eFinancialCareersInvestment Banks

If it seems as if banks are dragging their feet with their post-Brexit plans, they are. An EU regulator chastised U.K. banks last month for their “inadequate planning,” telling them to “speed up their preparations” and stop assuming a last-minute deal would between EU and U.K. authorities would be reached. Count J.P. Morgan as one of the few that actually listened, though it may have done so with a bit of an eyeroll.

J.P. Morgan has asked “several dozen” employees to relocate from London to continental Europe by the beginning of next year, and said it plans to “migrate or add” hundreds more employees to its EU offices before the March 2019 deadline. The memo, which represents J.P. Morgan’s first official Brexit-related communication to employees, provided a bit of good news for those who will be affected. The bank said it would increase its presence in cities like Paris, Madrid and Milan. J.P. Morgan was widely expected to push employees to the less desirable Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Dublin, locations where it currently holds banking licenses.

The “several dozen” in question will include mostly client-facing investment bankers and asset and wealth managers as well as those who work in risk management, according to the Wall Street Journal. Written with a rather compassionate tone, the memo appeared to suggest why banks have been so slow to make such decisions – and why J.P. Morgan has only contacted a few dozen employees and not the several hundred that would need to go.

“We want to avoid affecting the lives of employees and their families with changes that could prove to be unnecessary or premature,” the memo read. While a last-minute deal to allow financial firms in the U.K. to continue to operate as they do currently would likely be celebrated by J.P. Morgan and its rivals, none want to make dramatic changes to their staff if they ultimately weren’t required. The European Central Bank said yesterday that just 20 banks met the June 30th deadline to apply for a license to operate in the EU. Saying banks are dragging their feet may be an understatement.

Elsewhere, the Wall Street Journal just published a long expose on hedge fund titan David Einhorn, who has seen assets under management at Greenlight Capital drop by more than half as the firm has struggled with performance over the last three years. The piece provides a clearer window into what it’s like working for a hedge fund that once posted double-digit annual returns with ease.

While he can be difficult to deal with – sometimes insulting investment managers who hold dissenting opinions – Einhorn reportedly gives Greenlight employees plenty of outlets to blow off steam. Known for his penchant for poker, Einhorn whisks his staff off to annual gambling adventures in Atlantic City and Las Vegas – sometimes on a private jet – and doesn’t dissuade staffers from late nights at New York nightclubs. The hedge fund also hosted an annual poker tournament for employees, friends and clients, “where alcohol flowed and thousands of dollars changed hands,” according to the Journal.

“We worked hard and played hard,” one employee told the paper. The mood has likely soured a bit over the last three years with Greenlight posting a double-digit loss against the S&P’s 38% gain.

Meanwhile:

London boutique Robey Warshaw has advised on just a handful of deals during the first half of 2017, yet it owns a 20% market share in the U.K. The three-partner firm has a knack for advising on some of the largest M&A transactions. (Business Insider)

Former Harvard University president Drew Faust has been named to Goldman Sachs’ board of directors. (Bloomberg)

Swedish bank SEB is hiring 100 people a month, mostly in technology. (Bloomberg)

Google Cloud COO Diane Bryant has resigned after only seven months on the job. Speculation is mounting that Bryant could be in line to be the next CEO of her former company, Intel, though insiders say Bryant also struggled to find her role at Google. (Business Insider)

The chief executive of Allianz Global Investors is “very worried” about London’s ability to attract top graduate talent post-Brexit. The City may soon see a “brain drain…of the best and brightest.” (FN)

Deutsche Bank’s stock has been so battered that it may soon get booted from a key Euro stock index. (Bloomberg)

Morgan Stanley’s top lawyer is working to create a new political party in the U.S., the Serve America Movement (SAM). Eric Grossman hasn’t offered much detail on the party’s political and social leanings, but that hasn’t stopped him from eliciting big donations from Morgan Stanley veterans. (Bloomberg)

Dealbreaker is disputing a Bloomberg report that Credit Suisse is “wrapping up” its investigation into claims that an MD acted inappropriately with an intern at a company event. Dealbreaker, which broke the news last week, says the investigation hasn’t been concluded and the disciplinary process hasn’t even begun. (Dealbreaker)

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).

