eFinancialCareersEnglish (UK) – eFinancialCareers

Remember Qube Research and Technologies? It’s the $1bn quantitative and systematic hedge fund that spun out of Credit Suisse last year. It’s hiring.

Since the start of 2018, QRT insiders say the fund has increased its headcount by 15%, or 20 people. By the end of this year, it plans to add another 20, split equally between its offices in London, Paris and Hong Kong.

“We’re in a period of growth,” says one senior QRT insider, speaking on an anonymous basis. “We are raising money as an independent asset manager and are very much in recruitment mode. We are heavily focused on hiring for our research and technology teams.”

Most of QRT’s current 150 employees previously worked for the fund when it was still known as ‘Credit Suisse quantitative and systematic asset management.’ Many worked for SocGen before that. Some of the newer hires, however, have been drawn from further afield. Last month, for example, QRT hired Iain Raskin from UBS as a quant trading director in Hong Kong. In April, it hired Javier Escribano as COO in the London office. In October 2017 it hired Marco Dion, formerly head of central risk book trading at J.P. Morgan.

While quant funds like Winton have a reputation for hiring quantum physicists and applying their expertise to financial markets, QRT insiders say the fund is more about hiring excellent technologists and researchers with a finance background. “We’re recruiting traders as well, but they’re less important than previously,” says one senior insider. “In future, we expect to have fewer traders and more technologists and researchers.”

QRT isn’t alone in looking for systematic trading talent. As we’ve pointed out, Goldman Sachs is also hiring for its quant execution team under Michael Steliaros, and J.P. Morgan just hired a trader who left Nomura in 2016 to handle systematic equities trading for its central risk book.

This might be why the flow of staff at QRT goes two ways. Christophe Farès Wakim, a former quantitative equity portfolio manager at QRT, left in May and is now on gardening leave. Insiders say there have also been other exits, albeit many of them last year, before QRT span out. Some, like Benajimin Filippi and Ryan Sandor have recently turned up at ExodusPointCapital, the $7bn hedge fund set up by Michael Gelband, the former star trader at Izzy Englander’s Millennium Capital – which is also hiring.

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.)

““

Morgan Stanley is all about the three Cs: collaboration, communication and coordination. This is very much reflected in its approach to diversity, particularly when it’s championing the cause of its female workforce.

“It’s a very collegiate atmosphere here. People want to help you learn and grow,” says Sonali Siriwardena, an Executive Director in the Institutional Equities Division of Morgan Stanley. “Whether you’re in a junior role or a senior executive, all views and ideas are valued.”

A shining example of this collaborative approach is the Women’s Business Alliance (WBA), which is the largest network in the Firm. Its mandate is to encourage the career development of women within Morgan Stanley. But it’s not just about the female staff members working together; engaging male colleagues in the discussion is equally important in closing the gender gap.

“We need to partner with men and women across all corporate levels to foster a sense of community and champion the cause of addressing any in-balance within the Firm or the wider financial industry,” says Siriwardena, who has been a member of the WBA since she joined Morgan Stanley in 2011.

This stretches all the way to the top of the Firm; new Head of EMEA Clare Woodman is a vocal champion of diversity and inclusion and has mandated all heads of business to proactively work to address the gender imbalance at senior ranks.

“This translates into key performance indicators for senior management – how they manage their teams and how gender is represented within their core function and wider division,” adds Siriwardena.

Internal mobility is another key focus for Morgan Stanley and Siriwardena is a good example of this fact. A lawyer by training, she recently transferred from the Legal Division to Institutional Equities. “One of the advantages of working in a big Firm such as Morgan Stanley is that there are often opportunities to move internally if you are willing to explore new challenges,” says Siriwardena.

Naomi Strong has worked her way up through the Firm from a summer intern to an Executive Director in the Sales and Trading Division within the space of just nine years. She is proud to have made this progress thanks to her ability and work ethic, combined with the support of Morgan Stanley’s market-leading equities franchise and the leaders within it. But she is equally proud of the fact that “There’s now a healthy split of 50/50 men and women in the graduate scheme across many divisions, which wasn’t the case when I joined, so positive progress is being made.”

But both she and Siriwardena concede there’s more to do. “The split in my division on our graduate programmes is 50/50, and while some areas aren’t quite there yet, our target across the Firm in EMEA is 50/50. We are also working hard to ensure it is reflected in our experienced hiring at senior levels. We partner with Human Resources to increase the hiring and retention of women at all levels. We organise numerous career development events and access to senior role models. Most importantly we help women increase and leverage their internal and external networks.”

At the end of last year, Morgan Stanley announced that under the UK’s Shared Parental Leave policy, individuals who share the main responsibility for childcare will now be entitled to the same level of benefit in the first six months. This was in addition to doubling paternity leave to four weeks. “This allows women to continue their career, and can hopefully shift the culture in terms of the mind-set,” says Strong.

This flexibility also extends to working practices. There is an acknowledgement within the Firm that flexible working is doable, as long as jobs are completed. “With new technology, your role doesn’t have to involve sitting at a desk all day,” says Strong. “The Firm encourages us to have a manageable work-life mix and excel in our careers.”

Siriwardena has even managed to complete two Ironman Triathlons (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and a marathon) recently. “It’s not the race that kills you, it’s the training,” she laughs. “But my team have been very supportive throughout. I’ve raised money for several charities and the Firm recognised my efforts by contributing through a matched funding programme.”

In addition to the WBA, Morgan Stanley also has a further seven employee diversity networks to enhance employee engagement and advance the Firm’s overall culture of inclusion from the Pride & Ally Network to the African and Caribbean Business Alliance. “People are encouraged to interact, learn and support each other and proactively build relationships outside of their immediate business area.” says Siriwardena.

The Diversity Action Council (DAC) acts as a catalyst to drive forward the diversity strategy and agenda in EMEA. It comprises some 20 Managing Directors who meet monthly to discuss strategic diversity initiatives across all business lines. The DAC recently held a series of small-group sessions to talk openly about progress made and get ideas on future focus areas. It’s not just a top down strategy, but about engaging everyone,” stresses Strong.

Each staff member is valued, no matter what their education, background or views. “This goes a huge way to nurturing a person both as a professional and a human being,” says Siriwardena. “I don’t feel stifled to fit in or conform to a particular norm. We are all competent technically, but it is more about how we work together to enrich the Firm’s culture with diverse views and insights.”

Strong agrees. “You don’t have to be a particular type of person to succeed here. We are all quite different. But that diversity of thought is exactly what makes us more effective with clients and has helped us grow leading businesses.”

“We can also push boundaries and continue learning together. Even with all the technological and regulatory changes happening in our industry, this is still a people business, and they are our greatest asset.”

In recent years, equities trading has looked like the dystopian scenes at the start of The Terminator, with human beings stuck in increasingly precarious niches, hiding from the high frequency and algorithmic systems who are taking over their world. But has the Human Resistance found its moment?

