Quantcast
Channel: eFinancialCareers » News & Analysis
Viewing all 8687 articles
Browse latest View live

Asian PE firms cut 80% of bankers after one interview: here’s how to beat the axe

$
0
0

Despite the rise of the fintech sector in Singapore and Hong Kong, most investment bankers I speak to still say private equity is their number one choice if they want to leave IBD. Private equity is perceived as prestigious in Asia, while at the same time many global banks have been facing challenges in the region.

The PE industry also briefly faced competition for talent from the upstart VC industry in Asia. However, when speaking to job seekers recently, I’ve noticed that this battle has been decisively won by PE, at least for now.

This means, however, that the competition for PE jobs in Asia is fiercer than ever, with candidates from all walks of investment banking vying to impress PE firms with their M&A expertise and various other skills – from sector experience to foreign languages.

As a result, up to 80% of PE interviewees get eliminated in the first interview round, and only about 5% to 10% remain for the final round.

If you are invited for an interview, here’s how you can increase the odds of success in a hyper competitive market.

Get the timing right

Allow yourself enough time to prepare for the interview. If the firm wants to schedule it within 48 hours, you may want to push back – ideally you want at least three days (preferably including the weekend) to get ready. Once the interview date is set, I’m increasingly observing funds putting candidates through gruelling three or four-hour sessions to test both their skills and stamina. The safest bet is to take a half day or full day off for the interview – you are far more likely to be rested, relaxed and better prepared. If at all possible, obtain the names and backgrounds of the whole team just in case someone new gets pulled into the interview session unexpectedly.

Detail you deals

When preparing for your interview, remember that any deal or project on your CV is fair game for (very) in-depth questioning. Most bankers I’ve dealt with wrongly assume they can recollect all the relevant parts of all their deals. But the PE interviewer is looking for higher-level details than can be found via a Google search. They want to hear about your personal contribution to the deal, what challenges you faced and how you displayed lateral thinking to resolve them and to take the transaction closer to completion. They want you to show real-life deal-execution experience and an understanding of M&A dynamics.

Model up

The next stage is to prepare yourself for questions about your fundamental technical skills. PE deal teams in Asia are lean, so regardless of whether you are going for an analyst, associate or VP role, you will at some point need to delve into the bowels of a byzantine financial model. Most likely you will need to sit a four-hour financial modelling test at the firm’s offices. The model will probably be a highly intricate operating model where you need to link up three financial statements and then do a discounted cash-flow valuation. Some firms also test candidates on LBO modelling skills, although this is less common in Asia.

Quiz them

Most candidates view an interview as a Q&A session where they are the ones doing all the answering. This is a mistake that candidates in Asia are particularly prone to. You must be able to guide and generate the flow of conversation in an interview situation such that the interviewer also enjoys the process.

Turning the tables and asking the interviewers well thought out, properly researched and detailed questions is fantastic way to: a) demonstrate that you are a dynamic and proactive candidate; b) that you have high standards and are keen to ensure the platform you join is robust and progressive; c) that you are highly interested in the job and view the interview process as a genuine chance to find out more; and d) that you have highly developed inter-personal skills and good emotional intelligence.

Win them all over

Make sure you ask your recruiter for the full list of names of the people you will be meeting. If your recruiter is well connected, they will also be able to give you an insight into some of the personalities you are meeting. This can be invaluable. Particularly during an intense four-hour session, different interview styles and personalities need to be handled and managed with dexterity if you are to have any chance of success.

Remember that each interviewer you meet will have a say in the outcome – ‘consensus hiring’ in Asian private equity is virtually a must due to small team sizes. The more you can tailor your pitch to each person, the more likely they will take it as an interesting and positive experience and give you the greenlight to proceed to the next round.

Jay Abeyasinghe is a former research analyst who’s worked at Deutsche Bank, Caliburn Partnership and Commonwealth Bank. He’s now associate director of private equity, corporates and investment banking recruitment at Morgan McKinley in Singapore.


Image credit: dimid_86, Getty

““


Morning Coffee: Ex-Goldman analyst gives horrified ex-colleagues plenty to discuss. Lev fin jobs back in a big way

$
0
0

Maybe Goldman Sachs bankers should be used to it. Although CEO Lloyd Blankfein rails against President Trump on Twitter, some former staff are less averse to the lure of contemporary right wing politics. – The Trump administration is famously littered with ex-Goldmanites, and Steve Bannon, ex-Goldman M&A VP and lead anti-globalization agitator was until recently Trump’s chief strategist. Now, an ex-Goldman economist has stolen Bannon’s mantle: for the moment, Alice Weidel is the most famous, most right-wing, ex-Goldman Sachs employee on the planet.

Weidel and her political colleague, Alexander Gauland, just won a 13% share of the vote for anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Germany’s election. – Not enough to unseat Chancellor Angela Merkel, but enough to force Merkel into a new and potentially unstable coalition, enough to cause disquiet at the return of right wing politics to the German mainstream, and enough to raise eyebrows at Weidel’s former employer.

As the Financial Times points out, this is the first time that Germany has had a mainstream right-wing political party since the Nazis. Weidel’s message to the German electorate was that they needed to vote for her to “get their country back,” that they should put Germany first so they could still call it their home, and that the culture of Germany had changed since Angela Merkel’s admission of 900,000 migrants and refugees from mostly Muslim countries, so that as a lesbian woman she felt less comfortable showing affection in public.

While Goldman’s famously open-minded staff would undoubtedly approve of Weidel’s call for tolerance of homosexuality, they’d likely be less approving of the other elements of Weidel’s message. – All the more so because of their potential to inflame ugly sentiments from the past. At an AfD rally attended by the New York Times, for example, there were complaints that Germans now have the “mentality of a totally vanquished people” and questions over the need for a Holocaust memorial.

In fact, Weidel’s tenure at Goldman seems to have been brief. In an article earlier this year, Spiegel said she only worked for the firm for two years after leaving university. Even so, she seems to have created sufficient of an impression for former colleagues to talk about her in shocked tones. Four months ago, Spiegel says ex-Goldman colleagues were sharing videos of Weidel’s public appearances accompanied by stunned comments like, “Here is Alice. What happened to her?,” and, “Who is the real Alice?”

As of yesterday, Weidel’s former friends at Goldman will have even more to talk about. – All the more so because her success injects an element of uncertainty into German politics which might make the firm think twice before shifting thousands of jobs from London to Frankfurt at the earliest possible opportunity.

Separately, leveraged finance jobs are back and they’re bigger than ever. The Wall Street Journal notes that the volume of U.S. leveraged loans is up 53% this year, putting the U.S. market on track to surpass its record of 2007. It also notes that this previous record was one of the main signs of the impending crash and that investors in leveraged loans in 2007 suffered losses of 30%.