““

People keep leaving hedge fund Millennium Management (AKA Millennium Capital Partners in the UK). The latest to disappear is a 38 year-London portfolio manager who’d been there since 2012.

Insiders say that Neil Smith a top relative value trader who previously spent six years with RBS in London and New York, resigned on Monday. His destination is unclear. Millennium declined to comment.

The suspicion, naturally, is that Smith is off to join former Millennium trader Michael Gelband at ExodusPoint, the new $8bn hedge fund which has been hoovering people up from across the market. ExodusPoint, which already has over 125 employees – mostly in New York – opened a London office in April 2018. In New York, Gelband has been hiring various of his former Millennium colleagues amidst rumours of exceptionally generous multi-year pay packages. In London, however, headhunters working for ExodusPoint say Gelband is inhibited from hiring his ex-colleagues by a restrictive covenant, and that while the packages on offer may involve accelerated vesting of past bonuses, multi-year guarantees are not on the table. Nonetheless, ExodusPoint is understood to be Smith’s intended destination.

Smith isn’t the only trader to have left Millennium this year. Since January, six traders have left for Albar Capital, a long short equity hedge fund set up by Javier Velazquez, another ex-Millennium portfolio manager. Albar is backed by Millennium, however, while ExodusPoint is not. Like many other hedge funds, Millennium also has a reputation for ruthlessness with under-performing staff. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) indicates that at least eight people have left since the start of the year without other jobs to go to.

The most recent accounts for Millennium Capital Partners LLP in London indicate that the fund made a profit of £105m ($139m) for the year to December 2017, up from £94m a year earlier. The highest paid partner earned £7m, while the other 11 partners were paid £1.1m each, down from £1.4m the previous year.

Smith isn’t the only hedge fund PM on the move. David Curtin, who left BlueCrest in May, is understood to be joining Graham Capital soon.

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.)

““

When you lose your job at an investment bank – or any other organisation in the UK – it’s rarely a smooth process. Instead of simply being let go, employees in the UK are entitled to a consultation period. Depending upon the number of jobs being dispensed with, this must begin anything from 45 to 30 days before redundancies take effect.

Nomura is in the middle of just such a consultation period now. The Japanese bank is making around 50 people redundant in its London sales and trading unit. Individuals put at risk are understood to include emerging markets traders only hired last year and Omar Ghalloudhi, the former head of investment grade credit at Citi, who only joined in November 2017.

During the 30-45 day consultation period, banks are obliged to offer employees at risk of redundancy the opportunity to move into any vacant roles they have which match their previous positions in terms of pay and seniority. For the individuals concerned, this can present a problem.

At Nomura, for example, we understand that senior salespeople who were previously structuring derivatives solutions for publicly traded clients are in the process of being offered alternative roles at the Japanese bank. Instead of working with publicly traded clients, they will be on the “private side”, structuring solutions for privately traded companies and private equity funds. They can accept – or accept redundancy. Some appear to be choosing the latter.

Employment lawyers caution that refusing alternative roles in lieu of redundancy can be a risky strategy, however. “If you unreasonably turn down what is an obviously suitable alternative role, an employer can say you are not being made redundant but are resigning, and that you will therefore not receive a redundancy payment,” says Philip Landau of Landau Law. While there is no indication that Nomura has been deploying this technique, Landau says he’s seen it used in banking, with expensive consequences for the individuals concerned.

Severance packages in investment banks are typically one month’s pay for every year worked, although Deutsche Bank offers much less than this. To count as a suitable alternative to the role being made redundant, Landau says other jobs offered must have comparable pay, responsibility and status. They must also be based in a similar location – unless your contract includes a relocation clause, which is often the case in banking.