Tidjane Thiam has probably not been sent back in time by a group of embattled cash equities traders to turn back the course of history, but it may end up being significant that a bank which had historically been in the vanguard of algo trading is now openly discussing how important its high-touch and block-trading businesses are, and the high-profile MD level hires it has been making to support them. Meanwhile, JP Morgan has hired a senior trader and salestrader in Europe and in the last month, Bank of America has poached David Kim as its (human) head of flow trading.

In the case of Credit Suisse, the new strategy appears to be driven by Mike Stewart, the global head of equities trading who joined last summer from UBS. It has also been driven by necessity – Stewart was brought in to replace Tim O’Hara in the wake of some sharp market share losses, partly driven by algorithmic trading misfires And market share in cash equities just isn’t as valuable as it used to be, given the extremely low spreads.

So banks are looking for profits back in the business of block trading, and this is much more of a people business. Algorithms with high-frequency data feeds can tell you a lot about what can be deduced about supply and demand from what’s trading, but it’s a lot more difficult to get a sense of what the market clearing price might be for blocks of securities among people who are not currently trading, but might be persuaded to do so if the price was right.

To do that requires the sort of knowledge of investors’ positions that only comes from a fairly intimate trusted-advisor relationship; block trading is the point of contact where sales and trading blends into capital markets and advisory. And high-touch sales trading is just block trading with smaller blocks. They’re both concerned not so much with facilitating trades that the client wants to make, as with suggesting trades that the client didn’t know she wanted to make until someone passed on some information about another potential buyer or seller. For the moment, that’s quite hard to automate, and to the right kind of investor it’s extremely valuable.

Separately, anyone holding US bank shares might be in for a dividend or buyback windfall this year, as the indications are that, despite incorporating the harshest macroeconomic scenarios seen so far, the CCAR results, to be published on Friday, won’t see any major US lenders’ cash distribution plans refused. Payout ratios of 96% are being talked about. The US banks’ ability to do this is partly because they have built back capital buffers aggressively from the strong profits of the last few years, but it also might be that they are learning, slowly to give the Fed what it wants to see.

As American Banker puts it, “banks have developed a certain amount of expertise over the years” in creating regulatory scenarios. Added to this, the rules have changed this time round so that the dreaded and unpredictable “qualitative fail” based on inadequate systems of planning, is no longer considered a reason for the Fed to stop dividend payments. Of course, non-US banks have been significantly slower to develop that sort of expertise, and so we might expect to see quite a few failures among the foreign Bank Holding Companies being tested for the first time. But even the Europeans will eventually find out how to work within the system.

Meanwhile:

Softbank is planning to set up a new employee long term incentive scheme, and to invest it in the Vision Fund. (FT)

Gender pay gaps look much worse at Magic Circle law firms when equity partners are included in the data. (FT)

Rich millennials (they exist) want advice on cryptocurrency from their wealth managers. (Bloomberg)

But John McAfee has stopped advising over Twitter on crypto ICOs after “threats from the SEC” (Fortune)

Robots may not be able to handle block trading, but they can solve a Rubik Cube on their own. (Technology Review)

Deutsche Bank has shifted a $1bn portfolio of shipping loans. (FT)

BoA Merrill Lynch has paid a $42m fine to settle a case over misleading customers about its dark pool. (Reuters)

German savings banks are withdrawing their most expensive accounts, to the rage of savers. (Handelsblatt)

Beware of financial PTSD. (Of Dollars and Data)

Image credit: davidf, Getty

Lately, I’ve been interviewing some candidates for a junior analyst role at my firm. As you would expect, we want smart individuals who can think outside the box. We want dedicated people who are willing to put in the hard work required to do in-depth analysis (i.e. grunt work). People who have a desire to learn. And most importantly, people who are passionate about investing. This is just my opinion and others may disagree, but telling me about your mock portfolio doesn’t demonstrate passion for investing.

It’s not the size of the portfolio that matters

I get it. You’re young and you’re not some trust fund baby, so you don’t have millions of your own money to invest.

It’s not the size of the portfolio that impresses me. The problem with a mock portfolio is you’re not taking any risk. You don’t have any skin in the game. Have you ever tried to play poker without real money? It’s horrible. People call bluffs left and right. It’s impossible to get people out of hands because there’s no cost when they lose.

Working at a hedge fund, we deal with real money. Not mock money. So I need you to think and act like you have something to lose. In a mock portfolio, it’s easy to say you’re going to buy high volatility names. Everybody wants to own a stock that doubles. But would you invest your own money in that stock if you knew it was just as likely to go to zero?

Similarly, it’s easy to say you’d double down when the stock is down 50%. It’s a lot harder to do when you’ve lost 50% of your hard-earned dollars and you’re worried you could lose even more.

Diversification is Important

You can’t have three names in your portfolio. And they all can’t be in the same sector. Again, I get that you may not have much money to invest. The problem with having so few names is I question your ability to understand risk. On the buy side, your #1 goal is to not lose money. If you can do that, making money will take care of itself. Having a diversified portfolio shows me that you take risk management seriously.

What’s your thesis?

If a stock is in your portfolio, you need to tell me why you like it. I don’t need a detailed model or write-up. I just want the elevator pitch on why you think it’s a good long or short. Don’t tell me your friend suggested it. If you do, I’ll ask you if your friend is interested in this role.

What did you get wrong?

When we’re talking about your diversified, non-mock portfolio, you’re going to want to talk about your winners. I, on the other hand, am going to focus on your losers. Again, this goes back to rule #1 – don’t lose money. What went wrong with the trade? Did you miss something or was it bad luck? What did you learn from the experience?

Demonstrate passion

Again, you don’t need a large portfolio to impress me. You don’t even need to be that successful (but if you’ve managed to lose money in a nine-year bull market, maybe investing isn’t your thing). What I want to see is somebody that eats, breathes, and sleeps investing. Somebody that is dedicated and willing to learn, so that they can become a great senior analyst some day.

Margin of Saving was created by an analyst at a multi-billion dollar hedge fund to help others learn how to invest and save.

““

European banks often walk in stride with each other when it comes to U.S. strategy, investing in similar business lines while pulling back in others as appropriate. But not this year. European banks are all over the place, hiring in areas where others are firing and vice-versa. Below are the safest and the most precarious roles for U.S. bankers at five of the largest European banks. A few surprises await.

Credit Suisse

Since taking over in 2015, Tidjane Thiam has been one of the industry’s more conservative chief executives, prioritizing steadier businesses like wealth management over more volatile units like sales and trading. That’s why it came as a bit of a shock when executives told Business Insider just yesterday that it has been hiring senior traders in the U.S. while other banks have been pruning staff.

“There’s been a willingness to reduce the experience level, reduce the seniority and dilute the talent available to the buy-side,” Paul Galietto, Credit Suisse’s head of equities in the Americas, told BI. “We think that’s a mistake.” Who knew!