Meanwhile:

Weidel lived abroad in China for six years as a banker and speaks Chinese. (Haaretz) 

J.P. Morgan’s creating 2,500 new back and middle office jobs in Poland. (Financial Times) 

Top technology workers would rather work in Canada than Trump’s America. (Vanity Fair) 

Dataminr’s opening a Dublin office. (Irish Times) 

Men in Silicon Valley are starting a radical subculture calling for total male separatism.  (NY Times) 

Self-made trader who claimed to be very, very, rich actually isn’t. (Daily Mail) 

You’ll feel better if your job title is ‘chief fabricator of fairy dust.” (BBC) 

Everyone’s only pretending to understand Blockchain. (Finextra) 

Flying makes you stupid. (BBC) 

If you say things like “I think”, or “my view is”, combined with causal words such as “because”, “so”, “nevertheless” in a job interview, you’re more likely to get hired. (Financial Times) 

Goldman bankers keep quitting for Sotheby’s. (Bloomberg) 


Have a story or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

 

““

Credit Suisse just hired an MD who was last seen at Haitong

$
0
0

Something seems to be afoot at Credit Suisse. Last week, the Swiss bank quietly parted company with Warwick Palmer, its head of G10 EM/FX spot trading who only worked there 12 months. Now, it’s hired in a new senior emerging markets trader who spent a long time at Deutsche Bank but had the misfortune to join Haitong Securities just before it decided to slim down. 

Credit Suisse’s new trader is Jamil Hallak, a former managing director of emerging markets trading at Haitong Securities in London. As we reported last week, Haitong has cut its headcount by 67% and Hallak – who only worked there seven months – left in April. Before Haitong, Hallak spent five and a half years at Deutsche Bank in Dubai. Credit Suisse has clearly picked him up at a competitive rate late in the season – there’ll be no bonuses to buyout given that he’s been out of the market since the start of the second quarter.

Credit Suisse’s changes to its emerging markets business come amidst concerns that rising interest rates and proposals to reverse quantitative easing could reduce investor appetite for emerging market debt as yields rise elsewhere. Although Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, Jefferies, and Nomura have all been adding staff to their emerging markets businesses this year, banking intelligence firm Coalition said emerging markets macro trading revenues fell 2% across the market in the first half of this year compared to the same period of 2016.

There are signs that Credit Suisse is trying to put its global markets house in order as we go into the fourth quarter. Palmer isn’t the only exit this month: Jim Buccola, the former global head of Credit Suisse’s huge securitized products trading business also left, and was replaced by Joe Steffa, a trader hired from RBS in 2013.


Have a story or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

“”

Photo credit: creditsuisse_DSC_0031 by Herve Boinay is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

This top Morgan Stanley portfolio manager has just joined this $4bn hedge fund in New York

$
0
0

Morgan Stanley’s head of sovereign research in New York, Jens Nystedt, has left the Wall Street firm to return to the hedge fund world.

Nystedt joined Morgan Stanley’s investment management division in 2014 as a senior portfolio manager and head of sovereign research. For seven years before joining Morgan Stanley, he had worked in senior research roles at both Moore Capital Management in New York and as a senior macro strategists at GLG Partners in London. Earlier this month, he signed up to Emso Asset Management – an emerging markets focused hedge fund with around $4bn in assets under management and 25 employees across London and New York – as a senior portfolio manager.

Nystedt, who has a PhD in Economics from the Stockholm School of Economics, has flitted between the sell-side and buy-side during his career. He spent over three years at Deutsche Bank, initially as chief economist for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in London and later as chief US FX strategist in New York. He joined Deutsche in 2004, after six years working as an economist for the International Monetary Fund.

Emso was set up by Mark Franklin, the former co-head of global emerging markets sales and trading at Salomon Smith Barney. It has madea few hires this year – as well as Nystedt, it brought in Johan Larsson as head of European origination from Och-Ziff Capital Management in January.

Contact for news, tips and comments: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

Image: Getty Images

““

The new (cheap) universities for getting into J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs

$
0
0

If you want a job at a top investment bank in Europe, you’re probably thinking about attending one of the continent’s top universities for careers in finance – most of which seem to be located in the UK and will therefore cost you £9.3k (€11k, $12.5k) a year as an undergraduate if you’re an EU student, and £10k a year if you’re not.

But maybe you’re missing a trick? Imagine if you could land a banking job by attending a university which only costs €2k (or less) a year and which feeds students into banks’ hottest new hiring market?

Welcome to the top universities in Poland.

As we’ve noted before, Goldman Sachs is building out its technology and operations centre in Warsaw and is expected to make hundreds of new hires both in the front and back office in the next few years. It now transpires that J.P. Morgan has much the same idea. The Financial Times reports that J.P. Morgan plans to create 2,500 new middle and back office roles in Warsaw after opening a new global operations centre in the Polish Capital.

If you want to work in banking, Warsaw’s three top universities – The University of Warsaw, the Warsaw University of Technology and the Warsaw School of Economics – therefore look like a very good bet. All three already feed students into top banks. All three run key courses (eg. computer science, finance and international investment, and quantitative finance) in English. And all three are very, very cheap. 

For the moment, Citi is by far the biggest employer of graduates from Warsaw’s universities: many go into Citi’s big retail banking operation in Poland. However, as the chart below shows, the Swiss banks and Goldman Sachs are also in the market and J.P. Morgan is likely to soon join them. LinkedIn data suggests that between 84% and 87% of graduates from Warsaw’s universities who work in investment banks stay in Poland, although some students from the Warsaw School of Economics also find their way into front office jobs in sales and trading in London.

If you want to work in risk, or operations or technology – or even data-related quantitative finance jobs related directly to sales and trading – in Europe, Warsaw looks like the future. The FT says there are already 50,000 people working for international banks in Poland, and the country is gunning for 30,000 more after Brexit.  In the past, ambitious students who graduated from bachelors degrees at Polish universities came to London to take Masters programmes and get jobs in the City. In future, UK students might simply study in Poland from the outset.


Have a story or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

“”

Photo credit: Warsaw University by Fox Wu is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

KKR’s ex-head of private credit: Don’t go into private equity for the glamour

$
0
0

Erik Falk came over to the buy side late in his career. After spending over 16 years working in senior roles at both Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, he joined private equity giant KKR in 2008 and eventually became its global head of private credit. Most people make the switch as analysts or associates, but if you’re thinking of moving to the buy-side, do it for the right reasons – not the “glamour,” he says.

Whether you’re looking to move into private equity or private credit or anywhere else on the buy side, Falk suggests that you ask yourself, “Do I really love the idea of investing and the day-to-day reality of doing that type of work?”

“If you really love doing it and find opportunities to join people who will allow you to do it, great, but some people come to the business for the perceived glamour,” he says.

“I don’t believe that is the case for everyone, but assuming it is, it’s about finding people you want to work with, getting in at the ground level and really learning,” Falk says.

Erik Falk recently retired from his role overseeing private funds as head of private credit within the $35bn credit business at KKR. He’s now a senior executive and partner focused on strategic initiatives at Magnetar Capital, a $13bn alternative asset management firm with various fixed income, energy, quantitative and fundamental units, including both private equity and hedge fund strategies. After accepting his new, full-time role at Magnetar in Evanston, Illinois, Falk signed on to become a strategic personal investor and senior advisory board member at Star Mountain Capital, a New York-based investment management firm led by CEO Brett Hickey specializing in U.S. lower middle-market private debt.

