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Some areas of banking and finance aren’t as remunerative as they used to be. With some banks’ shares at record lows, all those deferred bonuses (paid in shares) aren’t nearly as valuable as they used to be. In Britain’s shriveling brokerage sector, the Financial Times says directors have been made to take pay cuts from £300k ($381k) to £150k as companies desperately try to preserve their margins. Where, then, should you work if you want to preserve your earning capacity for all eternity?

How about the Big Four? Long lambasted as a) a bit boring (compared to banks), b) poorly paying (compared to banks), it’s at times like this that the Big Four come into their own. Not only can they pay very well, but their remuneration appears strangely impervious to market conditions.

Take KPMG. In the UK, the smallest of the Big Four firms stands accused of questionable financial judgments for failing to spot the parlous state of Carillion, a government outsourcing firm which collapsed in 2018, costing the British taxpayer £148m+. Even so, it hiked pay per head for its partners from £519k ($654k) to £600k for the 12 months to September compared to the year before. A 16% pay hike is the sort of thing that rarely happens in banking nowadays.

In Big Four world, KPMG isn’t even the best paying – its three rivals are far more generous. The Financial Times notes that EY partners got £693k each for the past year, that PWC partners got £712k, and that Deloitte partners each had £812k ($1.03m) (even though their pay fell a bit). If you want to make money at the Big Four, you should probably therefore aspire to work for Deloitte. It undoubtedly helps that the firm is the strongest in consulting, where pay is typically the highest at all firms. These figures are UK-specific, but can be extrapolated globally.

Of course, not everyone will become a Big Four partner. There are only 700 of them at Deloitte, and everyone else earns considerably less. But the Big Four are always hiring, particularly in areas like technology consulting (with Delotte, for example, investing $547m into its cybersecurity offering globally) and there are often opportunities for disgruntled finance types who can work their way up.

Britain’s broking professionals may want to reinvent themselves – although whether the Big Four have room for a wave of consultants with expertise in MiFID II (the regulations that have squeezed the broking sector) is open to question. In the worse case scenario, you will arrive at the Big Four in time for the firms to be forcibly broken up by UK regulators who are questioning the conflicts of interest inherent in their combination of audit and consulting work.

Separately, you can blame fixed income traders if you work in banking and you get a lower bonus this year. At a banking conference run by Goldman Sachs this week, various banks have been reflecting upon the state of their revenues in the final quarter. The latest to do so is Citi, which said yesterday that fourth quarter volatility had affected its debt capital markets and rates trading revenues to such an extent that its ability to meet its overall efficiency (cost/revenue) goal might be compromised.

“It’s a much tougher revenue quarter then we would have anticipated,” said Citi CFO John Gerspach. Business Insider notes that J.P. Morgan said earlier in the conference that its overall sales and trading revenues will be flat, while Bank of America said its markets revenues were up a small amount.

Meanwhile:

Citi wants to rank 5th in equities. Two years ago it ranked ninth, right now it ranks around sixth. (Seeking Alpha)

Brian Moynihan says Bank of America has spent $300m to $400m getting ready for a potential hard Brexit. (Bloomberg)

Only 630 jobs have been moved out of London because of Brexit (so far). (Reuters)

After adding 65 people this year, Numis won’t be hiring quite so enthusiastically in future. (Financial News)

SoftBank’s Vision Fund is setting up an investment team in China. (Financial Times)

Evercore poached San Francisco-based Zaheed Kajani from Citigroup to cover the internet and digital media sectors. (Reuters)

Starting from 2019, Deutsche Bank staff won’t be able to place trades in ETFs without first getting them cleared by their manager and compliance staff, regardless of their size. (Bloomberg)

Goldman Sachs’ stock is down 30% since mid-March (and around 15% in the past month). The Trump bump is almost all gone. (Bloomberg)

Top hedge funds had a bad November. Point72 was down 4.3%. Point72 was down 2.8%. (Financial Times)

Facebook employees are buying burner phones to say negative things to the press. “We have an intense culture of conformity.” (BuzzFeed News)

Glassdoor data suggests Goldman Sachs staff are happier than staff at Apple. (Financial News)

Never go on a four-day Mediterranean crytpo-cruise. (BreakerMag)

A 500-year-old skeleton in thigh-high leather boots was found in the mud of the London Thames. (NY Times)

But did you ever consider horse therapy? (WSJ)

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I’m a software programmer in an investment bank and I can see a problem on the horizon. Right now, I produce software for a derivative trading desk, but this year that desk has begun hiring computer scientists instead of finance of mathematics graduates into analyst (e. junior positions) positions. I’ve been to town halls where the desk head for this business boasts of giving opportunities to unconventional candidates. These programmers turned traders are a sign of things to come.

On one level, it makes sense. If you’re a bank looking for a trader, a computer science graduate will make a good candidate – especially at the analyst level. An analyst does the repetitive and administrative tasks for the desk. When you’re an analyst, you won’t trade without supervision or manage your own books until you’ve learned the ropes. This is where being technical can make all the difference. If you’re a computer science graduate, you may be able to partner more effectively with technology teams and automate arduous processes yourself. If you can’t, you will be wasting time doing things manually. If you’re a stereotypical programmer, and are an unemotional nerd, you should also do well in a high-pressure and information rich environment.

What makes sense for the trading side of the business, however, may not make sense for the people working in technology. If you’re a programmer like me, working with a business full of people who are coders is a major headache – for exactly the same reason that the business likes them.

Why? I know from experience that the business likes to develop what we call, ‘User Tools’. Traditionally, these were business processes with elaborate implementations in Excel and/or Access. In my career I’ve seen things as fundamental as client order books maintained in Excel and passed around globally via e-mail. It’s the type of thing carries huge operational risk. When you’re a front office technologist like me, your role is to come along and systematize these processes. That’s hard enough when you have a huge Excel file, but it will much more difficult when the user tools are complex programs in Python or Java, without reference to any wider strategy or models.

Equally, what about being able to hack your way around controls? This s quite easily done if you have the technical chops and a bit of operational knowledge.

At the moment, there are two types of users that are a nightmare to deal with when you’re working for a tech team in the front office: the technically clueless and the super technical. We much prefer dealing people in the middle of that spectrum. It’s obvious what the difficulties are when you’re working with people who struggle to use software other than Bloomberg and Outlook. But the super technical present a different kind of challenge – they can be very snarky when systems fail, and more often than not will end up attempting to tell you how to do your job. In fairness, traders have always been relatively technical and much more comfortable with technologists and quants compared to salespeople or bankers.

Whether a bank hires computer science graduates or not, it’s increasingly becoming the norm that all new front office analysts will have to go through a mandatory coding course. What we’ll end up if we’re not careful are therefore trading floors full of half-baked coders, creating a sea of isolated tools, who like to tell technology how to do their jobs and what that last error message means. I can’t wait.

Joe Jones is a pseudonym
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com in the first instance. Whatsapp/Signal/Telegram also available.
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There may be no better time than the present to be a quant. Hedge funds and banks are not only hiring PhDs right out of school to research and mine datasets, but also to build algorithms and strategies that directly inform trading decisions. More quants inch toward the front-office every day.

When it comes to quant pay, the spectrum is rather wide. It all depends on whether or not you’re considered a ‘revenue-generator’.Either way, salaries are increasing across all experience levels as competition heats up. “Everyone is hiring,” said one hedge fund researcher at the recent Quant Conference in London.

