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Citi and BlackRock have become the latest financial firms to announce that they’re hiring in Paris rather than London. But Michael Corbat and Larry Fink, CEOs of Citi and BlackRock respectively, aren’t the ones receiving the plaudits on behalf of Parisian finance professionals. The praise is instead being heaped on a former investment banker: French president Emmanuel Macron.

As British government ministers resign amid this week’s Brexit-induced UK political crisis – the type of which typically unnerves stability-seeking bankers – a pro-banker promotional blitz from Macron is setting up Paris as an attractive destination for newly-minted finance jobs, and also for roles being relocated away from London.

BlackRock has announced that it has chosen Paris over London for its new base to provide alternative investment services across Europe and Asia. Citi, meanwhile, has recently made a series of senior appointments in the French capital and says it will continue to expand there, reports Reuters.

The Financial Times is now describing all this as a “coup” and a “victory” for Macron, who worked for Rothschild & Cie Banque between 2008 and 2012. The FT highlights the president’s promises to cut taxes and red tape under a “France is back” pitch, as well as his dinner with Blackrock’s Fink (alongside other investment sector leaders) at the Elysée Palace last year. “The effect of Macron has lightened up the country – before his election it was pretty bleak,” Luigi de Vecchi, chairman of corporate and investment banking in continental Europe at Citi, told the FT.

Recruitment by banks in Paris this year – J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and HSBC are all expanding headcounts there – may just be the tip of the iceberg. Arnaud de Bresson of the business lobby group Paris Europlace told the FT that recent Parisian hires at international banks are part of a “first” wave of team expansion.

Separately, have you ever wondered what your job title might be in five or 10 years? The answer is not what you might expect. HSBC has commissioned a new report into the future of banking, which highlights six potential titles on the horizon. Worryingly, if you work in the front-office, they are all of a tech-related persuasion: mixed reality experience designer, algorithm mechanic, conversational interface designer, universal service adviser, digital process engineer, and partnership gateway enabler.

Meanwhile:

UBS joins the banks that are hiring in Paris. (Financial News)

Chairman of Barclays EMEA banking operations retires. (Bloomberg)

The 30-year saga of Barclays investment bank, in one book. (Financial News)

Standard Chartered exec says the bank’s culture isn’t toxic. (ITV)

J.P Morgan promotes banker into new European infrastructure role. (Financial News)

Hong Kong bankers are quitting for biotech companies. (Bloomberg)

New Singapore CEO at Standard Chartered. (Finews)

Ex-BNP equity derivatives strategist resurfaces at Citi. (Global Capital)

UBS hires yet another China banker. (Finews)

Why your firm probably won’t be acquired by Goldman or Morgan Stanley any time soon. (Bloomberg)

The team that Goldman Sachs is backing to win the World Cup. (Business Insider)

Image credit: Alija, Getty

Working for Citi may be no easy task. The hours may be long, the pay not be totally satisfactory (although you should at least get a lot of cash in your bonus) and if you work in tech or operations the chief executive of Citi’s investment bank says you’re heavily at risk of losing your job to automation.

Sounds appealing, right?

Well, yes. This year Citi says it’s had 60,761 applications for 520 jobs at its corporate and investment bank globally.

In other words 99% of people are rejected, so if you’re thinking of interviewing at Citi, you need to prepare very well indeed. Below, we have listed all the questions people claim to have been asked in recent Citi interviews for your convenience.

IDB (Investment Banking Division) questions from Citi interviews

What are the advantages and disadvantages of ‘Comparable Company Analysis’?

How do you calculate the cost of equity?

To calculate shares that are fully diluted, which method would you use?

How do you value a company?

Which are the typical stages of an IPO?

How much do you know about discounted cash flow analysis?

What do you think of stock repurchases?

What is the best metric for valuing a company?

How many hours are there between the 27^th of February and the 3^rd of March?

In which kind of scenario would you not use comparables of discounted cash flow to value a company?

Why is minority interest subtracted out in the calculation of free cash flow?

Explain how the balance sheet and cash flow statement tie together.

Explain to me how an LBO is constructed and implemented.

How would you value an apple tree?

Sales and trading questions from Citi interviews

Which factors influence the price of a residential mortgage backed security (RMBS)?

Talk me through the European Debt crisis from the beginning to the current time.

What is the main driver that is making the debt crisis persist? What would be the solution in your opinion?

What is the difference between ‘TIPS’ and an ‘I bond’?

What is the role of a corporate client solutions team?

What is bond duration?

Technology questions from Citi interviews

What benefits does Python provide over other languages?

What are the differences between an object and an interface?

What is an inner join in SQL?

How do you swap two integer variables without using a temporary variable?

What is multithreading in the context of a CPU?

What are primary and foreign keys in a DBMS?

In the language Java, what is considered ‘static’?

How does java string class work?

What are paradigms and how do they come into Java?

Describe, in as much detail as possible, the software development life cycle.

Which agile methodology do you find fits with your work style and why?

Sources: Glassdoor.com, WallStreetOasis.com, Vault.com

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In around a month, the new generation of juniors will arrive to join the analyst classes at investment banks. They might come with ideas about how their banking careers will evolve, but if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from 18 years in finance, it’s this: nothing goes to plan.

Back in the early days, I didn’t think I even had what it took to fit in on Wall Street. I remember spending weekends researching my next career, convinced Wall Street wasn’t for me.

I was a shy nerd, I spoke with an accent, and I became a lonely cubicle slave, working hours on end. I wouldn’t speak in meetings because I figured who was I to be saying anything. When it came to bonus time, I just accepted whatever they paid me, happy with whatever scraps came my way.

I never expected to be where I am today. Along the way, I’ve made more mistakes than I care to admit and I’ve seen every single successful person I know do much the same.

Back in the early days, I thought mistakes were something to be ashamed of. I wanted to be the best and the fastest at everything. For example, when I was new to Wall Street, my boss gave me a project to be completed by the end of the day. I rushed through, proud of how quickly I was getting it finished. I handed it to my boss, waiting for my pat on the back. As it turned out, I had messed the whole thing up.

I was so focused on getting it done that I had completely missed the point.

I learned the hard way – quite a few times – to slow down and see the big picture. Now I tell all the new recruits to: “Try to figure out the substance of what you are doing and what makes your client happy, rather than the very specific, narrow task you have been asked to do”.

Finance is also an industry where things can change, fast. Just because you’re in a dark place one year, don’t assume you won’t catch a lucky break the next.

For example, I spent many years at Lehman Brothers in New York. While I was there, I was forced to change roles internally as my career was going nowhere. It was one of the lowest points of my career. And then, just one year later, I was hired by Goldman Sachs! Three years after that, I was made MD. It still amazes me how quickly things turn around.

Never assume that unexpected (good) things won’t happen when you work in finance.

You might want the security of a planned future, but you don’t have to have a plan for everything. Once you can let go and acknowledge this, you’ll get much further. I’ve seen so many young guys make the mistake of being in a huge rush for success. Finance careers don’t work like that. You’ll screw up – it’s inevitable. You may also feel out of your depth. What’s important is that you keep trying.