Before switching into private equity, he was the head of special situations and co-head of securitized products at Deutsche Bank, which he joined in March 2000 from Credit Suisse First Boston.

The offices of KKR and Star Mountain are only a few blocks apart in New York, but other than that, they are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

“The benefits of being at larger firms, whether it’s an investment bank or a larger private equity firm, relates to the breadth of experience, the depths of the talent pool around you, the resume you build and the types of experience you have,” says Brian Finn, the chairman of Star Mountain, previously the head of the $100bn Credit Suisse Alternatives division, eventually becoming the co-head of the M&A group and co-president of the bank.

Finn went on to become chairman/CEO of Asset Management Finance (AMF) Corp., a $75bn private equity and debt firm that acquires stakes in asset management and wealth management firms, and a strategic adviser to KKR.

“Smaller firms tend to be more entrepreneurial – they don’t have the same sets of rules and constraints as there are at a big firm, where if you’re doing health care, you stay in your lane, whereas at a small firm you can be working on healthcare one day, financial services the next day, equity one day and credit the next day,” Finn says. “At big firms, somebody runs the kitchen, but at small firms you have to make your own coffee.”


““

Point72’s chief technology officer swaps one billionaire boss for another

$
0
0

Point72 Asset Management has just lost its chief technology officer, Chris Corrado, who has worked at the company for the best part of 16 years.

Corrado, who was co-chief technology officer at SAC Capital Advisors before moving across to Steve Cohen’s rebranded family office Point72 Asset Management as chief technology officer in 2014, has just swapped one billionaire boss for another – joining MacAndrews & Forbes, the diverse holding company owned by Ronald Perelman, as chief information officer.

Corrado joined MacAndrews & Forbes earlier this month, having started SAC Capital in January 2001. He was initially a managing director and co-chief technology officer alongside Seetharam Gorre, who moved into the chief information officer role at Point72 in April 2014 – when Corrado became CTO.

While the CIO tends to oversee development and software choices within financial institutions, the CTO is more concerned with infrastructure and technology efficiency. Corrado claims on his LinkedIn profile that he reduced “technology operating costs by 35%”.

Technology has become increasingly important at Point72. As we reported in August, it brought in Jerrell Watts, the former head of algorithmic execution and order routing at Citadel as its new head of algo trading. Matthew Granade, its recently installed chief intelligence officer, said earlier this year that the move towards a ‘quantamental’ approach – blending systematic investing with human decision-making – meant that all new analyst hires were put through a computer programming and data science training programme.

Contact for news, tips and comments: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

Image: Getty Images

Â

Banking vs. consulting. – Which is really best now?

$
0
0

Investment banking and strategy consulting are like avocados and quinoa: both attract the elite (or, in the words of one ex-McKinsey director, “insecure, deeply left-brain, hyper-intellectual, OCD over-achievers.”). Both pay well. Both involve some serious commitments of your time and some heavy academic achievements.

This is not to say that banking and consulting are equivalent careers though. Like avocados and quinoa, they have some pretty substantial differences. What works for one person will not work for the other.

So… which is right for you? We asked a large population of people with experience of working for Goldman and McKinsey, or J.P. Morgan and Bain & Co. for their opinions on the differences between the two industries. These – plus some quantitative information – are listed below.

Are you a banker or a consultant? All will become clear.

You want higher pay? Choose banking (for the first 20 years)

If you want money, you probably want to work in banking. As the figures below from pay benchmarking company Emolument.com are to be believed, front office banking careers are generally a lot more lucrative than careers in consulting.

A note of caution, though. One ex-McKinsey consultant who now works in investment banking says the figures above are a simplification. If you play a long game in consulting, he tells us you’re likely to come out on top of the bankers. Bankers are paid more at the start of their careers, “But once you reach MD-level in an investment bank, compensation starts to plateau,” he tells us. “In banking, you can be subject to volatility, both from the market and personal performance. Meanwhile, consultants are on a consistent trend upwards.”

While the pay in banking is plateauing, he says compensation at places like McKinsey only really kicks in at the senior partner level. He also says that if you look at the median compensation of consultants with 15 years’ experience versus that of bankers at the same level, consultants will come out on top.

You want job security? Choose consulting

This brings us to the second point: job security. Your chances of having a 15-20 year career in consulting look a lot higher than your chances of having a 15-20 year career in banking.

Take McKinsey & Co. Between 1994 and 2001, it went from 3,300 consultants globally to 7,700. Right now, it has around 12,000 consultants – along with 2,000 “research and information professionals”. In other words, headcount in consulting just seems to rise and rise. – Although firms like McKinsey and Boston Consulting advocate layoffs and restructuring at client companies, their own staff seem fairly secure.

By comparison, all banks are under pressure to cut costs and heads. In the five years following 2008, American banks and insurers slashed 400,000 jobs according to the U.S. census.

Banking therefore looks like the more risky career option – you might get paid more to start with, but it might not last.

You want weekends off? Choose consulting 

Everyone we spoke to (literally everyone) agreed that consultants generally have a better life than bankers.

“My life is unimaginably better as a consultant,” says one ex-M&A banker. “My current colleagues are always listening in horror and shock when I recount some of my long months on less than a handful of hours of sleep when I was in M&A. Leaving at 11pm is really late in most cases in consulting.”

The really big difference, though is weekends: “Most consulting firms treat the weekend as sacred and it’s relatively rare to get an e-mail from a partner or a client.,” he says.

This isn’t to say that the hours aren’t sometimes tough in consulting too. One consultant said weekend work is often needed just to catch up. And even when consultants don’t work weekends, they spend their weeks ‘on the road’ (see below), miles away from home. An ex-consultant we spoke to said weeknights are often a killer in consulting jobs – you’re lucky to get in by 10pm.

Like banks, consultancy firms are alert to the long-hours issue. Boston Consulting Group has been implementing a policy known as ‘Predictable Time Off’ for years. Under it, consultants at the firm are assigned ‘predictable periods’ of downtime at the start of a project. During these periods, BCG consultants are required to be off completely – they mustn’t check their email and they mustn’t check their voicemail. Meanwhile, McKinsey & Co introduced flexible work programmes a few years ago – employees there can now take blocks of unpaid leave between projects, work three or four days a week, or take a leave of absence for up to a year.

You want less travel? Choose banking (for the first 10 years)

Everyone agrees that the big downer about consulting is the travel. If you work in banking you’ll commute in and out of your office on Wall Street, in New Jersey, or in the City of London every day. Yes, you might have to do a lot of travelling if you’re in a senior client-facing position, but if you’re a junior M&A banker or a trader you’ll mostly be glued to your screen at the mother-ship.