One interesting point of note: the recent dismantling of Dodd-Frank by the Trump administration raised the threshold on what defines a bank as being too-big-to-fail. All the big U.S. banks are still categorized this way and need to undergo stress tests and hold back more capital. Quietly, several U.S. factions of EU banks, including Credit Suisse, fell below the new threshold, meaning they can conceivably take more risks.

Credit Suisse has also increased its global headcount in leveraged finance to 124 so far in 2018, an increase of 13% from the end of last year. Staff rose by 14% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and by 12% in the Americas.

Elsewhere, Credit Suisse has been selectively cutting senior M&A bankers, though the moves appear to be centered more around performance and motivation than actual headcount reductions. Still, the bank has signaled that it won’t sit on its hands when it comes to underperforming M&A bankers. The firm has let go of at least 26 directors and MDs globally since February.

UBS

Despite somewhat sustained headwinds, UBS is pursuing a “very aggressive strategy” in the U.S., according to investment banking chief Andrea Orcel. The firm wants to double the number of senior dealmakers over the next three to five years, sources told Bloomberg. Orcel’s recruitment strategy seems to mirror that of boutiques: he wants “old-fashioned” client-facing bankers with a healthy rolodex. The Swiss firm has recently hired two senior dealmakers from Deutsche Bank and one each from RBC and Bank of America. Hopefully, they’re OK with the bank’s strict new edict that M&A bankers attend near-daily client meetings.

While UBS hasn’t moved up the M&A league tables in the Americas over the last three years, advisory fees in the region did increase 30% in 2017, Orcel said.

Meanwhile, UBS is slashing headcount within its asset management unit to focus more efforts in Asia. At least 30 positions in the U.S. have been or will be eliminated, with most coming in New York. The bank also continues to make cuts across its investment banking operations unit.

Barclays

Now appears a rather safe time to be working within Barclays’ U.S. operations. Chief Executive Jes Staley said earlier this month that the diverging political climates in the U.K. (Brexit) and the U.S. (tax cuts) are forcing Barclays to look toward the Americas for growth. He suggested that incoming regulatory changes that are more bank-friendly could play a role.

“To the extent that [the U.S. goes] down a different regulatory path, having the flexibility to recognize what’s going on across the Atlantic…I think it’s something that all of us need to consider,” Staley told the BBC. Like Credit Suisse, Barclays’ U.S. division is no longer deemed too-big-to-fail.

So far, Barclays has been doing more hiring in continental Europe as part of its post-Brexit plans. It appears the U.S. may be the next target.

Deutsche Bank

It goes without saying that Deutsche Bank is a precarious place to be if you’re a U.S. banker. They are cutting 1,000 jobs in the U.S. and 25% of global equities staffers, with the U.S. taking the brunt of the punishment. Layoffs have reportedly touched prime brokerage as well.

That said, several U.S. Deutsche bankers who work outside of equities and prime brokerage recently told us they remain rather upbeat after the bank cut some of the necessary fat. Still, no one will argue that U.S. staffers at Deutsche Bank are in the catbird seat, or anywhere near it.

HSBC

The Swiss bank signaled its intent to capitalize on the U.S. market by providing a 2020 return on equity target for its U.S. unit that’s six times that of last year. How they’ll pull that off is anyone’s guess, but new CEO John Flint has a background in retail banking and wealth management, suggesting you’d rather be working there than within HSBC’s fledging investment bank.

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).

““

The CFA exams are one of America’s most successful exports. As Donald Trump looks around for ways to make America great again, he might want to cast an eye upon a series of exams first conceived by a Wall Street analyst in 1942, which this weekend will be sat by 227,031 candidates worldwide.

The success of the three CFA exams globally isn’t all good news, though. This Saturday, just 28% of the candidates sitting the CFA will be in the Americas, down from 36% in 2011. By comparison, 53% of candidates will be based in Asia.

Asia is where the big growth is: four of the CFA’s seven new test centers for 2018 are there – in Dalian and Hangzhou in China, Hyderabad in India, and Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia.

The CFA Institute, which administers the exams, is all for it. In a press release today, it notes that there’s been a “20% increase in exam registrations in the past year alone”. Asian candidates have doubled since 2011; Americas candidates have risen 22% over the same period.

All growth is not necessarily good growth, however. Having begun their life as qualifications taken by portfolio managers and analysts on the buy-side, the CFA’s exams had morphed into credentials for getting front office jobs in investment banks. And yet, the CFA’s new candidates are increasingly being drawn from outside the world’s major financial centers: candidates who pass the challenging exams in Dalian or Ulaanbaatar are unlikely to go on to work in M&A at J.P. Morgan.

Anecdotally, this can lead to disappointment once the exams are over. People claiming to be CFA Charterholders complain about a lack of improvement in their job prospects; one says he’s been unemployed three years and is now teaching foreign languages for a living. In this way, are bubbles burst.

The underlying danger for the CFA Institute is that unless successful candidates put their CFA credentials to good use, the qualifications will become associated with aspiration in emerging markets rather than success in established financial centers like Wall Street and the City of London. Already, some people are suggesting that accounting qualifications or top MBAs are the better bet.

For the moment, though, the CFA Charter has one significant thing going for it when it comes to finding work on Wall Street. Thanks to the CFA’s historic affiliation with the U.S., 46% of current CFA charterholders, or nearly 71,000 people are based in the Americas. Having spent at least 900 hours studying to pass all three exams, those U.S.-based charterholders are likely to look kindly on candidates who’ve done the same. If you want to work on Wall Street, therefore, passing the CFA exams still makes sense – but the exams’ U.S. preeminence should not be taken for granted.

“”

What do you do when you’re banned from working in finance by the regulator after a 15 year career as a trader? How about opening a chain of fancy burger restaurants in London?

This was the route taken by Arif Hussein, trader turned UK director of Fatburger, a Dubai-based franchise selling freshly made burgers made from Halal meat. Fatburger has two outlets London outlets (Camden and Wembley) and there are plans for more. However, Fatburger’s online reviews are ‘mixed’ and Hussein admits that turning burgers into money isn’t easy: “With high rent and rates you have to sell a lot of burgers to just break even!”

Selling sterling rates swaps is probably an easier way to make money, but this is what Hussein was explicitly banned from doing in 2016 for his part in the Libor fixing scandal. In an effort to return to his previous profession, Hussein – who was a relatively junior trader despite his years of experience – has been trying to appeal the ban, arguing that he was simply told the rate to give to Libor submitters by his seniors and that his actions were, “mandated, sanctioned by the words and conduct of his senior managers and the policy of the bank.”

