading is emerging as the place to be. J.P. Morgan has hired a VP, Simon Sheffield, from Goldman Sachs to lead its desk in Europe (Financial News)

J.P. Morgan has donated $1m to fight hate groups (Financial News)

Eric Daniels, the former CEO of Lloyds Banking Group, is suing the bank for £1m in unpaid bonuses (Financial Times)

Goldman invests more in technology companies than any other non-tech Fortune 500 company (Quartz)

Citadel has hired a Deutsche Bank research analyst (HFM Week)

There’s another banker in the Great British Bake Off (Evening Standard)

Follow @paultclarke

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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““

How do you look for a new job when you’re working over 70 hours a week? Sneaking out to job interviews, updating your resume and meeting recruiters is hard when you barely have any time out of the office. This is what recruiters and career consultants suggest.

1. Get your friends to help you out

Most firms have internal employee referral schemes, so it’s worth asking friends and former colleagues to put in a good word for you. There’s a referral fee involved if you end up landing the job, so it’s not simply a case of people helping you out of the goodness of their heart.

“Generally all they will need is a resume and an idea of your interest, and they will be required to fill out the necessary forms,” says Janet Raiffa, career coach, the former head of campus recruiting at Goldman Sachs and the former associate director of the Career Management Center at Columbia Business School. “Their incentive, other than helping out a friend, is a referral fee that can be very generous for a small amount of paperwork.”

2. Use your vacation time

Interviews don’t generally happen outside of regular office hours, and there are only so many dental appointments you can pretend to have.

“When you must meet elsewhere from 9 to 5, take the day off, or take a half day off,” says Caroline Ceniza-Levine, co-founder and career expert at SixFigureStart. “Don’t expect to be able to pop in and out.”

3. Get the competition to notice you 

The best way to focus on your next career move is also the key to ascending in your current role: Do your job well.

“Become the best person in the seat, and perform like a rock star. Period,” says Julia Harris Wexler, a career coach who works with Columbia Business School. “People notice those around them who are stars at what they do.

“Those people change firms, become sources for recruiters when they call and have the ear of senior management,” she says. “Be authentic: Master the task at hand and be the type of leader who gives credit to others.”

4. Avoid face to face meetings

Be very selective with scheduling face-to-face meeting. Perhaps calls are good enough. And sometimes email exchanges are all that you need.

“Save the face-to-face [meetings] for really important conversations, [for example] people who can hire you or those who are otherwise incredibly important to your search and career,” says Robert Hellmann, the founder of Hellmann Career Consulting who previously worked at J.P. Morgan and American Express.

5. Use headhunters

Headhunters are usually more interested and successful if they are representing clients who are currently employed in a similar role.

“You’ll have to spend time meeting with them, but once the relationship is built they will have a strong financial incentive to arrange interviews for you,” Raiffa says. “Generally all you’ll need here is a resume. The headhunter will write up a summary of you as a candidate so no cover letter is required, and they will be active in preparing you for an interview,” she says.

6. Block out time during evenings and weekends

Related to making time during the workday, you need to make time for your search outside of work – the research, updating your marketing and networking. You make time for your search by ruthlessly cutting out other things, Ceniza-Levine says.

“I coached a bulge-bracket investment banker with a large family, and since he couldn’t slow down at work – it would be too noticeable – he had to drop one of the few nights earmarked for his kids to get his job search moving,” she says. “He couldn’t do it during the day so something else had to give. You will have to make time for your search – you won’t just find it.”

Hellmann agrees that you have to budget your time throughout the week – have a schedule, with weekly time goals, and stick to it.

“Try to spend 15 hours a week on their search if they’re working full time,” he says. “That works out to two hours a day Monday through Friday, and two and a half hours a day on Saturday and Sunday.”

7. Tap your college alumni

This isn’t just asking for referrals and introductions from Wall Street professionals who share your alma mater. Employers advertising on universities’ job boards will be more focused on certain populations and will likely have fewer applicants.

“You’ll be part of smaller applicant pools so your hit rate in terms of applications to interviews will be higher,” Raiffa says.

8. Put yourself out there…

Make time for extracurricular events that help your community, mentor more junior employees and make yourself available to help your firm in areas outside of your current expertise, Wexler says.

“Not only will these accomplishments get you noticed within your own firm and promoted over your peers who simply put their heads down, but you will be noticed by others,” he says. “It won’t be long before recruiters and offers are presented to you.”

9. Use the most effective channels

The top two channels are networking – getting an introduction – and cold calling or emailing the person who can hire you.

“Spend 80% of your time on these ‘active’ approaches to your search and 20% on job postings and search firms,” Hellmann says. “The latter two are the ‘passive’ approaches, the front door that everyone uses, so the competition is toughest.
Follow @danbutchrwrites

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““

Francisco Sottomayor was ahead of the pack as a senior trader leaving a big role in London to move to the Continent.

He departed Credit Suisse in April last year, when Brexit was more possibility than reality, for a small investment bank in Portugal called AXIA Ventures Group. Ten months on and he’s landed a major new job at SocGen – in Spain.

Sottomayor was a managing director and head of securities for Portugal and Spain at Credit Suisse in London, where he worked for nearly 16 years. In April last year he departed for an MD role at Axia, but has just moved on again.

He’s now head of global markets for Iberia at Societe Generale, a role that has necessitated a move to Madrid, Spain. Until his recent move to Portugal, Sottomayor spent his entire banking career in London, having started out as an associate at Citi from 1998.

Suffice to say, Sottomayor is unlikely to be the only senior markets professional covering a European market to head away from London after Brexit. Bankers are already now talking about ‘when’ they move to Europe, rather than ‘if’, according to research from recruiters Morgan McKinley.

As we reported last week, Vassilis Karamouzis, the former head of asset finance origination for Southern Europe and head of capital financing for Greece and Cyprus, left the UK for Athens to head up corporate and investment banking for the National Bank of Greece.

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Everyone knows that there’s been pain at KCG in London this summer. Following KCG Holding’s acquisition by high frequency trading firm Virtu Financial, the London proprietary trading business was closed in July and people were ejected – voluntarily or otherwise. In future, Virtu has said it will retain a London office, but only for “client facing trades”. Henceforth, it said the “market making business” will be based in Dublin, where Virtu has its European headquarters.

