Are you a talented trader? Do you have mediocre academic qualifications from a non-elite university? – Maybe you’ve been pursuing a degree in new media, or old media, or applied marketing? Fear not: if you can trade exceptionally well, Barclays will hire you.
The British bank is experimenting with a new method of recruiting revenue generators for its front office.
Finextra reports that Barclays is running a trading game (‘The Barclays Market Insight Game’) which is open to university students in EMEA, APAC and the Americas (everywhere, in other words). The top two performers from each region will reportedly be given the chance to come to Barclays, meet up with markets professionals and ‘discuss career opportunities.’
There’s no guarantee the two top regional traders will be hired by Barclays, but this is the intention. – “One of our core missions is to make financial services recruitment more meritocratic and more accessible, helping students realise their ambitions regardless of their backgrounds,” says Stockfuse, which is running the trading game on Barclays’ behalf.
Separately, if you’re a trader who’s lost your job and you’re thinking of trading from your spare room or kitchen table in a pair of shorts, reconsider. The Wall Street Journal reports that Tom Hayes did almost exactly this after losing his job at Citigroup, and it didn’t go well.
Initially, it was fine. Hayes used the £1 million ($1.5m) he had left from his Citi signing bonus to open a brokerage account, with which he traded currencies and stocks. He made £960k in profit, and he used this to renovate his house.
Rattled by his arrest, however, Hayes’ trading performance deteriorated. He subsequently lost £100k, and then hundreds of thousands of pounds more. Eventually, he was left with nothing. – Which explains how he came to be claiming legal aid.
Meanwhile:
Tom Hayes is appealing against his prison sentence. (Financial Times)
There are plans afoot to form a ‘UK sovereign wealth fund’ by consolidating local authority pension schemes. (Financial Times)
Deutsche Bank likes English men: it just hired Standard Chartered’s ex-finance director to succeed John Cryan on its board. (Bloomberg)
UK bankers have had £900m of bonuses clawed back for bad behaviour. (The Times)
Guggenheim just poached two MD-level high yield debt salesmen from Jefferies. (Bloomberg)
Eminently wealthy ex-Goldman Sachs partner is now prime minister of Australia. (Telegraph)
Goldman Sachs just is donating £2m to Syrian refugees. (Evening Standard)
JPMorgan is donating up to $2m to refugees in Europe. (Yahoo)
Can you talk like a trader? (WSJ)
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