Over time, I learnt that you only get what you ask for and I learnt that if you want to excel, you have to treat every day like an interview. I learnt that no one really knows what they are doing, and that we are our own worst critic. I learnt to trust myself and stop sweating the small stuff and start building the systems and habits that have changed my life.

The author is a former Goldman Sachs managing director and blogger at the site What I Learnt on Wall Street.

Follow @MadameButcher
Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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Photo credit: Cube Farm by Mark Blasingame is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

While merger and acquisition activity has spiked globally during the first half of 2018, the U.S. has clearly offered the most fertile ground, accounting for more than half of global M&A volume during the first six months of the year. This shouldn’t come as a particular surprise as the political and economic climate in the U.S. is generally perceived as an advantage for dealmakers. But volume aside, there were significant market share changes during the first half of the year, with several surprises.

Goldman Sachs vs. the world

Goldman Sachs is always a perennial contender for the number one spot on the M&A league tables, finishing second globally, second in the U.S. and third in Europe, according to Bloomberg’s first half assessment. No complaints, right? Well that depends on who you ask.

Goldman Sachs saw its global market share of M&A revenue increase by 4% during the first six months of 2018 but still lost its top ranking to Morgan Stanley, which boosted its market share by nearly 14%. Fellow rival J.P. Morgan gained serious ground on Goldman Sachs by increasing its market share by almost 11%, inching within less than 2 percentage points of Goldman in the league tables. Fourth-place Citigroup saw its slice of the global M&A pie increase by 14% during the first half.

Same song, different tune in the U.S., where Goldman Sachs increased its market share by a respectable 3.8% compared to a year ago. The only problem is that its closest competition, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan, saw a 16.5% and 14.1% jump, respectively. Like in the global rankings, Goldman dropped from first last year to second for the first six months of this year, again behind Morgan Stanley.

In Europe, Goldman Sachs had perhaps its worst showing, dropping from first to third in the league tables while losing 8.5% in market share. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan each increased their market percentage by around 10% in the EU.

Other surprises

Bank of America M&A’s team had a tough first half of the year, dropping from 5th to 10th in the U.S. league tables while falling from second to fifth in Europe. It was the only U.S. bank ranked in the top 20 in M&A revenues that lost market share to the field globally.

One of the bigger surprises is Barclays, which, after languishing for several years during cost-cutting strategies, appears to be back on track in M&A. The U.K. bank slightly edged up globally but increased from 16th to 9th in the Euro league tables with an 8% local bump in market share. No other non-U.S. bank had a more successful first half in M&A.

Failing to protect home-court

Perhaps the biggest disappoints in M&A were local firms that failed to protect their domestic business from foreign rivals. Local bank BNP Paribas fell from 1st to 6th in M&A volumes in France, representing an absurd 43% lose in local market share, according to Bloomberg. Fellow French bank Crédit Agricole, meanwhile, saw its market share drop nearly 16% over the first half of the year. France is a small market, and things can change quickly, but U.S.-based Morgan Stanley accounted for an eye-opening 40% of French M&A revenues.

Overall, M&A activity is bustling. The number of deals for 2018 is right on pace to equal those inked in 2017, but the average deal size has grown from $80m to $98m over that stretch.

All things considered, you’d likely rather work for a U.S. bank no matter where your office is located. Morgan Stanley appears the ideal employer at the moment. The firm has locked up the top spot on the league tables through the first half of the year in the U.S., the EU and APAC, displacing Goldman Sachs in all three locales.

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).

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Morgan Stanley gave a possible window into its eventual succession plan on Monday by offering a huge promotion to someone with a polar opposite background from its current chief executive, opening up the possibility that the bank could look a bit different after James Gorman retires.

As part of a series of moves, Morgan Stanley gave its trading chief, Ted Pick, oversight over the firm’s investment banking division. Pick, seen a potential successor to Gorman, may have just cemented his front-runner status as Morgan Stanley’s next CEO as he now controls businesses responsible for half the firm’s revenue. What makes the move interesting is that he’s different from Gorman in almost every way, including his experience and personality.

With a background in consulting and wealth management, Gorman is one of the most conservative CEOs in banking. He loves sustainable, predictable revenue, and suggested several times during the bank’s latest earnings call that he sees the firm’s securities business, which Pick has run successfully for several years, as more of a cherry on top rather than a core business that can be relied upon for consistent revenue. When asked how seasonality and market volatility affected Morgan Stanley’s terrific trading results in Q1, Gorman appeared to go out of his way to talk up other businesses within the bank, like wealth management, while downplaying the importance of sales and trading.

“We will do fine when the markets are tough and we would do well when the markets are good,” Gorman said after the bank booked $4.4 billion in trading revenue in Q1, up 26% year-over-year. “There are others who might do better when the markets are good, that’s fine. What I care about is how we do when the markets are tough.”

But perhaps this is why Gorman may prefer Pick, who cut 25% of Morgan Stanley’s fixed income traders in 2015 while slashing risk-weighted assets and relying more on electronic trading. Pick helped mold Morgan Stanley into a trading behemoth while simultaneously ratcheting down risk. Whether he would hold the reins as tight with Gorman gone is the question.

Either way, Pick’s potential ascension would likely bring a change in attitude at the top for Morgan Stanley. Unlike the extremely mild-mannered Gorman, Pick is known to have a penchant for profanity. Gorman’s predecessor, John Mack, once played a trick on Pick by having compliance pretend to flag him for his expletive-laden emails. Needless to say, Morgan Stanley could become a bit more fiery if Pick eventually succeeds Gorman, though the current CEO is only 59 and suggested that he’s not leaving anytime soon.

Elsewhere, a sell-side analyst at New York equity research firm Sidoti & Co. quit his job while burning every bridge he could, only to unsuccessfully try to put out the fires with a bottle of champagne. In a since-deleted Instagram video captured by the New York Post, Francesco Pellegrino pops a bottle of champagne, takes a swig, pours the rest on his boss’s floor and leaves a short letter of resignation on his desk: “F#*k you I quit.” Pellegrino will likely have to search elsewhere for a recommendation.