A new report from Wall Street Oasis provides a bit more clarity. The average base salary for quants and engineers at top algo-focused hedge funds was $163k in 2018. With a near $100k average bonus, year-end total compensation for a typical quant is north of $260k. That number is likely set to increase substantially as the survey ran throughout 2018 and included bonuses earned in 2017 that were paid out earlier this year.

The survey took into account self-reported base salaries and bonuses from quants at five well-known hedge funds: Millennium Partners, Citadel, Two Sigma, Man Group and D.E. Shaw. The number of respondents from each firm was too low to make any assessments about one particular hedge fund, but the combined data was statistically significant. In fact, when it came to base salaries, there wasn’t much deviation from the mean. The lowest reported base was $140k while the highest was $186k. While it’s impossible to say definitively that the respondents are mostly junior, that’s likely the case. Those who were surveyed had the option to self-identify as a vice president, director or managing director, but chose the title of quant/engineer. A New York recruiter who does retained searches for quants said the figures fit with what she sees at the junior and mid-level.

While $260k is a nice chunk of change for someone who may be in their late 20s, at least one expert thinks that quants are underpaid, particularly considering the investment they made in getting their PhD. Former sell-side and buy-side quant Robert Carver noted in a recent op-ed on our site that his brethren never see seven or eight-figure pay packets that senior traders and portfolio managers often earn. He argues that old-fashioned thinking tends to mislabel quants as engineers that are dispensable and easy to replace, thus they often aren’t justly rewarded.

The other reason quants are underpaid? They don’t make enough waves. “Most firms will pay you the least amount possible unless you complain, which is why the more vocal and aggressive sales people and traders have usually earned more,” Carver wrote.

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If you’re preparing your CV for a job with a Big Four accounting and consulting firm, it will need to be good. You will need to show that you have gained a deep and broad understanding of the business environment and that you can transform data into insights. You will also need to show that you are able to use those insights to influence performance, strategy and future commercial opportunities.

When you’re writing your Big Four CV, think of achievements you can quantify which demonstrate the following skills.

1. Strategy: How has your input shaped commercial or operational strategy?

If you are at a senior level, this could be designing a corporate vision and directing its implementation. If you’re at an earlier stage in your career, you could demonstrate how your analysis has shaped or supported a business leader’s decisions.

2. Market and regulatory environment: How has your analysis influenced a company’s direction?

This is a common competency question at interviews. Hiring decision makers want to see that you understand the context in which a business operates. For example, do you understand how technology innovations, compliance issues and how competitors affect profitability.

3. Process Management: How have you improved or re-engineered business processes?

Remember, you will need to link your activity to a quantifiable achievement. So, when you’re talking about improvements you’ve made to business processes make sure you have figures for how much you’ve reduced costs, saved time or increased efficiency. Alternatively, you may have enhanced or protected the corporate reputation – this is more difficult to measure accurately, but just as important.

4. Business Relations: How have you developed commercial relationships and won new business?

This is all about your professional brand and how you promote the organisation you work for. If you’re already in practice and directly responsible for winning or retaining clients this is fairly straightforward. It’s more difficult if you’re applying from commerce and industry. – You’ll need to think more creatively. Have you represented your organisation as a keynote speaker or on an expert panel or industry group? Have you published articles or contributed thought leadership pieces to your organisation’s content marketing strategy?

5. Project Management: How can you demonstrate your effective oversight of projects?

Lastly, when you’re applying to the Big Four it helps to have project management skills. PRINCE2 and Agile training are obviously useful key words to have on your CV. But can you also demonstrate stakeholder management, organisational influence or communications expertise?

Remember, hiring managers are looking for examples of achievements that demonstrate you have these competencies. It’s not just about making a list of everything you’ve ever done. You’ll need to think strategically and tailor the content of your CV to each role.

Victoria McLean is the CEO of City CV, an award-winning international CV writing and career consultancy. She was previously a recruiter at Goldman Sachs and the equities division of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

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The venture capital arm of hedge fund Two Sigma Investments just hired a chief of staff with a rather unique background. Juliette Han started at Two Sigma Ventures earlier this month.

Han comes over from rival hedge fund Citadel where she was the chief operating officer concentrating on human capital development and other strategic HR functions, according to LinkedIn. She previously held the title of chief of staff title at McKinsey & Co. as it launched its New Ventures initiative, before which she was one of their management consultants.

But what truly sets Han apart is her rather robust educational background. She has a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard to go along with master’s in physiology from UCLA. She was recently honored by Moves Magazine as a mentor for other women in business. Han is also an advisor to Harvard Medical School’s alumni advisory council.

Two Sigma Ventures is a subsidiary of the New York hedge fund that invests in early-stage technology companies that focus on machine learning, data science and artificial intelligence – areas that the quant fund knows plenty about.

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The Masters in Finance (MIF) qualification is slowly gaining traction in Hong Kong, a city where mid-career banking professionals have traditionally preferred MBAs. But given the plethora of courses now available locally and globally, where should you study if you want a MIF that will actually help you boost your finance career in Hong Kong?

To find out, we searched our CV database for finance professionals currently based in Hong Kong who have a Masters in Finance to their name, and we looked at which business school they attended. We then ranked the 15 most popular of these universities to produce the table below.

Because the MIF has only recently emerged as a mainstream qualification in Hong Kong, our data set is not yet large enough to examine the business function of graduates or the firm they work for. But the numbers do show which MIF are most popular with people now working in the Hong Kong finance sector.

Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to live and study abroad is not the only way to get a MIF that will lead to employment back in Hong Kong. Of those who attended one of the top-15 business schools, 65% studied at one of the seven local universities listed on our table. The University of Hong Kong’s Master of Finance course boasts the most MIF graduates (19%) working in the local finance sector, according to our resume database.

If you do want to leave Hong Kong for MIF (and then return to work in financial services), one country stands out: the UK. Imperial College London comes in fourth place, while Warwick Business School, and London School of Economics are both ranked highly.

Mainland China’s nascent MIF sector is starting to make an impact in Hong Kong – the Peking University (Guanghua School of Management) is in fifth position.

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

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Depending on how you choose to splash your cash, Singapore is the first (according to the Economist Intelligence Unit), second (Julius Baer), or fourth (Mercer) most expensive city on the planet. No wonder then that students and new graduates in the Republic tend to be fairly obsessed with money when they’re choosing what part of banking to work in.

What you earn during your analyst traineeship isn’t so important (you’re learning the ropes and probably living with your parents), but what you earn three years down the track as an associate is. This will help determine what your first car will be (a 3 Series or just a Nissan Note?) and how big a condo deposit you will eventually put down.

Realistically, to live well in Singapore, you need to be on an annual base salary of at least S$125k when you make associate. But despite what you might think, this kind of pay packet isn’t a certainty across all finance jobs, even at global banks in Singapore.

So which (non-technology) banking roles potentially pay S$125k or more a year to associates? We averaged out associate pay in mainstream banking functions across salary surveys from five recruitment agencies in Singapore. We took the maximum figures from each firm’s associate-level pay range, so the salaries in the table below are for top performers.

Unsurprisingly, global markets and investment banking positions top the list. Associates working in M&A, capital markets and trading in Singapore can potentially take home about S$190k in annual base pay. This figure pales in comparison to the equivalent salary in Hong Kong (S$242k/HK$1,380k), however, where junior bankers work on far larger North Asian deals.

