Which is the most desirable bank in Europe? According to JPMorgan, it’s UBS. JPMorgan’s analysts say the Swiss bank has all sorts of good things going for it: it’s well capitalized, it’s cut costs, it’s cut risk weighted assets, it’s pulled back from fixed income trading and has a great private bank. UBS also has the benefit of hiring. This year it wants to recruit 24 senior people for its investment banking division. Where will UBS hire these people from? Try Nomura.
Last April, UBS recruited William Vereker, the former global co-head of investment banking at Nomura, on a package worth an alleged £1m cash. Last week, UBS tapped Nomura again, recruiting Jean-Philippe Favre, Nomura’s former head of natural resources banking as its head of utilities for EMEA. Other Nomura bankers may yet follow. Having risen from 12th to 6th in European M&A last year according to Thomson Reuters, UBS is on a roll. Nomura isn’t: the Japanese bank is building its M&A team in the US but massacred its European M&A business back in 2012 in order to focus on a few priority sectors. Last year, the fees earned by Nomura’s global M&A business fell 33% according to Thomson Reuters. UBS has made clear that it will pay less than market rate for its new hires, but Vereker may still find other willing defectors at his old house.
Separately, the Wall Street Journal has spoken to some former summer interns at Barclays’ investment bank. They said that sleeping in toilets was a thing at the British investment bank. Specifically:
‘Exhausted from hours of nonstop work, the interns would sneak into a bathroom stall, plug headphones into their smartphones and set the alarm, in hopes of stealing a few precious minutes of shut-eye.’
This practice was known as the ‘toilet nap.’ We understand that it may not be restricted to Barclays.
Meanwhile:
Sergio Ermotti says UBS isn’t thinking of spinning off its investment bank. (Bloomberg)
Carlyle has hired a former MD and head of leveraged finance from UBS in London. (Bloomberg)
Brevan Howard, Cantab Capital and Bluecrest were among the worst-performing hedge fund managers of 2013. (Financial Times)
Goldman Sachs has a special equity analyst, 50 year old Charlie Burrows, who specializes in IPOs. He doesn’t actually do the analysis, but guides analysts through the differences in writing research on a company that’s IPO-ing and a company that’s already public. (Financial News)
Trafigura has spent around $2bn on share buybacks in order to allocate its shares to a new generation of employees. (Reuters)
Moelis has begun working with advisors on its potential IPO. (Dealbook)
The leverage rule has been softened to allow netting. (WSJ)
When I passed Level I, my employer paid me a bonus and a 7.5% raise, which was certainly generous and I was grateful. However, I shopped around that raise in the employment market and found out that I could get a 30% raise with the term “Level II CFA Candidate” on my résumé. (CareerCohort)
Rant of the fugitive German financier: “Whether it’s half a billion, a billion or two billion, you work a hundred hours a week for 20 years to make it and I’ve lived that life. Boring! You are selling your soul, you’re going to walk over corpses, you are going to sub-optimise the right side of your brain, the emotional brain, and you’re probably going to incur damage at the family level. My biggest remorse was I really lost 10 years. I was loaded when I was 40. I missed my kids growing up. I looked at myself and thought ‘you are a total fool’.” (Financial Times)