eFinancialCareers » News & Analysis

There’s unlikely to be a trader anywhere who hasn’t heard of Christian Bittar. He, after all, is the ex-Deutsche Bank trader who made £90m ($117m) aged 38 in 2008 thanks to a famously generous ‘percentage deal’ with Deutsche Bank whereby he got a share of his profits. Yesterday, it all came to an ignominious end: to the distress of his “inconsolable” wife, Bittar was sentenced to five years and four months in prison for conspiring to rig interest rate benchmarks. Judge Michael Gledhill said he’d contemplated issuing a prison sentence of 10 years, but had relented due to the toll the case had already taken on Bittar’s life.

Bittar’s ability as a trader was highlighted by the judge. So too was his curious disinterest in the money itself. Bittar was a trader of “calibre”, said Gledhill. – When fellow conspirator Philippe Moryoussef tried to copy Bittar’s approach and demand a similar pay deal, he made far less for himself or for the bank. And while Moryoussef was deemed to be motivated by greed, Bittar – whom Bloomberg previously described as living in a “relatively modest London house” and driving a non-flashy car – was deemed to be motivated mostly by the game. “The reason for your offending came at least in part from the satisfaction of being able to beat the system by manipulation,” suggested the judge – even though Bittar reportedly lobbied for higher pay at Deutsche Bank and threatened to leave for a hedge fund if it wasn’t forthcoming.

If true, Bittar’s lack of interest in money should now act in his favour. Now of no fixed address, he lost €40m in unrestricted stock when he was fired from Deutsche Bank and yesterday was ordered to pay fines and costs totaling £3.3m ($4.3m) alongside his prison sentence.

Bittar’s fellow conspirators, alleged and otherwise, fared better. Moryoussef was sentenced to eight years in prison but is hiding out in France and planning to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights after claiming outside the court that, “What I was doing was legitimate, legal and had been done throughout the banking industry for over two decades.” He didn’t turn up for the trial and was sentenced in absentia.

The court was unable to reach a verdict on three other defendants, Colin Bermingham, Carlo Palombo, and Sisse Bohart, who will be retried in January. The process is already taking its toll: Palombo, who has moved on from banking and is now a teaching assistant at the University of California, came to London for the trial and will now need to come back again next year. In July he raged on Facebook against, “morally worthless corporate lawyers, prosecutors and public officials who play the game in hope this will help their career.

“To all of them: enjoy your successful life and your social status, and be as unhappy as you can possibly be,” he added.

Separately, if you’re a senior person and you want to work for Goldman Sachs, this may be your opportunity to do so. The Wall Street Journal notes that Goldman has hired 15 partners externally over the last year, where in the past it hired almost none. Not everyone wants to be a Goldman partner though – the firm reportedly had a “handshake deal” to hire Bill Graham, a utilities banker at Morgan Stanley last spring but Graham changed his mind.

Meanwhile:

David Solomon is expected to load Goldman Sachs’ management committee with women. (Business Insider)

Goldman Sachs thinks equity research content will help it overcome MiFID II. (The TradeNews)

Goldman Sachs poached David Wernert, an equity derivatives trader from Barclays. (Business Insider)

Eric Schlanger ex-head of equities at Barclays in America is setting up a hedge fund: “Working for a large institution means you end up working on problems that you weren’t necessarily put on this earth to solve and may not affect the bottom line. I’m a trader and I want to make money, so being in a number of bureaucratic meetings is not necessarily why I came to Wall Street in the first place.” (Financial News)

A retired GP ordered the contract killing of his Edinburgh-based financial adviser on the dark web as part of a “five-year vendetta” because he blamed the banker for losing £300k from his pension. (The Scotsman)

There’s been a sharp rise in deaths caused by alcohol-related liver disease since the financial crisis. (New Scientist)

Concorde’s trying to make a comeback. (WSJ)

Cloned UBS economist has no worries for his job: “I can perhaps have more empathy and feeling for the client”. We drink coffee together, I do not have to press a touch pad for a response. We talk about a broad range of subjects — including Brexit…. This clone can’t do the job I do at the moment, but it is just the beginning.” (Financial Times)

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)

““

J.P. Morgan’s machine learning team has had a busy year. Following the exit of various of its senior members, J.P. Morgan’s renowned Intelligent Solutions unit was disbanded and its remaining employees dispersed across the bank’s operating units. Nowadays, machine learning in the investment bank is run by Luc Teboul, the head of corporate and investment’s data engineering unit. Meanwhile, Afsheen Afshar, the former head of data science at J.P. Morgan’s investment bank is busy building an entirely new system at Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity fund which owns a 3% stake in Deutsche Bank.

Little has been publicly divulged about Afshar’s project Cerberus. However, when Cerberus announced Afshar’s appointment in October 2017, it said that Afshar would both be building a new data science platform and assembling, “a team of world-class technologists.”

So far, there’s little sign of the latter – although Afshar recruited Jason Gilbertson, a fellow Stanford University data mining and statistics graduate in April 2018.

Quietly, both Afshar and Gilbertson purport to be up to something big. In publicly available information, both say their roles at Cerberus are to, build a ‘full-scale front-to-back data and advanced analytics capability that can be leveraged by all businesses and portfolio companies touched by the entire firm.’ This is in line with Cerberus’ original declaration that Afshar was hired to develop, “a proprietary operations platform focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning, the goal of which is to empower Cerberus’ portfolio companies and trading desks with the technological, analytical, and cultural perspectives to extract measurable value out of raw data.”

Afshar is working for COAC (Cerberus Operations and Advisory Company), a team of around 110 operating executives and experts which works to improve the performance and efficiency of the companies Cerberus invests in. Earlier this month, it emerged that COAC has been enlisted to help overhaul Deutsche Bank – suggesting that the system built by Afshar – who worked for Goldman Sachs for nearly six years before joining J.P. Morgan, could be used to improve Deutsche Bank as well as the other investments in Cerberus’s portfolio.

Cerberus isn’t the only private equity company looking at the use of big data and artificial intelligence. In February, Blackstone said it has an internal data group that’s also mining portfolio companies for information. Blackstone’s data science unit is run by Matthew Katz, who joined three years ago from hedge fund Point72 after starting his career in M&A at Credit Suisse.

““

Two years ago, Goldman Sachs made the decision to stop conducting interviews for undergraduate students on college campuses. Instead, the bank switched to video interviews for first-round candidates, noting at the time that the move would allow Goldman to broaden its reach and recruit from a more diverse pool of students.

Earlier this week, Goldman tweeted out a video with some tips on how to successfully navigate a video interview. While the advice comes from Goldman recruiters, most all of the suggestions are applicable for anyone preparing for a video interview at a bank. J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America also utilize video interviews for entry-level positions, as does Deloitte, Sequoia Capital and many other financial firms. We also included some specifics that we’ve heard from insiders on what digital interviews at Goldman are like as well as some questions that the bank has asked previous candidates.

Quick tips from GS

Prepare as if you were going into a traditional interview. Read up on the firm, the role or roles for which you’ve applied, and prepare a few personal examples on how your background would fit within Goldman. If you’ve applied to multiple roles, you’ll still only take part in one video interview.

Recruiters say that you don’t need to dress formally, but you should wear something that gives you confidence. What does this actually mean? Dress business casual. The video Goldman tweeted shows a male candidate wearing a crisp, one-tone button-down shirt with no tie or suit jacket.