Relationship managers in private banking still earn significantly less (S$140k) than their counterparts in investment banking, despite an abundance of IBD candidates and a shortage of talent in Singapore wealth management. As private banks in Singapore – most notably HSBC and Julius Baer – continue to increase their headcounts, however, the average pay rise for RMs moving between banks in Singapore is now about 20% to 25%, according to headhunters.

The appearance of anti-money laundering toward the top of our table is not as remarkable as it may seem. Singapore has witnessed a number of senior AML and financial crime job moves over the past few months, and demand for staff remains strong at all levels. Banks in Singapore are stepping up their efforts to detect money-laundering activities in the wake of the 1MDB scandal.

Meanwhile, it’s now even possible to make S$132k a year as a high-performing associate in internal audit as banks struggle to fill vacancies and resort to retraining staff from other functions to become auditors.

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

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Image credit: TARIK KIZILKAYA, Getty

Bloomberg set fire to Wall Street first thing Monday morning when it published an article highlighting how male bankers who are fearful of potential ramifications from the #MeToo movement have begun adopting a controversial strategy: “avoid women at all costs.” Interviews with more than two dozen Wall Street executives suggest that some male bankers are “walking on eggshells” – avoiding one-on-one meetings with female reports and altering business travel arrangements, among many other examples. One wealth adviser even said that hiring a woman these days is “an unknown risk.”

A quartet of former Goldman Sachs employees currently working for Mayor de Blasio has fired back, calling the reactions “sickening” and a major restriction on women’s ability to succeed on Wall Street. The letter was penned by former Goldman Sachs executive and current deputy mayor for housing and economic development Alicia Glen, along with three colleagues who also happened to be former Goldmanites.

“Men in these firms should be required to break bread with female colleagues — especially the up-and-coming ones of whom the men in the article were so afraid,” they wrote. “Because so many major career conversations take place during casual interactions like grabbing a coffee or a beer or going to karaoke, it has never been more important to ensure women are ‘in the room where it happens.’”

They offered a few suggestions, including cross-gender mentorships and encouraging more respect for female leaders. They also made the business case for banks ridding themselves of men who are incapable of having dinner alone with a woman “without making fools of themselves,” calling them a financial and cultural liability. “Would you trust a man who doesn’t trust himself to be alone with a woman with millions of dollars in investments or leading a major business division?” they wrote.

As the former head of its urban investment group, Glen was a major voice at Goldman Sachs. We’ll see if the letter will reverberate around the halls of investment banks and other financial firms like the initial Bloomberg report.

Elsewhere, BlackRock acknowledged that roughly one-quarter of its employees work as technologists, a larger percentage than at J.P. Morgan. The world’s biggest asset manager is spending around $1 billion annually on technology and data, according to Business Insider. But unlike its rivals, BlackRock has a true revenue generator in Aladdin, its investment management platform that it leases to competitors. Tech services make up 6% of the firm’s total revenue but the segment increased 18% year-on-year during the third quarter.

Meanwhile:

Daniel Och, the billionaire founder of Och-Ziff Capital Management, is stepping back from the firm. He and several former managing directors plan to sell 35% of their shares to current executive managing directors. Investors seem OK with the move. The stock was up 25% on Thursday after tumbling 58% over the last year. (WSJ)

Citi has named John Chirico and Kevin Cox as co-heads of its newly combined investment banking and capital markets division in North America. The bank also appointed Jan Metzger and Eduardo Cruz to similar roles overseeing APAC and Latin America, respectively. (Bloomberg)

London-based M&A advisor Andrea Partners has hired former Deutsche Bank dealmaker Nigel Robinson. The advisory boutique was launched by four former Goldman Sachs bankers in 2016. (Financial News)

The continuous plunge of cryptocurrency prices is starting to claim more victims than just investors. Coin developers and other software companies in the crypto community are facing a funding crunch, and some are now laying off large percentages of their staff and even shutting their doors. (Bloomberg)

Deutsche Bank has named Vathany Vijayaratna its new global head of fixed income structuring. The appointment is particularly noteworthy considering the division’s leadership has been historically dominated by men. (Financial News)

Mizuho International, the London securities and investment banking arm of the Japanese firm, has cut an unknown number of jobs within its capital markets business over the last week. Among the casualties is senior DCM banker David Rudd, who led the business in the U.K. (Global Capital)

Who said sanctions don’t offer any positives? Under a 2012 agreement with U.S. prosecutors over money laundering allegations, HSBC agreed to house a federally-appointed monitor to look out for suspicious transactions. Over the years, the monitor flagged transactions in the accounts of Huawei Technologies and relayed them to federal prosecutors, who arrested Huawei chief financial officer and daughter of the Chinese telecom giant’s founder earlier this month for alleged violations of Iran sanctions. HSBC isn’t accused of any wrongdoing, but previous alleged violations may have helped build a case against another firm. (WSJ)

J.P. Morgan feels the proposed 70-story tower that will become its new headquarters isn’t quite big enough for its needs. The bank is pushing back on a requirement to provide 10,000 sq. ft. of public space as part of the zoning agreement. J.P. Morgan argued that, due to the fact the block sits over a large train shed, it will be losing foundation and basement space. The local land use committee was quick to rebuff the appeal. JPM will have to settle for the other 2.5 million sq. ft. (Crain’s New York)

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If you’re a quantitative analyst who’s looking for an opportunity of reinventing yourself as something in data science, you might want to adopt Samuel Livingstone as your role model. Livingstone was once a lowly quant analyst. Now he’s head of data science at Jupiter Asset Management (as of this month.)

Livingstone’s big new role follows a four month period of gardening leave after he left Citadel and served out one of the hedge fund’s non-competes. He spent around two years at Citadel, working as a data scientist on the fund’s global equities desk. Prior to that he worked for Schroders and Towers Watson as an investment analyst after beginning his career as a sales trader at IG Group in 2010.

Livingstone’s metamorphosis from sales trader to quant analyst to data scientist should be of particular interest to anyone who aspires to work in data science but who doesn’t have a PhD in a mathematical area and didn’t attend a top university for a bachelor’s course. Livingstone graduated from the UK’s University of the West of England with a first degree in economics and business and went on to study a masters in economics, accounting and finance at the University of Bristol. In both cases, he finished within the top one or two per cent of his graduating class.

Jupiter’s appointment of a new head of data science comes as fund managers have doubled their spending on digital information sets in two years, leading to explosive demand for data scientists. Spending is expected to increase another 60% in the next two years, with hiring expected to rise along with it.

Schroders (Livingstone’s former employer) is widely considered one of the most advanced of the traditional asset managers when it comes to data science. The fund has had a data insights team since 2015.

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If you’re a junior banker at Deutsche Bank you will not get a bonus for your work this year. Nor (most probably) will you get a bonus if you’re a junior who works for DWS Group – the former asset management arm of Deutsche Bank. In the first case, this will not come as a surprise. In the latter, it could come as a shock.

Deutsche Bank has not paid bonuses to junior staff below assistant vice president (AVP) level since around 2017, when previous CEO John Cryan reformed compensation for junior staff. Since then, Deutsche’s juniors have only been eligible for ‘recognition awards,’ or smaller cash payments for good performance. In theory, the bank has hiked salaries to compensate for this – although in reality Deutsche Bank’s junior salaries appear to be on a par with everyone else’s.