Meanwhile:

Beyond Pick’s elevation, Morgan Stanley also appointed co-head of investment banking Frank Petitgas to run its international business. Susie Huang, current head of M&A in the Americas, will take Petitgas’s seat, making her the first female to run an investment bank at a bulge bracket firm. (WSJ)

Goldman Sachs will reportedly meet early this fall to discuss its own succession plans. The bank’s remaining decision is likely to name the successor to current COO David Solomon, who is widely expected to be named CEO following the reported year-end retirement of Lloyd Blankfein. (NY Post)

Credit Suisse has dismissed the MD who reportedly acted inappropriately with an intern earlier this summer. Paul Dexter, a former managing director within the firm’s M&A division, allegedly had previous instances of inappropriate behavior. (Bloomberg)

There are three constants in life: death, taxes and Nomura announcing plans to grow in the U.S. The bank wants to hire 15 senior-level investment bankers, focused mainly on U.S. M&A. (NY Post)

The former CEO of Heartland Payment Systems has been charged with insider trading. The SEC has accused Robert Carr of tipping off a romantic partner that the fintech firm would be acquired before the news became public. (WSJ)

Deutsche Bank has hired one of its own investors, private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, to advise the German bank on its restructuring plan. DB has reportedly completed most of its job cuts, though this news could change that. (WSJ)

Employees at McKinsey & Company who pushed back on the consulting firm for doing business with the highly controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency have got their wish. McKinsey will no longer consult for ICE. (NY Times)

Blackstone is planning to launch a $20 billion global private equity fund, its eighth. (Bloomberg)

Follow @BeecherTuttle

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One of the greatest battles between management and staff in the investment banking industry is “mobile phones on the trading floor”. On the one hand, personal phones are a compliance disaster area. Staff can use them to talk to headhunters, to pass on information that they don’t want to talk about on a recorded line and even to download inappropriate videos.

On the other hand, financial markets employees were among the first adopters of smartphone technology, and it’s considerably more difficult to get their phones out of their hands than it is to do so from an average teenager.

The FCA, among other regulators, has been looking at this problem for a while. Even in the absence of clear criminal intention, it’s still possible for employee’s social media use to be in breach of regulatory principles – a recent case concerned an employee who was simply in the habit of boasting about all the deals he was involved in to a WhatsApp group, inadvertently revealing confidential client data as he did so. As far as anyone can tell, only the most draconian of social media policies could eliminate this risk, and since banking employees are usually hired because they’re intrinsically social people, some sort of risk is more or less inevitable.

An uneasy truce that some banks had reached was the policy of BYOD, or “bring your own device.” Rather than being restricted to the corporate Blackberry, you were able to get the office email on your own iPhone, in exchange for having the corporate monitoring software installed, and some of the most egregious compliance risk apps, like WhatsApp and Snapchat, deleted.

But this might not be sustainable. The thing is, if an employee is using their own phone for corporate purposes, it’s not clear what that means for compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Under a literal reading of the regulation, all of the employee’s contacts could be considered to be personal data held by the corporation, with all the associated overhead cost and compliance obligation. Since up to 40% of employees use their personal mobile phones for corporate business, that’s a considerable GDPR problem.

The official position of the FCA – and therefore the likely position of all European regulators, and in all probability global regulators too pretty soon – is that BYOD is just not allowed.

So if you’re going to go by the letter of the law, it’s the work laptop, the work mobile, and absolutely nothing else allowed on the trading floor or in the office.

Is this sustainable? The whole history of mobile technology in the financial services industry says not. Welcome back to the days of the “batphone”, the “burner” and the private device semi-secretly hidden in the handbag or jacket pocket. And to the days of senior management giving lectures at monthly meetings, but basically accepting that every now and then, the employees will pick up a subtle vibration from a desk drawer, and suddenly feel the need to “pop out for a cigarette”
to find out what’s really going on.

Dan Davies, is a senior research advisor at Frontline Analysts and a former banking analyst at Cazenove, Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas.

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.)

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In a world where job security and loyalty to employers are fading memories, it’s normally a given that you should have a well-written, up-to date, modern-recruiter-compliant CV ready to go. Strangely though, there’s one highly visible and successful vocational group whose CVs often look like relics from a bygone age. These are senior bankers.

“Bankers CVs tend to look very dated,” says Janet Moran, founder of The CV House. “You regularly see just a list of job titles and responsibilities, in Times New Roman type. They tend to transactional and don’t focus on strategic skills or leadership skills.” They are, she explains, designed to satisfy the requirement of producing a CV and not much more.

But does this matter? Historically, perhaps not. Financial institutions are good at promoting from within and, if you are moving up in the same organisation, people know who you are what you’re good at. Moreover, even when moves involve going to a different firm, they are often done via networks and contacts. So again, the CV is there to tick a box, rather than sell a candidate.

Nigel Parslow, a director at Harvey Nash Executive Search says that banking is a highly visible industry. “People know each other and they see what deals are being done.” It’s a bit like being in the movie business: everyone knows what you’ve been working on and how you’ve performed because your work is out there for all to see. “Financial services,” he adds, “is a very open sector.”

However, for all this, the need for a half decent CV may be growing. Recruitment processes are becoming more robust and professional says Ms Moran. Moreover, she adds, if there is a Brexodus from the City (or indeed any other form of downturn) jobs may be harder to come by, competition could increase and CVs might go from being a hygiene factor to being a genuine differentiator.

Worth remembering too, regardless of the economic climate, is that if you’re applying to jobs which are some distance (either geographically or functionally) from your current role, your CV will eventually fall into hands of someone who doesn’t know you or inow of you. In this case, the CV will be all they have to go on. For this reason says, Mr Parslow, you want it to be more than just a perfunctory record of what you’ve done.

He adds that even a traditional banking CV (a page on your history and a transaction sheet) can be improved: “You should try and show that you’ve worked on a range of deals across a range of sectors and demonstrate deal ownership.”

Andrew Pringle, the founder of Circle Square says that CVs have an important role to play for those from certain backgrounds. “If you’ve come from somewhere niche like a tech boutique which is not known to mainstream recruiters or if your job is non-vanilla, you need to provide a description.”

Here, he suggests a brief synopsis of the organisation and your own role. “Give quantifiables. You might say that your boutique has five offices across Europe and closed X deals, of which you worked on Y.” You should, he adds, explain too how much the deals were worth and how big your role in them was. Again, it’s about making yourself stand out.

There are some situations where you really are likely to need to go above and beyond a banking CV. These are where you are either moving out of banking and into a sector that measures career progress more conventionally or into a management role in banking.

Here Ms Moran counsels that here you want to be thinking about a CV which shows how you’ve contributed to organisation goals or dealt with strategic issues. “I’ve worked with bankers who’ve been involved in really groundbreaking activities, led teams through really difficult times and made really difficult decisions,” she explains. “But they don’t show any of this on their CVs. “There’s no indication that they can manage people or persuade people.”

Even if you’re not thinking of moving, it’s a good exercise to write your CV out anyway. Doing so is a good way of forcing yourself to take stock of your achievements, charting your career progress and planning where you want to be in a few years’ time.

Finally, as Clive Davis, UK Strategic Accounts & Operations Director, at Robert Half says, particularly in a business environment where change is expected, you never know what might be round the next corner – and so it is always good to be up to date. “Any passive candidate should ask themselves, ‘If an opportunity presents itself do I have a CV ready – and how good is it? How well does it represent who I am and what I’ve really been doing?”

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Understanding the true sentiment of bankers is a difficult task, particularly when it comes to pay. No matter the size of bonus pools, bankers habitually think they should earn more than they actually do. This year is no different, with more grumbling about recent bonuses than celebrating. That said, bankers at some firms are more discontented than others. Generally speaking, those in the U.S. and the U.K. fared better compared to their expectations than their counterparts in continental Europe, though there were a few outliers.

