Morning Coffee: What makes JPMorgan’s junior M&A bankers weird. When analysts marry MDs

Next time you come across a junior M&A-type banker at JPMorgan, look him (or her) in the eye and ask seriously what they do. Chances are that you’ll be surprised. Chances are that they won’t be just working on M&A deals, they’ll also be working on IPOs.

Financial News reports that JPMorgan has done away with the outdated notion of juniors who just do M&A, and has melded its M&A professionals with its junior ECM professionals to form one single amorphous group of VPs, analysts and associates known (not unusually) as ‘corporate finance.’ This corporate finance unit reportedly comprises ‘product agnostic’ bankers who work on a bit of M&A and a bit of ECM as required. The blurring of the M&A/ECM boundaries at JPM began two years ago and Financial News says it’s one reason why the bank has been able to work on five ECM deals every two weeks for more than 40 weeks. – It hasn’t had to hire extra ECM staff to cope with all the extra work, but has just got some bankers who were working on M&A to reinvent themselves. It’s clearly good news for JPMorgan. It may mean that the bank’s product agnostic corporate financiers are a little fatigued, however.

Separately, how common is it for bankers at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy to be betrothed to those at the top? We ask, because it’s been pointed out that Nell Diamond, the daughter of ex-Barclays CEO Bob Diamond, just married a Deutsche Bank managing director having herself spent 15 months at Deutsche Bank as an analyst. Diamond’s spouse, Ted Wasserman, is head of equity derivative flow sales for North America at Deutsche.  Diamond was an analyst in Deutsche’s institutional rates sales business.

Meanwhile:

JPMorgan has just created three new senior investment banking roles in EMEA as it tries to increase its European market share. (Reuters) 

RBS wanted to pay its bankers bonuses equivalent to 200% of salaries, but it was overruled by the British government. (Reuters) 

The time for privatizing RBS is approaching, although there’s still no firm date. (Wall Street Journal) 

Douglas Flint, chairman of HSBC, says the EU bonus cap is a retrograde step. (Guardian) 

The president at CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York wants U.S. bankers to have 10 year bonus deferrals and for bonuses to held in a ‘performance bond’ which will be depleted if bad things happen. (DealBook) 

RBS was part of a cartel to fix Libor. After blowing the whistle on other cartel members, it managed to avoid a of €115m fine. (Telegraph) 

Hedge funds have had a very bad October. At Millennium (a popular fund with ex-bankers), internal loss limits were tripped and several traders were prevented from trading. (WSJ) 

Numis is setting up an office in Manchester and may yet be hiring brokers there. (Financial Times) 

Eight questions every candidate should ask in job interviews. (Inc)  

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