DWS used to be like Deutsche Bank. The asset management firm employs around 4,000 people and was part of DB until March this year, when it spun out (although DB remains the main shareholder). Juniors at the asset management firm are complaining that at the time of the IPO they were informed that the newly independent company would “be ending” Cryan’s pay edict and paying its juniors bonuses again. “This boosted morale among junior staff,” says one, who says there was no further communication for months. – Until now.

In the past week, the junior says it’s become apparent that bonuses won’t be reinstated for everyone after all. “It now appears that variable compensation is returning to some juniors but not all. Those in “product” areas will now be eligible but those outside of “product” will not. This has only been communicated to those who are now eligible, not those who are not.” He claims that juniors at DWS in Germany will also be excluded from this year’s bonus round.

A spokesman for DWS said the company is in the middle of a, “complex process,” to, “work towards a compensation structure more closely aligned with market practice and the regulatory frameworks of the asset management industry.” Ultimately, the spokesman says the intention is to, “reward all our employees based on overall performance – including cultural objectives.” – But this won’t be achieved in time for 2018 bonuses.

Despite the ongoing denial of performance pay, DWS juniors have had some love this year. – The company gave everyone a generous one-off award at the time of the IPO. “All employees, regardless of corporate title, were granted IPO-related awards on top of their regular total compensation packages,” says the spokesman.

This doesn’t seem to have done the trick for everyone. Various juniors have left in recent years (albeit before the IPO was announced) and the disgruntled insider suggests there will be more exits in 2019. “By creating two tiers of junior staff they have managed to push people closer to leaving,” he says. “I expect following compensation discussions in March there will be an exodus of non eligible juniors.”

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Do you need to go to a top university to get a job in banking? What if you attend a not-so-top university and get an excellent grade? – Will that suffice? Below we have the (anonymized) CV of a UK student in precisely this situation.

He wants your feedfback. Will this CV get him a job at an investment bank? If not, why not? What can be improved? Add your advice in the comments box at the (very) bottom of this page.

Is my CV good enough for an investment bank?

Education:

UK University (ranked 38th)

BSc. Accounting and Management (2nd year)

Grade: 1^st Class Honours
Relevant Modules: Financial Accounting – 97%, Applied Economics – 86.4%

School:

A Levels: – A*, Economics – A*, English – A, Commerce – A.

WORK EXPERIENCE

Accountancy firm, London

Intern (One month)

Analysing purchase and sales invoices of clients, and creating an input and output VAT summary to help reclaim or pay VAT on a quarterly basis to the government
Working with senior accountants to analyse invoices and statements, which reduces the time taken to prepare trial balances and increases efficiency in the preparation of financial reports
Implemented a new process of scanning clients’ bank statements and converting them into an excel spreadsheet (Bank Summary), which lead to overall improvements in efficiency
Keeping track of Payroll deadlines for all clients and informing colleagues to ensure timely tax return submissions.

Asian corporate

Summer Intern (Two months)

Assisted Head of Department in analysing accounts and preparation of Financial Statements required for auditing
Collaborated with Fixed Asset department in analysing and depreciating assets on a straight-line method on SAP accounting software and built reports collaboratively with Head of Department
Worked in teams to complete VAT summary, analysis to reduce the time taken to prepare reports

LEADERSHIP & TEAMWORK EXPERIENCE

JP Morgan Launching Leaders Insight Day, London

Participant 2018, one day

Selected to attend the event which consisted of 40 participants out of 250 applications in total
Introduction to JP Morgan and the investment banking division with details about the product, Industry and coverage groups
Participated in a trading simulation, networked with employees, attended seminars including a case study on Tesco-Booker merger

CIMA Business Game Case Study Competition, London

Team Leader, 2018

Given a case study on how to increase the profitability and growth for a high-tech leisurewear company
Led a team of four to analyse a case study and suggest changes to increase profitability before presenting our suggestions
Won 1^st place for the best suggestions and acknowledged for critical thinking and well-structured arguments

School

School Prefect

Elected as a representative of the student body to maintain discipline by collaborating with fellow Prefects
Led my house to victory in our inter-house football shield
Solved problems with regards to poor food quality by suggesting a change of suppliers to the Principal, which was implemented

SKILLS, ACTIVITIES & INTERESTS

Languages: English (fluent), Bengali (native), Hindi (fluent), Nepali (limited proficiency)

Interests: Cricket: Member of the Senior cricket team in high-school, Football: Integral member of the plus 2 (senior) football team

Societies: Trading & Investment society; Banking & Finance Society

Technical Skills: Proficiency in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, QuickBooks, SAP SE.

Certifications: Prince2 Project Management Course, Corporate Finance Institute Course: Introduction to Corporate Finance

Insight Event: Citibank Thought Leadership Insight Event: Invited to attend a seminar and network with professionals.

Add your comments below.

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Large Chinese banks have traditionally grown their own talent and found it difficult to lure senior bankers away from US and European institutions. But this is now changing, at least in Hong Kong, as global banks continue to trim their senior Asian ranks.

Bank of China International (BOCI) in Hong Kong is a case in point. We looked through senior online public profiles of BOCI staff in Hong Kong and found numerous employees hired from major Western banks. Here’s a selection of high-profile BOCI managers who worked at foreign firms earlier in their careers.

Raymond Yin, managing director, head of East China

Yin, who has been in his post since 2015, has a long work history at global banks. After starting out at Schroders in 1996, he worked for Citi for six years, latterly as a director in China investment banking, according to his public profile. He then headed up China industrials at J.P. Morgan, before joining RBS in 2009 as co-head of China investment banking. Prior to BOCI, Yin spent almost four years at Daiwa Capital Markets in Hong Kong as chairman of China and head of China investment banking.

Wei Wang, managing director, deputy head of research

Wang was promoted to his current job in May, having previously run fixed income research at BOCI. His first banking job, as a fixed income analyst for Merrill Lynch in New York, was in 1998. He joined Salomon Brothers (now part of Citi) just over a year later and worked there until 2008 in Hong Kong and on Wall Street. Wang combines his BOCI job with being an adjunct senior researcher at Renmin University of China and an adjunct professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Raymond Leung, managing director, executive head of investment banking division

Leung is somewhat of a trendsetter, having joined BOCI back in 2005. Previously a VP at BNP Paribas, the status of Leung’s current position suggests his move away from a foreign bank has paid off. His career began at HSBC in 1992 and he moved to UBS in 1997 for a four-year stint in its investment bank, according to his online profile.

Sebastian Ha, head of debt syndicate

Bank of China doesn’t just recruit from the Hong Kong offices of global banks. Australian Ha had never been based in Asia until he joined the bank in 2013 from Citi in Sydney, where he had worked for three years as a treasury consultant. He spent 2007 to 2009 at ANZ in Sydney.

Roger Teow, head of global markets, and regional market head for China and SEA

Bank of China has also hired elite private bankers from Western firms. Teow, who joined last year, previously worked for UBS in Hong Kong for eight years, latterly as Greater China head for ultra-high net worth clients. He was head of the investment advisory group, Malaysia desk, at HSBC in Singapore from 2003 to 2005, before moving to Malaysia’s AmInvestment Bank to run investments and product advisory.

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It’s no secret that technologists are the new power players in the banking sector – at Goldman Sachs they account for about a quarter of staff globally, while tech vacancies at DBS make up nearly 40% of all openings.