By comparison, if you work in consulting the travel is immediate. And it’s relentless. The ‘McKinsey Client Model’ involves, ‘Monday to Thursday at the client site and Fridays in your home office,” according to one McKinsey employee.  That client office could be nearby, or it could be hundreds of miles away. If it’s hundreds of miles away, you’ll spend your weeknights in some kind of faceless hotel. “The travel is a killer – you’re on the road non-stop unless you get a plush home city assignment,” says one ex-McKinsey consultant who now works in banking.

You want interesting work? Choose…consulting

Junior bankers in IBD spend their lives creating financial models in Excel and pitch books in Powerpoint. Consultants, meanwhile, spend their time creating diagrammatic models and Powerpoint presentations. Junior bankers devote their time to studying the value of a company and its capital structure; junior consultants think about the strategy of a company and its organizational structure.

Junior M&A bankers who’ve gone into consulting say the work they’re doing as consultants is more interesting. “I’m given a lot more responsibility here,” says one. “Already, I’m presenting to the top management of our clients, whereas when I was in banking I had little hope of meeting clients until I made vice president.” Another consultant says he’s presenting to top management and to general employees which gives him a better feeling for how the business really works: “In banking, you only think about the people at the top.”

One ex-banker turned consultant says the work in banking was too hurried and samey: “In banking, you end up specialized in a particular industry whereas here I’m more of a generalist. As a junior consultant, I get to handle a lot of different kinds of challenge each day and it’s about finding the right answer to a difficult problem. In banking, it was usually about getting the same things done in a short amount of time – we always felt very rushed.”

In theory, life as a consultant should be more fulfilling because consultants actually get to implement the recommendations they make, but one ‘executive transitioner’ who works with consultants moving into other industries says consultants get frustrated with the endless presentations and the limited opportunities to put their ideas into practice (a bit like junior bankers who put together endless pitchbooks for M&A deals that never happen). For this reason, he says they often move out of consulting and into management roles in industry instead.

The ex-McKinsey consultant-turned banker says life in consulting can be interesting due to the sheer variety of projects. On the other hand, the executive transitioner says some junior consultants get staffed across a broad range of projects managed by a range of different partners just to keep them interested, and that this can be come a struggle in itself.

One ex-consultant who now works for J.P. Morgan, says the standard of work is higher in banking: “In consulting I often felt that we were guessing the solutions without any reasonable argument. In banking, 100% correctness is always required and the level of work delivered to clients is very high.” This consultant also says that consultancy firms waste time and are inefficient: “In consulting, 4,000 slides were thrown on me to find something relevant for the task I had to do. You don’t get this in banking.”

You want to use your numerical skills? Choose banking

What makes a good banker vs. a good consultant? One McKinsey & Co. analyst who worked for a bank says bankers are more analytical: “They’re more numbers driven,” he says, adding that bankers use numbers to build up a big picture. By comparison, he says consultants have better communication skills and more aware of the small details behind a successful organization. “Junior bankers are routinely used to narrowing down a lot of info (eg. due diligence into its essential components), whereas most consultants will focus on getting additional information, creating deeper insights.”

You want to work with interesting people? Choose consulting. Want intelligent people? Choose banking

Consultants are probably more interesting people than bankers. Juniors who’ve worked in both industries tell us consultants are more “lifestyle” focused (i.e. they actually have lives outside work). By comparison, one consultant says M&A teams tend to be comprised of pretty similar high achievers. “This is great, because you’ll make friends for life in your analyst class, but in consulting you meet people with really varied interests and backgrounds, which can be more enriching.”

Another consultant who’s experienced both industries says people are smarter in banking. Consultants are good, but not that good.

You want a non-hierarchical culture? Choose consulting

While banks are all about saving money, consultants still have cash to splash. Juniors tell us the lifestyle in consulting is more fancy than in banks. While banks like Nomura now only offer cabs after 10pm and all banks breathe down your neck on things like colored photcopying, consultants say they get cabs to and from work, “many expensive dinners on company, private drivers to the airport.”

Another plus is that hierarchies in consulting firms are often flatter/less evident than in banking. “You feel that the seniors you’re working for actually care about your personal development and they’re often quite proactive in getting to know you beyond the scope of work,” says one McKinsey analyst. “That wasn’t really the feeling in banking – although granted I wasn’t to keen on spending that much more time with my MD after having worked with him for a daily average of 18 hours over at least a month.”

You want job prospects? Choose consulting

What happens when you decide you don’t want to work in banking or consulting any more?

If you work in consulting, you can always go off and become a senior executive in the sector you’ve been consulting in. McKinsey says 450 of its former consultants are currently running ‘billion dollar organizations’ around the world. They include Tidjane Thiam, the new CEO of Credit Suisse and James Gorman at Morgan Stanley.  

By comparison, swapping out of banking can be more of a challenge. The best people from investment banking go into private equity or event driven hedge funds. Sometimes they go into corporates to work for ‘in-house deal teams.’ But there are often more people who want to leave banking than there are places for them.

Interestingly, it seems very easy to go from banking into consulting and less easy to move in the opposite direction: there are plenty more people at McKinsey who used to work for Goldman Sachs but far fewer at Goldman Sachs who used to work for McKinsey.

One junior consultant says this is because banks offer an excellent schooling: “I’ll never learn as much in consulting as I did during those two years in banking, but I’m having a lot more fun as a consultant.”

If you’re smart therefore, maybe you’ll start out in banking and then move into consulting as your career progresses. That way you’ll be able to sample both worlds. And if you still can’t decide? You could always watch this. 

““


Inside OCBC’s new Singapore hiring drive

$
0
0

OCBC is joining a growing list of banks ramping up their digital banking teams in Singapore, but it’s facing local skill shortages as it tries to hire.

“We’re boosting our digital banking headcount,” says Pranav Seth, head of e-business, business transformation and the fintech and innovation group at OCBC.

Most of the new jobs will be based in Singapore, but OCBC is also hiring overseas, especially in Malaysia. “I want a mix of people, with experiences across various sectors and job functions, to apply,” says Seth, without providing headcount numbers.

“My team is already diverse. I have someone with a PhD in environmental science, for example, as well as people from software companies and start-ups,” he adds. “But I also like to hire people with banking backgrounds, who already understand wealth and payments, and appreciate the compliance issues in our industry.”

This kind of hiring can be “challenging”, admits Seth. “It can take a long time, sometimes months, to recruit the kind of people we want – they’re in short supply in Singapore. We’re competing for digital talent with consulting firms, technology companies and other banks.”

Singaporean rivals DBS and UOB are both hiring in digital banking, as is HSBC. But Seth is undeterred and is setting a high bar when it comes to recruiting designers, project managers and other digital banking specialists.

You won’t be able to rely on your technical skills alone to get a job at OCBC.

“If you don’t have empathy for customers, this isn’t for you. You need the ambition to change the way people bank, and the diplomacy to adapt to working within a large, complex organisation,” says Seth. “We need people who are good at building partnerships, and people who understand digital payments and how payments are happening outside of banking.”