Pay attention to body language and posture while maintaining eye contact with the camera. This is likely hard to do if your computer is sitting well below you, so chose a surface where you’re positioned on a level plane with the eye of the camera.

Be specific and be sure to answer all parts of the question. You’ll have 30 seconds to prepare after hearing the question and two minutes to answer, we’re told. But you don’t need to use the full time allotted – just move on to the next question. However, the recording will shut down right at two minutes.

Practice. Goldman allows you to take an unlimited number of practice questions before starting the actual recording. The default setting will contain a view of yourself but that can be turned off if it’s distracting.

Don’t be a robot. Recruiters were a bit more diplomatic in their phrasing, but they clearly don’t want to see that you’re reading from hidden notes or uttering scripted answers.

Specifics on the process

Previous candidates tell us you can expect five questions and possibly a sixth if you’ve applied to multiple divisions. As you’ll see below, the questions are fairly generic. The entire process will take less than 15 minutes and you’re likely to hear back in about two weeks. Most of the questions will be behavioral, with one specific to the division for which you’ve applied that will be more technical. J.P. Morgan only asks potential interns three questions, but they allow three attempts per question. It’s one-and-done with Goldman.

Both J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs rely on HireVue’s digital interviewing system, which has machine learning capabilities that can provide an automated assessment of candidates based on 15,000 dimensions, including body language, stress in your voice, vocabulary, speed of delivery and eye movements. However, Goldman recruiters note clearly in the video that your submission won’t be reviewed “by robots or anything like that.” Only recruiters and hiring managers will make the assessments. Other firms that rely on HireVue may utilize the technology, however.

Interview questions asked by Goldman

Why do you want to work at Goldman Sachs? Why investment banking?

Why this particular division? What does this division do? What is it about your background that makes you a good fit for this division?

What’s the hardest problem you’ve encountered? How did you overcome it?

Walk me through a time you were working in a team and you took the initiative to make a change.

Walk me through a time you had to resolve a conflict with someone senior to you.

What’s your greatest strength?

Tell me about an asset class you’re interested (asked in securities interviews).

Follow @BeecherTuttle

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: btuttle@efinancialcareers.com
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by actual human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t).

““

2017 was a good year for banks’ macro desks, with various banks making big hires across rates sales and trading in London and New York. Will 2018 be the year jobs are cut again? Not necessarily, but there’s a definite trickle of staff who are leaving.

Deutsche Bank’s decision to “significantly reduce” its U.S. rates business is well known. Nomura’s decision to cut senior rates staff in its recent layoffs is also well known on the street, although less well-publicized. Now, we understand that UBS has also made some cuts to its rates team in NYC.

UBS declined to comment on the cuts, which are understood to have affected a handful of salespeople at executive director and director level in the Swiss bank.

In London, Nomura is understood to have put at risk Ceki Boz, an MD and head of rates options trading, Will Johnson, a gilt trader, and Bala Arumugam, a Euro government bond trader.

When U.S. banks reported their results this week, the verdict for rates desks was mixed. Goldman Sachs, for example, said that rates revenues were “modestly lower” compared to the first quarter as lower revenues in Europe were partially offset by sold performance in the U.S. market. Bank of America said improved performance across its macro products business (rates and FX) was offset by a weaker quarter for credit trading.

The fact that some banks had good quarters in rates trading means that people who’ve been laid off from their rates jobs should find it easy to get new ones. Headhunters say Nomura’s traders have been interviewing elsewhere and that one already has a job, Paul Lynn, the EMEA head of macro sales who left Nomura in May has just turned up as head of financial institution sales at Credit Agricole in London, while Scott Friedlander, an MD in hedge fund sales at Nomura is understood to be joining a fintech firm.

““

Last year, I was at a friend’s birthday party, who, like me, worked in investment banking. Unsurprisingly, most people at the party was working in the same space; many well-off, promising faces from investment banks and funds. Another friend was speaking to me about leaving her job without a continuation plan, to which I asked if she had any emergency savings. To my surprise, not only was she not familiar with the rainy-day saving concept, but she also had less than £500 saved after several years. “That’s barely a month, not even two weeks of expense”, said I. To illustrate to her how imprudent it was, I asked around the party of how much savings people had. Even more astonishing, not a single person in this crowd had more than £1,000 in savings; while most had less than £500.

Assuming a typical first-year investment banking analyst salary of £55k ($72k) and a 50% bonus of £27.5, how do people who make 2.4 times the average London salary (£34.5k) end up without any savings?

To understand the cause of this, I conducted a survey on the spending behaviour of my peers. £55k base at a 33% effective tax rate (with National Insurance/other contributions) results in take-home pay of c.£3k/month. The following essential expenses already account for around £2.1k/month.

• Food: weekday meals or groceries – £100/week or £433/month
• Rent – £200/week or £860/month
• Essential bills (electricity, water, gas) – £25/week or £108/month
• Phone bills – £10/week or £43/month
• Transport cost (public transport and some taxi rides) – £50/week or £215/month
• Other miscellaneous expenses such as clothing, household amenities, gadget/travel insurance, gym membership, other online subscriptions (e.g.Spotify/Netflix) and more – £100/week or £433/month.

If you often eat out and/or going out 2-3 times every weekend with an average spend of £50 per occasion, this amounts easily to £645/month. After deducting student loan repayment of another c.£300/month, we’ve exhausted £3k. This is how many have been living on their pay checks month-on-month without any savings.

In addition, setting imprudent personal finance management asides, most junior bankers often scale-up their standards of living based on what they think they’ll be able to achieve with their salaries. They don’t actually realize that their salaries will run out faster than they think.

It’s because their salaries run out that many also spend their bonuses. The £27.5k bonus, equivalent to c.£18.k take-home pay, is often spent unwisely because people think they deserve some relaxation after such an intense work-hard/play-hard schedule.

Hence there are:

• Two annual long vacations (all-inclusive of hotels, flights, meals and experiences, at £2.5k each) costing £5k.
• Three short weekend vacations (all-inclusive at £1k each) costng £3k.
• Expensive hobbies (skydiving, golf, scuba diving, sailing courses, sport car rentals, fencing, equestrian, art club, or wines) easily costing an average £100/week or £5.2k a year.
• Branded clothing/accessories such as expensive suits, handbags, shoes or a combination costing £250/month or £3k a year.
• Costly spontaneous, impulse spending such as last-minute concerts or spontaneous spending on nights out, costing £1k a year.
• Spending on an electronic device upgrade or new much-hyped gear such as a phone, laptop, tablet, drone, camera or hoverboard. £1k a year.

As such, we are left with less than £500 from the £18k.

It’s easy to spend money. It’s also a mistake. Prioritising a rainy-day fund or starting to save for retirement is a habit you need to get into early in your career. – Especially in banking, where you might leave your job without an exit plan.

If you’re a junior banker you therefore need to remind yourself that you’re not that rich after all. Your money will disappear faster than you think.

Below is the flow chart I used to manage my money while I was at Goldman Sachs. I strongly recommend that anyone in banking follow the same approach!

Mai Le

Mai Le was an investment banking associate at Goldman Sachs before she left to found her own venture Vietnam Inbound. Besides writing on her own blog, she also runs a cover-letter sharing community called Cover Letter Library.