Not all banking tech jobs are created equal, however. Within Standard Chartered in Singapore one team stands out: SC Ventures, a unit established in March to invest in startups, and promote rapid testing and implementation of new business models.

Working for Ventures will put you in a strong position at Stan Chart, even as the firm looks to reduce costs in the current quarter. You’ll be spearheading tech projects across different divisions of the bank (including the eXellerator innovation lab) and using the most “disruptive technology”.

Moreover, Ventures is hiring. It’s just taken on Fernn Lim – who was previously head of culture and fintech acceleration at The Open Vault, OCBC’s fintech lab – as a director. Lim joined OCBC in January 2016 after a brief stint as an innovation strategist at Accenture’s fintech and innovation lab in London.

Lim’s recent moves reflect a new trend in the banking sector: lab hopping. So many innovation labs have sprung up in major financial centres (Singapore alone has about 28 of them, including ones from DBS, HSBC, and Deutsche Bank) that it’s now possible to build a career purely within the sector – and move from lab to lab in the process.

SC Ventures is led by Alex Manson, who joined Stan Chart in 2012 and was latterly global head of transaction banking. Other recent senior transferees into the new unit include Gautam Jain (formerly global head of digitisation and client access for transaction banking), Sachin Rajat Sharma (who led pricing and portfolio, group deposits), and Maxime de Guillebon (ex-head of digital platforms).

The unit continues to recruit. For example, it currently wants a head of analytics to apply big data tools for “data science processes and machine/deep learning development”, according to Stan Chart’s careers site.

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

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As 2018 draws to a close, it’s starting to look like banks might have to make some job cuts soon. Take, for example, Citi, which warned last week that it might not reach its cost/revenue target due to unexpectedly weak revenues in debt capital markets and fixed income trading. If you’re worried about your future as the festivities loom, you may have things to learn from an arch survivor: Tidjane Thiam, CEO of Credit Suisse.

In a long article about Thiam ahead of Credit Suisse’s annual investor day this Wednesday, Bloomberg notes that the Credit Suisse boss is still in his seat, despite a 50% decline in the bank’s stock price during his tenure and even though Credit Suisse stock was the second-to-worst performing of 39 bank stocks tracked by Bloomberg this quarter. Thiam has endured longer as CEO than either John Cryan at Deutsche Bank or Antony Jenkins at Barclays, observes Bloomberg. He’s done so despite the falling share price, despite a 40% decline in profits from the trading division between 2015 and 2017 (which Thiam might argue was intentional) and despite bad feeling among some employees (Bloomberg spoke to eight current and former employees who said Thiam’s tenure had negatively effected morale). So what’s his secret?

The short answer seems to be friends in high places. Thiam has survived because he carefully ensured people would look out for him. Key among them is chairman Urs Rohner. Knowing that he would make enemies as he restructured Credit Suisse, Thiam is said to have met Rohner 19 times before he took the job at the Swiss bank. Rohner assured Thiam that he would allow the new CEO to fix Credit Suisse’s weak capital cushion – even though doing so has upset shareholders, who’ve seen their CS holdings ‘massively diluted’. Rohner also has stood behind Thiam while he aggrieved traders, who’ve seen their jobs cut and their pay fall relative to that in the wealth management division, which Thiam prefers.

It’s not just Rohner though. Bloomberg notes that Thiam has further bolstered his position by adding his own supporters to the Credit Suisse board. When he arrived, Thiam nominated six people to the bank’s board, including Pierre-Olivier Bouee, the Credit Suisse COO who previously worked with him at Prudential and who has been the main protagonist when it comes to picking-off trading businesses.

Not everyone can befriend the chairman and nominate a cadre of friendly bosses, but Thiam’s technique bears scrutinizing. If you want to survive the coming round of cuts, you need to build support with those in the tier above you. If you’re moving into a challenging job, you need to make very sure that the person appointing you will stick with you through the worst. And you should try to work alongside a confidant, with whom you’ve worked at previous firms and whom you can absolutely trust. In this way, Thiam has become a survivor and earned $9.7m last year. Now all he needs to do is to return Credit Suisse to growth.

Separately, traders who didn’t get much sleep over the weekend may come to regret it by Tuesday night. Banks in London are reportedly preparing for chaos surrounding the parliamentary vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal. J.P. Morgan and Barclays are expecting traders to stay late and to come in early, while some trading houses are providing staff with sleeping bags so that they can stay in the office.

Meanwhile:

The German finance ministry has reportedly been discussing scenarios for merging Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank. In one, the German state would become Deutsche Bank’s largest shareholder for about five years before merging the two banks. In another, Deutsche Bank could raise money from German industrial companies to buy Commerzbank. In another, a holding company would hold stakes in both banks. (Bloomberg)

UK financial services exports to the EU could be 59% lower after Brexit. (Bloomberg)

Appetite for UK deal-making by private equity funds has fallen 50% since the Brexit referendum. (Financial Times)

Hedge fund founder Chris Hohn made £215m last year. (The Times)

Deloitte UK has fired 20 partners for inappropriate behaviour in four years. (Financial Times)

Ex-senior Goldman salesman’s guide to life on the trading floor after AI takes over: “OUT are the swaggering jocks that rely on gut feeling to take risk. OUT are the slick salespeople with seemingly unending charisma and expense accounts.” (Business Insider)

Millennials don’t want to work for start-ups any more. It’s all about chasing ‘steady corporate jobs’ instead. (The Atlantic)

Google is descending into paranoia as employees try to work out who’s leaking things to the press. ‘During a question and answer session at a company-wide meeting, a senior engineer took the microphone to shout “F*** you leakers” at his fellow colleagues.’ (The Times)

A 22 year-old Google employee was found dead as his work terminal at the firm’s office in New York. (NY Post)

Artificial Intelligence discovers that you don’t have to be a data scientist to become a data scientist. A Barclays analyst was identified by the software because he had a master’s degree in statistics and knew computer programming languages like C++ and Matlab, even though he had no apparent background in data science. (NY Times)

Why very rich people like money, and why money will never be enough. (The Atlantic)

Silicon Valley types and hedge fund owners are prepping New Zealand bunkers for the apocalypse. (Bloomberg)

I left Goldman Sachs over a year ago now, but I often still receive Whatsapp messages from my associate friends in the investment banking division (IBD) group. They message the group at 2am, complaining about their analysts. The juniors are driving them crazy.

It’s not easy to be patient when you’re working in the early hours of the morning and analysts can be especially infuriating. After all, when you’re an analyst, you’re technically just a newly graduated student. You don’t quite know how to function in the real world yet. I was an analyst once and I know what it’s like. After being promoted to associate after two years, I also know how frustrating analysts can be to manage.

Having sat on both sides of the fence, this is my guide to preserving your associate’s sanity when you’re an analyst who’s functioning on three hours sleep.

1. The analysts who cut off their associates with, “Yeah, Yeah, Got It”

A lot of associates complain about the, “Yeah, Yeah, Got It” analysts. It’s not just that they say this, it’s also i) that they presume that they know something which they don’t and ii) that they but don’t actually write down what they’re being asked to do, or remember it.

It’s terrible to be told that the “Yeah, Yeah” analysts have done something wrong. It’s worse when you find out at 2am that it hasn’t even been started because it was forgotten about.

2. The “Why Don’t You Do It” Analysts

When you’re an analyst in an investment bank, you often start out grateful. But as time goes on, you start to notice that associates are assigning you tasks which will take you hours (at night) and which could easily be done by the associate in around 10 minutes. “Why don’t you do it so we can both go home earlier” is then a common response, particularly on Friday nights when the analysts are grumpy having missed a romantic date.