This, then is the choice for around 50 employees at Nomura now: accept what’s on offer, or look for alternatives elsewhere. Early indications are that many front office staff will look outside, with the Japanese bank at risk of losing talent across the sales and trading business as staff not put at risk also contemplate leaving.

““

The bulk of what we’ve heard about Deutsche Bank’s massive layoffs plans – either directly from bank or through back channels – is that they’re focused on the bank’s equities business, with the elimination of 25% of all jobs within the unit. Deutsche Bank’s U.S. equities sales and trading business was said to be taking the brunt of the punishment.

Yet roughly 10 weeks out from the first round of cuts (around 400 U.S. staffers were already let go by the third week of April) Deutsche Bank’s U.S. equity capital management (ECM) team seems to have weathered the secondary market storm quite well considering. Deutsche Bank finished 11th in the U.S.. ECM league tables during the first half of the year, pulling in over $101 million in net revenue, according to Dealogic. While that’s down from 9th in all of 2017, Deutsche Bank’s U.S. ECM business is actually on pace to slightly trump last year’s performance, when it booked $195 million in revenue with a full team. And it only trails the 9th place position by 5% as of the end of June.

The numbers give credence to the theory of some current U.S. Deutsche bankers that the firm was simply cutting unnecessary fat without hitting the bone. Deutsche’s ECM team was extremely efficient, generating more revenue-per-deal than any of its surrounding peers on the league tables. Deutsche Bank’s debt capital management (DCM) business survived in equal fashion, falling from 8th in 2017 to 10th in the first half of the year. Again, they were around 5% from equaling last year’s ranking.

So where has the real carnage taken place? We’d suggest looking at Deutsche Bank’s U.S. mergers and acquisitions group. Deutsche Bank has fallen from 13th to 18th in the league table rankings, and now trails the likes of San Francisco-based boutique Qatalyst Partners, which was involved in one-quarter of as many deals as Deutsche Bank, according to Dealogic. In U.S. M&A, DB currently sits behind eight boutique investment banks.

Deutsche Bank’s U.S. M&A unit brought in virtually the same revenue as its ECM team during the first half of this year – around $101 million. No other full-service investment bank came close to equally this feat in the U.S. (most far exceed it). And it’s not that Deutsche’s M&A business is simply being outperformed by competitors in an up-market. They are on pace to miss last year’s revenue total by 28%.

The league tables suggest that a smaller headline may have had a much more material impact than the broader news surrounding the firm’s restructuring. As part of the moves, Deutsche Bank closed its Houston, TX office which primarily focused on advising oil and gas companies. The decision to walk away from oil and gas in the U.S. and the U.K. came as a bit of a shock to some insiders as it was said to be one of the better performing units within Deutsche Bank’s languishing global M&A business. Paranoia among other Deutsche M&A bankers ensued.

The closing of the Houston office and other oil and gas advisory cuts reportedly resulted in loss of around 70 jobs – mostly dealmakers and other front-office staff, according to the Wall Street Journal. The layoffs surely saved Deutsche Bank millions in overhead, though it appears they may have had more impact on earnings than other cuts within the U.S. investment bank, at least for now.

Follow @BeecherTuttle

““

Over eighteen years in banking and finance, including five as a managing director at a major U.S. bank, I’ve noticed what makes some people succeed. Why some people get hired with guaranteed bonuses and some don’t. One is that they’re charismatic and have great relationships. In banking parlance, they have great, “social capital”.

Relationships are critical because that’s how humans work. We evolved out of small tribes. Relationships are simply about having people in your life who like, trust and want to help you. If those people also happen to be powerful and can get you a job at the same time, well then that’s excellent.

So how do we go about acquiring social capital? The rules are a lot like investing – you have to invest to grow your assets. Regular inputs of charisma will increase your returns.

Break your social capital down into three categories: people, knowledge and emotional support. People are simply the relationships you have. Knowledge is the information you possess (for example, the facts, insights, opinions, or expertise that you can share with the people you know.) Emotional support is the psychological and emotional well being you can offer – the support, friendship, inspiration and guidance you bring to your relationships.