““

Ian Chong, now a Fixed Income Analyst at REDD Intelligence, knew that having the right Master’s degree would be critical in determining the success of the career switch he was aiming for.

Chong wanted to shift into a role that was more analytical and idea-driven, such as being an analyst at a research house, but he didn’t think his Bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance gave him the right foundation to make such a move.

“I wanted a postgraduate degree that was professionally orientated and would better prepare me for the demands of a career in investment research, as well as the CFA designation,” he says.

The MSc in Applied Finance (MAF) from Singapore Management University (SMU) met all his requirement of a postgraduate degree. Being able to graduate in 12 months in the full-time format was appealing. “SMU has a reputation for being very current and industry focused. A lot of effort is made to ensure you can apply what you have learned in a professional setting. This was important as I wanted to get my feet on the ground and start looking for a job as soon as possible.” explains Chong.

He also liked SMU’s proximity to Singapore’s financial district, which made it easy to network with alumni or other finance professionals after classes.

The SMU MAF programme is coursework-orientated and aims to prepare students for market-facing roles. It also follows the CFA syllabus closely. Chong says this enables students to develop a solid grasp of investment research and evaluation techniques, regardless of their work and academic backgrounds.

As part of the course requirement, Chong had to develop integrated financial models for companies across several different industries, as well as appraise their value to equity and bondholders. Many of the programme’s modules also involved challenging tasks that need to be completed in groups. “The programme takes in students from varied academic and professional backgrounds. The group work pushes you to build rapport with others who have different skillsets and viewpoints. I’ve emerged a stronger team player with a widened view as a result.” shared Chong.

Amongst the modules offered (ranging from financial markets in Asia, to fixed income and equities, to corporate finance), Chong particularly enjoyed the electives on private equity and advanced corporate banking. “These were taught by seasoned industry practitioners who have more than cut their teeth in the industry. They had lots of war stories and invaluable tips to share.”

One quality of the SMU MAF that really stands out for Chong is its emphasis on applying academic learning to real-world situations. The university’s highly qualified faculty play a big role in this.

“Having professors who have held diverse leadership and technical positions through challenging times like the 2008 financial crisis really drives home the contrast between what you learn as part of your academic pursuits and the realities that industry professionals face.” emphasized Chong. “It always helps when someone who is teaching you the subject has real-life anecdotes and observations to help bring you up to speed.”

Chong recounted the advice of the professor who taught corporate banking, whose mantra was that bankers did not lend to financial statements, but to businesses. “I now apply this daily in my job as an analyst. I’m always seeking to understand the company behind the numbers.”.

To balance the ‘hard’ critical, analytical and problem-solving skills, the programme also places emphasis on ‘soft’ people and communication skills. “SMU has no shortage of opportunities for you to polish your public speaking skills and string together coherent points on the fly.” acknowledged Chong. “It’s definitely helped me to manage this pressure and I’m now much more confident.”

Not only did the relevancy and coursework give Chong a solid headstart in his internships and full-time job, he passed both Level I and II of the CFA on his first attempt.

Apart from helpful SMU alumni who were willing to share tips and catch up over coffee or after-work drinks, Chong was also impressed with the assistance of the career services team in his job hunt. “There were a few occasions where the career services officer contacted me to recommend jobs. They even offered to help prepare me for the interview.”

Chong highly recommends the SMU MAF to anyone wanting to break into a front-office position. “The programme is a rigorous one, designed to provide you with abundant opportunities to learn and equip you with skills relevant to the real world.” he concluded.

Image credit: getty

Deloitte is looking to expand its Asia Pacific team to assist insurers as they gear up for the introduction of International Financial Reporting Standard 17 “Insurance Contracts” (IFRS 17).

With just two-and-a-half years to go before the standard becomes mandatory, an increasing number of insurance companies are turning to professional services organisations to help them meet the January 1, 2021 compliance deadline.

Francesco Nagari, Global Insurance IFRS Leader at Deloitte, says: “The situation we face right now is the demand for professionals with deep knowledge of the IFRS 17 requirements has increased substantially since the publication of IFRS 17 in May 2017.”

“For that reason, Deloitte is ramping up its capabilities, searching the market for the best talent interested in performing these services and join our existing team.”

Nagari describes the IFRS 17 journey as a long and complicated one, reflected in the fact that the International Accounting Standards Board has allowed three-and-a-half years for the transition, one of the longest periods firms have ever been given in which to comply with a new IFRS.

“It is almost like there is now a new financial language that insurance companies must learn to speak to their stakeholders, and the dictionary and grammar are in IFRS 17,” Nagari says.

“Just as when you learn a new language you have to dedicate a lot of time to it and you have to practice, similarly the work that the consultants we are trying to hire are going to be doing is to help insurance companies understand what they need to do to change the way they communicate their financial performance.”

He explains that not only will financial statements produced for the stock market and shareholders need to be changed to comply with IFRS 17, but internal reporting like management information will also need altering to make sure managers maintain their grasp on the business performance using the same metrics.

“It means planning, forecasting, and many other aspects of the business will have to be translated into the new language and that is why IFRS 17 is such a big deal,” Nagari says.

Deloitte is looking to recruit professionals with the ability to convert the IFRS 17 requirements into practical business applications for clients.

Nagari says: “The requirement for IFRS 17 are pervasive and extensive. The impact of IFRS 17 is particularly large on the entities that are going to apply it.”

As a result, Deloitte is looking for professional with deep technical accounting knowledge, focused on this particularly set of rules, who can assist clients with all aspects of the insurance model, including data, systems and processes, as well as workforce organisation.

Deloitte is particularly focused on strengthening its capabilities in Asia Pacific.

“Within this vast region we have built a number of hubs that act as centres of excellence for our broad engagement teams,” Nagari explains.

“Hong Kong is probably the largest and most important hub within the Asia Pacific region and that is where our talents will be deployed in the first place. Other locations include Singapore and operations in Australia, Korea, Japan and Mainland China and in other parts of South East Asia as well.”

Nagari believes there are significant benefits to talented professionals who join the Deloitte team to assist insurers in preparing for IFRS 17.

“We have been investing a lot in preparing our global network of firms for this challenge, and the result of that investment is that we are reaping very good success in terms of the recognition the market has given us for our capabilities.”

“If you are joining the Deloitte team, you will join a team that is at the leading edge in the delivery of services to the insurance industry.”

He adds Deloitte has always retained fully-fledged consulting capabilities, which makes it different to the other large professional services organisations when a multi-disciplinary regulatory change programme such as the one required from IFRS 17 is on the cards.

“At Deloitte you will be working at a firm where the capability of our services, from accounting to actuarial to technology to data management, is fully developed and yet continuously evolving to meet clients’ needs.

“You will work with other like-minded professionals, equally focused on serving the client, but with different perspectives,” he says.

Nagari is keen to point out that this environment gives talents great potential for enriching their own capabilities, knowledge and skills.

“If and when you want to move on in the industry, moving to service insurers from the inside, you will actually have an intellectual capital and experience that is probably unrivalled,” he says.

Nagari thinks the introduction of IFRS 17 is a challenging and exciting time for the industry, and he is keen to welcome new members to the Deloitte team.