There are three reasons why associates get frustrated with the “Why Don’t You Do It” analysts:

i) If the associates do not teach the analysts these kinds of tasks, the analysts will never learn, and if they never learn they will never become useful to the team

ii) Because they are not copied-in on all the deal emails and are unaware of the associate’s workload and prioritization, these analysts seem to assume that the associates actually have time to complete these tasks themselves among all other things they’re expected to do.

iii) The “Why Don’t You Do It” analysts don’t seem to be thankful for the fact that the associate choose to stay in the office to “suffer” together. The associate is there to help the analyst and to teach him/her how to do the task, in order to get the analyst out of the office faster. The easy alternative is for the associate simply to go back home and leave the analyst figure it out for themselves until the next morning.

3. The “I Haven’t Read It” Analysts

These analysts don’t read anything. They don’t read the books they produce, and they don’t read the emails where they are copied and mentioned.

I have to admit that when I was an analyst, I was often guilty of this mistake myself. When you’re overwhelmed with small tasks it’s easy to ignore a series of seemingly-unconnected tick-box items that make no sense as a whole. My associate was often annoyed at my inability to comprehend mark-ups because I hadn’t properly read the whole paragraph or the whole page of the pitchbook.

The problem here is that when you’re an analyst it’s easy to feel that you’re just a processor of tasks. You’re not always consistently copied into emails and you’re not always properly briefed. You don’t have a sense of the bigger picture. Then again, when you are copied in to a longer email chain from a managing director or VP, it’s easy to think that it’s not totally relevant to you and is someone else’s job.

The problem here is that often, long down in the email correspondence, someone mentions the analyst and assigns them a task. This goes unnoticed for several days, until the associate nudges. Similar to the “Yeah Yeah Got It” analysts, the “I Haven’t Read It” analysts are scary to associates. Again, there is nothing worse than being told at 2am that something hasn’t even been read, noticed, or done, which means both of you need to stay late to get it in on time.

Ultimately there are two camps of bad analysts. – The well-intentioned ones who work hard but repeatedly make the same mistakes and never seem to be able to put the pieces together. – The talented analysts who don’t entirely care and either rush the work or leave it unattended.

When I became an associate, I dealt with analysts’ mistakes by saying, “I am disappointed, not mad. You could do better than this.” This often works with both camps of bad analysts because it induces the well-intentioned ones to work twice as hard and the non-caring ones to prove that they can do it.

Of course, associates aren’t perfect either. VPs undoubtedly have their own Whatsapp chats complaining about their immediate subordinates, but associates have at least learned some humility.

Mai Le was an investment banking associate at Goldman Sachs before she left to found several of her own ventures. Besides writing on her own blog ( lequynhmai.com ), she also runs a cover-letter sharing community called Cover Letter Library ( coverletterlibrary.com ) and a learning and community platform for analysts called Next Analyst ( nextanalyst.com ).

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The British pound is on its way down, again. Following Theresa May’s decision to cancel tomorrow’s vote on her Brexit deal, City of London traders will get to bed early tomorrow night, but they could be kept up worrying that their compensation will be worth less when they return home for Christmas and convert it into euros.

The pound is down around 20% against the euro since its peak of €1.41 in July 2015. A London bonus of £500k that was worth €705k in July 2015 is now worth €550k. If you’re a French, German, Spanish or Italian banker in the City, this matters – all the more so because a lot of continental European bankers in London aspire to return home when they retire. Money earned in London will buy less of a finca than it used to.

Our own research suggests that around 45% of people in front office corporate finance and sales and trading jobs in London are non-Britons: just 55% of people in our CV database who occupy these roles in the City of London speak English as a first language. That’s a sizable chunk of people exposed to the gyrations of the pound. – One French trader at Bank of America in London says he’s looking forward to returning to Paris for precisely this reason: “‘I’d prefer to be paid in euros as would a few of my colleagues. – We all have liabilities like mortgages overseas.”

However, even a 20% fall is unlikely to have French and German bankers packing their bags. Some U.S. banks calibrate compensation in dollars before converting it into pounds which means that – in theory, London bankers could even end up better off as the pound also falls against the dollar (although in reality banks tend to pay on a constant currency basis). On this basis, it’s British banks like Barclays that really stand to suffer.

Equally importantly, though, pay in Europe is still low compared to London. As the latest remuneration report from Citigroup in Germany reflects, pay in Frankfurt is generous, but not excessively so. In 2017, for example, the 172 front office employee of Citi’s Frankfurt Institutional Clients Group each earned an average of €269k, including a bonus of €105k. In the UK, by comparison, the 469 people in Citi’s Institutional Clients Group each earned an average of £927k for 2017. – That’s €1m even at today’s exchange rate.

Clearly it’s cheaper to live in Frankfurt. Clearly, too, Citi has some of its highest paid staff at its historic European headquarters in Canary Wharf and they will earn more. Even taking this into account, though, pay in London is far higher than elsewhere and it’s easy to see why European bankers have chosen the City as a place to work. The falling pound alone is unlikely to change their minds. However, the combination of a falling pound, Brexit and higher income taxes under a government led by Jeremy Corbyn may do the trick.

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Dr Sonia Contera is a brilliant woman. A professor of experimental physics at Oxford University’s Clarendon Lab, she could easily have worked at somewhere like Winton Capital Management or Two Sigma, but she didn’t. Instead, Contera has chosen to apply her excellence to generating tangible improvements in people’s lives. She’s not alone. At an event for women in STEM hosted by Spain’s CaixaBank in London last week, Contera wasn’t the only academic explaining why some women might prefer working in a lab to working for a quantitative hedge fund.

“At Oxford, 90% of the people in my lab are women,” said Contera. While finance firms struggle to recruit women in STEM, Contera said these women gravitate towards her. “Women like to put their ideas to good use…They want to make a difference.”

Contera herself is making a difference by investigating the use of ultrasound to palliate pain and ways to improve the cryogenic freezing process. “Only 27% of men have sperm that can be frozen,” she said. “And only 50% of those frozen sperm survive.” Improved freezing would therefore greatly improve the success rate of artificial insemination in humans, and improve the lives of women who bear the brunt of fertility treatments.

Dr Esther Rodriguez-Villegas, professor of Low Power Electronics and director of the Wearable Technologies Lab at London’s Imperial College could equally have worked as a top quant in finance. Like Contera, however, she chose to apply her expertise to public good. “I could easily have had a lot of fun solving IQ puzzles, but I didn’t just want to have fun,” said Rodriguez-Villegas. “I wanted to work in healthcare.” Today, she’s also chief scientific officer of Acurable, a company that creates wearable technology to help patients with respiratory conditions and prevents otherwise healthy people from dying unexpectedly in their sleep. “I didn’t want to be CSO,” says Rodriguez-Villegas. “I was made to be.”

In this way, two of Europe’s top female scientists suggest one reason why banks have such trouble finding female quants and strats. Research by recruitment firm Octavius Finance found that when one major bank in London advertised quant jobs it received only two CVs from qualified women for every 50 it received from qualified men. This is partly because fewer women study quant subjects (women are only around 20% of UK computer science graduates and 40% of mathematics graduates, says Octavius), but it’s also because women don’t apply. Contera and Rodriguez-Villegas suggest they have better things to do with their brains.