In a court ruling yesterday, the judge said he was sympathetic to Hussein’s case, which he described as a “tragedy” and “troubling” given that the senior traders implicated in the affair all appeared to have fled the “jurisdiction” or to have managed to, “keep their fingerprints off the relevant documents.” However, the judge upheld the ban due to a “serious error of judgment” on the part of Hussein who was initially not candid with the FCA when under oath. Hussein said this was because he feared an “enormous financial penalty, which would have put me under dire financial pressure and most likely resulted in my young family losing their home.”

For the moment, then, Hussein is stuck in the difficult business of selling burgers as he attempts to support his family. Fatburger UK’s most recent accounts (for 2016) suggest the business wasn’t profitable – although this may have changed. Sympathetic traders who want to support him, may want to send out an Uber to collect today’s lunch.

Separately, ex-Goldman Sachs COO Gary Cohn has got various options after taking his leave of Donald Trump. Vanity Fair suggests that Cohn could always get busy on the speaker circuit, where he could earn between $200k and $250k a speech. Failing that, he could write a kiss and tell story of his time with Donald Trump – although he apparently doesn’t want to do that. Or, there’s private equity. Alternatively, Cohen can always relax with the $250m+ he’s amassed already.

Meanwhile:

Former chairman of City of London Corporation says Brexit could result in the loss of 75,000 jobs and up to £10bn in annual tax revenue. (Guardian)

European commission rates paid by asset managers fell 28% thanks to MiFID II. (Financial News)

Lloyd Blankfein is frightened of Italian debt: “A lot of the leverage that was with the banks didn’t disappear from the world. They migrated over to the sovereign.” (Bloomberg)

Bank of America holds the most live patents in the blockchain space: “We don’t want to be left behind.” (Fortune)

Hedge fund manager denies he wanted to call his assistant “sugar tits.” “Inventing a false #metoo narrative about me is insane because everyone knows I didn’t go around touching people inappropriately or discriminating against anyone.” (Business Insider)

Over at Deutsche Bank: ‘…some traders misled customers about whether their orders had been fully completed so they could retain profits, and failed to correct and deliberately made errors in trade execution records to benefit themselves and the bank.’ (Financial Times)

Goldman Sachs’ new China partner came from outside the firm for the first time ever. (Reuters)

Barclays offers UK workers redundancy or redeployment opportunity in Pune, India. (Mirror)

Modern yoga and meditation practices can inflate your ego, (Quartz)

England’s upskirting ban will also apply to kilts. (Scotsman)

““

As we reported earlier this week, it’s summer intern season in investment banks. Interns are mostly arriving this week and next and – if they’re working in investment banking divisions (IBD) are ready to put in 17 hour days.

This is not unrealistic – despite concerns over intern health and a hard stop at midnight for interns at Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, long hours remain the norm. One Morgan Stanley IBD intern-turned full-time analyst told us he regularly worked from 9am to 2am last summer and never left before midnight. If you’re home before 1am as an IBD intern, you’re lucky basically.

In this febrile and exhausted environment, interns themselves are starting to keep track of the best teams to work for. So far, one stands out above all others: the consumer and retail team at Credit Suisse in London. Here, there is talk of a particularly kind and considerate boss who strictly enforces a personal rule that none of his interns should work later than midnight during the week (alongside a bank-mandated rule that they should stop working at 7pm on Friday and not start again until 12pm on Saturday). “He’s very proactive,” says one intern. “In IBD, the amount of work you do is very much down to the team and the leadership. Credit Suisse’s consumer and retail team just has a very good culture.”

Who is this friend of the interns? We don’t know exactly, although Credit Suisse’s consumer and retail banking group is co-headed by Jens Welter and Andrew Van Der Vord. Der Vord rejoined last year from RBC and Welter, a CS veteran was appointed co-head of investment banking and capital markets for EMEA last September.

Credit Suisse declined to comment on the rumours. However, the allegedly relaxed atmosphere in the consumer and retail team might simply because there is less to do there – figures from Dealogic suggest CS has only worked on five retail deals globally this year, compared to 15 in technology and 13 in utilities and energy. Interns themselves suggest the financial insitutions group (FIG) team at the Swiss bank is also comparatively busy, with late nights/early mornings the norm.

While CS interns who want to sleep might be inclined to queue up for the consumer and retail group, there are those who would cast aspersions on this particular myth. Some at the bank say that even the consumer and retail team stay beyond midnight when deals require it. There is no escape. If you want a guaranteed seven hours’ sleep a night this summer, you should probably have chosen another division instead.

““

Something’s up in Goldman Sachs’ EMEA equity derivatives business. People keep leaving.

In the past week, exits are understood to include: Alexander Jansen, the head of Nordic and Netherlands equity and structured derivatives; Gauthier Amiot, an executive director trading the exotic stocks book; and Jean Paul Gorda, an executive director in equity derivatives sales at Goldman in Paris.

The latest disappearances follow the resignations of two executive directors from Goldman’s EMEA equity derivatives team in May. The departures come as both Goldman Sachs and rival banks staff-up their equity derivatives businesses after a strong first quarter. Gorda and Amiot’s intentions are unclear, but Jansen is thought to be joining BNP Paribas in several months after a period of gardening leave.

Goldman didn’t respond to a request to comment for this article, but headhunters and insiders said the exits are driven by combined disgruntlement about politics and pay.

The former are seemingly the result of new hires. Under managing director Radovan Radman, Goldman hired seven people into its equity derivatives business last year, including – in July 2017 – Tom Groothaert from Credit Suisse. Groothaert was one of those promoted to managing director at Goldman in last year’s bumper round of promotions, a move that seemingly upset existing executive directors who felt overlooked. Other new hires such as Ivan Levchenko from BNP Paribas, Guillaume Paulhac from Roland Berger, Leaf Wade from UBS and Stanislav Mindin, also from Credit Suisse, have allegedly reinforced the notion that existing staff are being supplanted, although it could equally be argued that Goldman is simply building its team.

There are also complaints that departing staff were paid poorly after all the new hires. “There was nothing left for us, but the partners seemed to pay themselves,” said one.

Goldman Sachs is not the only bank losing and hiring equity derivatives professionals. As we reported last week, two of Deutsche Bank’s most senior equity derivatives MDs in London have quit for Morgan Stanley.

“”

It’s easy to get burnt out in finance. In many a banker’s career there may come a time that you come home hating your job and wondering why you are doing it.

It’s important to spend time recharging. Over 17 years, I saw some bankers do this by traveling to luxury resorts in the Bahamas or adventure holidaying in Brazil. Others prefer to spend time with their families. Different things work for different people.

However you want to recharge, however, be sure to include some of the following exercises into your downtime. They’re all cheaper than flying to the Bahamas.

Two tricks for recharging from a Wall Street career

The single biggest reason that people leave Wall Street is because they just can’t take the daily pain, the long hours, harsh clients, impossible pace. They get tired.

When you work on Wall Street, you have to keep going whether you are tired, bored, sad, angry or unhappy. You have to be able to move forward no matter how hard it is and no matter how you feel.

It’s easy to lose your way when your day consists of updating a deck for the fiftieth time or revising that model for the thirtieth.