The most powerful people on Wall Street use charisma to work all three.

When it comes to people, you want to be a facilitator. You want to bring the best people together and step aside. The most charismatic bankers know that connecting up a network is the greatest way to grow it. When you know two people who have similar interests, hobbies, or you think might just like talking to each other, ask their permission and introduce them.

When it comes to knowledge, Wall Street’s most charismatic share what they know. Whenever I read something interesting, for example, I try to have a habit of thinking who else would like to read it. You could do the same – or help a friend with a resume, or share a perspective with a colleague. Start thinking of your mind as an open-source project that other people can benefit from.

When it comes to emotional support, the best bankers will “be there” for the people and the clients they know. They’re emotionally present. They make phone calls, send handwritten notes and gifts. They say thank you and they are available as sounding boards. They make a difference to others.

Once you start investing in your social capital, once you start using your charisma in the style of these bankers, you’ll notice something. You’ll see that you start growing your social capital. When you start introducing people, you’ll see that they return the favour, When you need an introduction, you’ll see they’re more willing to make it happen. Just like that, your network and relationships will grow.

Similarly, you’ll find that when you start sharing your knowledge more openly you become both a source and an authority on useful information for the people you know. This builds your credibility and inspires your relationships to share information back with you. Again people will see you someone with intellect and credibility, yet another reason to let you in.

And as you grow closer to those people as a result, you become a better friend, a better listener, which moves other people to become a better friend to you, deepening your rapport, trust and goodwill, and inspiring more and more acts of generosity.

It’s self-perpetuating. The most powerful and charismatic people on Wall Street understand that. It’s time you did too.

The authors are former managing directors at Wall Street banks who blog at What I Learnt on Wall Street.

““

When you resign from your job on the trading floor of an investment bank, it’s standard practice to be locked out of a bank’s systems and immediately bewith escorted from the building. After all, no bank wants exposure to the risk that you make a mistake or solicit its clients after declaring your intention to work elsewhere. At Deutsche Bank, however, some traders who resign are now being required to stick around.

We understand that several traders who’ve resigned from Deutsche Bank’s London fixed income trading business in the past few weeks are still at their desks. In a highly unusual development, we also understand that the German bank has required them to carry on trading and dealing with clients instead of taking the summer off on paid gardening leave. Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

The new policy follows a report last month that Deutsche Bank had cut paid gardening leave for its senior U.S. bankers to just 30 days, down from 60 days or even 90 days previously. During gardening leave, departing employees are unable to start new jobs elsewhere and are effectively paid to relax. Deutsche Bank’s truncated approach therefore denies exiting U.S. bankers summers off in the Hamptons.

In London, Deutsche insiders say they have signed contracts giving the bank the opportunity to cut gardening leave from three months to just one month within five days of handing in their notice. Even when gardening leave continues for three month, the bank is still requesting some traders to continue working.

Charles Ferguson, a veteran London lawyer with a long history of dealing with traders’ employment queries says Deutsche Bank is perfectly entitled to require its employees to continue trading, although it’s not standard practice. “Most banks immediately stick traders on gardening leave because they don’t want them chatting up clients after they’ve left.”

Headhunters who work with traders say Deutsche Bank’s new approach is unprecedented. “Usually, anyone in a risk-taking position is asked to leave the building as soon as they resign or are fired,” says one. “It’s possible that Deutsche Bank has decided not to follow this policy because they’ve lost a lot of people and need the desks manned over the summer for regulatory reasons.”

““

At the end of last week, Credit Suisse paid out fines of $47m to the DoJ and around $30m to the SEC, to settle the investigation into its “princelings” hiring scandal. This was an investigation into the practice of hiring the children of highly-placed Communist Party officials in China into lucrative banking jobs in the hope the kids would be able to help CS Hong Kong get banking business from their parents. This was felt by the regulators to breach the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. But the official press release on the settlement might strike many of us as familiar.

