If you’ve been closely following the ups and downs of Chinese banking, then you will know that some big regulatory probes have been going down ever since this summer’s Chinese market market crash. Canny Chinese bankers are seemingly using these as an opportunity to advance up the organizational ladder.
“People collect evidence on their bosses, because if they get rid of their boss, it means that they can get promoted faster,” one unnamed head of a Chinese mutual fund told Reuters. “It’s creating a very dog eat dog environment.”
Another broker said signs have appeared on trading floors, “with the number that you can call anonymously to encourage people to dial in.”
Mid-ranking bankers who are waiting to get promoted to managing director in London or New York might want to take note. Following years of gigantic fines, most banks on Wall Street and in the City are now hyper-sensitive to suggestions that any malfeasance has taken place, and have implemented their own whistle-blowing procedures.
Goldman Sachs, for example, has a 24 hour integrity hotline where ‘all matters are carefully reviewed and investigated with the highest discretion,’ and where you can call up and report incidents without giving your name.
Events in China, suggest ambitious employees could exploit this for their own ends. To do so, would clearly be lacking in integrity, but this doesn’t seem to have stopped bankers in Shanghai. J.P. Morgan even seems to have set a precedent in this area after firing a broker in the US following alleged letters of complaints from clients which were in fact written by the bank itself.
Photo credit: Miguel Virkkunen Carvalho
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