But there is way to rise above this and not let it burn you out. There are two tricks I’ve found a lot of bankers use to recharge and re-discover their energy and purpose.

Firstly, they remind themselves how far they’ve already come. They look at what they have already achieved. They reflect on how lucky they are. They are grateful and amazed. They think about the 99% of people on this planet who have less than them, and they are thankful for the opportunities still in front of them.

Secondly, they remind themselves of their ‘Why.’ Why are they here? Why do they want to do this? Why is it important to them? As Fredrich Nietzche said, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how”.

You can get a huge amount of confidence and strength by reminding yourself about why you are in the game in the first place.

The why drives everything.

Answer these questions and find a mentor:

If you want to recharge, get a piece of paper, and start writing the following before September:

The things you are grateful for.
A list of people you should thank and be grateful to for their contribution in your success.
What is important to you.
What do you want to achieve and how far you have already come?
What are your goals from this moment forward?
What do you need to be better at?
How are you going to execute the plan?

The more detail the better. This will reduce your anxiety and provide you a road map for your career.

When you’ve done all that, talk through all of it with someone you trust.

If you don’t have a mentor yet, get one. Nothing will be as transformational for your career as having someone to bounce ideas off.

The trick to getting a mentor isn’t to ask someone to be one. Instead find the people pre-disposed to, maybe someone you already go for advice. Start being there for them too. Try to help them. Grow the relationship. This takes time. Ask for their views on more things. Build trust.

Before you know it, they will be your mentor. Once you have had your ideas vetted and reviewed, and you have had some time to digest them too, you are ready to begin.

Start executing and don’t stop until you get to where you want to go.

You can have whatever you want.

The author is one of a group of senior bankers who blog at the site What I Learned on Wall Street (WilowWallStreet.com).

““

Current bankers have told us that interns these days make fewer mistakes than they used to and are often more prepared and serious than classes from just a few years ago. There’s enough information out there for students to walk in with fairly clear expectations. Unfortunately, the overall maturation of interns has made it even more difficult for banks to differentiate between candidates. No one is spoiling their chances by taking nude selfies in the bathroom anymore; banks need to look for subtle mistakes to help trim the herd. If anything, they’ve had to become more judgmental.

Below are a handful of common errors that can cause an intern to spoil their chances, whether they know it or not. Some are seemingly hypercritical and even arbitrary. The key, it seems, is to stand out with your work while blending in everywhere else.

Don’t botch the details

The consensus easiest reason to downgrade an intern is to find sloppy or lazy mistakes in their work or communication. Math, formatting and even grammar failings in emails rarely ever go unnoticed. “It speaks to your capabilities but also your attention to detail – one of the more underrated keys to being a reliable junior banker,” said a former Barclays associate. This can be a particular stumbling block for interns who come in with a stronger skillset than others. The work can appear more mindless and tedious than an actual learning opportunity, but you can’t treat it as such.

“Less proficient but hungrier interns can often beat out those who think they’re already capable analysts,” he said. Double-check your emails, triple-check your work.

Dress to blend in, not stand out

Bankers seem to get personally offended or at least annoyed when interns wear a suit or a pair of shoes that costs more than the internship pays. Fair or not, some make the inference that you come from money and may not be hungry enough to do the dirty work and put in the hours. Others may just view it as poor judgment. Be well-tailored, but don’t stick out with gaudy luxury names, a hedge fund exec told us. “Leave your Louboutins at home.”

“And don’t wear flip flops to work in the morning, even if it’s from the elevator to your desk,” she said. “My feet hurt too. Suck it up.”

Work before you network

If you’ve ever listened to interviews with bulge-bracket CEOs, they’ll preach to interns about the importance of networking, grabbing coffee with different members of the bank and meeting as many people as possible. “That’s bull****,” said one current VP. “If you’re off shaking hands and kissing babies while others are doing actual work, good luck.” The best way to meet other bankers outside of your group is to offer to pitch in on other projects after you’ve finished your work and your boss has gone home. Which leads to…

Don’t leave early. Don’t have plans

Being the first intern out the door at night can be a death sentence, even if you personally don’t have any work left. Find something to do, or at least pretend to. But don’t leave before your superiors unless you’re thrown out the door as a group, which does happen. “And don’t make plans that you can’t break. It’s only 10 weeks,” said the VP. “You’ll need the practice for the next two years anyway.”

Ask questions, but not the same ones

Don’t sit at your desk spinning your wheels if you don’t know what you’re doing, said a former Deutsche Bank VP. “Everyone assumes you are dumb and don’t know anything about this job. They won’t think less of you if you ask a question,” she said. But asking the same questions repeatedly – especially to the same person – will absolutely hurt your chances, added a headhunter who spent two decades as a banker.

Don’t be the party guy/girl

This is one issue bankers say they are seeing less and less. But don’t come in hungover, don’t talk about your epic evening and be careful not to overindulge at work functions, even if others do, said the banker-turned-recruiter.

It’s also always good practice to steer clear of these conversations outside the walls of the bank, never knowing who’s listening. We were told the story of an analyst who once bragged to a friend about a drug-fueled evening during his morning commute to New York City, not knowing an MD from a different group within his firm was sitting in the same train car. That was his last day with the bank.

And perhaps my favorite piece of advice

“Walk fast everywhere – people will think you are busy.”

Follow @BeecherTuttle

“”

Deutsche Bank traders appear to have a faculty for making mistakes. In 2015 they accidentally paid $6bn to a hedge fund client in an FX trade that was afflicted by a fat finger. This was followed by a far fatter finger in April 2018, when $35bn was accidentally transferred to an outside account. There was also a $60m loss on a U.S. rates trade that went awry in June 2017.

Now Deutsche’s U.S. traders have done it again – although this time it may be the German bank’s often-criticized U.S. risk division that was really to blame.

Bloomberg reports that Deutsche’s U.S. traders suffered a one day loss in the first quarter of 2018 that was 12x higher than the amount that the bank’s risk officers considered to be possible for that day under their Value at Risk calculations. Nor does this seem to have been an isolated incident – while most rival banks made no losses in excess of risk calculations for the quarter, a U.S. regulatory filing shows that there were four days in the months to March 2018 when losses at DB U.S. Corporation surprised the bank’s own risk managers. On one day they were 2.6 times higher than expected; on another they were 1.6 times higher.

The surprise losses happened under the watch of John Cryan, the former Deutsche Bank CEO who left in April 2018. As new boss Christian Sewing sets about cutting 7,000 jobs across Deutsche, many of them from the U.S. investment bank, some of the layoffs may seem valid.

Deutsche’s London traders could forgiven for feeling some schadenfreude at the fates of their accident-prone American colleagues: on the day that the U.S. bank made the huge unexpected loss in Q1, Bloomberg says DB’s London traders offset the U.S. loss with “related gains.” The implications are twofold: that London bailed out the U.S., and/or that DB was engaged in a complex international trade that was ultimately neutral and made individual country-measures of risk exposure irrelevant anyway.