Virtu didn’t respond to a request to comment for this article, but this official version – which implies that “high touch” traders will be based in London and that everyone else might move to Ireland – doesn’t do justice to the upheaval at the firm in the past month.

“At least sixty people have gone from KCG,” says one London headhunter, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There have been two or so tranches of layoffs so far and there are more to come – people are being let go across the business.”

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority register says 18 people were de-registered from KCG in London in late July, a decline of 38%. They include: Paul Bermingham, the former head of European ETF trading, who joined from Spire Europe in 2014; Robert Crane, the former Goldman head of electronic market making, who joined in 2015; Ivan Gilmore, the former head of exchange-traded fund sales trading, hired by Crane from DE Shaw in 2016 as head of ETF sales; and Graham Wayne, the former head of EU electronic trading (who, as we reported last month, is joining Barclays). Phil Allison, the CEO of KCG Europe who was hired from UBS in 2014, has gone too, as has Elio Manca, head of ETF sales in Europe.

Despite KCG’s reassurances, what emerges therefore is a portrait of a business that’s doing a lot more than just cutting London prop traders while keeping high touch traders and salespeople. The ETF business is seemingly being disbanded from the top down. Insiders say the high touch sales team in London has been “decimated”. No one (as far as we can make out) has moved from London to Dublin. Market makers like Michael Cahill, who might have gone to Dublin, have left for other firms in London instead (Cahill’s joined Bats Global Markets). Senior quant traders like Sam Patterson and Cameron Dobbs have gone. Junior analysts like Echo Qing Chang have gone too, as have senior technologists like Andrew Schneider.

“A lot of people have disappeared from KCG, many of their own accord,” says another headhunter, also speaking off the record. “Some of them have been offered moves to Dublin but they don’t want to go – why would you when there’s still plenty on offer in London.”

If this is the case, then KCG could be a premonition of what’s to come when other banks try shifting traders to Dublin. Bank of America, Citi, Credit Suisse and Barclays are among those expected to move jobs to Dublin because of Brexit (although in the case of Citi and BAML the jobs may be back office). As we suggested before, it may be necessary to offer traders financial inducements to emigrate.  

If ex-KCG traders prefer to stay in London, headhunters say there are plenty of places that would like to hire them. KCG recruited heavily from investment banks in recent years and top bank traders were only too happy to work there (KCG was not subject to regulatory restrictions on bonuses). While everyone waits to see what happens to big names like Crane and Allison, headhunters say even less feted ex-KCG people should have no trouble finding new jobs. “These are very good quality people,” says one headhunter. “Banks want to hire them, so do firms like Citadel and Tower.”

Just as telling as who’s left KCG/Virtu though, is who’s been left behind. For the moment, the combined firm still has the remnants of an ETF team in London. Quant traders like George Danker (the UK Su Doku champion) and quant strategist Alexey Sorokin are also still at their seats.

Meanwhile, and despite the reassurances, the indications are that almost no one from KCG has joined Virtu. Those who have joined the new parent company in London can seemingly be counted on one (or maybe two hands). They include: Stefan Zohren, a machine learning specialist; Fabio Martinell, the former head of EU market making sales and KCG and now co-head of electronic execution services at Virtu (in London); algo developer Oliver Egli; head of global systems and operations Igor Selivanov; and former head of delta one sales, Michael Seigne.

KCG insiders say another round of layoffs is due next month. What looked like an appealing alternative to a large investment bank has proven anything but.

Follow @MadameButcher
Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

“”

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J.P. Morgan is expected to move some of its London jobs to Frankfurt because of Brexit.  If you’re an employee at the bank who plans to become a parent, that could be good news. A job currently posted on J.P. Morgan’s own site reveals why.

The job in question is for a Frankfurt-based executive assistant in the M&A business to cover a period of maternity leave. The period of maternity leave will last for two years.   

This might sound exceptional, but it’s not as long as it could be. In Germany, any new parent who is a main care giver can take parental leave for up to three years. During that time, a job must remain open and a contract cannot be terminated. A parental allowance worth up to two thirds of the salary, up to €1.8k monthly, is payable during the first 12 months off.

Parents at J.P. Morgan in the U.S. in particular are likely to be gobsmacked by the bank’s German generosity. In the U.S. there’s no such thing as mandatory parental leave but JPM kindly offers its U.S. primary care givers sixteen weeks off, (fully paid).  Suddenly, this doesn’t look so great after all. The policy is already causing fuss from J.P.M fathers who claim they’re being discriminated against as they’re not designated the primary care givers.

Whether ambitious front office bankers actually take two or three years off in German when they have children is, of course, another question. Somehow, we think this is unlikely…

Follow @MadameButcher
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Are you a student trying to position yourself for an investment banking internship or applying to full-time analyst programs for after you graduate? Look to people who have been there, done that, and try to emulate them.

Here are a few impressive examples of young professionals who recently started as investment banking analysts and incoming students who have already sewn up a post-graduation full-time analyst position.

Saania Malik, Goldman Sachs

Route to a finance job: Saania Malik is a graduate of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, where she was a member of the finance and investment club and played track and field and field hockey. She interned at Goldman during her senior year and was able to secure a full-time offer.

Interesting fact: Malik was a senior mentor to at-risk public high school students at College AppAssist Inc., ascended to president and she is now a member of the board of directors.

Jonathan Hla, J.P. Morgan

Route to a finance job: Jonathan Hla got a BBA in finance from the City University of New York’s Baruch College, where he was the CEO of the investment management group and portfolio manager of the $250k student-managed equity fund. He was a debt sourcing summer analyst at Bower Investment Management and an investment banking summer/fall analyst at Oberon Securities and H.C. Wainwright & Co. before landing a spot in the investment banking credit risk summer analyst program at J.P. Morgan, where he accepted a full-time offer.

Interesting fact: In high school, Hla worked as a laboratory research assistant at the University of Connecticut Health Center and volunteered at New York Common Pantry.

Vaibhav Argawal, Morgan Stanley

Route to a finance job: Vaibhav Argawal graduated from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, where he was the chief investment officer of the student investment fund and a member of the accounting society and financial management association. He was an intern at Main Line Equity Partners, an analyst at Capstone, a project manager at Hilltop Consultants and an investment banking summer analyst in the mergers and acquisitions group at Morgan Stanley, where he accepted a full-time position.

Interesting fact: Argawal studied abroad at the University of Oxford.