He says: “We already have a large team of very lovely colleagues. We work hard but we have fun doing what we are doing. There is a good team spirit.

“The Deloitte environment is a very welcoming one, the team is growing, there is lots of excitement and lots of hard work as well, but we do it with a smile on our face.”

An increasing number of finance professionals in Asia are quizzing agency recruiters about whether the banking jobs they are applying for offer a reasonable work-life balance. This is often as far as it gets, however. The same candidates are reluctant to broach the subject of working hours when actually interviewed by banks.

“More and more banking professionals in Asia want jobs offering them a better work-life balance – it’s a noticeable shift in recent years,” says Adrian Choo, CEO of Career Agility International. “I’ve seen APAC regional sales directors who don’t mind taking a pay cut and handling a smaller market just to spend more time with their families.”

While candidates are happy to chat with recruiters about work-life balance, mentioning the subject at a job interview remains taboo. “Never say ‘I want better work-life balance’ during an interview. Here in Asia banks will get a bad impression that you’re a slacker – it’s a deal breaker in this region,” says Choo.

In the past three years, though, global banks have introduced new initiatives to promote work-life balance, most prominently so-called ‘protected weekends’ for analysts. “Sure, it would be great to work less, but I wouldn’t mention this at an interview, even if the bank has an actual policy in place,” says one recent graduate at an investment bank in Hong Kong. “The interviewer will potentially be your boss and bosses don’t take kindly to people they perceive might be lazy and not work hard for them. This is probably even more the case in Asia, where juniors are still expected to be quite obedient.”

Rather than raising the thorny issue of working hours, some candidates in Asia are simply staying away from roles at the larger global investment banks, say recruiters. “I’ve had people turn down opportunities at Goldman Sachs because of its image of having long hours,” says Kyle Blockley, managing partner at recruitment firm KS International.

If you want to find out about work-life at a particular bank, it’s best to take an indirect approach. “If the conversation gets more casual at the end of a job interview, ask a few innocuous questions about the manager’s own role, including, for example, their working hours and whether they regularly take late-night conference calls,” says Choo. “This should allow you to gauge their general attitude towards work-life balance in their team.”

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: smortlock@efinancialcareers.com

Follow @simonmortlock

Image credit: twinsterphoto, Getty

If you visit this site regularly, you will have already seen some cautionary tales of bankers who moved into private equity (PE) and who found the grass that was supposed to be greener to instead be withered and brown. Now, forum website Wall Street Oasis has a post from a former junior banker who joined a PE fund and whose life has become a misery as a result.

It’s not that the work is boring – although assembling spreadsheets all day for a middle market private equity fund in the healthcare, manufacturing and energy space isn’t necessarily more exciting than working for a bulge bracket bank covering “awesome tech companies.” Nor is it that the pay is bad – although the compensation is apparently “below the street” and there’s no carried interest until VP level. It’s the hours – the hours are awful.

Whereas most big banks now have restrictions on juniors’ working hours, giving young staff proper time off has passed some PE funds by. “Literally every weekend I get an email: “Let’s talk NOW. Where are you?” and it drives me insane – i can be literally anywhere as it is my day off,” complains the ex-junior banker in the midst of a rude PE awakening. “This company tracks every single hour that you are out of the office,” he adds, complaining that the U.S.-based fund only offers 15 days a year in holiday time and that any additional time taken as sick days or personal time must be deducted from this.

Like many other young bankers who leave for private equity, the Wall Street Oasis complainant now looks back fondly to his time in banking. In banking, he says the culture was “amazing,” the people were “fantastic,” and there were plenty of social events, group lunch breaks and coffee chats. And yet, for some reason he wanted to leave for private equity, and now he feels stuck. The longer he stays in PE, the worse it will get: once he receives carried interest, he’ll have to stick around for five or six years until it vests. “Start looking for another job,” advises someone else on the forum. “You get paid in PE with carry which locks you in. Don’t get locked in.”

Separately, Financial Times’ writer Janan Ganesh makes some interesting observations about the kinds of people who go into banking. “All my life, it [banking] has been the social-climber’s profession of choice,” says Ganesh, noting that there are few other industries that allow talented people to advance irrespective of their accent, class, colour or nationality. By way of example, he highlights Sajid Javid, the UK home secretary who previously worked for Deutsche Bank and J.P. Morgan. Javid was applauded for making British home secretary at 48, but he became a VP at Chase Manhatan at 25, says Ganesh. “We forget how much banking did to finish off the class system in Britain,” he adds.

Meanwhile:

The European Union rejected Theresa May’s plan for enhanced equivalence for financial services because it says it would, “rob the EU of its “decision-making autonomy”. (Financial Times)

Citi appointed Stefan Wintels, who ran the bank’s FIG group in EMEA since 2010, to a new role managing the bank’s office in Frankfurt ahead of Brexit. (Financial News)

Investors still aren’t clear about Christian Sewing’s strategy at Deutsche Bank. Unless revenues increase, Sewing may need to cut jobs in the investment bank again. (Bloomberg)

Blackrock hired 400 staff for a data and technology hub in Hungary and plans to hire 100 more. 82% of the hires so far are Hungarian. (Financial Times)

At least 24 people have left BAML’s London equity research business in 2018, including seven senior analysts. (Financial Times)

Quantitative hedge fund AQR paid $400k per employee last year. (Financial Times)

You’ll be in demand now if you can manipulate the genetic code of pigs. (Bloomberg)

Send a thank you letter – it will have more effect than you think. (BPS)

Photo credit: andresr/Getty

Â
““

XTX Markets is the future. With capital-constrained banks less aggressive than in the past, non-bank electronic market makers like XTX are seizing their moment. In the 2018 Euromoney FX survey, XTX jumped from 12th to 3rd place with a market share of over 7% for global FX trading. The company is pushing into Asia and is well known for its fancy office at London’s King’s Cross.

If you work for XTX Markets in London you’ll therefore work for a company that’s on the up. You’ll also get to eat your lunch in a replica Apollo 11 landing capsule and to sleep in the office if want. But will you get paid? The answer is yes, but not as much as you might think.

As an electronic trading company, XTX doesn’t employ legions of traders. Nor does it employ many human beings at all. The most recent accounts released for XTX Markets Ltd for the year to December 2017, indicate that there are just 47 staff in London, up from 43 last year. Together, these 47 made £155m in revenues and £61m in profits for 2017, a profit margin of nearly 40%.

However, XTX isn’t exactly generous when it comes to sharing this money around staff. While Goldman Sachs was lambasted last week for cutting the proportion of revenues it pays in compensation to just 37%, the compensation ratio at XTX is just 7%. Last year, the company paid £11.5m of its £155m revenues to employees.

The result was that average compensation per head at XTX was £244k ($320k) last year. Although this is more than most London salaries, it’s less than the $523k average at Goldman Sachs International. It’s also less than the pay at quite a few large London hedge funds. Nor does XTX pay entirely in cash: the company operates a three year deferral like most big banks.

Why doesn’t XTX pay more? It probably doesn’t help that 44 of its 47 staff are deemed “support staff”, with just three (Alex Gerko and Zar Amrolia, the co-chief executives and Niki Beatti, the non-executive chairman) deemed directors. But even the directors aren’t making millions – the highest paid received £400k for both 2016 and 2017.