You also need to prove to Seth that you’re a “rebel”. “I want to hire people who are going to introduce new ideas into the bank in a risk-mitigated manner,” he explains. “I want people who are willing to challenge the status quo. We have designers, for example, who focus just on playing devil’s advocate – questioning everything from customers’ viewpoints.”

What kind of projects might you find yourself working on at OCBC if you do fit the bill?

“We believe in experimenting and have pilots running in multiple fields – from robo and bionic advisory, to artificial intelligence and distributed ledgers,” says Seth. “We like people who can dream up applications to relevant opportunities and problems, and then rapidly apply these.”

OCBC is currently applying AI and machine learning to improve the quality and speed of core processes such as AML and KYC. “And we’re leveraging APIs through our Connect2OCBC API store and data sandbox to extend banking services outside of the bank channel,” says Seth.

His team has also built an integrated wealth management app which provides customers with bite-sized investment advice. “Our goal is to democratise wealth, to provide good investment advice to people who’ve never invested before.”

Seth says he enjoys working in digital banking because “you can see an immediate impact of your work”. “I take great pride when I see someone walking down the street using one of our apps,” he adds.

“My pitch to candidates is that you’re in the driver’s seat – if you have an idea, you should convince stakeholders and then go out and get it done,” says Seth. “You’re not just a small cog in the wheel here. You’re working in headquarters and you’re in a key part of the firm.”

““

The only banking job in Hong Kong offering pay rises over 20%

$
0
0

Banks in Hong Kong are not typically offering pay rises of more than 20% to lure new recruits.

In contrast to two years ago, salary increases for candidates moving between banks are now largely in the 15% to 20% range, even in the most sought-after sectors.

We asked six recruitment agencies to tell us percentage pay increments (at VP level) for the most in-demand Hong Kong banking job functions. We then averaged out their figures to produce the chart below.

Surprisingly, M&A tops our table and is the only job where average salary hikes for mid-level candidates squeak past the 20% mark.

Recent restrictions on capital outflow imposed by the Chinese State Council helped China outbound M&A volume fall 43% to $74bn year-on-year in the first half, although this performance was still the second-highest H1 on record, according to Dealogic.

The comparatively high pay increases in M&A are being fuelled by hiring at Chinese banks in Hong Kong – particularly CITIC, China Securities and Huatai Securities – which are inching up mainland M&A league tables and boosting compensation as they increasingly compete with Western firms for talent.

Just behind M&A on our chart sit three more predictable sectors.

While compliance candidates could count on 25% to 30% just two years ago, 20% is now the norm.

As we reported earlier this month, compliance hiring in Hong Kong is falling as fixed-term contracts expire, technology takes over jobs, and banks’ reach their desired headcount levels.

Meanwhile, talent shortages continue to plague private banking and cyber security, so banks are offering 20% when they recruit.


Image credit: kupicoo, Getty

““

Four unconventional techniques for getting a portfolio management job

$
0
0

The most common misperception in the investment management industry is that academic credentials are the rite of passage to becoming a portfolio manager. I earned all the top designations and licenses and managed money for several years. It’s not all about having the right letters after your name.

Model the practice, not the theory

There are a million CFA charterholders, MBAs, PhDs and Master’s in Finance degree holders that can’t crack into the industry. If academic credentials were all that it took, then the entire graduating class of MIT would fill every buy-side position. I can say that theory and practice are two entirely different things.

What I have come to learn as a businesswoman is what I wish I had known when I was trying to glean wisdom from my Gordon Growth models. I would have gone so much further if I could have put down my TI-82 calculator and gotten some practical business insight. Instead of grinding out Accounts Receivables ratios and holding them up like they were the gospel, I wish I had spoken to more collections agencies. Instead of projecting out every revenue line on the income statement according to linear forecast, I wish I had taken the time to speak with sales professionals in that particular industry and understood what the market was really going to yield in the future. But I didn’t. I put my head own and journeyed to analyst land, in which linear relationships and formulas rule. The definition of a model is that which is a representation but not the reality.

Those who understand the realities are business are going to do best at picking the companies that will outperform in the reality of the market, hands down.

Have an angle

When I was on the buy side and I would interview someone, I would hear all sorts of responses to the question, “So what would you invest in right now if you had $1m?” While this question could have been answered with unlimited creativity, most of the time the responses were very forgettable.

People with strong brands win in a competitive marketplace, and I’m not talking about the font on your business card, resume and cover letter. When most investment analysts are going to say the same thing, have a unique angle that will set you apart. For example, If you want to work at a hedge fund, become a distressed debt expert and know everything about turnarounds that anyone could possibly know. Then start writing a blog about it and blast it out across social-media channels, or present it to your local CFA society. Get obsessed.

Promote yourself hard

Most people underestimate how hard it is to get and keep a job in this field. Remember that the really successful hedge fund managers own yachts. There’s a reason why analyst salaries are what they are, and it is not just because of the sheer amount of hours people work. These jobs are competitive, demanding and hard to get.

Most portfolio-manager wannabes are going to make an attempt for a few years, struggle and eventually fail. They’ll pursue some job in corporate finance or become a financial adviser and call it a day. If you’re not prepared to promote yourself hard, then the market will punish you.

Here are some examples of what I mean by promoting yourself hard. Contact 10-to-15 new contacts by phone each week on your lunch break or other downtime. Make an effort to reconnect with old college friends and request introductions to their contacts who work at asset management firms. Use the CFA program not only as an academic experience but also a way to make inroads with at least five new portfolio management contacts each month. Update your mock portfolio and models each quarter to reflect economic changes.

Time is of the essence

The other thing to realize is that if you want to become a portfolio manager, you don’t have unlimited time to do this. While it’s not impossible to crack into the industry when you are in your 30s or beyond, keep in mind at that point you are going to make an entry-level salary and compete with the 26-year-old who has a motorcycle and no checking account while you have a wife, a mortgage and two kids that you have to pick up from soccer practice twice a week at 6pm. Employers know that.

There’s no shortcut a buy side job, and the older you get, the lower the chance that you’ll be selected for the lower-level positions that require training and would be your entry point to a career in portfolio management. This is why I recommend that people in their 20s or even early 30s market themselves hard.

Sara Grillo, CFA, is a financial writer with a focus on branding and marketing for investment management firms and professionals. She is a former associate at City National Rochdale and Lehman Brothers, an investment adviser at Grillo Investment Management and a financial adviser at Empire Wealth Strategies.

Photo credit: ismagilov/GettyImages
““

Morning Coffee: The most important finance jobs you never even knew existed. Top technologist’s date night

$
0
0

If you’re contemplating where in the world to situate your finance job, you might have your eye on North America – which is predicted to benefit from Brexit irrespective of the fitfulness of Trump, or maybe Frankfurt – despite the resurgence of German political risk. Or maybe you’re entertaining some vague notion of the ‘BRIC countries’. If so, you’re getting it all wrong. You should swivel your gaze to China’s ‘Belt and Road’ initiative. This is where it’s all happening now.