Oscar Bromberg, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Route to a finance job: Oscar Bromberg is a senior at New York University’s Stern School of Business, where he is a member of the economics honor society and participates in the undergraduate Latin American Business Association, TAMID Group, real estate group, negotiations club and soccer. He was an investment banking intern at Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO) and a summer analyst at Guggenheim Partners and BofA Merrill, where he accepted a full-time investment banking analyst position.

Interesting fact: Bromberg studied abroad in Shanghai and at Università Bocconi in Milan.

Kadish Hagley, Citi

Route to a finance job: Kadish Hagley got a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Colby College, where he was a member of the student programming board, student government association, admissions ambassadors, campus life and Students Organized for Black and Hispanic Unity. He interned at the Clifford Chance law firm, Moody’s Investors Service and Computershare before doing the investment banking summer analyst program at Citi, where he’s accepted a full-time position.

Interesting fact: Hagley’s interests include constitutional law debates, musicals, experimental theater, playing the cello and guitar, broomball, travel and independent research.

Clarissa Cartledge, Barclays

Route to a finance job: A member of the alternative investments club and managing director/portfolio manager of the student-managed investment fund, Clarissa Cartledge majors in finance with a minor in economics at Fordham. She did an exchange program at the London School of Economics. She was a capital markets intern at Cushman & Wakefield and an investment banking summer analyst at Barclays, where she’s accepted a full-time offer for after her graduation next year.

Interesting fact: Cartledge is a Division I athlete in volleyball and track and field.

Alexander Kennelley, Jefferies

Route to a finance job: Alexander Kennelley got a BBA in finance from Indiana University Bloomington, where he participated in faculty-selected investment banking workshops and Training the Street seminars. He was a financial planning summer analyst at Equinox and an investment banking summer analyst at Jefferies, where he accepted an offer to join as a full-time analyst.

Interesting fact: Kennelley worked as a prep chef at the Nantucket Clambake Co.

Federico Faffetti, Goldman Sachs

Route to a finance job: Federico Faffetti is a student at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business, where he’s a member of the alternative investment club, entrepreneurship society and investment banking society. He participated in Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Elevate Diversity Forum and has already interned at JTC Group and AXA Advisors, and he’s just wrapping up a summer analyst program at Goldman.

Interesting fact: Faffetti is a native of Argentina and has worked as a tennis instructor.

Sara Calvert, J.P. Morgan

Route to a finance job: Sara Calvert studied economics at Harvard, where she participated in the Federal Reserve Challenge, volleyball and financial analysts club. She interned at 2929 Productions and Endgame Entertainment before pivoting to financial services, securing investment banking summer analyst positions at Raymond James and J.P. Morgan, eventually joining the financial institutions group (FIG) of the latter.

Interesting fact: Calvert was the head producer in the video department at Harvard Student Agencies, an on-campus student-run non-profit association.

Alex Streich, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Route to a finance job: A senior participating in the finance club, investment club and student athletic advisory committee at Hamilton College, Alex Streich completed the Tuck Business Bridge Program at Dartmouth and interned at Sage Asset Management. He’s just wrapping up BofA Merrill’s investment banking summer analyst program.

Interesting fact: Streich is a varsity tennis player.

Karn Dalal, Citi

Route to a finance job: A senior at Rutgers, Karn Dalal is the co-head of investments at the student-managed fund and is a member of the investment banking club, ODE International Economics Honors Society and the Federal Reserve Challenge Team. He’s interned at WBB Securities and CIT, and he’s just wrapping up a summer analyst program in Citi’s financial strategy and solutions group (FSG).

Interesting fact: In high school, Dalal was on the varsity debate team and served as the president of the Future Doctors of America Club.

Charles Liu, Goldman Sachs

Route to a finance job: Charles Liu graduated with honors in computer science and economics at Rutgers University, where he was the treasurer and an equity research analyst in the investment banking club, and was a visiting scholar at Peking University. He’s a co-founder and portfolio manager of a long/short global equity fund that attracted more than $200k in its first two years. He’s completed summer analyst programs at Deutsche Bank and Goldman and accepted a full-time position at the latter.

Interesting fact: Liu worked as a teacher and corporate development consultant at the AMIO International School in Qingdao, Shandong, China.

Orlando Kahan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Route to a finance job: Orlando Kahan is a senior at the University of Chicago, where he was admitted to the Dougan Scholars Certificate Program and the Trott Business Program. He also interned at the Institute for Economic Affairs and was a summer analyst at LGT Vestra, Alvine Capital and BofA Merrill, where he’s accepted a full-time FIG position.

Interesting fact: Kahan worked as an intern for Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and former Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

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““

The interns in the bank are like a group of school kids gathering together after an exam, sharing information and wincing at the merest sniff that we might have done something wrong. We cluster, sharing vague phrases handed out by managing directors or our analyst buddies that suggest we might be given an offer next week. Or, even worse, that we might not.

Our superiors now have the ability to make us glow with pride, or sicken with anxiety just by the fairly faint praise they bestow upon us. “You demonstrated what it takes to be an analyst” is one that causes particular excitement, “I think you belong here” is enough to make us rush for the toilets, while “This is what I expect from a strong intern” convinces us that we are indeed among the favoured ones.

Anxiety, meanwhile, comes from the fact that maybe they’re saying this to everyone. Praise is no good if it’s ubiquitous. Not everyone will get an offer. Even worse, we’ve heard reports that these phrases have been accompanied by a “BUT”. Imagine it. “I think you belong here, BUT Clive is not convinced”. “If it were up to me, we’d take you, BUT Sarah prefers the Excel Macro meister”.

The reality is that at this point we can do little to influence the decision in a positive way, but it’s still possible to screw up at the last minute, so most people are on best behaviour. Worst, though, are the rumours. I’ve had other interns running up to me, out of breath, exclaiming that “Lizzie from the energy team already has an offer”. That’s great, we say, through our fixed grins, so pleased for her. Secretly, we die a little inside and wonder how the hell she got her offer before everyone else.

Another camp of interns are the mopers. They have nothing to back up their claims that they’re not getting a job at the end of the internship, but are lining up excuses anyway. They complain that they’ve never had a chance to shine, that their analyst only gives them dull, mind-numbing work because they want them to fail, that the bank hired too many interns in their group, that they should have accepted an offer to intern at another bank. Even that they’re the wrong ethnicity. The list goes on, but, it’s just self-pity.