Instead of rewarding its staff XTX seems to be investing in organic expansion. The XTX Group is pushing into new geographical markets and the UK entity helped fund the rest of the group with a £22m dividend last year. The UK company also paid significant amounts in operating leases, depreciation and ‘strategic advisory fees.’ Staff were one of many priorities.

XTX’s results could therefore spell bad news for technologists who hope to get paid like traders as algorithms take over. The implication is that they won’t be: they will be paid like very well compensated technologists. The new breed of technologists could soon be better off than traders, though: under XTX’s model, traders’ skills aren’t needed at all.

Photo: Nadler/Getty

“”

Remember Daniel Kaye? He’s the ex-Credit Suisse trader who’s been building out Macquarie’s London cash equities business, often with hires from Credit Suisse. One of his recruits hasn’t stuck around.

Jan Asboth, a former Credit Suisse electronic equities salesman who joined Macquarie in February 2018 has left again, according to his LinkedIn profile. Asboth has joined Barclays, where he will be head of program trading sales for Europe.

Asboth’s moves marks at least the 10th major hire to Barclays’ investment bank in Europe so far this year. The British bank has been building up its equities and electronic trading businesses after hiring Stephen Dainton as global head of equities in August 2017.

Like Kaye, Dainton also spent much of his career at Credit Suisse, suggesting the two men could find themselves competing for CS talent as they build their respective businesses. Before Asboth, Barclays hired Matthew Cousens, Credit Suisse’s former co-head of algorithmic trading sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Cousens will join in September as head of execution sales for EMEA.

Macquarie, meanwhile, has been known to hire from Deutsche as well as Credit Suisse, but appears to have a preference for Kaye’s ex-employer. Headhunters say the Australian bank is willing to pay generously to bring staff on board. In Asboth’s case, this doesn’t seem to have been enough to impel him to stay long term. Earlier this month, Macquarie hired two senior researchers and a senior trader (not from Credit Suisse) for its U.S. cash equities trading business, suggesting it’s growing in the U.S. as well.

““

Whenever things go wrong in any company, sooner or later fingers will point accusingly at its culture.

Deutsche Bank is no exception. Despite a recent pop in the share price following a rare positive earnings warning, it is certainly true that a lot has recently gone wrong for my old employer.

It is extremely difficult to pin down a single culture within Deutsche Bank. It is still, despite the recent job losses, a mighty big place – over 90,000 employees based all over the world. Retail banking in Germany has very different constraints and pressures than investment banking in London.

When I first arrived at Deutsche in 1999, after years at the American bank Bankers Trust (which Deutsche had recently bought) the ‘feel’ of DB’s investment bank was, at first contact, not so different from what I was used to.

There was the same kaleidoscopic mix of nationalities speaking in various accents of fluent or broken English; the same feeling of urgency to do deals; the same male-dominated gender mix.

True, there were little differences. Bankers Trust was an exceptionally scruffily dressed bank. Bankers’ CEO Charlie Sanford had cared little for fripperies that did not enhance the bottom line. Deutsche’s i-bank on the other hand, led by the always immaculately dressed (and soon to be late) Edson Mitchell, was considerably sleeker.

The first big difference I encountered was one of scale. In the first month of my time at DB another ex-Bankers colleague and I cooked up a rather neat Euro-based FX hedging idea. We communicated it to the bank’s enormous European corporate sales force and sat back waiting for bites. For weeks there was nothing.

And then deals started coming. At first there were just a few, then dozens upon dozens of transactions poured in until we had done billions of Euros of notional. Eventually we had to turn off the pipe before we were overwhelmed.

This was emblematic of the way the bulk of Deutsche – the ‘German’, corporation-serving bit – operated. Slow at first, then, if things worked out, with unstoppable momentum.

This Germanic slowness also had its downside. It was a constant source of friction. Dealing with the retail bank or the private wealth arm was like wading through a swimming pool of sticky ooze. The committees that we investment bankers had to present to were uniformly polite but the delays in getting decisions from them were often interminable.

The really notable thing, however, were the rifts in the investment bank. – Not referring to the constant low-grade bickering between sales and trading. At Deutsche Bank it was more serious.

The investment bank had been set up in a hurry post-1995. Its various departments had been assembled almost from scratch. Probably because of this, the culture of each was different.

Maybe it was as a result of the different nationality mixes in each team? FX (where I worked) was populated very heavily with Aussies, Kiwis, South Africans and Brits.

Away from FX though, it was different. The Equities team, especially equity derivatives, was like a little France. Rates had a slightly Italian tinge. Emerging Markets was Russian and Turkish. And so on.

Each team also developed its own way of doing things. FX was very heavily focused on dealing technology. Emerging took a lot of prop risk. Rates was all about structured products.

This wouldn’t have mattered if the departments had worked together amicably. That was far from being the case. Each product ‘silo’ developed its own systems. Each silo competed to get the sales force (which was, in theory ‘non-aligned’ with any product) to get the bank’s customers to trade its products rather than those of its rivals. There was a presumption of loyalty to your silo that felt almost tribal.

And when there was a debate about who should be doing what product there was always a fierce and unrelenting maelstrom of internal competition. For example: who should be doing long-dated FX options, Rates or FX? Who should do mortgages?

Sales debates were, if anything even more intense.

Attempts were made to dial this competition back but, in my experience, the impetus for this came from the wearied businesses themselves rather than being imposed from above. For instance, there was a document written in quasi-legalese that attempted to demarcate who should do what when it came to long-dated FX. The heads of Rates and of FX had signed it as if it was the banking equivalent of the SALT II agreement.

Thus it was not for nothing that Deutsche, even at the peak of its success, got a reputation on the street as an extraordinarily ‘political’ place to work. When the money was rolling in, this wasn’t considered to be a problem. Years later, it raises two important questions.

First, has this culture remained in place? I’ve not been at the bank for four years but old colleagues tell me life’s the same only with more boxes to tick.

Second, does it really matter? In my view, yes. I think that there is no doubt that an ingrained culture of fragmentation and internal competition has been a major factor in Deutsche’s recent discomfort.

For one thing, costs will inevitably be too high if there are multiple rival and duplicate computer systems (a state of affairs that led the previous head of IT to call Deutsche ‘the most dysfunctional’ place she’s ever worked).

Also, making hard calls on what businesses to dial back on and which to invest in becomes a torrid shouting fest if each silo fights to protect its turf like a Mafia family. Result? Costly inertia.

And this problem is even more intense if it takes place in the context of a decades-old culture of distrust between the big divisions.

Deutsche still employs a huge number of extremely talented people despite some recent departures, but it faces a long, hard road to recovery. That road will be shorter and easier if those extremely talented people can learn to work together as teammates, not rivals. That is the overriding challenge facing CEO Sewing and his colleagues.

I live in hope.

Kevin Rodgers started his career as a trader in 1990 with Merrill Lynch in London before joining another American bank, Bankers Trust. From there he went on to work as a managing director of Deutsche Bank for 15 years, latterly as global head of foreign exchange. His book, “Why Aren’t They Shouting?: A Banker’s Tale of Change, Computers and Perpetual Crisis” was published by Penguin Random House in July 2016.

Photo: fotokostic/Getty

““

A top quantitative trader who left Credit Suisse’s New York office in May is understood to be joining Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s central risk team.