Neither of the two women wanted to prioritize making money, and neither was short of offers. “Finding money is not a problem,” said Contera. “I can usually find someone who will invest in my ideas….Sometimes I give my inventions away.” Rodriguez-Villegas said she quickly raised $400m in investment after co-founding Acurable to take her respiratory device to market. “We didn’t choose the investors who offered the highest valuation,” she said, “We chose those we liked the most. The most ethical people. Most start-ups hate meeting their investors, but we love meeting ours.”

While brilliant women are opting to start their careers in academia rather than finance, both Contera and Rodriguez-Villegas also highlighted their frustrations with university careers in Europe. American universities have close links with business, but European universities operate in isolation. “Knowledge is trapped in universities,” says Contera. “Young women don’t want to stay in academia because they realize it will be hard to get their ideas out and they want to make a difference.”

“It can be very difficult to get intellectual property ideas to the user from an academic lab,” agreed Rodriguez-Villegas. “You investigate, and you write a paper and the university is happy to leave it at that.”

This is where finance comes in, and where private equity funds – as opposed to quant hedge funds – might have something to offer the women in STEM who want to make the world a better place.

CaixaBank also hosted a female representative of a large U.S. private equity fund in Europe. Speaking off the record, she insisted that private equity careers aren’t just about making money. They’re also about, “bringing great products to market”, and, matching ideas for improving the world with the capital necessary to realize them. “These are jobs that…stand for more than just getting a bonus at the end of the year – they are exciting and innovative and have a real impact,” she said. “Are we really convinced that women don’t want to be massively overpaid for jobs that allow them to influence the world?”

Neither Rodriguez-Villegas nor Contera responded directly. However, some women who start in academia may cross the commercial Rubicon. They could have a lot to offer. “The best people at this [private equity tech investing] are those with networks across the board,” said the private equity investor.” They have been technologists but they have also worked with CFOs….Beyond anything else, success in finance is about the ability to build relationships and empathize with people, and this is the kind of thing that women do best.”

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Christmas is coming and you might be inclined to talk to your family about your career. However, unless they also work in finance, there may not be not much point. Such is the suggestion of David Abrams, a Boston-based hedge fund manager who manages nearly $9bn at his fund, Abrams Capital.

Abrams addressed attendees at a New York conference last week and reflected that most parents have little to offer when it comes to advising on finance. “It’s not about if your parents or mother-in-law have heard of the place you’ll be working,” he said. Instead of choosing somewhere to work based upon prestige and the slight chance that your mother might know it, Abrams advised choosing an employer based upon how well you get on with the, “half dozen people you’ll be working with every day.”

There’s a pattern emerging here. Last month, Colm Kelleher, the global president of Morgan Stanley, described how his father, a country doctor in Ireland, found the size of his early bonuses “horrific” compared to the kind of pay a country doctor in Ireland was used to. – There’s no point even trying to massage or cap banking bonuses to the level someone like his father would find acceptable, concluded Kelleher; within reason, banks should just do their own thing.

While parents and siblings might have something meaningful to say about office politics and awkward managers, work conversations are nonetheless best avoided at approaching family occasions. Last year, Marty Chavez, co-head of the securities division at Goldman Sachs recalled how a guest at a Thanksgiving dinner asked, “Marty, how can you work for that company? How do you look at yourself in the mirror?” Chavez concluded that humans like to have someone to, “name and shame and blame,” to make themselves feel better, and that bankers have been fulfilling this function of late. “This too shall pass,” he figured.

If family outside finance is too far removed from – and too opposed to – the industry to be of much help, who can you turn to for assistance? Insiders, obviously. And if those insiders also happen to be members of your family, so much the better. At a Women in STEM event organised by Caixa Bank in London last week, the representative of one major U.S. private equity fund said she went into banking and then PE because she grew up immersed in finance – “There was never any question that this was what I would do.” And if your family are country doctors or bank bashers? – There are always the public utterances of people like Abrams. “I would not advise people doing what I did, which is entering the business knowing absolutely nothing,” he said – although that doesn’t seem to have hindered him much.

Separately, a former associate at Moelis & Co. in London has achieved a quite exceptional new job. Financial News reports that Sabina Virtosu, who previously spent 18 months at Moelis and two and a half years at HSBC, has just turned up at WeWork, the fast-growing New York provider of flexible office space which is receiving a $10bn investment from SoftBank. As, ‘growth strategy and operations lead for Europe, Australia and Africa,’ Virtosu will be responsible for driving ‘expansion’ across EMEA, says Financial News. In this way, she appears to have escaped an M&A boutique with a reputation for very long working hours and injected herself into a hip expansionary company where you can bring your pet to work. Who knew corporate development jobs could be so exciting?

Meanwhile:

Fund managers are protesting against global warming. Yan Swiderski, a fund manager blocked a busy London road near his Pimlico home the other week. “It was the first time I’ve ever done anything like that.” (Financial Times)

Raj Hindocha, the former COO for research at Deutsche Bank, is joining UBS as UBS ramps up its Evidence Lab technology-based research platform. (Financial News)

Seven KPMG partners have left because of inappropriate behaviour, including sexual harassment, in the past four years. (Financial News)

The UK Financial Conduct Authority is trying to hire fewer people from Oxford and Cambridge. “We have started taking off educational venue but not educational achievement. We don’t see that this person was from Oxbridge and that person was from Kent. We just look at what they have achieved and then we test around competence.” (Financial News)

Beware of Barclays in the event of a hard Brexit? “Its relatively greater exposure to volatile, capital-hungry investment banking remains problematic.” (Financial News)

SocGen is opening a Paris hub to clear derivatives in the EU. (Reuters)

J.P. Morgan wants to employ 200 technologists in Israel. (Bloomberg)

If you live five to six miles further away from the job you’re applying to than rival applicants, you will receive fewer callbacks. (HBR)

Brexit-supporting hedge funds are shorting the British economy. For example, Odey Asset Management has taken out £436m worth of declared short positions against British companies, of which nearly £150m are consumer-facing entities. (Guardian)

Hedge fund managers who are buying a house under-perform, particularly if the house is a big one. (Barrons)

Beware the brogrammer tech firms. ‘Heavy drinking, colleagues fire large foam darts at her while she is working and try to one-up each other.’ (Financial Times)

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Given the extent of Deutsche Bank’s troubles (the bank’s share price is down again today, leaving Deutsche the 90th biggest bank in the world behind Axis Bank in India), a state of minor insurrection in its Birmingham (UK) office is unlikely to bat many eyelids globally. Even so, DB Birmingham insiders’ angst bears noting – not least because their jobs look particularly precarious in a world where Deutsche is trying to cut costs in the middle and back office, and the angst might spread.

Insiders in Birmingham complain of high levels of stress and overwork following a hiring freeze that was imposed in March this year. “It’s becoming an unbearable place to work,” says one. “I’m burned out, micro-managed, unfairly treated, and given no idea of my future with the bank. The compensation package here is not competitive with other employers. People are signing-off work with stress and I’ve decided to move on.”

Deutsche Bank didn’t respond to a request to comment on conditions in Birmingham. In fairness, not everyone at its outpost in the British Midlands seems to share this disgruntlement. A quick look at Glassdoor reveals DB people in Birmingham praising the bank for its ‘high pay,’ ‘high productivity’ and ‘great culture.’ Even if it does only score 3.5 stars overall, someone there must be doing something right.