One employee, described at length in the DoJ press release, was hired after a slightly less-rigorous-than-normal process in which a CS banker wrote her resume for her, and warned colleagues that “she is a princess who is not used to too many rounds of interview”. After joining the graduate intake, she was rated bottom of her analyst class, and criticised for little things like rarely coming into the office and bringing her mother along to training events.

This didn’t affect her promotion prospects. She got evaluations with phrases like “try to answer the phone and not be rude” and “come into the office more – we love to see your smiling face”. Other bankers were asked to send her “congratulations, couldn’t have done it without you” emails relating to deals they had done thanks to her connections. She ended up getting about $1m total comp before the investigation turned into a career speed bump. The settlement doesn’t record what the other employees thought about all this, but it’s hard to imagine that it was anything very positive.

This is something of an extreme case. But haven’t we all worked alongside someone who was just a little bit of a teacher’s pet? A relative of someone who is a senior executive, or a kid of a big client, or someone with a surname that’s on one of the conference rooms, for example. The fact is that investment banking is about doing deals, and for this reason, people who can help the bank get deals are more valuable than people who can’t. And the P&L account doesn’t really care whether the deals are brought in by financial brilliance and business savvy, or by family connections. That’s why this isn’t the first princelings scandal by a long way – JP Morgan, for example, paid $264m to settle similar charges two years ago. The old proverb that “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is in many ways true.

Separately, which bank begins with D, ends with E and has a load of compliance trouble? Well yes, them too, but Danske Bank’s Estonian operations appear to be caught in a major money-laundering scandal which has grown and grown the more it’s been investigated and might involve as much as 53bn Danish kronor ($8.3bn). The bank is now seeing some customers shifting their own deposits in protest, and Bill Browder (of Hermitage Capital, and a perennial lobbyist against Russia-related organised crime) is planning to launch a criminal complaint against them.

What it looks like is a scandal similar to the HSBC Mexico case of a few years ago – a local operation that has never been properly integrated into the compliance framework of the group as a whole, and which has never in the past been seen as important enough to be worth supervising properly. A bad branch of a good bank is the most dangerous thing in financial crime, as it tends to be given the benefit of the doubt earned by the reputable parent, so there are much weaker constraints on its ability to expand its activities to truly amazing proportions. That’s another old proverb – “what you don’t know can hurt you.”

Meanwhile:

The top hedge funds in Europe surveyed, including some which don’t usually get much publicity. (Financial Times)

Steve Cohen gets turned down by the FCA as not “fit and proper” to open Point72 to the British hedge fund investing public. (CNBC)

A poem made up of Wall Street platitudes. (WSJ)

The inside story of the Blackrock / Hovnanian CDS affair. (WSJ)

HSBC and L&G chief executives will be having dinner with Donald Trump on his official visit to the UK. (Financial News)

Old Mutual Global Investors is to be renamed “Merian”, after a 17^th century butterfly expert. (Financial News)

A review of “Finn”, the new J.P. Morgan banking brand aimed at millennials. (Business Insider)

Citigroup has hired Gregoire Haemmerle and Pierre Drevillon from UBS to run CIB and M&A in France. (WSJ)

Arif Hussein is now running a burger restaurant rather than trading sterling rates for UBS, but he still wants them to cover his legal fees. (Daily Telegraph)

Credit Suisse has appointed Antoinette Poschung to the newly-created “Conduct and Ethics Ombudswoman” post, with responsibility among other things for handling all #MeToo cases. (Reuters)

Image credit: tuu Sitthikorn, Getty

It’s getting into that time of year when London is filled with the perennial sounds of an English summer. Leather on willow (or if it’s an Ashes series, leather on stump). Sausages sizzling on the barbecue. And the weary sigh of a posh kid in a new suit going “I just feel like I’m not really making use of my degree”. Yep, the interns are coming back again.