Separately, it’s usually the case that when a trader takes too much risk, he or she (although usually he) panics, and makes things worse. Think Kweku Adoboli or Nick Leeson. In the case of Harouna Traoré, a novice day trader with a background in performance analysis software sales at Thomson Reuters, the opposite seems to have happened.

The Financial Times reports that 41 year-old Traoré built up $5bn position in U.S. equity futures and turned a loss of €1m into a profit of more than €10m after mistakenly thinking that he was on a demo version of a UK trading platform. After realizing his mistake and the initial loss, Traoré said he panicked and could only think of his wife and family as he took more risk and ultimately set things right. The brokerage firm is refusing to pay Traoré his €10m and says he breached his contract. He is pursuing them in court.

Meanwhile:

Ali Almakky, who was heading Deutsche Bank’s corporate strategy team from London, and who doesn’t speak German, is leaving the bank. (Wall Street Journal)

Soon, doing data science will become as normal as doing Excel. In the meantime, there is something weird and desperate about traditional firms going out and hiring quants. (Bloomberg)

Jefferies just hired Michael Pope, a former managing director at Angelo Gordon who was a senior distressed debt trader there since 2012, as a managing director in sales. (New York Post)

Inside the Google rebellion as ethical engineers refuse to work on a project that would enable the company to win military contracts. ‘The engineers became known as the “Group of Nine” and were lionized by like-minded staff.’ (Bloomberg)

Why and how companies burn out their high performers. (Harvard Business Review)

Japanese worker punished for starting lunch three minutes early. Bosses bow in apology. (Guardian)

Clinton son-in-law running out of financial industries to try. (Dealbreaker)

““

In theory, banking is the most highly paid industry to enter as a graduate. Figures from research company High Fliers suggest that graduates who go into investment banking earn an average of £47k ($63k) a year in starting salaries while those who go into law earn £44k. When it comes to compensation, it seems that entry-level bankers beat lawyers hands down.

Or do they?

Banks have been holding junior pay steady: starting salaries for first year analysts in London this year are £50k, exactly the same as last year. However, U.S. law firms have been hiking it. When shorter working hours are factored-in, law starts to look a lot more lucrative than banking.

The latest round of legal pay hikes were started by Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, which increased starting salaries for newly qualified lawyers globally to $190k at the start of this month. U.S. law firm Cravath and Swaine then matched this, followed latterly by U.S. law firms Kirkland & Ellis and Akin Gump.

RollonFriday, a UK legal site, says first year lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis are now on $195k (£147k) including bonuses.

Newly qualified lawyers aren’t exactly new graduates. It takes two years to qualify as a lawyer in the UK, meaning those ‘new’ lawyers on $195k are really the equivalent of third year analysts in investment banks. Third year analysts in investment banking divisions (IBD) are on around £113k ($150k) according to recruitment firm Dartmouth Partners, so the lawyers are still better off.

Junior lawyers also work slightly shorter hours than bankers. Law firm Legal Cheek says lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis work, on average, slightly less than 12 hours a day. By comparison, 70 hour weeks – or 14 hour days – are the norm in banking. On this basis, hourly pay for newly qualified lawyers now looks approximately 50% higher than for third year IBD analysts, at around £50 an hour vs. £34 an hour in IBD.

Does this mean you should choose a career law over a career in M&A for the sake of an easier life with higher pay? Maybe. However, law firms’ total compensation advantage doesn’t last.

As the chart below shows, even the highest paying law firms are trumped by banks’ compensation as juniors progress. Eight years into a career in investment banking in London, IBD juniors earn £46k a year more than lawyers at the same level. Of course, banking juniors may still work longer hours than junior lawyers – but U.S. law firms aren’t exactly known for offering an easy life either.

““

Banks are cutting traders on Wall Street. Deutsche Bank’s cuts have been well-documented, but it’s not the only one trimming: Bloomberg reports that Nomura is cutting 28 global markets traders in the U.S. too. Securities professionals in New York City might want to watch their backs – or head for the banks with the best traders in the market.

Thanks to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, it’s possible to get an idea where the best traders are to be found. The council, which prescribes principles for five different financial regulatory bodies in the U.S. requires banks to publish quarterly reports on their risk exposure and the performance of their trading businesses in America. It was one of these reports that highlighted the trading irregularities at Deutsche Bank’s U.S. business, for example.

The reports illuminate the extent to which traders at different banks had loss-making and profit-making days in the three months to March 2018. The results, which are shown below, clearly reflect the tendency for traders at European banks in America to have a lot more loss-making days than their traders at their U.S. counterparts.

As the chart below shows, the U.S. trading businesses of HSBC, BNP Paribas and UBS all had far more loss-making than profit making days in the first quarter.

By comparison, the profit-making days at both J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley far surpassed the loss-making ones, with both U.S. banks making profits on 42 days and losses on just 22.

The information isn’t infallible. We don’t know, for example, whether the profits that were made on the profit-making days far outweighed the losses. Goldman Sachs’ traders made profits on the same number of days as Deutsche Banks’ – even though we know that on one of the 27 days that DB traders made a loss, the loss was a huge 1,197% of that day’s expected value at risk.

Nonetheless, on balance, U.S. banks’ trading divisions look like the best places to be on Wall Street – with J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley’s the best of the lot. Meanwhile, Deutsche may not be the only bank with a U.S. risk management problem – HSBC and BNP Paribas also had days when their U.S. businesses made losses that exceeded estimated Value at Risk in the first quarter, although at 166% and 108% of expected VaR, the miscalculations weren’t nearly as extreme as at Deutsche Bank.

““

Landing a job at a hedge fund is no easy task. Just getting an interview typically requires attending a top university and completing several prestigious internships. For those lacking one or both, there is an alternative option – one that can literally guarantee you a seat in front of a hiring manager at a hedge fund. You’ll just need to out-argue the masses while proving that you’re a stock market junkie.

Several fintech companies have partnered together to launch the Stocks Debate Challenge, an online video-based competition that will reward the three top performers with a job interview at New York hedge fund Apex Capital Holdings. The idea behind the challenge is to try to develop new pipelines for talent that may be hiding in the weeds at lesser-known universities.

“Even if a particular student at the University of Missouri is as good as the best investor at Harvard, there is simply no way they would have access to the same opportunities,” said Alexey Loganchuk, founder of program co-sponsor Upgrade Capital, which partners with financial firms to screen and develop traders. “This disparity reflects massive inefficiency in the way the industry currently looks for talent.”

The format is rather simple. Contestants are divided into two groups. Those in the first group put together a one-minute video where they pitch a long or short investment idea that will be posted on Micgoat, an app developed by co-sponsor Thinknum that lets users debate various issues. People in the second group will then choose their adversary and counter with a one-minute response that takes the opposing position. Each pairing will debate back-and-forth several times before the full videos are posted. The judge for the first round is the general public, along with three experts. The 24 people with the most number of upvotes move on.