The data below comes from salary benchmarking firm Emolument, which surveyed more than 2,500 bankers across more than a dozen firms. Somewhat surprisingly, bankers at three U.K. firms – Barclays, HSBC and RBS – report being rather content with their 2018 bonus. Perhaps U.K. banks are taking care of their own before sending them packing post-Brexit? Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan filled out the top half of the chart, while Citi and Bank of America dragged down U.S. firms as a whole.

Meanwhile, just a handful of bankers at French firms BNP Paribas and SocGen reported being happy with their bonus. That trend may continue considering the most recent league tables. French banks took it on the chin in their own home country during the first half of 2018.

On the other side of the coin, the number of bankers who were unhappy with their 2018 bonus outpace their contented counterparts two-to-one. To no one’s shock, Deutsche Bank led the way with 52% of staffers displeased with their bonus. The bigger surprise, however, was that 26% of Deutsche bankers were actually happy with their bonus. Facing massive layoffs, the German lender has apparently decided to reward top performers it hopes to keep while passing over middling staff. Our own recent survey covering total compensation found similar results, with more Deutsche bankers being satisfied with their pay than one might think.

The biggest statistical outlier is Goldman Sachs, where just 24% of bankers reported being unhappy with their bonus – nine percentage points lower than at any competing firm. Expectations seem to meet reality at Goldman Sachs. Roughly half of respondents were neither happy or unhappy with their bonus.

Source: Emolument

Follow @BeecherTuttle

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Investment banking is meant to be an egalitarian system where all that matters is your ability to make money, in principle. In practice, anyone with experience of watching hiring and promotion decisions being made knows that the PLULPLU Principle (‘people like us like people like us’) is at least as important as in any other walk of life.

Now a report has come out putting some figures to the perception, and shaming and praising the best and worst companies in London for their class bias. The Social Mobility Foundation has published a list of the top 50 companies for recruiting people from poorer social backgrounds. And finance has not come out well.

Interestingly, some of the top companies on the list are accountancy and legal firms – KPMG, Grant Thornton and Deloitte are all there. The asset management and insurance sectors are also well represented by Aviva, M&G and Standard Life Aberdeen. This suggests that it’s not necessarily anything particular about financial knowledge that makes it easier to acquire if you grew up rich. But of the allegedly meritocratic world of the sell-side, only J.P. Morgan manages to appear on the list.

Why is there such a gap between the myth-making of “poor and hungry” and the reality? Part of it appears to be driven by the fact that top investment banks are even more obsessive than other blue-chip employers when it comes to only recruiting from the world’s top brand-name universities. This means that all the social stratification that’s already in the admissions process of Oxford, Cambridge and their equivalents worldwide tends to be reproduced on the graduate admissions programme at Barclays or Goldman Sachs.

It’s also true that getting a job in banking usually means coming through the internship route, and this means putting together a resume of academic and extramural selling points pretty early on in your university career. That’s something that people don’t necessarily realise they have to do if they didn’t come from a background where finance and investment was a daily subject of conversation.

And once you’re into the industry, there’s an awful lot of path dependency. Genuine rainmakers who can win deals or generate trading profits will find that they can move from bank to bank based on their track record. For the rest of us, the industry is likely to judge you based on what your previous employer looked like. So if you join a second-tier company to start with, it’s that much harder for you to reach the top ranks of the bulge bracket. As a slight first step to remove this path-dependency (and to help reduce discrimination in the hiring process), State Street has banned its managers from asking about previous salaries when making hiring decisions.

Deutsche Bank, of course, has been needing a particular kind of talent – in the chief operating officer division – for a while now. Its attempt to buy in some help from Matt Zames, the former JPM COO and Jamie Dimon lieutenant has not gone down well with its shareholders, though. The decision to hire the Cerberus Operations Advisory Company to advise on restructuring, rather than McKinsey or any other consultancy, has raised eyebrows because of a perception that Cerberus’ 3% equity stake in Deutsche creates a conflict of interest. “You have to ask yourself how Cerberus is earning most of its money”.

The private equity giant has assured the market that there will be full Chinese Wall separation between its advisory and investing activities, and agreed to be restricted in buying or selling Deutsche stock for as long as the consulting relationship goes on. But as the owner of a 5% stake in Commerzbank and (jointly with JC Flowers) of HSH Nordbank, it’s easy to see how Cerberus could be in a position to generate synergies for its own investments. And activist investors might wonder how a shareholder can really hold management to account if they’re partly on the payroll. Deutsche clearly needs help, but lots of people are wondering whether this was the help they needed.

Meanwhile:

Analysts are getting their scorecards ready for JPM and Citi as they kick off the Q2 results season. (Financial News)

Overall, UBS has tried to analyse the “sentiment” from earnings call transcripts measured by their use of favourable and unfavourable words and phrases. (Business Insider)

Credit Suisse has to decide whether to appeal against a Texas court which ruled that it had misled Highland Capital over a real estate development that collapsed in the crisis. (Reuters)

Deutsche Bank wants to get back into the top five for LBO lending. (Bloomberg)

The European Investment Bank wants Britain to remain a member post-Brexit. (FT)

Nomura are still hiring in some areas – Nezahat Gultekin has arrived from Temasek to head up tech banking in London. (Financial News)

The Kindle version of hedge fund cult classic “Margin of Safety” which briefly went on sale this week turned out to be a pirate edition. (Forbes)

The head of Morgan Stanley’s “Hollywood team” of brokers to the celebrities has left, after some #MeToo allegations. (WSJ)

Goldman Sachs is trying to get the IBD dealmakers to bring in wealth management clients. (Bloomberg)

And Elliott Management has taken control of AC Milan with a €50m equity investment. No word of what AC’s Argentinean players think of this. (Financial News)

Image credit: yoh4nn, Getty

Landing a job on the buy-side is a notoriously difficult task. The sheer number of people who apply to work at hedge funds, private equity firms and venture capitalists means you’ll likely need a blue-chip resume just to earn an interview. An MBA can help you separate yourself from the herd.

We scoured our CV database containing more than 900k resumes to identify the business schools that will give you the best chance for a career on the buy-side. As one would imagine, the list is made up of top programs, with U.S. business schools being the biggest feeder of talent. There were some surprises, however. Graduates of NYU’s Stern School of Business, a top destination for prospective investment bankers, don’t populate as many chairs on the buy-side as one might think. There are also fairly large gaps between top-rated programs in Europe and Asia. Columbia edging out Harvard and Wharton may come as a surprise to some, though it finished atop the list last year as well and was second in 2016.

The rankings are made up of the MBA programs with the highest percentage of graduates from each school who are currently working at hedge funds, private equity firms or venture capitalists. Schools included in the rankings needed to hit a minimum threshold of current buy-side employees and total MBAs grads within our database to be statistically significant, hence the omission of Stanford Graduate School of Business, which does well within the VC world but provides too small of a sample size overall.