Insiders say that Mitrajit Dutta, the former head of model driven trading at Credit Suisse in New York has been hired by BAML as it expands its central risk desk.

Neither Credit Suisse, BAML nor Dutta responded to our request for comments. Dutta’s LinkedIn profile shows him still working for Credit Suisse. However, his FINRA registration reveals that he left the Swiss bank in May 2018.

Dutta would be a big catch for BAML. A physics PhD, he started his finance career at Goldman Sachs in 2007 as a quantitative strategist and subsequently spent five years at various hedge funds before joining Credit Suisse in 2014.

Dutta’s arrival at BAML would also coincide with the expansion of central risk desks as banks react to MiFID II’s impetus to set up their own systematic internalizers. It would come too as Michael Steliaros, Goldman Sachs’ head of quantitative execution services and the former global head of quantitative solutions at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, is building Goldman’s own central risk function and hiring from BAML in Europe.

Insiders suggest that Dutta is likely to be the first of several hires at Bank of America in New York. The U.S. bank is understood to be recruiting trading strategists for its central risk desk as it expands.

““

Alibaba and Tencent have been busy hiring from the Asian banking sector for the past two years. Our recent analysis of the latter’s workforce showed that its M&A, investment and strategy teams are littered with ex-bankers and research analysts from the likes of Deutsche Bank and Citi in Hong Kong.

Not all Chinese technology giants are so keen on banks as a source of talent, however. JD.com, the Beijing headquartered e-commerce company which boasts more than 300m active users, has few bankers within its ranks. This may change in the near future as the firm makes further investments overseas, in particular in Europe, where it plans to start operating its online shopping platform in 2019.

In the meantime, if you want to move from a bank to JD.com, it will be “tough going”, says a Hong Kong-based technology recruiter. But some experienced banking professionals have still made it into the tech firm. Here’s a selection (based on their public profiles) – let them be your inspiration.

Ernest Fung, senior director, head of international corporate

One of JD.com’s most high-profile picks from the finance sector, Fung joined back in 2014 from Citi. He had been with the US bank for almost 11 years, latterly as a Hong Kong-based director in TMT investment banking, according to his profile. Fung, who is one of several TMT bankers recruited by Chinese tech firms in recent years, holds a Master of Financing Engineering from Cornell University.

Tang Yu, enterprise security architect

One of a small group of technologists at JD.com who boasts experience in financial services, Yu has been with the company for just five months. He spent the previous six and a half years working in financial tech roles, first at DBS (where he was a Shanghai-based VP from 2011 to 2014) and then at NASDAQ-listed investment and trading firm Yintech, where he was group security and operations director.

Xiaolin Zheng, investment director

Zheng works for JD.com in Hong Kong, and like Fung he has a technology investment banking background. After a year-long stint as a graduate recruit at BAML, Zheng moved to Deutsche Bank in 2010 and worked in the firm’s TMT corporate finance team for three years. Zheng went in-house in 2015, taking a corporate development role at Chinese consumer conglomerate LeEco, according to his profile. He joined JD.com the following year and is part of its international investment and business development team.

Nancy Xu, investment manager

Xu started her career at Citi in Hong Kong in 2012 and spent three years there as an industry analyst covering the consumer, healthcare, alternative assets and TMT sectors. Like Zheng, she then did a brief stint at LeEco (JD.com is an investor in the cash-strapped company) before joining JD.com to work in group strategy and investment. Like many of JD.com’s banking recruits, Xu studied outside of Asia – she has a BBA from the University of Michigan, according to her online profile.

Chencheng Wang, business analytics manager and product manager

JD.com now has enough clout in the global job market to hire from the US. Wang is a case in point. Before joining JD.com in 2016, she worked for two and a half years as a VP in credit risk modeling and scoring analytics at Citi in New York. Wang is now in charge of JD.com’s 9N business analytics platform, an online product that analyses customer behaviour for precision marketing based on AI models, according to her profile.

Stella Shen, senior director, risk management, JD Finance

Shen leads the risk management department at JD Finance, the company’s financial technology arm, which is currently trying to raise $1.9bn in new investment to compete with larger rival Ant Financial. Stanford graduate Shen came on board in 2014, following a stint of almost two years at Deutsche Bank where she had been a VP and head of CRM portfolio management. Like Wang, Shen also worked for Citi in New York – she was a risk manager in the credit cards division there between 2005 and 2008, according to her public profile.

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: smortlock@efinancialcareers.com

Follow @simonmortlock

Image credit: FangXiaNuo, Getty

BlueCrest Capital Management, the family office run by billionaire investor Michael Platt, has just made another senior hire in Singapore as it continues to source its top portfolio managers from the banking sector.

Nicolas Fanchon joined BlueCrest earlier this month as a portfolio manager, according to his online profile. He was previously at Nomura for almost 10 years, latterly as an executive director in fixed income proprietary trading. Prior to that, he spent most of his career as an Asian interest rate options trader at BNP Paribas (1998 to 2004) and UBS (2004 to 2008).

Fanchon’s new firm, New York-headquartered BlueCrest, was one of the world’s hottest hedge funds until it became a family office in late 2015. As we reported earlier this year, the firm’s new status has not reduced its ability to recruit. Since January, BlueCrest has added a handful of people in the UK, including Evgenii Stroinov, an equity research analyst from Renaissance Capital, and David Bowen, a former currency portfolio manager at hedge fund Pine River.

As in the UK, BlueCrest has been selectively hiring in Singapore, but has been prone to taking senior people – often department heads – directly from large banks. Singapore’s hedge fund sector is comparatively small, making recruitment from buy-side competitors more difficult than in larger markets like London.

Portfolio managers like Fanchon make up a large proportion of these sell-side-to-buy-side moves. Last September, for example, Laurent Piedois, ANZ’s head of FX options for Europe and America came on board as a PM.

Piedois’ move came a few months after those of two ex-Barclays employees, who are now working as BlueCrest PMs in Singapore: Varun Kodthivada, the UK bank’s former head of Southeast Asia rates trading, and veteran trader Ashish Saksena, who spent more than 12 years at Barclays, latterly as a managing director.

In June last year, BlueCrest took on yet another banking boss when Ron Choy, Credit Suisse’s head of APAC rates and head of APAC investor product group, joined as a PM. That same month, Deutsche Bank’s former head of fixed income and currency trading for China, Yun Zou, also became a BlueCrest PM.

BlueCrest’s liking for senior traders from banks is perhaps not surprising – its Singapore CEO, Pierre Mauratille, comes from this background. Before joining Bluecrest in 2012, Mauratille was director, yen interest rates trading, at Barclays in Tokyo.

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: smortlock@efinancialcareers.com

Follow @simonmortlock

Image credit: southtownboy, Getty

Did someone say “juniorization’? Deutsche Bank, which is in the process of cutting 7,000 people and has cut 1,700 so far, has significantly increased its recruitment of graduates this year.

Business Insider reports that Deutsche’s 2018 global intake of analysts – typically new graduates – is 25% higher than 2017’s at 800 people, including 211 in corporate finance, 177 in technology and 128 hires in global markets. This is Deutsche’s second largest intake of analysts ever.

The German bank’s swollen graduate ranks come after Peter Selman, Deutsche’s still-new head of global equities, told Bloomberg in February that he planned to, “focus a lot on graduate recruiting” rather than, “a lot of very high-priced, expensive lateral hires.” Nonetheless, it looks like corporate finance is the biggest beneficiary of the graduate binge.