It’s an arrangement that seems to be set up in the best interests of absolutely nobody. A lot of college kids spend what ought to be the finest summers of their lives, sweating away in London and New York at the time of year when the city is at its smelliest. The banks pay money which could, pro rata, finance a pretty good management consulting project in return for work of close to zero value. And dozens of investment bankers face a choice between three equally undesirable options. You either spend time and effort in coming up with a challenging summer project unrelated to your real work. Or you bite the bullet and actually let a twenty year old rugby player loose on a few millions of client deals.

Or, like most of us, you come up with half an idea and some binders from last year, and put up with a gloomy bored presence sighing at the end of your desk for five weeks, occasionally looking up to ask a bizarre question. Heaven forfend, by the way, that you ask the person on the desk with least real work to help out with a bit of photocopying or make a tea run; in the brave new world of human resources, asking an intern to get some coffee is a grave faux pas.

How did it come to this? Once upon a time, there was a thing called “campus recruitment”. People interviewed for jobs in banking during their last year at university, on their campuses. Then, when they got their results, if they had passed, they started work as an employee. They were usually on six month probationary periods, so you could fire them if you’d made a mistake.

But MDs and Directors got tired of wasting their time going round the country, and they weren’t always very good at interviewing. So a system was devised whereby the candidates could come into the office and waste our time there, with the interview process spread out into an agonising getting-to-know-you exercise over a period of weeks. There might be some net saving of time and effort but I doubt it.

And there are real consequences for the industry. Since the recruitment process came to be dominated by internships, it has been entirely focused on a particular type of person – the type of person who knew that they wanted to work in an investment bank early enough to get their applications in for internships in their second year.

That’s not a representative cross section of society; most 18-year olds haven’t even heard of the investment banking industry, let alone decided on a career in it.

The people who apply for internships are generally very impressive in their academic results and extracurricular accomplishments. But there’s a certain similarity to their worldview, which is a result of a competitive treadmill of internships that robs them of any chance to have experiences that aren’t resume-enhancing. Graduate programmes today have achieved the feat of consisting of an impressively diverse group of young people, all of whom think exactly the same.

We should give the kids their summers back. It might not be possible to put the genie back in the bottle – now that this is the normal recruitment process for top talent, no bank is going to want to be the first to go back. But it wouldn’t be hard to shorten them, to a fortnight at most. Turn internships back into what they were meant to be – short work experience placements, not pretend summer jobs. All we have to lose are a whole load of bound Powerpoint projects that will be dumped in the bin five minutes after the intern class of 2018 leave the building.

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.)

““

MBA admissions officers used to look more favorably upon applicants with financial services experience. The strong work ethic associated with investment bankers and money managers and the prestige that comes with working for a big brand are attributes that business schools such as Harvard, Wharton and Stanford covet, as they demonstrate readiness for the rigors of the MBA classroom.

These days, finance candidates have to take a more critical approach to MBA application strategy, as they represent the largest pool of incoming students at top business schools. And while MBA admissions committees do accept applications from oversubscribed populations, they are now focusing more on diversity of profession, gender and nationality, because it enriches peer-to-peer learning and contributes to their success in the rankings. With finance an overwhelmingly male-dominated profession, men in particular have a higher bar to reach in the current MBA admissions climate.

So, how do you rise to the top of a competitive pool when you’re a common commodity? Every element of the MBA application should be optimized if you are to set yourself apart from the financial herd. Here’s how to do it:

Recognize that your resume doesn’t make you special

The default among financiers is to assume that their strong work ethic, employer brand and high stats will get them into a top school, but that is not the case today. About 50% of our finance inquiries do not realize that the bar is higher for their cohort, and that their application must be more compelling to differentiate themselves from the competition. Accepting that truth is the first step to securing a place on a top MBA program.

Top business schools expect holistic interests and achievements.

Highlighting personal qualities and triumphs is essential to your MBA application strategy. At SBC, we charted the application journeys of 21 MBA candidates from private equity firms applying to Harvard (HBS), Stanford (GSB) and Wharton.