For anyone unfamiliar with the dissonant nomenclature, Belt and Road is China’s tagline for an expected $900bn of infrastructure investments intended to connect it to the world. There are two parts: a ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’, by Road; and a ’21st Century Maritime Silk Road,’ by sea. The two will cover China, Central Asia, Russia and Europe (the Baltics), with the aim of linking China with the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea through Central Asia and the Indian Ocean. The investments began in 2013 but are only just starting to get going. McKinsey equates the project to postwar reconstruction of Europe in the Marshall Plan, except it says Belt and Road has the potential to be bigger.  Banks are on full alert.

The South China Morning Post says Belt and Road offers U.S. banks a valuable opportunity to finally get a foothold in the vicinity of China. While many have struggled to compete against Chinese banks in China itself, the longer tendrils of Belt and Road mean they can build a presence in its environs.

Citi is already deploying corporate banking staff along the countries implicated in the initiative and John Mullally, director of financial services in Hong Kong and Shenzhen at recruitment firm Robert Walters, tells the SCMP that there’s also “strong hiring” from Chinese banks and investment funds in China itself. Most Belt and Road initiatives are financed by government-owned banks, with China Construction Bank Corp and Bank of China already raising billion-dollar funds for future investment, but Citi was recently the lead issuer in a rainbow bond issued by Bank of China to help finance new Belt and Road branches. There’s also the potential to fund multinationals looking to expand along the new axis, with the result that capital markets throughout the region are expected to expand.  

Europe and the U.S. look tired by comparison – if you want to insure your career until 2030, you might want to work somewhere along the lines below.

Belt and road banking jobs

Separately, Goldman Sachs’ chief technologist in Europe has an interesting idea of a date night out with her husband. Financial News says Joanne Hannaford, Goldman’s partner and head of Emea technology & global head of quality assurance engineering, enrolls a few times a year in programming courses at a London university. She and her husband (also a programmer) treat this as a date night and have dinner afterwards. “I think it is very cool to sit in a class and learn new programming languages alongside much younger people,” Hannaford says. Students who see her might want to ask for a job.

Meanwhile:

Bridgewater is equipping its employees with an automated “coach” based on artificial intelligence. “Let’s say you’re dealing with somebody who isn’t doing a good job or is somebody who has a personal problem, maybe an illness, or whatever the person’s circumstances are. What it does now is if you type into a ‘coach’ …  it then gathers information about the person and the circumstances, so they’re there. It analyzes what they’re like and provides guidance for what to do.” (Business Insider)

U.S. banks in London are lobbying for a continuation of the ‘overseas person exemption’ post-Brexit. This allows non-EU banks to carry out some forms of regulated activity in the UK without a specific license to operate. If it’s included in a “mutual access” arrangement agreed between the EU and UK before Brexit, U.S. banks should be able to continue operating in London as they do now. (Financial News) 

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has had zero applications for new licenses from EU banks operating in Britain who might lost the right to “passport” services into the country after Brexit takes place. (Reuters) 

French investment banks are thriving. They’re already focused on corporate clients, have escaped the worst of the rout in fixed income, and are generating a healthy return on equity thanks to their cash management businesses. (Wall Street Journal) 

A banker from Deutsche just joined a huge Asian buyout fund. (Reuters) 

Nomura hired a Deutsche Bank MD for its agency mortgage business in the U.S. (Reuters) 

Women are getting too clever for men. (Daily Mail) 

Aged three, U.S. children are more likely to ask for help. (Sage) 


Have a story or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

““

Andrea Orcel on the boringness of banking and rehoming staff

$
0
0

Andrea Orcel’s job doesn’t sound very exciting any more. In a Brexit breakfast discussion run by Financial News this morning, he complained that 60% of his job is now consumed by dealing with regulation, of which Brexit is – we imagine a part.

Orcel runs UBS’s investment bank, which has fallen to 10th place globally in Coalition’s ranking of banks, meaning that he could probably benefit from spending his time on more pressing considerations than the regulatory implications of Britain leaving the European Union. As we’ve noted before, for example, UBS has spent this year poaching fixed income salespeople from Goldman Sachs, implying that it’s trying to rebuild its fixed income business, where it ranks in the top three in G10FX, but almost nowhere for everything else.

Earlier this year, Orcel said it would take UBS between 18 months and two years to move staff out of London and that for this reason, time was of the essence. The Swiss bank is expected to choose Frankfurt as its trading hub and recent reports suggest it “could move” 250 jobs there, although CEO Sergio Ermotti indicated last year that as many as 30% of UBS’s 5,000 London jobs could move out as time progresses.  

Orcel also said this morning that a key factor in deciding where to move after Brexit is where bankers will be happy in terms of schools and housing. As we’ve noted before, many of UBS’s senior staff seem to live in Holland Park, West London. Orcel’s own West London residences were thrust into the spotlight a few years ago when his wife used them as photo-shoots for her interior design business. 

UBS’s emigre bankers would likely be happy in Amsterdam, where the education system is the fifth best in the world and you can live in a large house in villages like Aerdenhout, Bloemendaal and Heemstede for the same price as a three bedroom flat in Putney. Those who move could always ask Orcel’s wife to help them settle: Companies House indicates that she restarted an interior design business earlier this month – although its title “E11 Interior Design” suggests it’s focused on East London rather than Western Europe.


Have a story or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

““

This hot new private equity firm has been poaching from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley

$
0
0

It’s not just hedge funds run by star traders that are attracting recruits from big investment banks. A new private equity fund, set up by two former TPG executives, has been recruiting from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Novalpina Capital, started by the former head of TPG in Europe, Stephen Peel, and Stefan Kowski, who was a principal at the firm in Hong Kong and latterly a managing director at Centerbridge Partners, has hired a handful of former bankers as it targets €1bn for a debut fund.

Tobias Buck, who has worked for Goldman Sachs Principal Investment Area (PIA) for the past six years, has just joined Novalpina Capital as an investment professional. Buck joined Goldman Sachs in 2011 after completing a Masters degree in Business Administration at ESCP Europe.

Novalpina brought in Bastian Lueken from Platinum Capital as the third founding partner in July. Mikael Betito, a former Goldman Sachs investment banking analyst who has spent the past two years at PE firm Oaktree Capital Management in Paris, has also joined as a principal.

Novalpina now has seven employees and further down the tree, the PE firm has been hiring from U.S. investment banks. Leif Berger, an investment banking analyst who has worked at Morgan Stanley since 2014, has just joined as has Christopher Backes, who worked in the technology investment banking team at the U.S. investment bank.

Aside from the investment banking connection, the commonality among the new recruits is that they all speak German, suggesting the fund will be looking to Europe for investments from its London base.

There’s a proliferation of new private equity firms in London set up by former senior employees at large firms that could offer new job opportunities. The Builders Union, started by KKR’s former EMEA head of financial services Alexander Bruells and Marcus Bihler from Blackstone, has recently hired Perella Weinberg associate Laurynas Jankauskas.