Surprisingly, as the overall class has grown Deutsche’s intake of technology graduates has fallen. While banks like Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan boast of their credentials as technology firms and go out looking for ever increasing numbers of STEM graduates, Deutsche Bank’s intake of junior technologists went from 186 last year to 177 this year.

Deutsche’s new graduates are already in situ. They’ve just arrived for their orientation week and will be settling in over this summer. As such, they will have been chosen last year and are therefore they work of former Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan rather than Deutsche Bank’s current cost-cutting CEO Christian Sewing. Deutsche’s new juniors therefore need to hope that the new CEO is in agreement with his predecessor’s strategy. If not, their tenure at the bank could be shorter than expected.

Separately, Goldman Sachs’ soon to be CEO David Solomon is already putting his stamp on the firm.

A known supporter of diversity issues and a father of two daughters who wants to help women get ahead, Solomon added three women to Goldman’s executive board, almost doubling their presence there in the process.

The new top Goldman women are: chief strategy officer Stephanie Cohen, who only made partner four years ago and has been promoted impressively quickly; Alison Mass, head of the investment-banking division’s financial and strategic investors group, and Sheila Patel, head of the international asset-management business. Solomon also elevated one man: chief administrative officer Lawrence Stein.

Goldman’s executive committee now has 33 people. Last week, there were reports that Solomon was thinking of reducing the size of the management committee. As he stamps his authority on the business, these four promotions may soon be followed by a larger number of layoffs.

Meanwhile:

Blackrock is expanding in France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. “We have to be local in every market….. You can’t just fly in people from New York or London. We have brought in country chairmen. That’s making sure we have people who are integrated in the local markets.” (Financial Times)

U.S. banks complain that UK taxes are too high. “This is not a cheap place to do business any more from a tax perspective…If I have a loan book here versus somewhere else, why wouldn’t I look at moving that?” (Financial Times)

Barclays is creating a new technology and operations centre in Scotland and hiring 2,500 staff. The bank is committed to hiring locally, including staff with disabilities and younger people struggling to find work. (Financial News)

Barclays hired a new head of electronic equities origination for America from Credit Suisse. (Business Insider)

Standard Chartered insider says head of compliance was sacked for telling “dad jokes.” (Financial News)

State Street will be hiring at Charles River. (TheTradeNews)

Google employees who wake up at 4am to catch flights in order to have 11 meetings in a day also fantasize about leaving and founding start-ups. (Financial Times)

Facebook is doubling its office space in London and creating room for another 6,000 work stations. (Reuters)

Highly intelligent people are twice as likely to be short-sighted as people with low IQ scores. (New Scientist)

Photo credit: Wild pixel, Getty

““

If you work for UBS now, you don’t want to be a contractor, or in equity capital markets. You do want to be in the U.S., probably.

These are the implications of the Swiss bank’s second quarter results, released today. As the chart below shows, UBS had a miserable second quarter in equity capital markets (ECM) compared to rivals and a weak three months in debt capital markets (DCM) and M&A too. Fixed income trading (FIC) at the Swiss bank was very strong, but it’s in the Americas where UBS is really pushing for growth this year.

“We are focusing our hiring on the U.S. to rebalance our portfolio,” said UBS chief executive Sergio Ermotti during the call accompanying today’s results, speaking in response to a question on the bank’s poorly performing corporate finance business. “We are an APAC-Europe skewed investment bank and a little bit of diversification will help… We are not talking about [hiring] hundreds of people, but people who will help rebalance the portfolio.”

Ermotti’s comments come after the head of UBS’s investment bank Andrea Orcel said in April that UBS has a, “very aggressive plan” for the U.S. which will involve doubling the number of client-facing bankers in the American market. UBS wants to hire, “old-fashioned bankers, who have relationships, have ideas, execute better than others — and clients therefore trust them,” said Orcel, adding that, “We have a very high bar on the quality of people we hire.”

Of late these quality people seem to be coming from Deutsche Bank. UBS hired Jeff Rose from Deutsche Bank to co-head Americas M&A in June 2018. Solon Kentas, also formerly of Deutsche Bank, joined UBS as an MD in consumer and retail M&A in the same month.

(Hover over the chart to highlight each bank’s results)

Ermotti said today that U.S. bank has also been building out its U.S. equities business and that this performed well in the second quarter, with growth in both flow and structured products. Europe sounds like a headache by comparison: Brexit will cost CHF100m ($101m) this year alone, said Ermotti, describing the “threatening” language being used in Brexit negotiations as “quite disturbing.”

While the U.S. is UBS’s hiring sweet spot, you probably don’t want to be a contractor at the Swiss bank.

In the 12 months to June 2018, UBS cut 3,855 contractors as it focused on internal staff instead. However, it would be wrong to presume that internal staff are safe, even in the U.S or businesses that are performing well. UBS wants to cut another CHF100m from costs before the year end, and has been quietly laying off staff (the investment bank had 90 fewer staff in June 2018 than in March). Despite a strong year in fixed income trading thanks to its strength in FX, the Swiss bank has been cutting its rates sales desk. Recent layoffs include David Steckl, the former institutional head of U.S. rates sales who only joined from Deutsche Bank in mid-2017.

(Hover over the chart to highlight each bank’s results)

““

After last year’s frenetic hiring, Balyasny Asset Management has been clipping its wings. Around 10 macro traders were cut from the hedge fund’s macro training program in February and the UK’s FCA Register indicates around five further exits in June and July. Meanwhile, those who left Balyasny previously are finding new roles.

The FCA Register suggests that various people have left Balyasny in recent months. They include: Nicolas Grand-Chavin, an associate portfolio manager in quantitative equities trading; Andy Hill, an execution trader; Chris Langman (a portfolio manager previously reported as leaving by Bloomberg), and Daryl Li, a former Morgan Stanley swaps trader. Balyasny didn’t respond to a request to comment on the exits and none of the individuals we contacted for comment responded.

The FCA Register also shows Ulrich Brandt-Pollmann, Balyasny’s global head of systematic strategies, leaving the UK office in June 2018. Brandt-Pollmann is now working for Balyasny in Chicago.

Many of those who appear to have left Balyasny this year were only hired in 2017, with several spending less than two years there.

Some of those who left Balyasny this year are finding new roles elsewhere. Anindya Mohinta, a portfolio manager who left Balyasny this month after joining from Goldman Sachs in June 2015, has just joined Moore Capital in a similar role. Joel Odjdana, an investment analyst who joined Balyasny from Nomura in 2014 and left in January 2018, joined the Seaport Group in March – only to leave again this month. Hammad Khan, a former Balyasny quantitative portfolio manager who left after less than two years has set up his own fund, QuanVolve LLP, based out of Sevenoaks in Kent.

In May, five of Balyasny’s macro professionals also joined Point72.

The staff movement at Balyasny hasn’t all been one way. While people have left, others have joined – albeit in smaller numbers than last year.

The FCA Register indicates that Balyasny has hired at two people since May as it rebuilds its London macro team under Tim Wilkinson from Citadel. They are: Xiao Zhang from Capula and Dimitry Korsunsky from Element Capital Partners. Separately, Bastien Lacassagne has joined the equities team from Rothschild (where he was an M&A analyst) and Simon Freeman has joined from GLG to launch a merger arbitrage strategy. Following the cuts to its training program, notably fewer of Balyasny’s recent recruits seem to have come from investment banks.