It’s important to note that the rankings are based on the percentage of graduates from each business school working at hedge funds, private equity firms and VCs, not the overall total. MBA programs with larger enrollments like Wharton, Columbia, Harvard, Booth, INSEAD and London Business School account for the greatest number of buy-side employees, but the rankings are shifted slightly because a few other qualifying programs enroll fewer students yet sport higher percentages. An argument can be made to give those five schools an extra bump as more of their alumni are in the business and can help make introductions, though they all rank very highly anyway.

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Banks have a well-deserved reputation for promoting bad managers, but I would challenge anyone to produce a manager worse than my own. He is a guy with big problems.

He’s been here years and has struggled with stress for a long time. He himself was afflicted with a very aggressive manager in the past, and took some time out. Now he’s back and like the playground bully, is visiting his past traumas on his team. There are eight of us, and he’s our defacto boss.

He sits there, stony-faced, slamming his mouse and his keyboard for almost no reason and cursing quietly so that you can just about hear. We rarely have the guts to approach him, and when we do he says he’s too busy to talk to us. The only time he perks up is lunch (always a burger) or at the prospect of a trip to the U.S., where he seems to max out his expense card (we get to see the fancy restaurants he’s taken clients to). The rest of the time, he sits there, seething.

Why was he promoted? Your guess is as good as mine. Other teams are aware of his reputation and regularly commiserate with us. The head of the division likes him, though, and the feeling appears to be mutual as he’s all-smiles when the big boss comes around.

I suspect that his success also has something to do with HR. They know that this guy himself was bullied in the past and took some time out and they don’t want to risk him leaving again and potentially suing the bank for discrimination (he’s Asian). Either way, HR are doing nothing.

The situation is untenable, but we remain here like rabbits in the headlights. Most of us have been here for years and we don’t want to swap jobs now because moving banks would entail giving up our amassed redundancy packages, but working alongside our boss is like sitting in a room with a bee’s nest that has to be approached very carefully. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Caspar Abeln is the pseudonym of a VP in a U.S bank

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Following the social networking apps craze, Silicon Valley is now hosting a new tribe: the FinTechpreneurs. A deluge of East Coast tech talent from investment banks have traded their ties and jackets for flip-flops and sunshine. Since 2009, more than 7,500 fintech firms have been launched globally, with hundreds popping up in the Bay area alone. Annual funding of fintech startups jumped from $5.1bn to $28.4bn from 2009 to 2015, according to Accenture.

While the fintech craze was born mostly from business opportunity, many banking technologists have left the sell-side for personal reasons as well. For one founder, launching her own financial startup was a no-brainer, considering the quality of life with her former employer – a major British bank.

“Having very few moments for yourself and your personal life was very difficult,” says the founder, requesting anonymity. “I wasn’t prepared to do this sacrifice for the job. Unfortunately, there was not a good balance between work life and personal life no matter what management was trying to implement to improve it.”

While choosing to launch a startup was an obvious choice for the young CEO seeking a better work-life balance, the heyday of fintech may now be in the rear-view mirror. New entrants to the industry – many with traditional banking backgrounds and no experience with startup culture – have been surprised with the lack of traction they’ve gained. Market saturation, a lack of recent fundraising and the growing presence of their former employers – bulge bracket banks – have made life difficult for many fintech entrepreneurs.

“Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. It’s an awesome ride but it’s a wild one,” says one French-American founder based in New York. “You have to be OK to live with uncertainty. You never know what will happen tomorrow, next week or next month.”

Indeed, less than 10% of startups are still running after two years. Industry professionals tell us the odds aren’t much better in fintech. Many banking technologists get tripped up dealing with fundraisers – a key aspect of the job they had no exposure to in their previous life.

“Venture capitalists are complaining about longer return on investments. They are more wary – some of them even say fintech is not that ‘hot’ anymore,” said Robert Naess, CIO of Nordea Bank and head of its portfolio. Many VCs look at fintech as highly likely to become “a bubble,” he said.

VC investments in fintech in the U.K. actually declined by a third from 2015 to 2016, despite the fact that the number of deals increased by 5% over that time, according to Accenture. The activity is there, but the idea that fintech will foster the next round of startup unicorns is starting to fade. It’s not 2015 anymore.

The reality is that success for many fintech companies is not disruption, but simply being bought out by large banks that incorporate their technology. So far, the deals haven’t broken any records. Others have been forced to partner with investment banks to get their product off the ground, and not necessarily through traditional investments. J.P. Morgan operates an in-residence program that acts as an incubator for fintech startups – typically launched by former employees – where the bank ultimately decides whether to go to market or keep the technology proprietary. Many competing banks have jumped on board, embracing Blockchain, AI and cryptocurrencies, further crowding the field with companies that have near-unlimited financing and huge existing customer bases.

In order to stay afloat, many fintech startups have no other option than to look to big banks. But fintech CEOs have struggled with traditional institutions’ lack of agility, willingness to partner and culture fit, according to the Capgemini World Fintech Report.

The end result is more stories like that of Jonathan Birnbaum, a former star Morgan Stanley trader who made Forbes’ top 30 under 30 finance list before quitting the firm to launch a fintech startup. Just six months later, he returned to finance at hedge fund behemoth Bridgewater Associates. Working in fintech isn’t all roses, it appears.

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Making managing director is often the highlight of anyone’s career in investment banking, and it was for me too when I reached that rank at UBS in Hong Kong. But unlike many freshly-minted MDs, I didn’t celebrate the milestone with a round of extravagant spending on high-end brands. And throughout my time as an MD I didn’t feel the need for designer goods – I wore a Timex, not a Rolex, for example.

Why do a lot of MDs have a passion for luxury items? And why don’t I? Let me explain.

What bankers buy

Bankers in Asia tend to prefer big global brands over local boutique labels. Many senior bankers don’t think twice about spending US$50k on a watch, and Patek Phillippe is an obvious choice if they don’t go for an Audemars Piguet. For suits, it’s often Zegna or Tom Ford, complemented by a Hermès tie. And if you see someone with a Tumi briefcase and carry-on luggage on a plane between Singapore and Hong Kong, you know he or she is probably a banker. Some bankers use their MD promotion to make more substantial lifestyle upgrades, such as trading in their Porsche for a Ferrari.

Why bankers spend so lavishly

Having seen many people get promoted during more than 20 years working in banking, I think that lavish spending on well-known luxury brands is largely to celebrate hard-earned titles. Some bankers have no time to shop, so by purchasing big brands they know they “can’t go wrong”. Others may want people to see and recognise their possessions. Their message is: ‘I have arrived! Look at my watch and look at my car!’. I’m embarrassed to admit that I had this mentality when I became a vice president some 15 years ago.

Why didn’t I splash out?

So why didn’t I spend as much as some other new MDs? And why would I advise that senior bankers keep their spending in check? There are several reasons:

The thrill never lasts

You typically only enjoy something during the first few weeks of owning it – then the novelty wears off. So why bother buying top-range brands when there are so many excellent middle-market alternatives out there? I find my Muji bags good enough when I travel. My Audi cars (no Ferraris) have served me well wherever I have worked, be it Singapore, Shanghai or Hong Kong.