Our study concluded that past academic background nor GMAT (admissions test) scores could reliably predict whether candidates were admitted or rejected. Success — defined by either an admit or interview invite – was rather predicted by how interesting the candidate was to admissions officers, our study found.

Being “interesting” was conveyed through activities that candidates engaged with outside the classroom during their undergraduate degree or in recent years, to the extent work/life balance allowed. For example, debate leadership, athletic activity and a remarkable thesis were undergraduate experiences that correlated with admits to GSB and HBS. Emphasizing earlier life interests that show character and values can differentiate finance candidates vying for top MBA programs.

Display responsible leadership credentials

Admissions committees want you to demonstrate more than financial success. “Show how you have made a positive impact on the communities in which you have operated, as this demonstrates leadership and predicts success at HBS,” shared a former HBS Admissions Officer on the SBC consulting team who asked to remain anonymous as they still work in the industry. It’s important to list your leadership roles and titles held, but also how you interacted with others and worked well in teams.

Many business schools also want to educate people who will lead society, not just business, and consider how their career impacts the environment around them. Schools are thinking about employability when reviewing applications – a critical factor in MBA rankings – and whether candidates will use the MBA to achieve their career goals.

“Clarity of goals is extremely important to Wharton, especially as they’ve combined MBA admissions, career management, and student life under the same deputy vice dean,” according to Meghan Ellis, a former Wharton Admissions Officer on the SBC team. “The Wharton admissions committee will look at applications to see: is this person already on the fast track, are their goals logical and reasonable, do they have a plan for how they will use their time during the program and how they will meet their goals?”

In addition, illustrate how you will contribute to your new community at business school. Convey that you will be active and engaged on campus — how you will take on a leadership role within a club that you are passionate about, for example.

Use recommendations to show how you are at the top of your class

A career at a prestigious firm such as Goldman Sachs may not be enough to get you into business school, but it sure can help. A recommendation from a senior manager at a leading bank or fund can add some stardust to your MBA application.

Use your recommendation letters to convey what made you stand apart from your peers at the firm — including project or people management, and evidence of high performance, such as receiving promotions more quickly than others, which are all valued by MBA admissions teams. It’s not generally permitted to write the letters yourself, of course, but you can guide your recommender by explaining what business schools want to know about you, relative to the strengths and vulnerabilities of your profile.

Being a banker can still be an advantage to gaining an admit to an elite MBA program, if you know how to sell it.

Stacy Blackman is the president and founder of Stacy Blackman Consulting, an MBA admissions consulting advisory launched in 2001. Stacy earned her BS in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and her MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Follow @BeecherTuttle

““

Credit Suisse has brought on board Raymond Sisson, a veteran salesperson who has spent his entire career in aircraft leasing, as a new managing director in New York.

It is not immediately clear what Sisson’s role will be at Credit Suisse given that he has never worked for a bank before. However, it is very likely that he has been hired by Credit Suisse’s private bank, which has built up an aviation finance unit for corporate customers and high-net-worth individuals as one of its core strengths.

Credit Suisse had previously been named the best private bank for business jet finance and advisory in EMEA by Corporate Jet Investor. Aside from bankers, the group also employs pilots, aeronautical engineers and lawyers for its aviation finance team. Sisson’s background would fit in well. He comes with more than two decades of experience in the aviation industry and has a JD from Georgetown University Law Center and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Before joining Credit Suisse last month, Sisson served as the chief executive officer and chairman at AVi8 Air Capital, a commercial aircraft leasing company that he co-founded in late 2016 with Ed Wegel, the former CEO of Eastern Air Lines Group. The company’s website is not functional at present, and Sisson’s LinkedIn profile implies he already ended his association with the firm in June.