Meanwhile, KKR big hitters Kugan Sathuyandarajah and Dominic Murphy kick-started 8C Capital earlier this month and Philip Wack, a director at KKR, launched Moonlake Capital in July. Haroun van Hövell, the head of energy for EMEA at KKR, launched Fort Bay Capital earlier this year.

Contact for news, tips and comments: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

Image: Getty Images

““

Why this Barclays MD quit banking to go back to the charity he worked for straight out of college

$
0
0

Kanna Kunchala spent over 17 years in investment banking, as a managing director at both Goldman Sachs and Barclays investment bank across London and New York, but this was never part of the plan.

Kunchala started out at Goldman at the age of 30 after completing an MBA at Kellogg School of Management in 2001. While all his classmates were rushing to tech start-ups, he decided to accept an offer at Goldman Sachs. The dot-com bubble burst shortly after.

“It was rough, and not just for those who chose tech,” he says. “There were 105 associates in my class at Goldman Sachs. Within four years, I’d say there were 10 people left.”

For Kunchala, investment banking was supposed to be a means to an end. Up until his MBA, he’d worked as a speechwriter for the City of Boston, and spent three years straight out of college at a charity called City Year.

“I’d always intended to spend three years in the corporate sector, and then return to community service. But Goldman got me, and then offered a move to London. After a few years, Barclays hired me. There was always something new on the horizon, and we had kids. My stay in finance was elongated.”

Kunchala worked at Goldman Sachs for over 10 years, in emerging markets and European equity derivative sales before moving across to Barclays in 2012, where he spent the best part of six years. In August, he finally got around to quitting banking.

Call it full circle, but last month Kunchala quit Barclays, left London and returned to Boston to work for City Year. Now, he’s a senior vice president at the charity, which intervenes for children in high poverty areas who have gone off track with their schoolwork – typically around the ages of 9-11 – and uses a network of volunteers to get them back on the straight and narrow to high school graduation.

Kunchala says that his new role involves fund-raising for City Year from individuals, rather than sponsorship from organisations. Not surprisingly, he’s been calling former colleagues and clients, hoping to convince them to donate. “I wish it was as easy to get them to accept my calls when I was selling equity derivatives,” he says.

City Year started out in the U.S, and has outposts in 28 cities across the country. It also started out in the UK in 2010, and now has offices in London, Birmingham and Manchester. It has also been backed by funding from financial services organisations like Bain Capital, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse to scale up over the next three years.

Kunchala says that he retained close links to City Year throughout his time in investment banking, and also convinced Jonathan Beebe, Barclays’ former head of equities for EMEA, to sign up as a trustee. Beebe has since tutored six students from Tower Hamlets himself.

“Both Goldman and Barclays gave me the latitude to do volunteer work. If this hadn’t been on the table, I’d have left banking a lot earlier,” he says. “The reality is, though, that it was the pull of volunteer work that led me to leave, not being pushed out of banking.”

Contact for news, tips and comments: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

Image: Getty Images

““


What to ask at European banking interviews now, by Deutsche Bank

$
0
0

We’re approaching the end of year dead-zone for banking interviews involving senior and front office positions, but this doesn’t mean we’re in an interviewing interregnum. Even now, there are graduate interviews and internship interviews, and interviews involving people who are out of the market or who are willing to move without having their bonuses for 2017 bought out. 

If you fall into any of the latter categories and are a “live candidate”, you may be interested in the contents of a new note from Deutsche Bank’s banking analysts. In it, the analysts outline the issues currently bugging them about various banks in Europe. We’ve listed some of them below. If you’re interviewing with any of the banks on the list, you may want to gently approach some of these queries. We’re not suggesting anything too full frontal, unless you intend to antagonize your interviewers and walk away empty handed.

Questions to ask at Barclays interviews

1. What happens after Brexit? How does Barclays plan to retain passporting rights within Europe? How much of the Barclays investment bank business is business with European customers?

2. Barclays’ investment bank is a drag on group returns. The U.S. investment bank makes good revenues, but seems to have higher costs than its U.S. peers. Meanwhile, your European investment bank suffers from lower revenues/risk weighted assets than its European peers. How do you plan to address these issues?

3. Do you intend to continue growing share in your investment bank?

Questions to ask at BNP Paribas interviews 

1. What are your growth plans for Germany? How do you intend to expand the corporate and investment bank in the country?

2. You have a return on equity target of 10% in your business development plan for 2017-2020. However, this is on a higher capital base before (of 12% vs. 10%). How realistic do you think your new RoE target is? What will it take to achieve it?

3. Your equities sales and trading division gained market share in the first half of 2017. What drove this? Do you think it’s sustainable?

Questions to ask at Credit Suisse interviews

1. You’re planning an additional CHF1.5bn of cost savings in 2018. Where will these come from?

2. Would you say there are synergies to be achieved between your equities sales and trading business and your private banking business? How could you achieve them?

3. You’ve been hiring a lot for your equities business. What are your growth plans in equity derivatives and high and low touch equities trading?

Questions to ask at HSBC interviews

1. HSBC has increased its target cost savings from $4.5bn to $5bn a year to $6bn. Where are costs coming out from? How will the extra savings be made? What are the revenue implications?

2. Returns in your U.S. business are very low compared to your peers. What’s your strategy for improving these in the long term?

3. How are risk weighted assets, revenues and costs in your global banking and markets business allocated between Europe, the U.S. and Asia? How is this likely to change?

Questions to ask at SocGen interviews

1. SocGen is a world leading equity derivatives house, but your performance in equity derivatives has recently been weaker than peers. Why is that?

Questions to ask at UBS interviews

1. What kind of impact is Brexit likely to have on your operating model and costs? – What are your expectations for increased regulatory spend? Your current cost base includes CHF700m of temporary regulatory spend – is this likely to become permanent?

2. Your current CFH2.1bn cost savings programme is nearly completed. But your costs are still comparatively high. Do you see scope for further cost savings? Where though?


Have a story or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

““

Credit Suisse trading head swaps banking for tiny asset manager run by former colleagues

$
0
0

The head of a major trading unit at Credit Suisse in London has just signed up to a small investment manager started by the bank’s former CEO of Asia-Pacific, Osama Abbasi.

Benjamin Leung, the head of EMEA macro investor products trading at Credit Suisse, left last month and has just landed at TriSpan LLP as a partner and deputy chief investment officer.

Leung worked at Credit Suisse for over 12 years, having joined as a director within structured credit trading in 2005 from General Re Financial Products in New York. He started his last position in 2015. Before this, he was head of commodity index options and exotics trading.

Trispan is a small company that has flown under the radar since Abbasi started it in 2015. The former head of equities for Asia-Pacific, he was promoted to CEO of Credit Suisse’s regional operation in 2010, but left five years later in one of the many management reshuffles at the investment bank. Karim Lari, the former deputy head of quantitative strategies at Credit Suisse is the firm’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer.

It has offices in London, New York and Dubai, but just 11 employees registered with the Financial Conduct Authority. However, it has attracted some big names.

Gregor Lanz, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs in London, joined as a partner last year, as did Said Freiha, the former head of MENA family offices at Deutsche Bank, while Mufid Shawwa, head of Credit Suisse’s fund-linked and equity derivatives coverage for MENA signed up in 2015.

Trispan’s latest accounts, to 31 December 2016, show that it made a £2.3m loss. It paid its eight members £592.3k, the accounts suggest.

Contact for news, tips and comments: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

Image: Getty Images

““

J.P. Morgan’s commodities CEO who left for AI start-up: Don’t go into banking unless you’re “jazzed” about it

$
0
0

Catherine Flax worked her way to the top of the ladder (or close to it) in banking, climbing to the role of CEO of global commodities for Europe, the Middle East and Asia and then the chief marketing officer of J.P. Morgan. But her route to the top was not exactly conventional.

She finished a Masters degree in economics and finance at Brown University, and then decided to spend some time teaching at university and…hosting a radio show. This was in the mid-80s, and led to some consulting work for the city of Tulsa, Oklamhoma. Her first finance job came at Williams Company, structuring and trading commodities. All of this doesn’t exactly suggest a route to the top at J.P. Morgan and is unlikely to be a path any graduate recruits take these days. This, says Flax, is a shame.

“How banking has evolved from a recruitment of talent perspective is regrettable,” Flax says. “Banks tend to hire directly out of their intern programs, so students have to decide very early on what their specialization will be, which was not the case when I got my start and worked to my benefit.”

More to the point, she says, it means that students have to set themselves on the track to an investment banking job before they realise what they really want to do. Often, this means that people view banking as a stepping stone to another career.

“If more young people would be a little less afraid to try things that seem appealing, they would get more out of it, rather than ‘I have to do my time in banking,’ which is fine if you really like it,” Flax says. “Banking is much more regulated and slower moving than it used to be – there are so many boxes to check, so it’s not as entrepreneurial.”

“There are enough people that actually love banking, so if you don’t, it’s going to show – you’re always going to be pitted against the person you’re sitting next to you at a bank and evaluated against that person. If you don’t love it now, you probably won’t love it later. Why not doing something you’re really jazzed about?”

Flax’s advice for young people going into banking counters that given by other former senior bankers who believe that a large investment bank offers the best training for those who want to eventually do something else with their lives. Flax, though, believes that you should do something you’re passionate about – want to work in fintech, go straight into it.

For the past three and a half years, Flax has been a managing director and the Americas head of commodities, foreign exchange and local markets at BNP Paribas. She’s also been providing strategic advice to AI fintech start-up Pefin. Earlier this month, she bit the bullet and quit banking to become CEO of Pefin.

“It did require some soul-searching on my part if it was the right thing to do, but I have a strong entrepreneurial bug that I caught from family members who have their own businesses, so I’ve always had it in my head that when I’m done with banking I will do something like this,” she says. “The last couple of years, spending as much time as I have done in the whole fintech ecosystem and realizing all of the transformation that has to happen in banking, while I enjoyed trying to facilitate that transformation from within a big bank, it is frustrating, because it’s not always easy to make sweeping changes.

Pefin is hiring

Pefin uses AI algorithms to provide investors with personalized financial investment advice and asset allocation recommendations. The 20-person firm recently moved into a new, bigger office in New York and is hiring.

“In addition to the consumer launch in the U.S. that is happening imminently, we’re also rolling out a B-to-B, white-label offering for advisers and insurance agents and a third division for employee benefits” Flax says.

“Our most pressing hiring need is computer science, which is the number-one major of the people sitting on the floor, and some have undergrad only, some Master’s, some PhDs, so it’s a range,” she says.

The firm uses various programming languages, including, SQL, HTML and R. They are also looking to add UI and UX developers who do design work.

Photo credit: chombosan/GettyImages
““

UBS Singapore has just hired a senior salesman in FICC rebuild

$
0
0

UBS has hired a senior FX salesman in Singapore, in a sign that its FICC rebuild is spreading to Asia.

Rene Schwarzl joined UBS earlier this month as an executive director in FX global macro sales, according to his online profile. He previously spent three years and three months working in the same field at Standard Chartered, where he was a director.

Schwarzl was at Citi between 2006 and 2014, first in London and then as a Singapore-based director.

His hiring by UBS comes almost five years after the Swiss bank shuttered much of its fixed income sales and trading business. More recently, though, UBS has been hiring again, albeit on a small scale.

Earlier this year, for example, UBS recruited three Goldman Sachs salespeople. Peter Wilson, a London-based Goldman VP in macro FX sales is now a UBS director, while UBS also poached Ali Sanai in London and Aliza Raffel in New York, sales executives for rates and FX respectively.

Other European banks – including Barclays, BNP Paribas and Deutsche – and have been bulking up their FICC desks globally this year, although there are now fears that FICC revenues are set to fall in the third quarter.

Still, recruiters in Asia say FICC hiring in their region remains comparatively healthy. “Macro trading has been underperforming in recent years, but now some astute firms are adding more talent in Asia,” says Matthew Hoyle, a trader-turned-headhunter in Hong Kong.

Goldman Sachs is one of these firms. It hired two new executive directors into its Asian macro sales and trading team in July. Steve Ji Xu, a former Asia emerging markets FX trader at J.P. Morgan, joined the bank as a macro trader in Hong Kong, while Singapore-based Kevin Feng moved from Citi to work in south Asia macro sales at Goldman.


Image credit: urf, Getty

““

Bluecrest said to lose its top equities trader in London

$
0
0

Bluecrest Capital Management, the former hedge fund which became a family office nearly two years ago is understood to have parted company with one of its most senior equities traders in London.

Insiders say that Derek Flynn, the fund’s head of equity execution trading, left on Friday after three years. Flynn joined Bluecrest as a senior equities trader in 2013 after working as a prop trader for Nomura. He was hired by Christian Dalban, Nomura’s former head of equities trading. Dalban himself joined Bluecrest in 2013 and proceeded to build an equities team spread across London. New York and Singapore, hiring right through to September 2016. 

Dalban left Bluecrest in June 2017 and Flynn’s exit is said to be the latest of several from the equities team Dalban built. The BlueCrest Equity Strategies fund was launched in March 2015 with a target of $2bn. A few months later, Bluecrest began returning money to outside investors. 

Flynn didn’t respond to a request to comment on his exit. For the moment, the FCA Register suggests Flynn is still technically employed at Bluecrest. Flynn is a graduate of the University of Limerick with a bachelors degree in Computer Systems, Systems Analysis, Database Design and Programming.

Whilst its equities business is being depleted, Bluecrest has been adding in other areas. In June, for example, it recruited a macro trader from Goldman Sachs. 


Have a story or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

“”

Photo credit: Exit by InertiaCreeps is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Viewing all 8687 articles
Browse latest View live


<script src="https://jsc.adskeeper.com/r/s/rssing.com.1596347.js" async> </script>