Big-brand items aren’t always practical

Some of the expensive things that bankers like buying aren’t always practical, especially when you’re travelling a lot. Expensive cuff links and French-cuff shirts are almost a standard among male bankers. But I avoid both. It’s annoying on a business trip if you forget your cuffs – your shirts become unusable. I once had to buy two loaves of bread just to get some twist-ties to keep my shirt cuffs together. As a banker, my focus should be on serving clients, not on worrying about the expensive watch that I just remembered I left in my hotel room.

MD-level job security isn’t great

The MD rank is no guarantee of job security. In fact, senior bankers have been more likely to be laid off in recent years. And if you lose your MD job, it’s disproportionally difficulty to find one that pays a similar salary and bonus – banks in Asia don’t hire much at this level. In short, a flashy lifestyle is potentially unsustainable because it’s linked to one’s ability to make an ever-increasing yearly revenue budget. When I became an MD in 2011, I was a bit nervous because I’d seen many people get made redundant shortly after being promoted. And throughout my time as a senior banker, I was always grateful and didn’t assume my job would be there forever. So I simply wasn’t willing to boost my spending.

It’s better to save

By not spending so much when I was an MD, I was able to set more money aside so that I could maintain my lifestyle when I retired from the industry, and could be my own boss, and do something I love. And I’ve been able to achieve my goal – I set up a training and career coaching firm in 2016, continued my university teaching and now also blog to 2.5m followers on LinkedIn.

I prefer the personal touch

Here’s an example of a cheaper product being more effective: As a banker, I didn’t write with a pricey Montblanc; I always used Pilot pens and would make large orders of them with my name and email address printed on each one. I’d give them away to clients and potential clients, who would have a reminder of me on their desks. I tailored my suits not only because it was cheaper than buying off the rack, but also because I like to have pockets for my iPhone and access cards.

My habit of comparing prices

Noticing my Timex watch, an analyst once asked me why I didn’t wear a ‘proper’ watch that seniors bankers typically wear. I told him that it was partly because my modest family background (my mother worked two jobs just to get money to buy groceries) meant I’d always been ‘price sensitive’. I still have a bad habit of comparing prices between different supermarkets, for example, even though I can probably afford to buy anything on their shelves.

Eric Sim is a former UBS managing director who’s now the founder of career training school Institute of Life in Hong Kong. He’s also a guest lecturer at Renmin University and Tsinghua University’s Schwarzman College.

If you’re working at Bank of America, did you wake up with an extra bounce in your walk today, from the knowledge that according to Euromoney, your employer is officially the World’s Best Bank? And Citi employees, how does it feel to be the World’s Best Investment Bankers? The year-long reign of HSBC and Morgan Stanley has come to an end, and the bragging rights have been redistributed. Jean-Pierre Mustier is no longer the Banker of the Year – that title is now held by Tidjane Thiam of Credit Suisse. It’s all a bit of fun – or is it?

Well, it is all a bit of fun, but it’s not just a bit of fun. Banks put in a surprising amount of lobbying to win these titles and Euromoney’s editorial team put in the hours reviewing them. There were 1,500 submissions in total for the awards programme in total (20 global awards, 50 regional awards, and “Best Bank in ….” awards for nearly 100 countries). The judging process took four months and required over a thousand interviews. People are taking this a little bit more seriously than your average industry awards ceremony with a prosecco and chicken supper and 30 minutes of banter from a comedian in a dinner jacket.

The reason is that these “World’s Best” awards look absolutely fantastic in a pitchbook. The “credentials” slide is always one of the most important in any deck when you’re trying to get new business, because it’s the one that tells the clients what they really want to know. And since everyone is exaggerating their achievements, it’s valuable beyond belief to have a big gold star on that slide demonstrating that an informed outside judge with no particular conflict of interest thinks that your bank is the best at what they do.

That’s why the real value that was distributed at the ceremony last night is in the global category awards. Things like “World’s Best Bank” and “Banker of the Year” are not really specific enough to motivate a transaction. Potential clients might see them (probably correctly) as awards for having a currently fashionable business model, a rising share price and managing to avoid any really damaging scandals that year. But “Best Bank For Transaction Services” (HSBC) or “Best Bank For Sustainable Financing” (BNP Paribas) – to a client interested in doing some business in that space, this is a title very much worth having.

And related to this, winning the category awards is great news for bonus expectations. It’s unlikely that many people at BoA are really expecting a better compensation round for winning the overall gold star. But the heads of divisions who won “Best Bank For Financial Institutions” (Morgan Stanley) or “Best Digital Bank” (DBS) will not only be expecting a good year’s compensation round themselves, but will be able to make a pretty good case to the C-Suite that their world-beating franchise is delivering results and needs to be paid up in order to keep the team together. Congratulations to everyone who won.

Commiserations to anyone who was hoping for a good result from the UK government’s Brexit White Paper, which was about as disappointing for London’s bankers as Wednesday’s football score. It was finally confirmed that there is basically no hope for UK finance that the “passport” which allows them to do business all over the EU will remain, and the “mutual recognition” approach which was proposed as an alternative to it has been recognised as unacceptable to Europe. Instead, British banks will do business on the basis of “regulatory equivalence”, the same regime as US firms, to the very great dissatisfaction of industry associations. The Brits still hope that they can agree an “expanded” version of regulatory equivalence, but at present this doesn’t look likely. The European Securities Markets Authority has warned UK firms currently doing business in Europe under the passport that they only have until the end of July to get in their applications for a securities business authorisation in one of the EU27 states, and that they shouldn’t be relying on a transition period.

Meanwhile

Philippe Moryoussef, formerly of Barclays, was found guilty in the Euribor-rigging trial, while Achim Kraemer was found not guilty and remains employed by Deutsche Bank. The jury failed to reach a verdict on the other three defendants, who were all former Barclays employees. (Financial Times)

Jacques Ripoll of Santander will be replacing Jean-Yves Hocher at Crédit Agricole CIB when he retires this year. (Financial News)

The New York Department of Financial Services wants fintech lenders to be regulated to the same standards as conventional ones. At present, many online operations partner with national banks who are recorded as the “true lender” and thus avoid state-level usury laws. (Finextra)

Morgan Stanley has an AI platform, called “next best action”, which draws on a database of hundreds of conversations with its advisors to make recommendations. (American Banker)

A former department head at Citibank now offers guided trips to follow the path of Guru Rinpoche in Nepal. (Entrepreneur)

Deutsche, Rabobank, Unicredit and other European banks have launched we.trade, the first live trade finance platform to run on blockchain technology. They have had ten customers use it in the first five days. (Forbes)

Arabesque, the quant fund, has run data on various metrics to score global companies on environmental, social and governance issues. Lots of European banks did badly, but Deutsche Bank (partly as a result of governance issues and layoffs) was among the worst, ranking number 6,539 out of 6,700. (Financial News)

Christopher Lawrence, the rainmaker at Rothschild responsible for deals like Intel/Mobileye and American/US Airways, will be joining Lazard as head of global financial advisory. (Reuters)

No banks (unless you count Fannie Mae) in the top ten workplaces. (Indeed)

An unnamed J.P. Morgan employee has got a record $30m whistle blower award from the CFTC for speaking up about conflicts of interest with asset management clients. (Bloomberg)

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If you make it to the top of banking, you’re going to be part of the 1%. Congratulations! Except, that this comes with some downsides: success can breed envy and criticism. If you want to handle this without turning resentful and aloof, you need to cultivate the right mindset. Here’s what that looks like.

Personally, I recently reached a major milestone in my life: my 40^th birthday. It’s a cliché, yes, but this midlife marker has caused me to look at my life and to consider my priorities.

When I first started out, my biggest focus was on all the money I could earn. After eighteen years of experience, and making money….the money is no longer the most important thing.

Instead, my goal now is to pursue all the wisdom and happiness I can gather. Over the course of my career, I’ve come to realize that nothing in life, whether good or bad, will last forever.

If you want to keep your head in finance, you’ll need to be a stoic. Focus only on what you can control. I try to spend my time controlling what I focus on – my goals, and my values. The rest is out of my power, so there is no sense in stressing over it. I now know that I don’t get to control the outcome, the result, or other people’s actions.

I also try to avoid feeling flattered or forlorn about other people’s opinions of me. I don’t want to spend all my time and energy chasing the latest status symbol to elevate me in the eyes of others.

I try to be humble. Over my demanding career, one of my favorite pursuits has been to remain modest at all times. No matter how far I have got or what I have done, I’ve tried to be like the Romans who were continuously reminded of their mortality after battlefield successes. – Remember we are just ants crawling around on a big rock and none of this matters. Being humble also helps to protect you against the loss of all that you have accomplished. Slow down, enjoy people: we are all on this crazy journey called life together.

I try to help people and I feel like this is one of the best ways of dealing with feelings of envy and criticism. – Help people who have less and who aren’t as lucky. – Help the new guy learn the ropes.

Most of all, I try to remember that I didn’t get here alone. I had help from friends and mentors along the way and it’s now my turn to pay it forward and return the favors and the wisdom to my mentees, In doing so, I’m helping others and facilitating my own personal growth.

Here’s to another ten years of hard work!

The author is one of a group of senior bankers who blog at the site What I Learnt on Wall Street.

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Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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Goldman Sachs has poached a senior corporate derivatives executive from UBS as it seeks to grow the business under assumed CEO-in-waiting David Solomon. Former UBS executive director Andrew Bisset will start with Goldman after his gardening leave period is up, according to sources.

The move comes just a month after Solomon, Goldman’s current COO, provided a strategy update for investors in which he singled out the bank’s corporate derivatives business as an area of focus. Goldman Sachs finished 2017 with the fourth-ranked corporate derivatives franchise, but Solomon indicated at the time that the bank planned to grow the team.

The hire comes at a somewhat tumultuous time for Goldman’s equity derivatives business, at least in Europe. Several high-profile traders have recently left the bank, including executive directors Francesco Taglietti and James Spooner in May. Nick Laux, the London-based head of single stocks derivatives trading and a Goldman Sachs lifer, is also said to have left the bank, as has Jean Paul Gorda, an executive director in equity derivatives sales in Paris. The departures follow a number of big-name equity derivatives hires earlier in the year.

Bisset, who is based out of New York, spent the last decade at UBS following a two-year stint at Lehman Brothers, where he was a risk solutions analyst, according to LinkedIn. Neither Goldman or Bisset responded to requests for comment on the hire.

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J.P. Morgan and Citigroup each booked strong second quarter performances, with profits increasing 18% and 16%, respectively. But J.P. Morgan’s investment bank and securities businesses shined in Q2, shattering expectations on route to a big payday for its bankers and traders.

Investment banking fees at J.P. Morgan were record-breaking, reaching nearly $2.2 billion on the back of a 24% increase in M&A fees compared to a 14% jump at Citi. IPO bankers also fared well at Citigroup, increasing fees by 8% to $335m. At JPM, meanwhile, equity underwriting revenues were up a ridiculous 49% to $570m. Each business line was expected to show marked signs of improvement with M&A and IPO activity spiking during Q2, but J.P. Morgan bankers took better advantage of the environment. Debt underwriting fees were down 1% at J.P. Morgan and 20% at Citi year-over-year.

In sales and trading, J.P. Morgan was particularly adept. Markets revenues were expected to remain somewhat flat during the second quarter as average trading volume on the NYSE declined by more than 8% between quarters. Yet J.P. Morgan’s markets revenues increased 13% to $5.4b, beating expectations by $500m. Equity trading revenues were up 24% year-over-year while fixed income revenues climbed 7%.

Meanwhile, Citi’s markets revenues met street expectations, falling by 1% to $4.5b. Equities traders did well, however, increasing revenues by 19%. The gains were offset by Citi’s fixed income business, which saw revenues decrease by 6% year-over-year.

The end result is a financial windfall for investment bankers and traders at J.P. Morgan. Compensation totals within its corporate and investment bank (CIB) were up 11% compared to Q2 of 2017. The bank shed around 800 jobs overall during the quarter, but added more than 200 staffers within its CIB. Compensation at Citi remained flat.

The results suggest that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley may be next week’s earnings darlings. Both banks rely heavily on their huge investment banking and markets businesses, though JPM’s traders could have simply had a banner quarter that won’t be replicated by rivals.

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Working flexibly means that Andrea Chan is able to attend her children’s school events and be involved in their education. A Division Director in Macquarie’s Commodities and Global Markets team based in the Hong Kong office, Andrea says being able to work flexibly allows her to be present and “does away with a lot of guilt and distraction”.

Recognising that flexible working means different things to different people, Macquarie’s approach is to empower its staff to manage their professional commitments to suit their own personal situation, and equips its people managers to lead a flexible workforce. For Andrea, that means a four day work week, having Fridays off but says she is flexible with her days and changes it based on business and team needs.

In addition to spending more time with her children, Andrea uses her flexibility to volunteer, running better education programs in schools for an NGO.

Macquarie recognises that flexibility is a key enabler of productivity and engagement and is committed to providing a flexible workplace that supports its people to reach their full potential.

Recognising that not all financial institutions offer flexible work arrangements, Andrea says she approached her manager “gingerly, but hopefully” when discussing her need for flexibility but was met with a positive response. Understanding what she needs to achieve, Andrea manages her deliverables regardless of which days she is in the office and balances family life and volunteering whilst holding her senior position at Macquarie.

Having more time to spend with her two young children as well as giving back to the community, Andrea says that she is very thankful that both her manager and Macquarie support her flexible work arrangement. This view is supported by Biju Joseph Jacob in Macquarie’s Singapore office.

When Biju approached his manager about working flexibly so he could further his study, he was met with a “very positive response”. Going back to university to study a Master’s degree in Management and to pursue the Chartered Financial Analyst exams meant that Biju would need to attend morning classes once a week. He wanted to keep his fulltime workload, so after a conversation with his manager who Biju says was “extremely supportive of this initiative”, they worked out a personalised flexible working arrangement that allowed him to attend classes and sit his exams without reducing his work hours.

Biju is a senior manager and sits within Macquarie’s Technology team, supporting the Equity Derivatives and Trading business as a software developer. Once a week he comes in to the office in the afternoon and works late into the evening. The arrangement, which has been in place for the past two years, means that he can both maintain his fulltime work and attend his classes.

“The flexible working policy has enabled me to complete my Master’s degree and to pursue the Chartered Financial Analyst exams. These studies have not only helped me personally by equipping me with up-to-date technological, financial and management skills, but has also motivated me to contribute more back to the firm,” Biju said.

“Flexible working does not come at the cost of one’s career growth. Instead it provides a mechanism for an employee to perform at their peak. The ability for me to bring back modern academic concepts to use at work has been very valuable.”

As technology continues to evolve to allow greater freedom to perform work from different locations and in different ways, Biju says that he was able to utilise Macquarie’s flexible-working technology to stay connected, regardless of where he was.

Set to graduate this month, Biju says he has already “taken on additional responsibility, making my role more aligned with my newly acquired skillset.”

Andrea and Biju’s stories aren’t unique at Macquarie, with employees working flexibly for many years in different ways across their offices globally. To further promote flexibility, Macquarie employees across Asia are celebrating #flexweek, an initiative introduced to further encourage workplace flexibility and to promote the range of options available to its employees.

Find out more about a career at Macquarie: www.macquarie.com/careers.

Many new entrants into banking complain about the culture, often comparing it enviously to that of the tech world, where their former classmates are strolling into the office in jeans while banging out work on a beanbag chair. But what would a traditional bank even look like if it embraced a more laidback culture? And would employees actually prefer it? Berkshire Hills Bank is providing some answers to both those questions.

The somewhat unknown Boston-based bank has quietly grown its assets from $1b to $11.5b since 2002, when it was taken over by unconventional chief executive Michael Daly. “We’re not boring,” Daly told the Wall Street Journal in an exposé. Dubbed “America’s most exciting bank” (by Daly himself), Berkshire Hills doesn’t allow employees to wear suits, plays rock music at every meeting and hosted lip-sync battles where bankers dressed up like members of the band KISS. Daly even once “let it rain” at an employee town hall, throwing out $100 bills to a crowd of employees.

Daly’s unconventional leadership style pushes beyond fun and games, however. He writes hundreds of handwritten notes to his 1,900 employees every month and hands out his cellphone number to new employees who join via acquisition, encouraging them to “come get in [his] face” to prove they’re worth keeping around, according to the Journal. He’s been known to hire outside of traditional channels to find talent, including bringing on two former clothing store salespeople who impressed Daly with their energy.

Does every employee love the culture? Daly acknowledged that not all do, noting executives who don’t buy in tend to move on rather quickly. Roughly 40 employee reviews on Glassdoor paint a muddled picture, with some staff applauding the relaxed dress code and culture while others complained about a lack of training and “juvenile” co-workers. The average Glassdoor rating is a 2.1 out of 5; Daly has a 33% approval rating from employees. Berkshire Hills is a retail bank, but it’s building up its wealth management, private banking and commercial lending businesses.

Elsewhere, the co-owner of a London private equity firm may have taken the cake for the worst office party foul in the industry. Elvaston Capital’s Oliver Thum allegedly brought his mistress to the office shindig, prompting his wife to file for divorce two days later, according to the Telegraph.

Meanwhile:

Here are the average Wall Street salaries and bonuses for all five traditional banking titles. The biggest percentage increase is the difference in pay for VPs who get promoted to director. (Business Insider)

Despite plans to move 500 workers to the EU post-Brexit, Goldman Sachs has committed to occupying nearly every seat at its new London headquarters. (The Telegraph)

Roughly 4,500 tech workers from companies like Google are banding together to create a volunteer network that helps Democrats utilize digital mediums to reach voters. (NY Times)

Around 40% of J.P. Morgan senior tech hires come from traditional technology companies, rather than rival banks. (Business Times)

Hedge fund Millennium Management is considering moving from its 5th Avenue office space owned by Kushner Cos., the real estate developer formerly headed by President Trump’s son-in-law. (NY Post)

A sculpture made out of coins that depicted a beggar bent over a bowl was apparently not earmarked for its location outside the Royal Exchange in downtown London. The installation was unauthorized, hence the statue’s eventual removal, but nobody knows who built it or how it was installed without anyone noticing. (The Times)

Traders on the NYSE used to wear hats on every Friday the 13th to ward off bad luck. The tradition ended when a reporter snuck onto the trading floor and wrote an article titled “The Fat Cats in Hats.” (Business Insider)

Wearing a tie may reduce blood flow to your brain, according to a new study. (New Scientist)

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So much for Deutsche Bank’s 70 layoffs a day in May and June 2018: the German bank’s preliminary Q2 results, released unexpectedly today, reveal that only around 40 jobs each working day (1,700 in total) were eliminated in the two months after CEO Christian Sewing took over in April. Maybe Sewing decided to go easy on his front office bankers people after all? Even so, Deutsche’s corporate and investment bank (CIB) kept on losing market share.

As a quick recap, Sewing said in April that he intended to cut 7,000 jobs across the bank. Around 5,000 of these (although Sewing didn’t exactly say so) were expected to come from the CIB. At the end of May, Sewing said he planned to make all the front office CIB job cuts in June – implying around 2,200 front office job cuts in a month based on the fact that 45% of Deutsche’s CIB staff are in the front office (and presuming that the cuts were made in proportion to this).

The fact that just 1,700 jobs have been eliminated therefore implies that Deutsche’s front office bankers got off very lightly. Yes, emerging markets bankers, oil and gas bankers, equity structurers, healthcare bankers, prime brokerage personnel, and U.S. rates people have gone (among others), but it could have been much worse. Even so, Sewing’s strategy is showing signs of shakiness: as bankers are falling away, so – seemingly – is Deutsche Bank’s market share.

So far, only J.P. Morgan and Citi have divulged their results for the second quarter of 2018. Based on today’s limited revelations from Deutsche Bank (DB only gave overall revenue figures for all trading and for the whole of its investment banking division), Deutsche’s traders and its investment bankers lost share to their counterparts in the second quarter of 2018 – only the woeful performance of Citi’s investment bankers was worse. More worryingly – and as the second chart below shows – Deutsche’s traders and bankers also lost significant share to their two U.S. rivals in the first half of this year as a whole. And while Deutsche is losing, J.P. Morgan seems to be growing.

Sewing may not care about the shriveling share of Deutsche’s investment bank. – He is after all, a retail banker, who is widely expected to pivot to what he knows. However, Sewing has also said that he wants the investment bank to remain core to Deutsche’s DNA. We’ll only really know how Deutsche compares once other banks report over the next few weeks. For the moment, though, Sewing seems to be proving the adage that you can’t shrink to glory – and that if you try to, U.S. investment banks will take advantage of your diminution.

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