Sisson began his career in 1995 with GE Capital Aviation Services where he served as a senior vice president and regional manager for 13 years. He moved on to become CEO and president of Titan Aviation Leasing Ltd. in 2008, but shifted to aircraft maintenance repair and overhaul service provider SR Technics as the chief commercial officer a year later. Between 2010 and 2016, he served as the CEO and president for Ansett Worldwide, a commercial jet aircraft leasing company. Up until last month, he was on the board of directors for Hudson Structured Capital Management, which focuses on equipment financing in aviation, shipping, rail, containers, and auto among other segments.

““

The two U.S. co-heads of prime brokerage at Cowen Inc. have left the firm just a year after joining. Michael DeJarnette and Douglas Nelson were named co-heads of the U.S. business in 2017 after coming over as part of Cowen’s acquisition of brokerage firm Convergex Group. Insiders say the pair left the company in June.

Nelson had been the CEO of Convergex for over a decade before Cowen’s $100 million acquisition. DeJarnette was an executive director of prime services. The two were only named co-heads of the U.S. business in October after Cowen fully integrated Convergex within its own platform. The acquisition closed in June of last year.

Prime brokerage has been an interesting area to watch over the last few years. Executing trades and covering margins for hedge funds, prime brokerage units are capital-intensive yet can be highly lucrative. Banks that are looking to reduce their leverage and satisfy regulators have been cutting their exposure to prime brokerage while others have looked to fill in the gaps.

Credit Suisse has been scaling back its prime brokerage unit for several years. The Swiss bank cut seven staffers from its New York operations just last month. Faced with similar capital restraints, Deutsche Bank has also recently made cuts to its prime financing business in the U.S. Meanwhile, BNY Mellon launched an FX prime brokerage unit earlier this year while Standard Bank started offering prime services late last year.

Cowen was voted the best boutique prime broker at the 2017 U.S. hedge fund services awards while earning the same honor in Europe in 2018. The company declined to comment on the departures. DeJarnette also declined comment while Nelson didn’t respond to an inquiry about the nature of his exit.

Follow @BeecherTuttle

““

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

““

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

Related articles:
You’ll know your finance career has failed when…
Is it time to leave? These are the signs.
I was addicted to my banking job. Here’s how I broke the habit
I got on the hedonic treadmill in 1999 when I joined Lehman Brothers. I stayed there for 18 years.
How I increased my pay 25x during 18 years in finance
There's an art to achieving the big money in banking.

“”

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

““

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

““

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

““

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?”

““

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

“”

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

Morning Coffee: J.P. Morgan reluctantly tells staffers to start packing. What it’s like to work for a hedge fund that’s rolling

Millennium Capital Management lost one of its top London portfolio managers

Why you should accept the alternative jobs banks offer instead of redundancy

Where jobs cuts have – and haven’t – hurt Deutsche Bank in the U.S.

How to network with all the charisma of a top Wall Street banker

Disconcerted Deutsche Bank traders are being made to work their notice periods

Morning Coffee: The $1m “rude” banker who wouldn’t take phone calls. The small bank with big compliance problems

Against banking internships – give the kids their summer back

How to leverage your banking resume to get an MBA at Harvard, Wharton or Stanford

Credit Suisse hires airplane salesman as new MD

Top prime brokerage execs depart Cowen in short order

Morning Coffee: Europe’s most powerful ex-banker credited with Citi coup. HSBC wants to change your job title

These are the interview questions you’ll be asked at Citi

IDB (Investment Banking Division) questions from Citi interviews

Sales and trading questions from Citi interviews

Technology questions from Citi interviews

I went from being a lonely cubicle slave to an MD at a top bank

Morgan Stanley M&A bankers outperform Goldman Sachs at home and abroad, among other surprises

Morning Coffee: What Morgan Stanley’s potential new boss says about the firm. Analyst quits in epic meltdown

Has your secret phone become a problem on the trading floor?

Horror as senior bankers forced to redo their CVs

The bankers that are grumbling most about their bonuses

Morning Coffee: J.P. Morgan is the only bank that isn’t full of blue bloods. Deutsche shareholders are cross about Cerberus