If there’s one thing which sounds worse than being staffed as an overworked M&A generalist in a pool of analysts based in London, it’s being staffed as an IBD generalist in a pool of analysts based in London and Frankfurt with the expectation that you’ll move between the two cities as deals dictate. This is the new set-up at Berenberg.
Financial News reports that the German bank has just merged its M&A, ECM and DCM teams into a new ‘corporate finance’ unit, which will operate out of London and Frankfurt and deploy juniors between the two cities as appropriate. “The junior pool of bankers will now be staffed wherever the projects are,” Oliver Diehl, Berenberg’s head of corporate finance, told Financial News. FN also elicited some interesting statistics on the structure of Berenberg’s IBD team: 25 of its 40 members are ‘junior employees.’
It’s not clear how these 25 juniors feel about the new arrangements, but with demand for experienced analysts and associates still high in London, Berenberg needs to hope they’re cool with commuting across Europe.
Separately, HSBC’s bankers have been caught acting aggressively. The Financial Times reports that US-based managers in HSBC’s global banking and markets business resisted attempts to increase compliance oversight and anti-money laundering practices. “Interactions with both internal audit and [compliance] were marked by combativeness, overblown complaints about factual inaccuracy, and a basic lack of co-operativeness,” says an independent monitor’s report. The bank added that HSBC’s business had, “a deficient culture that had not fully accepted the role and legitimacy of the internal audit and control functions.”
Meanwhile:
James Gorman’s pay just increased 25% to $22m for 2014. (WSJ)
European bonuses were up 18% to £136k, or about $201,000, in 2015. Bonuses in the US were £216k for the same period. (NY Times)
Jonathan Paul, a former Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs banker, is joining Standard Chartered as group head of financial markets. (WSJ)
Adam Herrmann, most recently global co-head of equity finance at UBS, will start in June at Citigroup’s London offices as global head of prime finance. (WSJ)
Jack Welch: An MBA really costs $300k – “$100,000 salary, two years gone, plus tuition.” (WSJ)
Student complains that Wharton is full of, “Ex PE robots who just want to make money and die.” (WhartonJournal)
Why you might want to do your MBA at Wharton instead of Harvard. (Bloomberg)
Facebook’s new headquarters has a ball pit. (Mashable)
Citigroup’s new headquarters doesn’t. (The Real Deal)
Three quarters of people that get new jobs haven’t actively looked or applied for a job in the previous three months, meaning they were probably poached or referred. (Quartz)