Balyasny Europe’s most recently available accounts, for the year ending December 2016, show the fund making £11m in profits and employing 69 staff (up from 37 one year previously).

Photo: Jevgeni_Tr/Getty

““

If you’re a technologist in an investment bank, you’re probably interested in getting promoted. Who doesn’t want to make it to the top? But you may also be aware that whenever managing director lists are issued, technologist staff seem to be underrepresented. Getting to the top in technology is not always easy. As someone who has spent their career in finance technology, I’ve seen a lot of disappointment.

The good news is that many of the reasons you’re not promoted are within your control. If you can solve them, there’s always next year.

How are your soft skills?

When technologists approach me to make a case for getting a promotion, I always ask the same question: Why? – Why should I put you forward for a promotion instead of someone else?

Most of the time, they will tell me: “I am a great technologist, I work hard, get results and I feel I deserve it.”

This is often true: their technical skills are usually great, as is their work and results. But promotion requires something more: you need good interpersonal skills too.

Look at the people above you in the organisation. How do your interpersonal skills compare to theirs? What are they doing differently to you? How would you compare to them in a performance review? And – most importantly – would you really want to do what they’re doing each day?

If the answer to the final question is yes and there are gaps in your skillset, you’ll need to build your softer skills with stretched tasks and project. Banks have promotion committees and promotion committees like evidence: if you want to get head, you’ll need to participate in projects that will enable your manager to provide this.

Have you really had an impact?

If you want to get promoted, you’ll also need a long hard look at what you’ve really been up to. You might be exceptional in your role day to day, but what have you done outside of it?

For example, what impact have you had on the team, the department, the business and the wider organisation? Have you brought the team closer to the strategy? Have you mentored junior members of your team? Can people talk about your impact? – Is it something your recognized for? What have you actually improved?

Is your manager blocking you?

This is a bit more sensitive, but I’ve seen technologists who don’t get promoted due to a lack of support, planning or preparation by their manager. It might, for example, that their manager has put them into the promotion process before they’re ready – they may be perceived critically by the team. Alternatively, the manager may present them too late so that there’s insufficient time to prepare for the interview that leads to promotion, or the manager may not present a top technologist well to the promotion committee.

If this is the case, you need to recognize this in your manager. You either need to help them prepare, or you need to find a new manager in the organisation or elsewhere.

The numbers are against you

Lastly, don’t take it to heart if you don’t get promoted. It’s never easy to make it to the highest levels in an investment bank – by their nature there are only a limited number of roles. It can be even harder in tech.

The promotion committees are usually given a target number of candidates for promotion each year. Candidates have to be ranked: if you fall below the line, you’ll have to wait until the next opportunity.

The target for tech promotions is often small. With the continued focus on downsizing in high cost locations, with vendor onboarding and offshoring, it’s never been harder to get promoted to MD as a technologist in London or New York City. If it doesn’t happen to you, don’t take it personally. – But if you can work on your soft skills, impact, and “story”, it will become more likely.

Nick has over 15 years of leadership experience in financial technology and is now a leadership and career coach specialising in helping leaders achieve successful, rewarding and fulfilling careers – nicholas-foster.com

““

Recent waves of redundancies at global banks in Hong Kong have one common characteristic – they’ve been aimed largely at expensive senior staff. While job hunting at the top of the banking tree has always been more difficult than at the bottom, the difference is now even more extreme.

But in which particular parts of Hong Kong financial services is it toughest (and easiest) for experienced staff to get work? To find out, we analysed at our database across 18 key finance job functions and compared the number of Hong Kong-based vacancies demanding at least 10 years’ experience with the number of local CVs at that level.

In the sectors towards the top of the table below, older candidates are currently enjoying comparatively straightforward job searches. For example, in corporate banking and private banking – two talent-short functions dependant on building long-term client relationships – there are ‘only’ 17 and 18 resumes on our database respectively for every Hong Kong vacancy.

While Hong Kong recruiters say openings for senior risk and compliance professionals aren’t as abundant as last year, the table shows that middle-office candidates are still more sought after than most other job seekers in the finance sector. Risk management tops our table.

More surprisingly, experienced capital markets bankers (15 jobs per CV) are also in demand, although this is primarily because Chinese firms are still hiring in ECM in Hong Kong as they increasingly win work from the mainland companies who now dominate new listings in the city.

By contrast, you’ll face 177 and 57 rival resumes respectively in private equity and hedge funds, if you have 10 years’ or more experience under your belt. Buy-side firms traditionally tend to hire elite analysts and associates from investment banks – senior openings remain rare.

The dramatic lack of jobs in equities (research, sales and trading) reflects more recent events. Deutsche Bank made redundancies in its Asian equities team just last month, while Credit Suisse culled dozens from its regional equities operations last year after a slump in revenues. Barclays, along with several other banks, cut jobs in 2016. These people face a bleak search for work – there are 122 roles in Hong Kong for every CV on our database in equities.

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: smortlock@efinancialcareers.com

Follow @simonmortlock

Image credit: Aneese, Getty

Morning Coffee: Sorry end for talented trader whose pay deal was the envy of the industry. Goldman’s interesting new habit

Meanwhile:

J.P. Morgan’s old head of AI is up to something interesting at Cerberus

How to ace a video interview at Goldman Sachs

After a mixed second quarter, banks are trimming rates desks

Junior banker? You’re not that rich

My prep route to becoming a Fixed Income Analyst

Deloitte is on the hunt for talent as it helps insurers prepare for IFRS 17. These are the candidates it is looking to hire

Work-life balance still taboo in Asian banking. I’d be called lazy for mentioning it

Morning Coffee: The awful reality of working for a private equity fund. Banking careers for social climbers

This is how much you’ll earn working for XTX Markets

Top salesman quits Macquarie for Barclays after six months

Deutsche Bank’s problem: a historic culture of ruthless internal competition

Top quant trader who quit Credit Suisse in NYC said to be joining BAML

Meet the bankers and finance techies who managed to get jobs at JD.com

Ernest Fung, senior director, head of international corporate

Tang Yu, enterprise security architect

Xiaolin Zheng, investment director

Chencheng Wang, business analytics manager and product manager

Stella Shen, senior director, risk management, JD Finance

Hot investment firm hires yet another senior banker in Singapore

Morning Coffee: Deutsche Bank’s curious junior hiring binge. Goldman Sachs’ new top women

Meanwhile:

The best and worst places to work at UBS for the rest of 2018

Balyasny traders finding new jobs as FCA Register indicates further exits

Why tech staff in banks don’t get promoted. What to do about it

How are your soft skills?

Have you really had an impact?

Is your manager blocking you?

The numbers are against you

The Hong Kong banking jobs where you have no future

Meanwhile:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Ernest Fung, senior director, head of international corporate

Tang Yu, enterprise security architect

Xiaolin Zheng, investment director

Chencheng Wang, business analytics manager and product manager

Stella Shen, senior director, risk management, JD Finance

Related articles:

Meanwhile:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

How are your soft skills?

Have you really had an impact?

Is your manager blocking you?

The numbers are against you

Related articles:

Related articles: