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Corporate bond underwriting is one of the few flourishing businesses in fixed income. The only problem for big banks is that, unlike in years past, bond underwriting is no longer their own personal sandbox. Smaller players keep showing up uninvited.

This year, the top five banks in U.S. corporate bond sales – J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Barclays –have combined to win the smallest market share in any comparable timeframe, according to Bloomberg. At 47%, the top earners still own the lion’s share, but that’s down from 59% in 2009, and it’s likely to keep dropping. Nearly 150 underwriters are now in the business.

If that weren’t enough, margins are also falling. Junk-bond underwriting fees, which pay the most, stand at record lows, according to Bloomberg. Fees at the top banks are down 6% despite volumes only falling 2.5%.

The news stands as a kick to the gut for fixed income businesses that are already reeling at top U.S. banks. FICC trading revenue may fall as much as 20% this quarter at the likes of Citi, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

Interesting, Goldman President Gary Cohn made an argument last week that the bank is actually gaining market share in fixed income trading, though “it’s tough to see.” His argument is that Goldman is winning more higher-margin trades than competitors. So, when volatility returns, Goldman’s revenues should increase at a faster pace, or so goes his theory.

It’s Boutique Time (eFinancialCareers)

Want to work for a boutique investment banking firm? Now’s the time. Boutiques are thriving, particularly M&A-focused Moelis & Co. and Greenhill & Co. Here’s what you need to know before applying to either firm.

Back Office Jackpots (eFinancialCareers)

Here’s a list of the highest-paid back office jobs globally. Sadly, only one opening resides in New York.

Icahn and Lefty (WSJ)

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, famed gambler Billy Walters and PGA golfer Phil Mickelson are being investigated for insider trading. News of the investigation may hinder its success as the government has lost the element of surprise. Secret wiretaps are critical to convictions.

People Moves (Bloomberg)

Goldman Sachs has named Stephen Scherr as its new chief strategy officer. Scherr is replacing Andrew Chisholm, who’s retiring after three decades with the bank. Elsewhere, UBS Global Chief Investment Officer Alexander Friedman is stepping down, and Chris Levett is returning to Moore Capital Management.

KKR Exits Hedge Fund Industry (Reuters)

KKR has confirmed that it is shuttering its three-year-old hedge fund unit formed by ex-Goldman Sachs prop traders, led by Bob Howard. KKR will say goodbye to roughly a dozen staffers as it liquidates the fund.

You’re Fired (BBW)

J.P. Morgan is the second bank to be fired by meat producer JBS for partnering with rival Tyson Foods in a bidding war. Banks have never really been loyal throughout all parts of their businesses, but JBS doesn’t seem to care.

It Pays to Be Here (FT)

The average banking chief executive earned a 10% pay raise last year, but not all compensation was equal. CEOs at the six largest U.S. banks ranked among the seven best-paid bosses.

Buzz Around the Office

Only $27.5 Million Per Bedroom (Bloomberg)

The penthouse apartment atop the famed Woolworth Building in Manhattan is priced at a record $110 million. The apartment spans nine stories yet houses only four bedrooms. Surely there’s enough room for a pullout sofa or two.

Quote of the Day: “While I have obviously heard of Phil Mickelson, I have never spoken to him or met him.” – Carl Ichan

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The purpose of investment banking jobs is changing. Once, they were all about earning large amounts of money in small amounts of time. Now, they’re partly about getting the right brands on your CV and partly about meeting people who (if they stick at it) will become rich in future and buy things from you if you quit banking to become an entrepreneur.

The first point was made by Wharton Business School and McGill University in a study released last year. The Wharton showed that you earn more in later life when you have a big name brand (Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan) on your CV. The second point is made by Bloomberg journalist Max Abelson today. Abelson shows that people who’ve exited banking are now having fun selling expensive items to people who haven’t.

Take Serge Marquie, former head of corporate equity derivatives at Goldman Sachs, who now sells Napa Valley Wines to ‘bankers and hedge fund guys’. Or Jay Dweck, the former head of global strategies at Goldman who is now busy selling illuminated violin-shaped pools to former colleagues with $5m to spare.

Marquie and Dweck aren’t the first former bankers to figure there’s money to be made from colleagues who are in the industry for the long haul. Helena Boas, the founder of female bankers’ favourite underwear label, Bodas, began life as an analyst at Mercury Asset Management. Barney Stratton, a former corporate financier who left the City of London over a decade ago, is now well known for his ‘Stockton Shoot,‘ which offers London bankers the opportunity to take potshots at pheasants. Andrew Kojima, a former equities analyst at Morgan Stanley and UBS, is now busy cooking for friends’ dinner parties.

The selling-stuff-to-ex-colleagues trend is only likely to gather pace. As banks reinstate their ‘pyramids’ and opportunities to make it to the top of the hierarchy dwindle, it will make more sense to drop out and sell high-margin deluxe items to people at the top of structure than it will to to cling on bitterly half way up.

How junior bankers at JPM and GS must spend their mandatory holidays

Wharton study identifies ideal banker career path: spend the first 5 years at Goldman Sachs

VP and director: the new worst job titles in investment banks?

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In the latest hiring roundup, a London hedge fund eyes global expansion, boutiques are poaching from big banks and one regulator needs to hire hundreds.

Calpers needs a CIO

It’s only one opening, but it’s a big one. Calpers, the largest public pension fund in the US, is hiring a new chief investment officer. No network needed. Just send your resume to their recruiter.

One door closes, another opens

The Ziff Brothers have now shut down their hedge fund officers in New York and London after losing their top portfolio managers. David Fear, head of ZBI’s London office, is launching his own firm. He’ll be hiring many of staffers from his old firm, but will likely look at other candidates as well.

Losing hedge fund still hiring

AKO Capital lost tens of millions last year, but it’s still hiring. The London-based hedge fund has eight more people working in research than it did a year ago. It also just hired to people in administration roles.

100 new hedge fund hires

Winston Capital Management wants to recruit 100 people for new offices in London (Hammersmith), New York, Tokyo and Sydney. The firm wants to become “an international investment manager,” according to its CEO.

Compliance hiring spikes, again

Some banks and hedge funds are hiring “50 to 60” compliance staffers at a time, led by the likes of JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup. Because of this, salaries are skyrocketing, including for people with less than two years of experience.

Italian bank expanding presence abroad

Mediobanca is hiring ex-investment bankers from Barclays as it tries to reposition itself as a boutique.

Economists apply here

Investment banks are scouring competitors, central banks and academia to find economists who can help them develop stress-testing models.

Small advisers poaching from big banks

Boutique advisors Robey Warshaw Associates and Zaoui & Co. are hiring…mostly from Morgan Stanley. Fellow boutiques Moelis & Co and Greenhill & Co. are also having success, so keep your eye on them.

SEC needs 640 more staffers

The SEC has “immediate and pressing” needs for more examiners who oversee and investigate financial advisors. It plans to hire as many as 640 new employees all together.

The post UK hedge funds step up hiring; boutiques winning poaching war appeared first on eFinancialCareers.

Transaction banking is a hot sector in Singapore and across Asia. It’s generating jobs as banks in the region chase steady income streams from globalising Asian companies and try to reduce their reliance on investment banking.

Salaries in the sector are rising as a result, as we reported last month. Meanwhile, wholesale transaction-banking revenues in Asia Pacific are expected increase to $139 billion by 2022, from $46 billion in 2012, according to a September report by the Boston Consulting Group.

DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank, is among the firms recruiting transaction-banking professionals across Asia right now. We speak to Lum Yin Fong, managing director of global transaction services, cash and trade, at DBS and a veteran banker who’s also worked for Citibank and ABN AMRO, about the type of candidates she is looking to hire.

You graduated in the mid-1970s and got your first job at Citibank – how does Singapore corporate banking back then compare with now?

There were a lot fewer innovations, it was not so much of a KPI-driven culture and probably less stressful as well. Back then, your competitors were just the banks, while in transaction services today you’re competing against non-bank players like PayPal and e-commerce portals. And while compliance has always been important, Basel III, FATCA and other new regulations are fundamental to jobs in transaction banking – it’s no longer the responsibility of the compliance officer. For example, DBS is now offering more Renminbi products, so for these we need to understand relevant regulations not just here in Singapore but in Hong Kong and China too. Another big issue today is the importance of cyber security, because of the potential for transactions to be compromised by cyber attacks.

As a Singaporean-headquartered firm, is DBS able to compete for talent with the large international banks in Asia?

I joined DBS in 2001 and was tasked with setting up a transaction-banking team. We had about 20 people in the team back then; now we have almost 400. When I started at DBS, it could sometimes be quite difficult to hire good people, but this situation has totally reversed now. Our capabilities and product range have expanded enormously – we regularly win trophy deals from large corporates in Asia – and this means we can attract the best talent. We’re headquartered in Singapore, but I no longer define us just as a Singaporean bank; we are regional now.

What are your hiring plans within transaction banking?

We continue to hire and grow our headcount in both core areas of transaction services – cash management and trade financing – for both product-sales and product-structuring roles. When sales increase, we also have to hire more product people to support them. Trade within Asia is growing faster than Asian trade with the US or Europe. Our corporate customers are expanding their businesses into new Asian markets and we must respond to their changing needs. For example, we have set up a China desk in Singapore to service mainland companies who are expanding here.

Which countries are you recruiting in?

We are hiring across Asia – especially in our core markets of Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and India. We’ve also been hiring a few people in Vietnam, Korea and Los Angeles, and are now potentially looking at London. In the near future, Myanmar will be a key place for trade growth. When you’re helping clients manage and reconcile payments, handling day-to-day things like letters of credit, you need people on the ground to service them directly.

What skills are you looking for?

I’m not just interested in whether you can do a letter of credit or remittance, you also need to be able to help clients with their broader working-capital needs. Transaction banking is a volume business, it’s not about doing one big IPO deal, so you need to enjoy helping customers over the long term.

Are graduates interested in transaction banking as a career?

Prior to 2008 most young graduates wanted to work in glamorous areas like equity capital markets or debt capital markets, but the financial crisis highlighted the importance of bread-and-butter transaction services, which provide stability to banks’ revenues. Things have changed a lot – I now see much more interest in transaction-banking careers.

What’s the key lesson you have learnt during your banking career?

During my early days at Citibank I told the Singapore CEO that I didn’t want to work in an operations role, but he told me to do it for a few years and that I’d soon change my mind, which I did. Now I always encourage people in the DBS management associate programme to do a stint, perhaps two years, in the back office. If they then do a customer-facing role, an ops background helps them speak to customers with an in-depth knowledge of what’s really happening at the bank – the key risk and control processes. You know exactly what you can put into products and exactly what you are selling. A corporate banker who’s done a stint in credit ops, for example, will have a much better understanding of their customers’ credit worthiness.

The post DBS MD explains how to build a successful career in a booming part of Asian banking appeared first on eFinancialCareers.

It’s happening. Paul Taubman, the former-Morgan Stanley rainmaker who left the bank in 2012 and has since advised on some of the biggest deals on the market despite operating entirely on his own from a shared office in a law firm with no secretary, is setting up a boutique.

Not only is Taubman setting up a boutique, he’s also poaching Morgan Stanley M&A bankers to staff it. The first defectors are reportedly Robert Friedsam and James Murray, both members of the TMT M&A team at Morgan Stanley, which is Taubman’s specialized subject.

If you aspire to work for a boutique, you have options. The spectrum goes from the big and established houses (Greenhill & Co, Moelis & Co, Evercore, Perella Weinberg) to the upstarts like Robey Warshaw. The best boutiques are born in the orbits of big-name bankers and if you’re a TMT banker especially, Taubman looks like an excellent person to attach yourself to. Unfortunately, no one even knows the name of his firm at this point – let alone whether he will have an office in London.

Separately, New York Magazine has been talking to Steve Cohen’s friends, if not Steve Cohen’s wife, if not Steve Cohen himself. It says Cohen is a whole new person since his problems with the SEC – he appears to have had a “personality transplant.” Cohen has reportedly morphed from a ‘money talks, bullsh*t walks’ kind of guy into a caring sharing sort who makes managerial speeches about how much his employees care about each other. That former brusqueness is maybe being channelled into awareness of his own mortality. – One day an admirer approached him on the street – “You’re a legend,” the man said. “Legends are usually dead,” Cohen reportedly answered.

Cohen’s wife Alex is very happy with her changed spouse. She says Cohen’s tribulations taught him a valuable lesson: he’s humbler, wiser, and realizes how lucky he is compared to some of his former employees. He still has his family. He still has his $11bn. “Even billionaires have feelings,” Alex says.

Meanwhile:

Goldman is a technology company, ok? (Bloomberg)

Today is the day that Deutsche Bank issues shares that will increase its capital by €8bn. They are likely to be priced 30% below market. (Reuters)

Profit just tripled at Canaccord Genuity. ‘Exceptional performance’ in the US and UK was to blame. (Bloomberg)

Goldman’s co-head of markets and macro research is expecting a little more volatility later in the year. (CNBC)

A Jamie Dimon clarification, (Twitter)

Applicants to top business schools expect their pay to rise 44% when they graduate. (Poets and Quants)

Charlie Munger’s summer reading list. (Farnham Street)

How to make educated guesses in your CFA exams. (300 Hours)

The post Morning Coffee: The hottest boutique not in town. Deep in the mind of the shamed hedge fund manager appeared first on eFinancialCareers.

The former vice chairman of Deutsche Bank’s financial sponsors group, who retired from the firm in 2012 after nearly 20 years, has joined the capital markets division of private equity firm KKR.

Sekhar Bahadur joined KKR Capital Markets in early May, according to filings on the Financial Conduct Authority, more than two years after he left Deutsche Bank.

Bahadur retired from Deutsche Bank in February 2012 after 19 years working at the bank, latterly as vice chairman of global banking for the Financial Sponsors Group. His exact role at KKR’s capital markets division is not clear and the firm didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Since his retirement, Bahadur has been engaged in a number of executive positions including sitting on the board of Dubai-based investment company Istithmar World and being a trustee of the University of Chicago, Booth, from which he gained his MBA.

Bahadur is another example of senior investment bankers finding it difficult to simply enjoy their retirement. Christian Brodie, who was deputy chairman of UBS’s investment bank, retired earlier this year, but now runs his own investment firm along with a host of executive positions and charity commitments.

Bahadur is an investment banking veteran with a wealth of experience and some deep relationships gained over 30 years working in the industry across a range of functions. He started his career at Salomon Brothers in 1983, in M&A, equity and debt financing functions in both New York and London, eventually becoming director responsible for Southern Europe M&A.

He joined the Bankers Trust in 1992, which was later taken over by Deutsche Bank. From 2001, he was co-head of leveraged finance at the bank, but later became managing director, vice chairman of Deutsche’s Financial Sponsors Group.

He also has a degree in Chemistry from the University of Chicago.

The post Former Deutsche investment banking vice-chair joins KKR two years after retirement appeared first on eFinancialCareers.

Fear not, young banker. Decades ago, Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein was in the same seat you are, and he was absolutely terrified. At least that’s what he wants us to believe.

Speaking with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg at an event on Tuesday, Blankfein described his winding road to the top seat at Goldman Sachs – a firm that once rejected his application.

“I applied to a number of Wall Street firms, including Goldman Sachs and got turned down by all of them,” he said at the Wall Street luncheon. Blankfein eventually took a job at commodity trading firm J. Aron & Company, “which on the prestige [scale] between equities and fixed income and commodities—commodities was just above a toaster,” he half-joked. Goldman Sachs later bought out J. Aron, giving Blankfein a second chance at the firm he coveted.

“I walked in the first day and said ‘I hope I can make it to the second day,’” Blankfein later told Bloomberg TV. “I joined a class of other people who were striving. There were 30 people with me, a year later there were 20, and a year later there were 10. I said ‘Gee I hope I can fool them for another week, a month, a year.’”

Blankfein was also asked about the millennial generation and its propensity to complain about long hours and working weekends – an issue that’s highly prevalent on Wall Street. He described complaining about your workload as more of a rite of passage – something that he also took part in as a young lawyer.

“I complained for hours and hours about how late I’d have to stay,” Blankfein said. “If I complained any less I’d get out a lot earlier, but I worked. I think kids today are doing the same things.”

Hiring Roundup (eFinancialCareers)

In the latest hiring roundup, a London hedge fund eyes global expansion, boutiques are poaching from big banks and one regulator needs to hire hundreds.

Crushing the CFA Exam (eFinancialCareers)

Here are the seven hardest CFA questions, along with expert advice on how best to answer them.

Cuts At Barclays (Reuters)

Job cuts at Barclays investment bank have begun this week. The New York office isn’t taking quite as much punishment as London or offices in Asia. This is just the beginning of roughly 7,000 cuts that will occur by 2016.

Cash Machine (WSJ)

Meet David Abrams, a star hedge fund manager out of Boston whose brilliant yet understated career has just now been fully discovered. The “one-man wealth machine” has averaged a 15% annualized return over the last 15 years, despite the fact that 40% of his portfolio is cash. He employs just three analysts and a small back office staff.

Another Oops for BofA (The Street)

The first publicly published data on the size of banks’ alternative trading systems came out on Monday and, surprise, surprise, Bank of America finished first. At least that’s what everyone thought. BofA acknowledged on Tuesday that it made a mistake in its calculations. Its private trading platform is half the size that it originally reported.

Tiger Cub (Bloomberg)

Manny Singh is set to become Julian Robertson’s latest Tiger cub. The stock picker will reportedly launch his own fund later this year with Robertson’s backing.

Too Many Egos (Dealbreaker)

Banking analysts Dick Bove is done with TV interviews. He’s “sick of ego trips.”

Buzz Around the Office

An MD’s Jokes Are Always Funny (Business Insider)

Keep your shoes shiny, but don’t let anyone see you having your shoes shined. One of 25 pieces of advice for interns from @GSElevator.

Quote of the Day: “There are people at Goldman that I work with—world class athletes, you know manly men, strong women…And when the crisis happened, people metaphorically curled up in a fetal position. We had people who worked for us who didn’t look like they could climb a flight of stairs.” – Lloyd Blankfein

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Pity the poor rates trader. According to report today from Morgan Stanley, volumes in FX and rates trading businesses are already at seven-year lows and are approaching 25-year lows. Unprecedentedly low volatility is to blame. As Goldman chief operating officer Gary Cohn said last week, the low rates have created an “abnormal trading environment….If markets never move or don’t move, our clients really don’t need to transact.”

And yet, interest rates could soon increase. Rates strategists are predicting that they’ll rise soon – especially in the U.K. where the economy is suddenly ‘booming.’

“We are looking at the increase in UK rate to materialize in Q4 this year at the latest,” says Peter Chatwell, senior rates strategist at Credit Agricole CIB in London. “The market is getting a lot of confidence that the Bank of England is going to be hiking rates in the not too distant future,” he adds. The U.S. Federal Reserve is also expected to raise rates sometime next year.

Some senior bankers are already calling a resurgence in volatility. Citigroup chief executive Mike Corbat is forecasting an increase in volatility in the second half of this year. Francesco Garzarelli, co-head of global macro and markets research at Goldman Sachs, is predicting that we will see, “more turbulence kicking in in the second half.” Deutsche Bank is hiring for its U.S. rates team. And in a seeming bet on a resurgence in rates trading revenues, Kavi Gupta – who formerly headed a group trading credit-derivatives indexes for Bank of America in the U.S. has just switched into a role leading a group trading interest rates swaps.

All things being equal, Chatwell says a resumption in volatility should lead to a resurgence in rates revenues. Unfortunately, however, all things are not equal. Banks everywhere, from Barclays to Credit Suisse, to Deutsche, to RBS are reducing the amount of capital allocated to rates businesses and shunting capital intensive long dated rates derivative products into their so-called ‘exit businesses.’ “It’s more complicated than just volatility – the money made from rates trading depends upon the amount of balance sheet allocated to that business,” says Chatwell.

Credit Suisse has already let go of some of its rates traders. Barclays and RBS are doing the same. Royal Bank of Canada is hiring, and Bank of America is expected to bolster its team once Michele Foresti gets his feet under the table.

Surprisingly, perhaps, headhunters say there aren’t too many unemployed rates traders sloshing around the market. However, there are a lot of rates traders who are set to be disappointed over their pay for 2014 – “Most people’s revenues are down 10% to 30%,” says one headhunter, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And that’s compared to last year, which was bad too.”

Massive increase in salaries at Deutsche Bank, which is hiring 500 compliance people

Barclays will now be hiring, paying and appreciating precisely these people in its investment bank

Horror as HSBC & RBS far outperform Barclays’ FX professionals in Q1

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While most financial services professionals must now surely be savvy enough to avoid generic CV clichés like “entrepreneurial”, “innovative team-player” or “dynamic problem-solver”, there’s a chance you could be inadvertently be including hackneyed phrases when attempting to demonstrate your prowess for your particular business area.

The key, say exasperated recruiters, is to be as specific as possible. If it’s not tangible, or something that can demonstrate your real achievements, it’s probably bunkum.

1. Tired technologist terms

A dab hand with programming languages they may be, but coining a phrase is not generally a gift technologists possess. In a world where technologists must also demonstrate an understanding of what IT means to the bottom line, the potential for cheesy one-liners has never been greater. Here are a few choice phrases to avoid:

“I’m the bridge between technology and the business.”

“I simplify technology and can talk to the business in a language they understand.”

“A technology visionary and evangelist who can bring the business on a journey of discovery.”

“I cut my teeth coding on a ZX Spectrum.”

Paul Bennie, managing director of IT in finance headhunters Bennie MacLean, adds: “A general frustration is technologists claiming to be all things to all men with their technology knowledge, only for it to become apparently clear during interview that they know very little.”

2. Risk management ruminations

Risk management in banking has, of course, become a more desirable skill-set in recent years, as firms bolster their control functions in order to comply with more stringent regulatory requirements. It remains the case, however, that only the best, strategic-minded, risk managers can command a significant salary premium, so most candidates tend to overstate their tactical nous. Avoid the following:

“Strong ties to the risk team, partnering with them to ensure there is a joined up and forward view of risk management.”

“Driven change and efficiencies across the bank’s risk management functions.”

“Client-focused, resourceful and analytical.”

“This type of jargon is pointless. It’s far better to tell us specific examples of what you have achieved and the impact this has made,” says Tim Allen, operations recruitment consultant for investment banking at Morgan McKinley.

3. Operational utterances

In investment banking operations it’s all about creating efficiencies – hence Goldman’s embracing of the term “higher-value locations” when referring to nearshoring and offshoring – and highlighting a client-centric approach, despite having little or no contact with clients. This is a goldmine for phrases that use the words recruiters want to hear, without backing them up with actual examples.

“Turnaround champion.”

“Created processes that significantly improve efficiencies and drive change.”

“Full ownership of strategic initiatives.”

4. Investment banking bunkum

Advisory functions have once again become more important in investment banking as trading revenues slump and institutions highlight the importance of deep client relationships for bringing in business. Not everyone’s a super-star, of course, so there remains an element of fudging it over outlining specific deal experience. Victorian McLean, managing director of City CV and former recruitment manager for Goldman Sachs, and other recruitment sources say the following often crop up.

“Entrepreneurial deal-closer.”

“Decisive collaborator with proven success in building lasting relationships.”

“Able to conduct ‘deep dive’ financial and strategic diligence.”

“Experienced go-getter.”

“Forged strong relationships and facilitated discussion.”

5. Trading tales

The reality is that recruiters only want to know two things from potential trader recruits – which bank they’ve worked for and what their track record is. Unfortunately, in a world where every CV is spruced up for HR, softer qualities inevitably creep in, says McLean.

“Strong core values, ethical, strong communicator.”

“Able to work well in a high-pressured, fast-paced environment.”

“Effective team member as well as strong individual contributor.”

6. Project management pontification

Project managers, particularly those who can deliver change projects, remain hot property as banks looking to overhaul their processes and procedures. Unfortunately, considering much of the job involved managing people, expectations and being very process-driven, there’s a tendency to veer towards the corny, says McLean.

“Proactive team-player with a collegiate approach.”

“Positive approach to challenges, open to change.”

“Re-engineering processes to enhance the client experience.”

The post Banking CV clichés you must definitely avoid, by job function appeared first on eFinancialCareers.

Barclays is cutting heads. Last month, the bank promised to get rid of 7,000 people from its investment bank in the next 24 months. This week, those cuts have reportedly begun.

You might think the extraction of nearly 30% of the investment bank’s headcount would cause some upset within Barclays. Not at all. In an unnoticed Q&A session last week, Barclays’ finance director Trushar Morzaria said that people at the bank are more energized and excited than they’ve been for a long time. It seems that the buzz is especially loud at Barclays’ U.S. office: “Some of the town halls in the U.S. business in particular, have been absolutely unbelievable, less “what are you doing for me”, it’s “what can I do to help execute strategy,” Morzaria enthused.

This might be because the new strategy at Barclays has the potential to benefit the U.S. business. Once the strategy has been executed, the newly refocused Barclays will coalesce around the old U.S.-based Lehman business, says Patrick Jenkins of the Financial Times. Accordingly, a high proportion of the 7,000 redundancies are expected to come from Barclays’ fixed income currencies and commodities business, mostly located in the UK, while the equities and M&A businesses which form the nub of Barclays’ activities in the U.S. should be mostly unaffected.

Even outside the U.S., Morzaria said people at Barclays are being “very mature” about the job cuts. In the front office it will all be, “relatively quick,” he claimed. However, Morzaria admitted that the pain is likely to be more protracted in infrastructure teams, where people at Barclays appear to be a little less compliant. The infrastructure job cuts are, “a long-term proposition that we will close over time and to have that staffed and to control those as we wind it down is a little bit trickier,” said Morzaria, opaquely.

27.5% of jobs at Barclays investment bank to go in two years

A history of Barclays’ investment bank in bullish management presentations

Eight more ex-Lehman U.S. M&A bankers who could quit Barclays soon

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Goldman Sachs is bolstering its M&A practice in Asia. The firm is relocating Christos Tomaras, head its European private equity M&A practice, from London to Hong Kong team. It’s shunting Richard Campbell-Breeden, ex-head of M&A in Asia ex-Japan, into a role as Asia chairman. It’s moving John Kim, who was the head of Goldman Sachs Korea, into Campbell Breeden’s old job. And it appears to be hiring a financial institutions group associate for its Hong Kong office.

Goldman’s M&A moves follow a 36% increase in the value of Asian M&A this year. Asia is clearly a growth region. There’s only one drawback; M&A bankers in Asia often don’t command any fees. As Moelis and Greenhill complained last week, Asian M&A is usually a loss-leader. The real money in Asia comes from IPOs and equity capital markets work – Asia’s M&A bankers create the relationships and are the bag carriers for their fee-earning colleagues.

Elsewhere, City Am reports that London’s fund managers are boosting their Investment 2020 scheme, which aims to get 2020 non-academically perfect young people into the investment management industry every year by 2020. For the moment, they’re still a long way off that goal – just 120 people will be hired this year by firms as diverse as Aberdeen Asset Management, Blackrock and JPMorgan. The scheme is ‘talent driven’ says the Investment 2020 website – ‘successful trainees are not judged on grades achieved, university attended or whether the applicant has previous work experience. It asks what you will bring to the industry and to the firm.’ Talented trainees are given a year’s structured work experience at the fund management firms involved. 90% of them go on to secure permanent employment.

Meanwhile:

John LeFevre, the man behind the Goldman Sachs Elevator, did not receive a job offer at the end of his internship. (Business Insider)

Deutsche Bank is having admin problems with its right issue. (Reuters)

Goldman Sachs likes Credit Suisse. (Businessweek)

Credit Suisse thinks European banks could have to pay $103.5bn in fines. During the financial crisis, banks lost $201bn. (WSJ)

BNP Paribas is coaching its bankers on how to appease clients’ concerns about its fines. (Bloomberg)

Kweku Adoboli tried, and failed, to appeal against his fraud conviction. (Reuters)

Richard Banks, the man winding down Northern Rock (still), earned £815k last year. (WSJ)

The hottest boutique not in town. Deep in the mind of the shamed hedge fund manager

Where to find £65k banking jobs when you have no experience. 100 jobs at top ‘hedge fund’

Goldman finally admits it’s overstaffed. The most degenerate place to work in finance?

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Six years is a long time to be twiddling your thumbs. When you’ve been out of the market for that long, you might think the time has come for a complete change of career. Right now, however, we’re seeing people who left banking in 2008 and who haven’t worked since getting hired again.

Admittedly, they’re not going into front office roles. The big areas of hiring now are operations and compliance. All compliance roles are hot, and within operations we’ve seen a massive increase in demand for people to fill Request for Proposal (RFP) investment writing roles.

Candidates with experience in these areas are being offered as many as seven different jobs and they can have the pick of the bunch. Five offers and a £20k pay rise in asset management compliance are not unheard of. And, as I’ve said, experienced people who’ve been out of the market since the financial crisis are being brought back in again. They tend to be hired directly by banks’ in-house recruitment teams, however, as banks don’t want to pay recruitment fees for them.

The skills shortage in compliance and operations is down to both demand and supply. Demand for people to fill these roles has increased massively. At the same time, the supply of young graduates who want to go into these roles is dwindling. In the past few years we had little problem filling compliance and operations roles with first class maths graduates with excellent A-levels. This year, they’re finding it easier to get into more desirable front office roles – leaving the pipeline of junior talent unfilled.

If banks want to hire in compliance and operations, they therefore have three choices. Either they need to move like lightening when they find an experienced candidate, or they have to pay over the odds, or they have to lower their standards and hire people without directly relevant experience. Alternatively, the can scour the country for former operations and compliance professionals who are now doing something else instead. All three things are likely to become more common in future.

Jim Gervaise-Brazier is managing director of JGB Partners a specialist asset management recruitment firm

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When you’re casting around for a role model for female bankers, Joanna Lumley is not the obvious choice. Firstly, she’s never worked in a bank. Secondly, she’s conceptually inseparable from the louche character of Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous. And thirdly, she has the kind of eclectic non-linear thought patterns that don’t sit comfortably in the corporate world.

However, it was Lumley who was the first interviewee at Deutsche Bank’s Women in Business Conference yesterday. And it was Lumley who charmed the assembled female bankers with her exorbitant eccentricity and tales of hair that was back-combed to look like Marge Simpson. In her wake, the financial services interviewees fell a bit flat.

Despite the obvious mismatch between erratic acting careers and life at the corporate coal face, Lumley had some proper advice for the 2,000 female bankers who assembled in London’s Barbican to immerse themselves in women in finance. Her wisdom could even be re-purposed for men.

1. Reclaim your life by ignoring things

“Throw away your phone!,” intoned Lumley – or at least don’t look at in the evenings. Ignore people who critcize you – unless you think their criticism might have a tiny grain of truth. You’re only affected by what you choose to be affected by. Operate a filtering system.

2. Hard work is selfish. Make time for other people

Lumley had a period of her life when she was “selfishly working all the time”. She loved acting, but her other relationships suffered. Are you really working hard for other people? Or are you doing it for yourself? (Ultimately, Lumley’s passion for stage acting dwindled anyway.)

3. Connections matter

Lumley knows all sorts of people and drops their names like Prada handkerchiefs. Thanks to her extended network of the rich and celebrated, she’s been able to raise money for an exciting ‘garden bridge’ to cross the River Thames in London.

4. Help people

Lumley most famously campaigned for the Gurkhas to be able to resettle in the UK, but she’s involved in all sorts of charitable causes. “You can always do something,” she said – even if it’s only writing letters or sending money.

5. Don’t fear shallowness

“I was born shallow as a puddle,” Lumley declared in between calling everyone, “dahling.” This is has not been a problem.

6. Don’t stop during the dark times

Lumley was once a struggling single mother who abruptly stopped work and moved back in with her parents. Even now, she has black moments. “Everyone has the nameless dread, but you have to keep going. Walk, move, write things by hand,” she said. “Keep going and then one day it will be gone.”

7. Live now

“I live every day as if it’s my last because one day it will be and then I’ll be happy,” Lumley said.

8. You can’t entirely disassociate your work persona from yourself

Joanna Lumley is Joanna Lumley. However, even when she’s Joanna Lumley she’s also very similar to Patsy Stone. Like it or not, your work-self cannot be compartmentalized.

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There are plenty of good reasons to want to work for a hedge fund. It’s exciting, the hours aren’t as brutal as they are on the sell-side and the job comes with a host of sweet perks. Of course none of those are the real reason people chose to work for hedge funds. It’s the money. Hedge funders made bank last year.

Total mean compensation for investment professionals at hedge funds nearly surpassed $950,000 last year, up 18% over 2012 numbers, according to Institutional Investor’s Alpha.

Senior portfolio managers took home the biggest haul – an average of over $1.4 million – though junior portfolio managers saw the biggest increase in year-over-year compensation with an 81% jump to $887,000. The average senior PM saw a 27% increase in total comp.

But perhaps the biggest surprise in the report is how well non-investment hedge fund employees did. They earned an average of $575,000 last year, up 6% compared to 2012. Compliance and risk roles may not have the same cache, but the money is still there.

The financial windfall came during a decent but less-than-spectacular year for hedge funds, which returned an average of around 10% in 2013. That would be all well and good if the S&P didn’t climb 30% during the same period. Obviously most firms are hedging against risk, but that’s still a fairly wide disparity.

Investors don’t seem to mind all that much. The industry is on pace to attract as much as $171 billion in new investments in 2014, which could push total industry assets to a record $3 trillion by the end of the year.

Resume Clichés To Avoid (eFinancialCareers)

Here’s a host of resume clichés particular to each line of business in banking that will severely hinder your chances of scoring an interview.

Barclays’ Bankers OK With Job Cuts? (eFinancialCareers)

You might think the extraction of nearly 30% of the investment bank’s headcount would cause some upset within Barclays. Not at all. By the way, Barclays just cut seven people from its Scandinavian and continental European fixed-income teams.

The Elevate Network (WSJ)

Former Bank of America executive Sallie Krawcheck is launching a new index fund that invests in companies that boast strong gender diversity.

End of the Solo Act for Taubman (Reuters)

Former Morgan Stanley rainmaker Paul Taubman is starting his own advisory boutique. He’s already poached two senior bankers from his old employer – Robert Friedsam and James Murray.

Code Stealing Suspicion (WSJ)

KCG, the byproduct of the Knight Capital and Getco merger, suspect that a former technology executive who now works for rival company Clearpool Group may have stolen the trading firm’s computer code. Raymond Ross, chief technology officer at Clearpool, has denied any wrongdoing.

New Head at General Re (Bloomberg)

General Re, Berkshire Hathaway’s asset management unit, has promoted Bill Rotatori to chief executive officer. Rotatori is replacing Jerry Lynch, who will retire at the end of the year.

One Hired, One to Go (Financial News)

Halcyon Asset Management has hired former Benros Capital founder and ex-Goldman prop trader Daniele Benatoff as the new managing principle in charge of the U.S. firm’s push into Europe. Halcyon is currently recruiting a co-head to join Benatoff.

Buzz Around the Office

Sad But Likely True (HuffPo)

Fake news programs like “The Colbert Report” may do a better job of keeping people informed than actual news stations like MSNBC, CNN and Fox News, a new study suggests.

Quote of the Day: “I would say that my job, when things are going well, there’s nothing more fun and I can never imagine leaving it. When things are going badly, my sense of responsibility takes over, and I couldn’t imagine leaving it,” Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein squashing any retirement talk

The post The average hedge funder likely made a lot more than you last year appeared first on eFinancialCareers.

Until 2012, Alessandro Butini was Chris Hohn’s right-hand man at the Children’s Investment Fund Management as a partner and senior trader generating ideas and “trading colours” for the founding partner and the hedge fund’s research team. Now, when he thinks of colours it’s for an entirely different reason – interior design for the sort of high-net-worth individuals who want to deck out their luxury historical homes or yachts.

Earlier this year the Italian, who had been working in finance since starting as a junior salesman role at Salomon Smith Barney in London in 1998, joined at Intarya, an interior design company that focuses on the luxury end of the market. He won’t actually be doing the designing, however, but is head of acquisitions and business development – finding buildings that can be redeveloped by the design team (and then sold on), and adding clients who want to spruce up their houses, yachts or private jets.

“We need to be opportunistic in life,” he tells us. “I found a way of re-using my skills in an industry that is completely different. I hope I will have the opportunity of growing, learning and becoming successful in my new role. I do not envisage going back to finance anytime soon.”

This is not Butini’s first vocation since leaving TCI. From 2012, he was involved with a project to try and create a Major League Soccer team in Miami, partnering with the University of Miami to try drum up $85m for a stadium to house up to 20,000 fans. However, he was eventually competing with the star power of David Beckham, who’s proposing ‘Miami Beckham United’ and has even hinted that he might be the first ever ‘player-owner’. Butini’s decided to call it a day on this project.

Understandably, perhaps, financial services no longer feels like such an attractive career option, but Butini admits that he’s become a little disillusioned. “I left because of a lack of motivation and excitement in an industry that grew too much too fast, and it is now coping with the aftermath of a strong earthquake,” he says.

Before joining TCI he spent over eight years working at Morgan Stanley in various trading roles in both equities and equity derivatives in London, New York and Milan. While any plans to go back into either banking or hedge funds are on hold, Butini says that the skills he acquired in his finance career have helped in his current vocation.

“Extreme attention to detail, quick, analytical decision-making, build out processes that can help leverage the business and team-playing” are all necessary in his current role, he says.

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The post From hedge fund trader, to David Beckham’s rival, to interior design appeared first on eFinancialCareers.

Once deemed Royal Bank of Scotland’s ‘Shining Star‘, the firm’s U.S. headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, home to one of the world’s largest trading floors, will soon look more like a black hole. RBS is following in the footsteps of its next-door neighbor, UBS, in cutting hundreds of trading jobs from its Stamford hub. The cuts are likely to have an equal effect on local businesses in the area that rely on the town’s wealthiest workers.

“Business will slow down, especially around lunchtime,” said the manager of local restaurant Kona Grille, who asked we don’t use his name. “We get most of [RBS’s] daytime crowd.” The manager said he wasn’t worried about the long-term health of the business, however.

An anonymous worker at Morton’s Steakhouse, located just a few hundred yards from RBS, said that business was affected from the “get-go” of the initial UBS layoffs in late 2012, though they said the restaurant doesn’t serve that many bank employees anymore, so the RBS cuts won’t have much of an effect.

Indeed, some of the damage has already been inflicted in Stamford, a city that houses high-earning workers by day, though some of the money leaves at night to other pricier Connecticut towns like Greenwich and Darien that bankers call home.

“Usually they just want to get the hell out of Stanford” at the end of the day, the manager of Kona Grille said of bank employees.

Mitchell’s Fish Market, once called the “anchor” of Stamford’s Town Center, closed unexpectedly in March. The manager at neighboring restaurant P.F. Chang’s told us Mitchell’s was a local hangout for bankers in the area. The restaurant closed its door during the same month as Saks Fifth Avenue, one of Stamford’s higher end retail outlets. At the time, neither gave much of a public reason for closing.

Other high-end businesses like car dealerships and antique stores told us they haven’t experienced any dip in business, but some of the customers are changing. “There are familiar faces that you don’t see anymore,” said Mike, the manager at Autotech Foreign Car Service in Stamford. “I think a lot of bankers are back working in New York City.”

“This is the dynamic world we live in. Corporations just aren’t going to stay forever,” said Michael Pollard, the chief of staff of Stamford Mayor David Martin. “Stamford is still a very attractive city for businesses. Not one or two companies will dictate growth.”

Pollard said that, as hundreds are likely to leave RBS, Starwood Resorts is looking to bring in another 300 workers. Of course they likely won’t make up for the drop in expendable income in the area.

The financial services industry makes up less than 15% of the city’s economy, Pollard said. Stamford still plays host to General Re — Berkshire Hathaway’s asset management unit — MC Asset Management and several other investment and financial services firms. But none have the size and gravitas of RBS’s trading unit. Pollard said Mayor Martin will be meet with executives from RBS next week.

Connecticut a happy home

Traders too are lamenting the loss of jobs in Connecticut, even if they find work back in Manhattan. “You’d be crazy not to want to work out of the city near where you can own a home,” said one 35-year-old trader who commutes in to New York at 6 a.m. every morning.

And job losses in Connecticut aren’t just coming on the sell-side. SAC Capital, Steven A. Cohen’s iconic hedge fund, turned in to a family office following the company’s guilty plea over insider trading charges. The Greenwich firm has also said goodbye to many traders in recent months.

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The post Connecticut businesses putting banking days behind them appeared first on eFinancialCareers.

These days, a bank is not often a bank unless it has a non-core unit of assets it wants to wind down. What started as a localized phenomenon at banks like RBS and Citi has spread to UBS, Deutsche and most recently Barclays. If you want to work for a bank, you may not be able to work for the good bit. You may have to settle for the dark side, AKA the ‘bad bank’ or ‘non-core unit.’

Leading banks’ non-core units are home to some big names. Barclays’ new bad bank is being overseen by Eric Bommensath, the longtime head of fixed income for the British bank, who was most recently co-CEO of the whole investment banking unit. RBS’s long-established bad bank (also known as the ‘capital resolution group’) is the domain of Rory Cullinan, who reports directly to the executive committee. Former top fixed income traders and loan specialists are also to be found populating the bad benches. At UBS, for example, Adam Masood, one-time head of FICC algorithmic strategy trading is now an exotics trader in the non-core division. Jeffrey Lavine, a former managing director in UBS’s real estate group, is now a managing director in the ‘StabFund‘ formed of illiquid assets which UBS bought back from the Swiss National Bank after it was bailed out in 2008.

And yet, one headhunter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said bad banks are a career dead end. “I’ve spoken to a lot of people in these non-core units and they’re all desperate to get out of there,” he said. “It’s basically a contract role – you’re working on something that’s being wound down. Your job won’t exist in three years’ time.”

This may be overstating the case. UBS’s non-core unit, formed in late 2012, still employs around 150 people and is whittling that number down as assets are disposed of. At the last count, however, UBS still had around $65bn of legacy assets to go, down from $114bn in 2012. Disposals at the Swiss bank are taking longer than anticipated, suggesting that Barclays’ $676bn of bad assets may create work for Bommensath’s team for many years to come.

Will a bad bank job equip you for a good bank job in future?

When you emerge from your bad banking job, having wound down all the bad assets and done yourself out of employment, what will you do next?

Banks argue that their bad units equip employees to do all sorts of things when they leave. One tells us ex-bad bankers can go to other banks (who are setting up bad banks) or hedge funds who want to own the assets being disposed of. Chris Wheeler, banking analyst and director at Mediobanca, said bad banks offer very high profile roles, particularly when it comes to disposing of illiquid structured credit assets which require negotiation with the counter-parties involved – which can give you good contacts for a future move onto the buyside.

However, headhunters beg to disagree. Barry Seath, managing director of Mirage Recruitment, says that although he gets CVs from non-core units he’s never placed their owners into a hedge fund role. Hedge funds are choosy, says Seath: they only want to hire from the trading and M&A teams of ‘good banks.’ The anonymous headhunter agrees: “What are you doing in a bad bank? Selling assets. It’s completely different to a job in a hedge fund or fund management company where you’re holding assets to make money. It prepares you for nothing at all.”

This may be why some banks seem to be struggling to fill their bad banking roles. At both UBS and Deutsche, non-core units seem to be partly staffed with people promoted into trading jobs from the middle office. This seems to suggest that established traders think they might be better off elsewhere.

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The post How desperate must you be to accept a job in a bank’s ‘non-core’ unit? appeared first on eFinancialCareers.

As Barclays starts its high-profile purge of investment banking jobs, spare a thought for the firm’s support staff in Singapore, whose roles are also being cut and who are already calling recruiters to scope out opportunities elsewhere.

Barclays announced plans in May to trim 7,000 investment banking jobs globally by 2016 and reports suggest that 100 of these roles have been cut in Asia this week. The bank has also suffered several high-profile front-office departures in the region, including Jason Rynbeck, vice chairman of M&A for Asia Pacific, who left to join HSBC.

While much attention has focused on the front-office, within the past week back-office roles in Singapore – where Barclays currently employs about 3,000 people, its largest workforce in Asia – have also been cut.

“Most of the new layoffs in Singapore have actually been IT and operations focused, with some roles being offshored to India,” says a recruiter with knowledge of the bank, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Finance people were lucky this time round but I suspect there will be more cuts coming in the next few months and finance may be next on the list.”

“There is a constant reduction-in-workforce going on and people are paranoid about getting a tap on the shoulder,” he adds.

Finance recruiters in Singapore have noticed a recent increase in enquiries from Barclays employees, especially those at VP to director level, who are worried that their jobs will be made redundant.

“Barclays are top-heavy in operations and people have already started picking up the phone to be ahead of the game when the tap comes,” says the anonymous recruiter. “But there are few jobs for senior ops people in Singapore – RBS is closing down units, Standard Chartered has some vacancies but not senior ones.”

As we’re reported recently, although global banks are hiring in internal audit, compliance and operational risk, they have been offshoring process-driven IT and operations jobs away from expensive Singapore for the past two years.

“Only at the junior level do roles exist in operations; anything VP and above is hard to come by,” says Kyle Blockley, co-founder of recruiters KS Consulting in Singapore. “Singapore now has a mature job market similar to London or New York. Most hires are replacement ones and only get filled if the bank doesn’t have offshoring plans. The contracting market is growing as that’s the only way to get people through the door.”

While Barclays may have too many expensive, senior back-office people in Singapore, it still appears committed to gradate recruitment. Earlier this week it launched Singapore’s first investment banking “apprenticeship” programme targeted at polytechnic graduates, which it’s running alongside its university-based scheme. “Barclays will always be a substantial employer here at grad and junior level, despite all the current restructuring,” says the anonymous recruiter.

The first cohort of 11 apprentices have already been recruited and will work full-time in entry-level positions, in business units including operations, human resources, finance, and sourcing, according to a statement from the bank.

Barclays has recently consolidated its office space in Singapore, giving up two stories in the Marina Bay Financial Centre and closing suburban operations centres in Changi and Tampines.

The British bank has not yet responded to a request to comment on its Singapore restructuring. Wealth-management recruiters in the city state say Singaporean private banking roles remain safe from the cuts.

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If you’re a believer in Anshu Jain, you’ll be of the opinion that any troubles Deutsche Bank has with its trading business are mere pimples on the contours of success. Last week, Deutsche gave an interview to Bloomberg in which he said that Deutsche was well-placed to survive on a diet on restricted fixed income currencies and commodities (FICC) revenues because it had already cut headcount and risk weighted assets by around 20%. Deutsche can selectively invest because of this, said Jain. As we enter the post-crisis phase of the banking industry, he added that Deutsche is well-positioned to succeed.

Fast forward one week, and Deutsche has just disclosed that things aren’t going so well after all. The German bank said yesterday that its investment banking revenues fell even faster in the second quarter than they did in the first. Fixed income trading revenues have now, “largely declined” on an annual basis, said Deutsche. So too have equities trading revenues, which increased in the first quarter.

Deutsche’s admission of a decline in trading revenues may mask a more dramatic deterioration in its market share. In the first quarter, revenues in the bank’s ongoing FICC business were flattered by disposals of its rates inventory. If inventory disposals continued in the second quarter and revenues fell substantially nonetheless, Deutsche’s FICC problem may be even worse than it seems.

Separately, Lloyd Blankfein has given a good demonstration of how to answer tricky interview questions. Asked ‘what motivates him [now]‘, Blankfein reportedly explained that he feels impassioned no matter what. “I would say that my job, when things are going well, there’s nothing more fun and I can never imagine leaving it. When things are going badly, my sense of responsibility takes over, and I couldn’t imagine leaving it,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “It’s a very hard thing to do. I either love what I do because it gives me a lot of exposure to great people and influence, and when things are bad my sense of—my obligations take over,” Blankfein added. This also means that he never wants to retire.

Meanwhile:

Deutsche Bank warned that its exposure to FX probes could be ‘material.’ (Financial Times)

Lloyds has reinstated Martin Chantree, a former senior FX trader who was suspended as part of the FX investigation. (Wall Street Journal)

Hedge fund Millennium Management is hiring Tony Woods, a former emerging markets trader at BAML. (Financial News)

UBS has hired Neil Carragher from Credit Suisse as chairman of its financial institutions group. (Wall Street Journal)

New research suggests emotionally intelligent people are more successful. Here’s how to tell if you’re emotionally intelligent. (Fast Company)

Why you should pay far greater attention to your profile photos. (NYMag)

Goldman adding bankers who work for nothing. Fund managers targeting the academically mediocre

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The post Morning Coffee: Deutsche discloses troubles in trading. Blankfein answers tricky job interview question appeared first on eFinancialCareers.

In investment banking technology, the suits rule. With IT budgets running into hundreds of millions, how technology will impact the bottom line is an executive concern and the core developers and architects who do the legwork face (another) glass ceiling.

As Kirat Singh, long-time senior technologist at the likes of JPMorgan and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, told us previously, those running the show in IT “haven’t written a line of code in 20 years” and it’s difficult to progress as a technologist unless you’re prepared to sacrifice being a hands-on developer.

Goldman Sachs insiders, however, tell us that there’s a subtle shift of power within the technology teams, to the point where it’s the uber-technical guys who are gaining ground at the top. Since the shake-up of Goldman’s senior technology ranks at the tail end of last year – when R. Martin Chavez took over from Steve Scopellite as chief information officer, and Don Duet and Paul Walker were installed as co-heads of technology – the ‘strats’ have been taking over, suggest our sources.

Chavez heralded from Goldman’s ‘strats’ team, which is largely a quantitative function with the ‘core strats’ building complex models across the bank’s trading desks. So did Walker, who joined the bank as a vice president in the FICC strats team in 2001. Most are not pure technologists – heralding from a science, maths and engineering background – but are still very computational.

The good news for technologists hoping to make to the upper echelons of investment banking is that Goldman appears to be embracing the idea that technical people should remain in charge. This is reflective of the strategies rolled out by Silicon Valley firms – Google, for instance, has a dual management track for both programmers and less-hands on types. It is these firms, after all, that the banks are competing with.

Nonetheless, this hasn’t sat overly well with some the IT staff at the bank, who feel the balance of power has shifted towards the quants. Headhunters tell us that since the departure of Mike Grimaldi, who joins Deutsche Bank in July as CIO for its corporate banking and securities division after more than 20 years at Goldman, some senior technologists at the bank have been looking for pastures new.

Nonetheless, Goldman continues to offer a lot of opportunities for technologists – at least 25% of its employees work in tech. Lloyd Blankfein says that the bank is a “technology firm nowadays”, while Walker’s LinkedIn profile invites technologists to get in touch with the bank’s HR teams.

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