The key to securing an offer is to fall into the ‘value for money’ bucket for the banks. In a way, most of us in this bracket are chilled because we’re not desperate for an offer. Maybe the bank can smell this and appears keener to ensure that we take a job with them rather than a rival bank, PE firm or consultant. This means we’re based in Europe, that we don’t need a visa to stay in the UK, are multi-lingual and that we are studying a masters degree. In other words, we’re giving banks a lot of bang for their buck.

I’ve worked non-stop for the past nine weeks, had my life consumed by my job and barely saw the sun or my family throughout the summer. But, actually, I feel very sad to have to say goodbye to my new friends and to role that I’ve come to enjoy. Next week, I’ll find out if I’m coming back for a full-time job in 2018.

James Roberts, an pseudonym, is a summer intern on an M&A desk at a bulge bracket bank in London. He’ll be writing about his experience here. 

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““

Private banks in Asia are dealing increasingly brutally with newly hired relationship managers (RMs) who fail to meet tough shot-term performance targets.

“Many private banks in Singapore and Hong Kong are ruthless and now review you just six months after you join,” says a Singapore-based headhunter who asked not to be named. “If they don’t think you’re on track to performing well, they’ll cut you. This is helping to create high stress levels among new joiners.”

If you make it past six months, you then need to achieve (or come close to achieving) a year-one target of assets under management. If you don’t, your job is on the line again. Industry-average AUM goals for high-net-worth bankers in Asia are shown in the table below (RMs typically also need to generate a return on these assets of about 0.5%).

“In your first year it’s only ok to miss target by 10% to 20% – and only then if your pipeline is strong and if you have a good relationship with your manager and team,” says Josie Ling, head of private wealth management at search firm Eban in Singapore.

Meanwhile, some underperforming RMs aren’t waiting to be fired. “If they’re confident of finding a job in another bank soon, they will start looking,” says former Merrill Lynch private banker Rahul Sen, now head of wealth management at search firm The Omerta Group.

Sen says a lot of RMs blame the bank, not themselves, if they flunk year-one targets. “Some complain that they aren’t getting adequate support from their seniors, or that the platform isn’t what they expected, or that the boss who hired them has left, or the bank has changed its strategy making their clients’ investment requirements untenable.”

While your first 12 months at any new private bank is likely to be trying, it’s typically even harder to start at boutiques like Pictet, Sarasin and EFG than it is at UBS, Credit Suisse, Citi and other larger players in Asian wealth management. “This is because boutiques have limited availability in their balance sheet, less sophisticated platform capabilities and lack universal product offerings,” says a private banking consultant.

To avoid first-year failures, private banks in Asia are trying to do more during the recruitment process to weed out candidates. “Banks are now pickier about potential new RMs, especially on the quality and portability of their assets,” says Ling from Eban. “Tougher regulations and KYC standards make it harder for bankers to move their clients. This year candidates have to really convince banks that they can hit their targets.”

“A lot of RMs in Asia provide too optimistic a view of their client book and their ability to move it to a new private bank,” says Pathik Gupta, head of APAC wealth management at McLagan in Singapore. “Banks have become much more conscious of how much an RM can really move – on average that’s only about 25% to 30% of total book.”

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If you’re looking for a new role as a corporate banker in Hong Kong, you face a rapidly changing job market in 2017.

While Western banks are paring back their hiring of relationship managers, Chinese firms – from BOCI to ICBC – are scaling up.

Here are the big hiring trends that are now shaping Hong Kong corporate banking.

1. The boom is long gone

The most recent “hiring boom” in Hong Kong corporate banking ran from 2010 to 2012, says John Mullally, director of financial services at recruiters Robert Walters in Hong Kong. ANZ, Barclays, RBS and Deustche Bank have since slimmed down or shuttered their corporate banking operations, while even Citi, HSBC and Standard Chartered are not hiring as aggressively as they were.

2. Banks are pickier

“Recruitment is still steady but the difference now is that banks are far more circumspect about who they take on. And they can afford to be – recent redundancies have increased the supply of candidates,” says Mullally. “They want RMs who already have strong revenue track records. And these days more than half the hiring is for RMs who serve large Chinese clients rather than smaller local ones.”

3. It’s hard for candidates to bring in new clients

International banks in Hong Kong now largely “share the same client pool”, says Lilian Yeung, a senior consultant at recruiters Michael Page in Hong Kong. “This makes it challenging for RMs to bring in clients that the new employer doesn’t already have.

4. Seniors are still sought after

Seniors may be in the firing line in investment banking, but in corporate banking they remain in demand. “Compared to last year, recruitment is flat, but it’s more skewed towards the mid and senior levels – people who can run the deals,” says Anita Sim, regional head of front office at LMA Recruitment.

5. Chinese banks are dominating hiring

“Cost saving has been a major focus in 2017 as international banks hold back from investing additional headcount in Hong Kong,” says Rick Chung, a senior manager at recruiters Randstad. “Chinese banks have been bucking this trend by continuing to recruit – particularly in the mainland corporate sector – to capture more cross-border business.”

6. And more bankers are willing to join them

Compared to last year, candidates are now more open to moving from Westerns banks to Hong Kong or Chinese banks, says Yeung. “They recognise the trend of corporations switching to Chinese banks instead of global ones. And internal compliance is comparatively tighter in Westerns banks, which leads to heavier workloads for RMs.”

7. Especially VPs

“The growing disparity in the lending powers between the Asian and international banks,  coupled with slow growth at European banks, has seen many VP and SVP level candidates trade their HSBC or Stan Chart roles for positions at Chinese Banks,” says Aditya Dangi, a consultant at recruitment firm Selby Jennings.

8. Mainland banks are now offering sign-ons

“We’re seeing an upward trend of candidates shifting from Western banks to local and Chinese ones this year,” says Ivan Lam, an associate director at recruiters Morgan McKinley. “It’s a very competitive job market for them, so they’re increasingly offering sign-on bonuses to attract the right people. They didn’t do this much before this year.”

9. And they want to expand even further

While Chinese banks in Hong Kong are now focused on hiring RMs to service large Chinese companies and state-owned enterprises, this could soon change. “Next year I expect them to build up their teams for mid-market and local corporates as their understanding of the Hong Kong market improves,” says Dangi from Selby Jennings.

10. But beware the downsides

“Product offerings in Chinese banks remain limited compared to those of international banks,” says Jack Leung, a business director at recruiters Hays in Hong Kong. “And writing credit applications in Chinese, not English, is also a deal breaker for some.”

11. Masters grads are trying to get in

“Due to growth of Chinese and regional banks, there’s been an increase in people from Hong Kong universities –  with Masters degrees in business, economics or finance – attempting to get a foothold in corporate banking through credit analyst and risk roles,” says Dangi.

12. Pay increments are not what they were

If you move banks as an experienced RM in Hong Kong, expect a pay rise of about 10% to 12%, says Jack Leung, a business director at recruiters Hays. That’s a far cry from the increments of 20% or more experienced earlier in the decade. Click here for our guide to salaries and bonuses in Hong Kong corporate banking.

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““

If you want the best jobs in finance today, you may not want to do a CFA or an MBA. In fact, as someone who left a comment on a recent article pointed out, these qualifications could actually be detrimental to your career by making you seem more expensive than everyone else. No, if you want to be love-bombed by recruiters now, you need to do one of the emerging courses in data science.

We’ve alluded to courses for data scientists before, but it’s worth mentioning them again in light of a big Bloomberg article on “super quants.”  The quants in question are the data scientists, a term incidentally defined by Dhanurjay “DJ” Patil at LinkedIn in 2008 when he was advertising a new kind of job.

For the moment, data scientists are a motley crew, spanning feeble Python coders who don’t make the grade to full-blown machine learning specialists who do. Although the University of California Berkeley has an MSc in business analytics and Columbia has a masters in computer science with a focus on machine learning, Bloomberg says there aren’t many courses specifically devoted to data scientists. – But this is about to change, a lot.

Next month, NYU is starting a PhD program in data science. In 2018, Harvard is starting a data science masters program. MIT is preparing a PhD that will encompass data science. Columbia’s soon launching a data science PhD. Yale’s all-new Department of Statistics and Data Science, unveiled in March in 2017, will grant degrees. Brown University has started a data science program. The University of Washington will soon follow.

Universities’ enthusiasm for data science is similar to their enthusiasm for Masters in Finance courses ten years ago. They’ve clearly scented a new stream of revenues and are determined to jump in. If you’re a prospective student, the question is which course is best? Columbia has form, but will it be overtaken by MIT and Yale? For the moment, there are no league tables and no way of knowing.

Prospective students wondering which course to take can console themselves with the thought that the course itself may make little difference to their ability. Patil tells Bloomberg that the best data scientists are untrained in the area. “Some of the best data scientists I know have no real classic training,” he says. “There are great data scientists who come from everywhere. It’s how you pick up the skills and apply your knowledge to that.”

Separately, forget slogging 80 hours a week for £50 an hour.  Meet the 23 year-old home educated New Zealand woman who’s got a $22m VC fund dedicated to the science of aging.  “When I started fundraising, I was 17 — too young to legally sign contracts. I’d never managed money before,” says Laura Deming, who’s moved to Silicon Valley and has attracted investment from the likes of Peter Thiel.

Meanwhile:

BofA’s Italian head of equities wants to be in Frankfurt after Brexit. It’s Iranian and American heads of fixed income want to be in Paris. (Bloomberg) 

An international school in Frankfurt has already hosted nine delegations of banks thinking of sending children there.  Delegations typically consisted of senior bankers and human resources executives. (Bloomberg) 

Average pay per head at UBS’s new European business based in Frankfurt is $152k. (Bloomberg) 

Bloomberg’s setting up a new data consulting business that will use terminal data to inform brand consulting, corporate communications and marketing strategy advice. (Financial Times) 

It’s a great time to be in CLOs. (Bloomberg) 

Credit Suisse hired two technology bankers from Barclays in San Francisco. (Reuters) 

London family offers $129k and use of Maserati to elite nanny with no children of own and a degree in child psychology. (Business Insider) 

Use this simple test to find out if the eclipse has blinded you. (Guardian)  

More intelligent people are quicker to learn and unlearn social stereotypes. (BPS) 

Mystery cake baking banker of Canary Wharf. (The Sun) 

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This year, strangely, has turned into a summer of fixed income hiring, and there’s one small investment bank in London luring trading staff across from big players with the added bonus of a grand job title.

SMBC Nikko Securities, a subsidiary of Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui Bank, has been making some big hires this year, bolstering both its London and New York office.

The latest recruit in London is James Asquith, a VP in credit trading at Deutsche Bank who also holds the auspicious accolade of being the youngest person ever to visit all 196 countries in the world. Asquith joined the Japanese bank earlier this month as an executive director, but also leads the bank’s corporate credit trading in London.

SMBC Nikko has around 120 employees in the UK, so it’s unlikely to be a huge desk that Asquith is heading up, but the bank has still been successful at capturing some senior markets staff from big name banks.

In New York, it’s also brought in Roger K. Horn as a senior emerging markets desk analyst within its fixed income sales and trading division. For the past five years, Horn has been working at $93bn investment manager MacKay Shields, as a senior emerging markets credit strategist. However, before this he was a managing director and head of credit research for the Americas at Societe Generale in New York.

SMBC Nikko also landed another senior hire in June. It brought in Isabel Mahoney,  Morgan Stanley’s former head of financial credit trading in London, as its new head of fixed income sales and trading. Mahoney left Morgan Stanley in November 2015 as part of the swathing cuts in its fixed income division, and re-emerged at the Japanese bank 18 months later.

SMBC Nikko’s fixed income build out may be small, but it’s consistently landing new employees from bigger competitors. Another recent recruit is Tom Ordish, who was working as an associate in Goldman Sachs’ fixed income division in Japan – he joined SMBC Nikko’s Japanese equity sales and trading team in London.

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If you want to work in financial services after you leave university, you’re probably equipped with finance internships. After all, most successful candidates these days have completed spring internships, summer internships and attended pre-internship introductory days.

But what if you missed all that? What if you kept your head down, worked hard at your degree and only thought about jobs when your university career was over? If this is you and you want to go straight into a finance job with an investment bank or fund manager, you’re going to struggle. If you’re very lucky, however, a small UK asset management firm could save the day.

For the past five years, Intermediate Capital Group (ICG), an asset management firm with €23.8bn of assets invested across private debt, credit and equity, has been offering paid 12 month placements to graduates who don’t have previous internships.