Round two is a little more formal. The jury is made up of three seasoned investment pros: Sahm Adrangi, founder of Kerrisdale Capital Management; Keith Weissman, director of research at Sibilla Capital Management; and Peter M. Lupoff, managing member of Lupoff Friends and Family Interests, an impact investment firm. They’ll pair off the remaining 24 contestants, provide the topics and ultimately decide which three earn the interviews.

Winners will be interviewing for analyst positions, but the actual roles will be further defined by Apex Capital, according to Micgoat CEO Marta Lopata. Candidates will be judged by the technical skills they show off, their overall market knowledge and their ability to verbalize their message, she said. Micgoat, of course, will likely count as another winner. The competition will surely generate loads of new app users, especially during round one when applicants are scrounging for upvotes.

This is the group’s first competition, so there’s no precedent to suggest whether any of the interviews will result in job offers. We’ll have to wait and see. Lopata said they’re planning to offer additional competitions in the fall. Registration closes on Sunday, June 24th, and the competition begins just a day later, so you better already know how to read a financial statement and get camera-ready ASAP.

Follow @BeecherTuttle

““

Where are all the high yield traders when you need them? Not on European trading desks, it seems. – Following an unprecedented number of job moves and market exits in 2018, one headhunter is warning that around 40% of Europe’s leading sell-side high yield risk takers are out of action.

“There are just an awful lot of people out of the market,” the headhunter says, speaking on condition of anonymity. “You’ve either got people who’ve gone to the buy-side, or who have moved back to the U.S., who are between sell-side jobs, or who are simply not working for one reason or another.”

The list of people who were trading high yield in Europe and who aren’t any more, is certainly a long one.

It includes people like Dan Cohen, the ex-head of high yield trading at HSBC, who resigned in April to join Nomura but has yet to arrive. There’s also Mike Anderson, a high yield credit trader with five years’ experience at Barclays, who’s rumoured to be en-route to Goldman Sachs. There’s Dominic Surry, the former head of high yield at Deutsche Bank who quietly retired at the start of the year. Or Nadia Egorova, a director of high yield trading at Deutsche, who’s currently on maternity leave.

There are also the European high yield traders who’ve moved to the U.S. market. They include people like Evan Remmes, a former head of high yield trading at Bank of America in London, who’s gone to New York; Ovie Faruq, a former high yield trader at Barclays in London, who moved to Barclays in New York in February 2018; and Sam Page, the former head of European high yield trading at Citi, who went to America in December 2017.

To add insult to injury, Vidur Khanna, a vice president level high yield trader at Citi, left to do an MBA this month. And Chris Derry, the former head of high yield trading at RBC Capital markets, and an experienced risk taker, swapped across to high yield sales in February 2018.

In combination, headhunters say the moves mean that a market which houses a small number of traders at the best of times, is now seriously lacking in experienced personnel.

The jury is out on whether this matters. Russell Clarke, founding partner of fixed income headhunting firm Figtree Search, said the high yield market in Europe has experienced juniorisation as banks have become less willing to hold high yield inventory: “Nowadays it’s all about the primary market and flow, and that means banks need a different type of trader.”

““

The number one topic of interest whenever two employees of different banks meet is always “who’s paying best this year”? And this year, the survey carried out by HR consultancy Emolument for Financial News shows a pretty consistent pattern; U.S. banks, in London at least, are paying substantially better at the VP level than Europeans.

There are plenty of caveats to the data. It’s based on 140 responses, which is enough to form a valid statistical sample, but means that it could be based on as few as a dozen data points per bank. And the response rate to these surveys might itself be biased in an unknown direction – on one hand, people who get low bonuses might be too ashamed to talk about them, while the real high fliers might feel they have better things to get on with than replying to surveys. Not so long ago a similar survey raised eyebrows when it found that Nomura was the best paying bank in London.

But when you have a gap as big as the one between Citigroup (£292k) and SocGen (£150k), and when there’s such a clear geographical pattern to the differences, it does feel like it’s not likely to be a data glitch. The U.S. banks are making more money, so their employees are making more money. It’s as simple as that.

There are a few more truisms that are reinforced by this data. Most obviously, the banks which pay the biggest base salaries, also pay the biggest bonuses. This is true both in absolute and relative terms; toward the top of the scale, VP’s at JP Morgan earned £143k basis and £141k bonus; at the lower end (BNP Paribas and Barclays), bonuses were more like 50% of base, and this fell to 20-30% at Deutsche and SocGen. Some banks often claim that they pay low base salaries in order to keep fixed costs down, but are competitive on total compensation; it’s rarely true.

It’s also noticeable that different banks have different cultures when it comes to sharing the wealth. Deutsche, for example, is right down at the bottom of the league table when it comes to VP pay, with £120k basis and £40k bonus. One rung up the ladder, however, and the German national champion is almost competitive with JP Morgan at director level, where DB paid total compensation of £350k. That one notch of promotion is a lot more important at Deutsche than at HSBC, which is at the top of the European pack for Vice-Presidents (£130k basic plus £85k bonus for a total of £215k), but much lower down for Directors, who only take in £55k more at HSBC than VPs do.

The biggest caveat to place on this sort of survey, though, is that the individual variation is always more important than the averages. Poor performers will get poor bonuses even at the best paying firms, and it’s still possible to get rich at a failing bank if you manage things right. Being in the right place at the right time helps, but getting the right pay for the right job is what really matters.

Some people who might be nervous about this year’s compensation round might be in the compliance departments of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. In a week’s time, we will find out if the capital plans of the big banks have been approved, and if they’re going to be able to pay out the dividends and buybacks that they planned to their shareholders. And although the overall picture from the first round of stress test results seemed favourable, the two big-paying Wall Street investment banks were much closer to the pass-fail mark than they might have expected.

If a capital plan is rejected, it’s a significant embarrassment for the top management and potentially a serious disappointment for the share price. But who would carry the can for it? There are several candidates – the CEO who sent a too ambitious plan to the regulators in the first place, the traders and bankers who acquired the assets that made the bank look risky, and the risk managers who got out of touch with how the regulators might see them. But the probable most likely candidate for the blame in any bank is the bearer of bad news, and that means the person with the regulatory relationship who has the job of carrying the Fed’s decision to the board. Good luck, guys …

Meanwhile …

Half of all women working in hedge funds have experienced #MeToo behaviour, 30% at their current employer. (Financial Times)

Banks are using “Lehman style” window-dressing to make their capital ratios look good. (Bloomberg)

Wells Fargo reduces equity research headcount … (Bloomberg)

…And Nomura cuts 28 global markets staff. (Bloomberg)

Could Brexit really be the end of London’s dominance in European finance?… (Bloomberg)

… although a new “settled status” for EU citizens might help banks retain staff. (Financial Times)

Stuart Roden, chairman of Lansdowne Partners, is leaving the hedge fund he co-founded. (Financial Times)

Barclays appoints Steve Penketh as CFO and COO of Barclays International, the investment banking part. (The Street)

China Renaissance Group is to IPO, with a valuation as high as US$800m. (Reuters)

After David Drumm’s sentencing in Ireland, here’s a short list of all the other bankers who went to jail. (New York Times)

What is it about tech firms that attracts “incels”? (Wired)

Do rich people really have less empathy? (Financial Times)

““

Ken Lee, the former head of Barclays’ European equity research, who left the firm last September has re-emerged doing something that couldn’t have been more different than his previous investment banking stints. He joined the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) as an associate professor earlier this month.