The more vociferous grumbling at DB in Birmingham seems to be coming from a client services data team, which insiders say was set up in July last year to remediate client data problems. At one point, the team in question allegedly employed around 40 analysts. Insiders claim that it’s now down to 20 following various exits and a hiring freeze which has inhibited the ability to recruit replacements. “For a new project, it’s been a shambles,” says one analyst. “But the bank is happy that people are leaving because it means they are cutting costs.”

Birmingham isn’t the City of London, but it still has its fair share of alternative employers for DB people who leave. At least eight people have left the data team in the last five months alone.

Even so, it’s quite possible the complaints are simply the result of a disaffected few and that most people in Birmingham are happy with their lot. Even so, as Deutsche would do well to take note of the grumbling on the ground as it prepares to cut costs in 2019. “Working here has been the worst experience of my life,” says a plaintive Birmingham employee. “Management are not interested in keeping employees on their teams, there’s a lack of opportunities and the fear of redundancy.”

Deutsche Bank’s former CEO, John Cryan, famously said that robots could replace half the employees at Deutsche Bank and still get the work done. It may be that this is the kind of thing new CEO Christian Sewing has in mind as he takes costs from the middle and back office. In the meantime, DB Birmingham is staffed by human beings – and some of them, at least, do not appear to be very happy there.

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If you want to leave banking and work in the fintech sector – or simply to sidestep banking altogether and go straight to fintech – you may have heard of Revolut. Based in London, the app-based bank founded by a former Credit Suisse equity derivatives trader and an ex-Deutsche and UBS developer is already valued at around $1.7bn. It’s hiring heavily and expanding rapidly – into the U.S., Asia and Australasia. But don’t imagine you’ll get a job there easily – or that you’ll spend your time sipping kombucha and doing yoga if you do.

Revolut is no ordinary fintech.

What kinds of people work for Revolut?

Every week, Revolut receives around 1,000 CVs from people who want to work there, say Alan Chang and Christos Chelmis, a VP in operations and product owner at the company respectively. 99.5% of those applicants are rejected: the company is extremely fussy about who it hires. “We accept people who are super, super high calibre,” says Chelmis. “We want Revolut to be the other place that top students apply, alongside Google, Amazon and Facebook.”

“Super, super high calibre” means that as Revolut expands, it’s chasing the same kinds of students and young people who might otherwise work for investment banks or consultancy firms to join its operations team. Top academic qualifications from top universities are the norm. Chang graduated in physics from the UK’s Imperial College; Chelmis has a masters in econometrics from the London School of Economics.

The London office ops team also includes people from UCL and Cambridge. While Revolut clearly needs developers and engineers for its development jobs, its current focus is on hiring operations and business development people as it expands. Of over 120 jobs currently advertised globally, only around 25% are for technologists.

“An ops associate at Revolut is a generalist,” says Chang. “We want to hire the sort of person who becomes a banker or a consultant – with that standard analytical and presentational skillset. If you want to work for a fintech, this is an alternative to going in as a programmer. You don’t need a background in computer science to work for a fintech.”

What even is operations at Revolut?

Chang and Chelmis are keen to emphasize that operations at Revolut is an exciting place to be.

“Working in operations for Revolut is not like working in operations in a bank,” says Chang. “There, you’re the ‘back office’, here it’s almost the other way around. We push the business and drive it forward. We’re active rather than passive and we take direct responsibility for revenue growth and ownership of the margin.”

Practically, you’ll either be working in business development and helping Revolut expand overseas, or will be assisting with the development of existing products and markets.

What’s the application process for working at Revolut?

If you’re one of those 1,000 people a week who fancies working for Revolut, you’re going to need to send in your CV. If you’re one of the rarer birds that catches their eye, you’ll be asked for a screening interview. If you get through that, you’ll be given a “home task”.

What does this involve? Chang and Christos are cagey. Suffice to say, the home task to work in operations is a dataset which replicates a problem Revolut has faced in real life. You will solve the problem; the successful applicants simply solve it more elegantly than others.

What’s the culture like at Revolut?

You’re probably not going to work for Revolut if you’re super chill and not at all competitive.

“We have a culture that’s direct, hard-working, transparent and ambitious,” says Chang, who’s LinkedIn profile is preceded by epithets like, “We are underdogs. We innovate. Everyday is a new fight”. Chang says that Revolut is channeling Bridgewater, the hedge fund who’s culture is self-described as ‘being like a nudist camp at first:’ “We model some of our values on Ray Dalio’s approach at Bridgewater – although ours is a very basic version of what they have there.”

Some people take exception to this. “The culture is by far the worst I’ve ever experienced,” complains one Revolut review on Glassdoor. Chang is unphased: ““When people leave, it’s because they’ve misunderstood what it means to work for Revolut. There’s an expectations gap. They think that because they’re joining a start-up they’ll be hanging out, drinking beer, playing ping pong and going home at 6pm.”

In any case, Chang says the rate of staff turnover is falling: “The people who didn’t enjoy working here have left and those who are here now love it.”

What are the working hours like at Revolut?

You’re also not going to want to work for Revolut if you have a lot of hobbies and like to work eight hours a day or less. Revolut founder and ex-Credit Suisse trader Nikolay Storonsky is famously unapologetic about the company’s working hours. “We are not about long hours — we are about getting sh*t done,” he told Business Insider last year. As a corollary of this Storonksy said people at Revolut, “work long hours…at least 12, 13 hours a day. All the key people, all the core team. A lot of people also work on weekends.”

Chang and Chelmis are no exception to this rule. However, both stress that Revolut is very flexible. “There is no clock watching culture here,” says Chelmis (who previously worked for J.P. Morgan). “People know what their goals are, and how they choose to work towards those goals is up to them.” Accordingly, while both work 13 hour days in pursuit of their goals, one comes in at 8.30am and goes home at 9.30pm and another arrives at 10.30am and goes home closer to midnight. Another unnamed person at Revolut reportedly arrives at work at midday and goes home in the early hours of the morning.

As long as you get the work done, it’s up to you. People at Revolut seem to like this. “We work hard because we love it,” says Chang. It probably helps that the average age at the company is 28.

What’s the pay like at Revolut?

Salaries at Revolut are “market” say Chang and Chelmis, refusing to elaborate further. Needless to say, there are also stock options which could be worth a lot when Revolut eventually IPOs.

The company also offers perks like meals after 7pm and Ubers home after midnight.

So why would you want to work for Revolut?

Aside from the $1.7bn valuation, the prospect of making loads of money in an IPO and the free meals in the evenings, another reason to work for Revolut is that it’s hiring. The London office employs 150 staff and expects to double this in the next few years. New York and Singapore are recruiting, as is Australia. If you join now in London, the chances are you’ll be sent to drive the expansion overseas.

Chang and Chelmis are also big on the concept of ‘ownership’. “When you’re a product manager, you manage a whole scheme of projects, from beginning to end,” says Chelmis. It helps that Revolut has a policy of building everything in house rather than buying-in systems externally. “At a bank, you’re maintaining old systems. Here, you are building from scratch,” Chelmis adds.

“People here enjoy working hard,” he reiterates. “You get a lot of responsibility and you get to deliver something at the end of it. It’s not like you’re making a presentation that no one will ever see, or are working on a deal that will never get done…”

If you’re a top student in your 20s who’s happy to work 13 hour days, join the queue.

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