Jo Zendel, ICG’s head of human resources, says they’re interested in hiring people with work experience, but not if that experience is in finance: “The experience must not have been in an investment bank,” she says. “We get kids who’ve done all sorts of interesting jobs. – People who’ve worked in a pub or a restaurant, or who have said up a clothing line because their family’s in the rag trade. The people we hire have all demonstrated industriousness and hard work.”

Why not hire people who’ve demonstrated industriousness in finance though? Banks are notoriously biased towards hiring children from the middle and upper middle classes, and Zendel says they want to give other students a look-in. “We’re trying to give people who would otherwise struggle to get into finance an opportunity to get a first step on the career ladder.”  She says the graduates who join ICG tend to be, “very bright,” but don’t have relatives who work in the City. – “No one gave them pointers along the way. They focused on getting their first class or their 2.i degree and when they started thinking about applying for a job it was already too late to get into banking.”

ICG doesn’t hire students with the intention of keeping them. – At the end of the 12 months, most leave, although there are some exceptions. The benevolent intention isn’t necessarily to feed ICG’s own talent pipeline, but to put a small cohort of talented students back in the running to apply for jobs elsewhere. During the programme, they’re taught Excel modelling, given a buddy and mentor, and are exposed to various parts of ICG’s business.

“We treat everyone differently,” says Zendel. “A lot of our interns go into the client services team where they prepare the background research and the responses to requests for proposals from investors. Some also go into compliance, research or IT.”

When the programme’s over, previous ICG hires have gone to work at Credit Suisse, PWC, Bernstein and Mitsubishi UFJ. “We ask that people stay with us for six months, but after six months we’re happy to support them in applying for positions elsewhere,” says Zendel.

In some ways, ICG’s approach resembles that at Tobin & Co, the US M&A boutique which also offers graduates work experience in the expectation that they’ll move on and find jobs elsewhere. But while Tobin pays nothing at all in the way of salary, ICG’s ethos means payment is integral to the programme. “It’s critical to pay the graduates,” says Zendel. “If you don’t pay, you’re excluding kids who don’t come from affluent backgrounds. It’s not cheap to live in London and we pay enough that people can rent a room in a house or flat. It’s important that people get the experience of living in London and to not pay them would be sending the wrong message.”

ICG’s applications will soon be open via a link on its website. Successful candidates can expect telephone interviews and an assessment centre. Unsuccessful candidates will receive feedback on why they failed.

Naturally – and as with everything in finance –  it’s not easy to get onto ICG’s programme. Every year, the firm accepts no more than two or three people; every year, 200+ apply.

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““

Dublin has been losing out to Frankfurt in the battle for front office jobs as banks move headcount out of London after Brexit. Now, a planned hiring spree by a $105.7bn Asian asset manager has just been put on hold.

Mirae Asset Financial Group, a South Korean investment group, chose Dublin as a base for a new ‘global trading centre’ earlier this year, and had plans to open a new office housing 20 people including seven or eight traders. We now understand that Mirae has postponed its move into Ireland for the moment, but may still open up there in the medium-term.

Mirae, announced that it had chosen Dublin over London as its new European trading hub because of the Brexit vote in an interview with a local paper in June. The promised hiring spree, while relatively small, caused a buzz locally because Mirae has a prop trading operation. This is relatively unique in the Irish market and would have attracted international talent.

Dublin has been successful at luring asset management firms over from London after the Brexit vote – Legal & General Investment Management chose Dublin, while Blackrock has shortlisted the city for its post-Brexit hub. Most major banks have decided to shift trading jobs to Frankfurt, although Barclays has said that it would move 150 jobs to the Irish capital, and Citigroup has said that Dublin is one of the European hubs it would expand after Brexit. J.P. Morgan has agreed to pay $137m for a new Dublin office that could house 1,000 staff.

This week, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said it was deciding between moving jobs to either Frankfurt or Dublin. TD Securities said yesterday that it had chosen Dublin as its EU trading hub, and will be initially creating 10 bond trading roles in the Irish capital.

IDA Ireland did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

Ireland’s ability to attract big banks in the wake of the Brexit vote was described as “disappointing and underwhelming” by Michael McGrath, a finance spokesperson at the main opposition party Fianna Fail in an interview with Bloomberg. Meanwhile, despite expanding its headcount to deal with an influx of new business after Brexit, the Central Bank of Ireland has been criticised by some for not being welcoming enough to big banks looking to shift trading jobs.

Dublin has long been a hub for back office functions, with some of the biggest banks and fund managers employing thousands of people in its International Financial Services Centre in the East Wall parts of the city. Brexit was viewed as an opportunity for Dublin to increase its reputation as a location for front office activities.

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““

If you’re a first year analyst in an investment bank, how much must you spend on your outfit? While the suit your mother bought you from eBay is definitely a no-no, do you really need to go very large in Hugo Boss?

You might think this would depend both upon where you work (in terms of organization) and the sort of division you work for. For example, a technology analyst at HSBC who mostly interacts with colleagues might be expected to dress less snappily than an M&A analyst at Goldman Sachs with aspirations to visit clients.

In fact, sartorial splashing out seems to have more to do with the individual than the bank or division.

We asked some analysts who joined banks full time this summer how much they spent on suits. The biggest spender was in the technology division of Goldman Sachs, which is now allowing its people to go “totally casual” if they so wish.

“I spent £1,500 on my suit,” says the nattily-dressed Goldman tech analyst. “I spent around £200 on my shoes and I have ten shirts costing £80 pounds each.” That’s £2,500 ($3.2k) in total then.

At the other end of the scale, an IBD analyst at a leading M&A boutique in London says his suit budget was £200. “Given that I was going to be wearing it every day, I tried to minimize what I spent on my suit,” he tells us. “I didn’t see the point in buying an expensive suit that was going to be ruined by daily wear and tear. I bought several double-cuff shirts, costing between £30 and £60 each and I bought a pair of cheap shoes for less than £100, plus some more expensive ones that I only wear to meetings.”

The smallest spender was also in Goldman’s tech division. “I have two suits, both of which cost me around £100,” says another GS tech analyst. “- I have one pair of really good shoes which cost me £150 but were a really good investment (I’ve had them for two years and they look like new). I usually buy non-iron shirts costing around £30 and I have seven of them. I also have three ties which cost me £40 each and some cuff-links which cost me £25 each, but I don’t really use those either…”

He’ll probably be using them a lot less now that t-shirts and jeans are the thing.

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Sixteen-year private equity veteran Nancy Ford joined $140bn PE giant KKR’s San Francisco office last month as a managing director.

KKR has been expanding globally, hiring in Europe and Asia, including opening new offices in China, and in the U.S. has been making replacement hires and growing headcount at its New York headquarters, Houston, San Francisco and Menlo Park, California.

Before her recent move to KKR, Ford worked at FFL Partners, a PE firm that invests between $50m and $300m in middle-market companies and raised $2bn fund in 2015. She worked her way up to managing director over the course of 14 years at the firm, which she joined after getting her MBA at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

Prior to that, Ford worked for two years at Thomas H. Lee Partners, a Boston-based PE firm that has raised more than $22bn and invested in 140-plus portfolio companies with an aggregate value of over $150bn.

Ford started her career at Goldman Sachs, which she joined as an investment banking analyst after graduating with a BS in economics from Duke University.

KKR, sometimes referred to as “the Goldman Sachs of private equity,” has been hiring a lot of junior bankers from Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. It finished second on the eFinancialCareers Ideal Employer list of firms that PE professionals want to work for.

Last month, KKR appointed Joseph Bae and Scott Nuttall as co-presidents and co-chief operating officers, putting them in position to take over leadership of the firm when Henry Kravis and George Roberts step down. In response, various people resigned, potentially opening up some opportunities.
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““

Any big promotion in the finance sector comes with challenges – but if you’re a priority banker in Singapore who’s just become a private banker, your chances of succeeding in your new job are now less than 50%.

In an effort to plug skill shortages, some private banks in Singapore have recently increased their recruitment of priority bankers, who manage ‘mass affluent’ clients (typically people with $100k to $1m to invest).

Most of this ‘hiring’ is done via internal promotions at large firms – Citi, DBS, HSBC and UOB, for example – that boast both priority and private banking units. Standard Chartered is understood to upgrade about 10 priority bankers a year in Singapore, according to an industry source.

Those picked for promotion usually have some customers whose investable assets have already breached the bank’s threshold for becoming a private client (typically $1m to $5m depending on the bank). “And they’re also top performers in terms of meeting their targets,” says former Merrill Lynch private banker Rahul Sen, now head of wealth management at search firm The Omerta Group.

But despite having a track record of high performance, the newly promoted relationship managers often fail to make the grade. “Across all private banks in Singapore, more than 50% don’t succeed,” says Liu San Li, an ex-Coutts private banker, now head of banking at search firm IGS Asia in Singapore. “But not all are fired, most are given the option of returning to the priority side.”

Sen says differences between managing clients in the two sectors explain the high failure rate. “Priority bankers are essentially working in the retail segment. They are micro-managed with daily calls from the boss, daily sales calls and weekly targets,” he explains. “But when you go into private banking you’re suddenly in a much more mature way of functioning – your manager might check in on you once a month but you’re largely left to your own devices. You either build your business or you fail.”

New private bankers also need to get up to speed quickly with the more complex products they are dealing with. “You can’t be a pusher of simple insurance and mutual fund products any more. And you’ll be managing fewer clients, but increasing wallet share from them,” says Sen. “Private bankers must operate end-to-end with their clients and deal with issues like long-term estate planning.”

Because priority bankers can only bring their wealthiest clients to the private bank, they also face tough revenue targets, says Pathik Gupta, an associate partner at consultancy McLagan in Singapore. “Usually they’re given about 24 months to succeed. Because they bring sales experience rather than a big client base, they need to spend a lot of time building up clients, which is difficult,” he says.

Despite the failure rate, hiring priority bankers can pay dividends for banks. “When UBS took on about 100 of them from Citi, HSBC and the like in China about three years ago only about 35 were successful,” says a Singapore headhunter who asked not to be named. “But the salaries of the 65 others were low anyway and the bank took on their clients when they left – so it worked out.”

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““

Typhoon Hato may have smashed skyscraper windows, torn down trees and injured scores of people in Hong Kong, but for some banking professionals it provided a brief respite from the stresses of working in finance.

The storm, which triggered Hong Kong’s highest ‘Typhoon 10’ warning for just the third time in the past 20 years, shut down the territory’s stock market and closed offices on Wednesday.

Banks in Central followed long-established government protocols – less severe typhoons regularly hit Hong Kong between July and October – and told staff not to come into work. “We typically send emails out the day before to prepare people for the possibility of a typhoon day,” says an HR manager at a global bank.

Not all employees had their noses to the grindstone at home, however. “I worked from my apartment in the morning, then looked after the kids, and then went for a beer on the waterfront to see the after-effects of the storm,” says a director at a large US financial institution.

“People at my firm see a typhoon day more as a free holiday than as a lost day of work. There’s actually a bit of excitement and fun about it,” he adds. “If you have calls with international colleagues you’ll definitely still take them, but you’ll feel like you missed out on the day a bit.”

Banking professionals typically try to combine work and leisure during typhoons. “Hong Kong is a productive city, so most employees do some work from home. But I’ve seen people going shopping or to the movies, or having drinks – not all businesses are shut for the whole day,” says former Standard Chartered head of selection Henry Chamberlain, now an executive coach.

The amount of work you do on a typhoon day ultimately depends on your job description. Back-office roles, for example, can be heavily dependent on office-bound technology.

“In operations, working from home isn’t an option,” says Alex Medana, an ex-head of APAC cash equities client service at Deutsche Bank who now runs fintech company FinFabrik. Large banks typically delegate urgent processing work to other global offices when Hong Kong shuts down for a typhoon.

Investment bankers, by contrast, tend to spend most of the day working, albeit at a more relaxed pace. “Bankers are less affected by typhoon days because they can work almost anywhere as long as they have wifi for their laptop. The main disruption is if you need to reschedule flights or client meetings,” says Eric Sim, a former UBS managing director who’s currently a guest lecturer at Renmin University. About 400 flights were cancelled during Typhoon Hato.

Traders, meanwhile, are less busy but still stay in touch with markets. “There’s usually at least minimal coverage from Hong Kong as international markets are still open, although some of the coverage may be shifted to other offices if necessary,” say trader-turned-headhunter Warwick Pearmund. “Traders simply work from home. Remote access, even for systems like Bloomberg, is now the norm.”

Working remotely doesn’t always go smoothly, however. “We knew in advance about the latest typhoon, so we could take our laptops home. But my computer refused to start on Wednesday and IT support was offline,” says another senior banker in Hong Kong. “I had to work off my phone and make a stack of calls to people outside HK. Now I’m back in the office and I’m swamped – not by water, but by work.”

Follow @simonmortlock

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““

As we’ve noted before, you probably don’t want to work in research now. McKinsey & Co is predicting massive layoffs in equity research in the next few years, partly because of MiFID II and partly because equity sales and trading jobs have already been cut and research jobs haven’t. Researchers are already complaining of being asked to work for free. 

In this context, yesterday’s news that Deutsche Bank will be halving the amount it charges for its research after MiFID II doesn’t look very promising. Bloomberg reports that Deutsche’s plan to charge €60k for 10 users to access its fixed income and macro research has been revised downwards after unnamed other banks cut their prices. Instead of €60k, Deutsche will be charging €30k. That includes access to written research and access to Deutsche’s analysts. Basically, Deutsche’s analysts are going to pimping their wares, and themselves, for a lot less money than they’d thought.

Maybe it’s just Deutsche? The good news for the moment is that most other banks seem to be sticking to higher research prices. Bank of America reportedly plans to charge $100k (€85k) per client for an “ultra high service.” Nomura proposes to charge €120k for access to all its research on global economics, fixed income, credit and foreign exchange. Meanwhile, fund managers like Unigestion and Pimco have indicated that they will absorb the cost of banks’ research themselves rather than passing it on as a separate cost to their clients, suggesting they might be willing to pay more to banks.

Either way, life for researchers is about to change. In future, the way researchers work is likely to be as much the result of their employer’s pricing structure as the depth of their research notes and rankings on Extel. The danger is that prices will race to the bottom. In the worst banks, researchers will be reduced to commodities, endlessly churning out research notes and meeting clients for little real gain. In the best, they’ll become revenue generators in their own right. The question now is which banks will fall into the first category and which – if any – will fall into the second.

Separately, Credit Suisse has made another big hire for its equities business. Reuters reports that Michael Ebert from Bank of America has joined as global head of equity derivatives. Credit Suisse has been rebuilding its equities business this year after hiring Mike Stewart from UBS as the new global head. Stewart worked for Bank of America before joining UBS in 2011 and is therefore likely to know Ebert from the past.

Meanwhile:

CDOs are making a comeback under the guise of “bespoke tranches.” The market has more than doubled this year compared to last, with issuance of $20-30bn. (Financial Times) 

High ranking German regulator says banks need to move to Frankfurt soon. “The banks have to finally get their act together, otherwise they won’t make it before Brexit happens at the end of March 2019.” (Handelsblatt) 

Shares in Bitcoin firm suspended after rising 6,000%. (Marketwatch) 

Overseas students don’t want to stay in the UK after all. (Guardian) 

My year at Google Brain. (ColinRaffel) 

Death of the coding bootcamp. (NY Times) 

Maybe you could live in an empty London office building. (Vice)

The personality style best adapted to the situation of interacting at work within a cohesive group of colleagues is a talkative, true-to-one’s-self forthrightness. This is likely to maintain trust. (HR Director) 

Follow @MadameButcher
Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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““

Speak to any senior investment banker who’s been in the industry for a long period of time, and one common theme comes up – pay is not what it was. Whether it’s down to the bonus cap in Europe, which predominantly limits variable pay to 100% of salary, or investment banks being more prudent with pay, it’s no longer a fast-track to retire at 40.

But, to put it in perspective, banking still pays very well. Moreover, even if you’re in a comparatively low paying job in the financial sector, you’ll earn more than the vast majority of people in the UK. New figures from compensation benchmarking website Emolument.com, suggest that the best place to be in finance is…M&A. The figures below for director level employees, show that total compensation comes in at an average of £308k in London for investment bankers. Trading jobs still have the edge over sales, with £295k and £288k in total compensation respectively. All of the top five paying finance jobs are front office roles in an investment bank.

Looking at the flip side, the ‘worst’ paying finance job is a middle and back office role in asset management. This is, admittedly, a fairly broad brush – a risk manager will earn far more than a fund accountant, for example – but Emolument suggests that senior back and middle office staff bring in a total of £112k. What’s more, actuarial roles, which take six years and 15 exams before you’re even qualified to work in the sector, are at the wrong end of the pay table with average compensation of £142k.

In truth, these figures gloss over the fact that banks’ tendency to shift support functions to lower cost destinations – both in the UK and abroad – means there are finance jobs that pay a lot less than this. Figures from recruiters Robert Walters, for example, suggest that a back office banking role in the North of England can offer a starting salary of £18k.

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Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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““

Jihan Bowes-Little is as well known for his rap skills as his trading prowess. The former Goldman Sachs trader is also known as Metis – a hip hop artist who wrote a track called “Goldman Rucksack” about his dilemma over whether to display the bank’s logo when he wore its corporate freebie.

Bowes-Little, who has shifted from Goldman Sachs to hedge funds and finally to J.P. Morgan’s private bank in Los Angeles, has just left to start his own venture capital firm.

Bowes-Little worked at Goldman in London for seven years until 2009, when he left to start Roark Entertainment, an investment firm for artists and creative entrepreneurs. He went back into mainstream finance with a portfolio manager role at Bluecrest Capital Management in January 2012.

Last year, he shifted again, joining J.P. Morgan’s private bank in March. 18 months on, and he’s now founder and managing partner at Bracket VC, according to his public profile. No further details were available on the firm and he did not respond to requests for comment.

Bowes-Little has spoken extensively about his secret double-life while he worked as a European credit derivatives at Goldman Sachs, spending evenings trying to carve out a rap career in sweaty London clubs. He told the FT that he regularly had to takes calls for work from Tokyo after gigs, and that he hired a PR company to ensure his no one in the music industry knew his day job and that no one at Goldman knew he rapped.

He told Brown’s alumni magazine that the Goldman job was a “means to an end”: “I had to put some money away and help my parents out. I went to Goldman mainly because it would teach me a lot and give me the opportunity to do what I wanted to do later on.”

Bowes Little is not the only former Goldmanite to embark on a rap career, and use his time in the City as a source of inspiration. As we pointed out previously, Rehan Islam, who worked as an analyst in structured finance at the bank for three years, was asked by his interview to prove his rap skills – and got the job.

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Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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