Lee began at Barclays in 2009, when it launched its European equity business and was instrumental in building it up. He left the firm last year, after Barclays hired Rupert Jones, Morgan Stanley’s former head of European equity research to replace him.

Equity researchers have been squeezed under MiFID II, which requires banks to charge separately for their research services. When Jones left last year, Barclays said he had been actively involved in briefing Morgan Stanley’s customers about the impact of MiFID II. “As we head into MiFID II, research is all the more central to the success of our overall European equities business,” Barclays said.

When Lee left, he was said to be pursuing, “interests outside of banking.” Those interests were clearly going into academia. Immediately after leaving Barclays, he became a teaching fellow at Aston Business School, and a senior lecturer at Roehampton University. According to his LinkedIn profile, he still holds these positions.

In some ways, Lee’s career seems to have come full circle. He began his career in 2000 as a training consultant at BG Consulting, which offers customized financial training courses. He then moved to Citi Investment Research as an accounting and valuation analyst in 2004 and remained there till he joined Barclays as a managing director and head of equity research, EMEA.

““

If you want a technology job in banking now, it will help to have three words on your CV: equities trading technology. As banks build out their algorithmic trading capabilities, senior technologists with experience working on high speed trading systems are the new hot thing.

Goldman Sachs is among those in the market for technologists with experience in the area. It recently hired Jee Wayn Ong, a former vice president at Bank of America Merrill Lynch with seven years of experience in equities electronic trading technology. A Java developer with experience of technology supporting both algorithmic trading and the central risk book, Ong joined Goldman as an executive director in the London office earlier this month.

Ong isn’t Goldman’s only executive director hire into the electronic equities space. The bank also recently recruited Sami Haj Slimane, a former director at BAML with historic experience in equity quantitative analytics and algorithmic trading.

Meanwhile, banks are having a hard time retaining their existing tech talent. For instance, J. P. Morgan recently lost one of its most senior equities trading technologists, Asif Adatia, and will need to find his replacement.

Adatia, who has more than 27 years of experience, 15 of which were at Goldman Sachs, served as a managing director at J. P. Morgan before leaving the bank earlier this month. Adatia didn’t respond to a request to comment on his exit, which may mark his retirement. It comes after J.P. Morgan appointed Mike Grimaldi as head of technology in the investment bank in September last year.

““

Saturday was CFA exam day. To judge by the post-exam comments of some of the 227,031 people who sat the notoriously difficult examinations, it was also a day blighted by problems of a scatalogical sort.

On of the most popular Reddit posts on the exams concerns a candidate in New York who says his, “risk tolerance was high,” and so he ate some, “crazy spicy halal chicken for lunch.” This turned out to be a mistake: his stomach needed to, “write down the value of [its] intestinal assets with a vengeance about 90 minutes in.”

Another candidate on the same thread says he was busy doing positive affirmations and “power poses” in a stall when someone came into a neighbouring stall and destroyed the vibe.

In Chicago, there were complaints about an “ethics violator,” who allegedly hid papers in a toilet cubicle and had a look at them halfway through. In Boston, a candidate was allegedly eliminated for taking too long in the toilet and holding up the start of the morning exam. In Toronto, a candidate was apparently seen running to the front of the bathroom queue before the afternoon session whilst shouting, “diarrheaaaaaa.” Another Toronto candidate complained that the queues for toilets there were so long that he had to go in a bush in the parking lot.

Bodily functions weren’t the only issues on Saturday. In one New York test centre (number four) candidates said there was a concert happening next door: “Bass starting blaring periodically through the exam,” complained one test-taker. In Vancouver, there was pigeon flying around the examination hall. And in one, unnamed venue a male candidate began crying 20 minutes in and was refused permission to leave.

The CFA exams are notoriously difficult: each of the three exams requires at least 300 hours of study and the pass rates vary from 43% for level one to 54% for level three. The six hour exams – broken into morning and afternoon sessions – are therefore a period of high tension. Now that the exams are over, some candidates complain they’re oppressed by the sudden eruption of free time. Their digestive systems, however, have time to recover.

““

The quant hedge fund that spun off Credit Suisse is doing some big hiring

“It’s about engaging at all levels, not just the top.” How Morgan Stanley’s commitment to diversity is empowering women.

Morning Coffee: Bank of America and Credit Suisse want old-school traders – here’s why. Toothless stress tests coming

Meanwhile:

Some advice for the mistaken young people I interview for hedge fund jobs

It’s not the size of the portfolio that matters

Diversification is Important

What’s your thesis?

What did you get wrong?

Demonstrate passion

Where European banks are hiring and firing on Wall Street now

Do you still need the CFA to work on Wall Street? Or is it all about Asia now?

Morning Coffee: The tragedy of the ex-UBS trader now running a burger restaurant. Gary Cohn’s new way to make $250k

Meanwhile:

London interns trade stories of a special IBD boss at Credit Suisse

Resignations at Goldman Sachs amidst complaints about politics and pay

The art of summer when you work in investment banking

Two tricks for recharging from a Wall Street career

Answer these questions and find a mentor:

How to fail as a banking intern

Morning Coffee: The latest bizarre events at Deutsche Bank. Novice trader’s miraculous return from the abyss

Meanwhile:

Should you become a junior lawyer for an easy life with high pay?

Proof that the worst traders on Wall Street work for European banks?

How to land a guaranteed interview at a hedge fund without a blue-chip resume

Upset in the high yield business as masses of traders disappear in 2018

Morning Coffee: The best and worst paying banks for VPs and Directors. And who carries the can if a stress test is failed?

Meanwhile …

Barclays’ ex-head of European equity research resurfaced doing something very different

The new technology CV that will get you a job at Goldman Sachs or J.P. Morgan

Saturday’s CFA exams blighted by various washroom disasters

Related articles:

Meanwhile:

Related articles:

It’s not the size of the portfolio that matters

Diversification is Important

What’s your thesis?

What did you get wrong?

Demonstrate passion

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Meanwhile:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Two tricks for recharging from a Wall Street career

Answer these questions and find a mentor:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Meanwhile:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Meanwhile …

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles: