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It’s been hot. In the UK, the heatwave may be about to break but this is little consolation to all those who’ve spent the past month sweating into their TM Lewin shirts whilst traveling to and from air conditioned offices.

Faced with the sorts of temperatures last seen in 1976, banking insiders say the finance population has being quietly taking action. There are no flip flops, for these are banned as surely as Hawaiian shirts. However, there are…ankles.

“I’ve some men wear loafers with no socks,” says one vice president of J.P. Morgan. “It’s unusual, but it’s happening.”

At Goldman Sachs, where operations staff to get to dress down in jeans and shirts all summer, there are rumours of one intern turning up at a meeting with an MD in a t-shirt and being sent out again. Elsewhere, there is the usual array of short skirts and sweaty armpits, diaphanous materials and standard-issue chinos.

Although London’s Lord’s Cricket Ground has relaxed its dress code and absolved “gentlemen” of the need to wear jackets in the pavilion, none of the bankers we spoke to had received any special sartorial guidance for the hot weather. Despite occasional threats to wear shorts (see below), the Goldman VP said displays of male calf are inherently unacceptable and that shorts are, “never allowed.”

This is disputed by a senior banker at a rival firm, who says, “There has been a surge this week of men in the City in shirts with smart shorts… and yes, the loafer sans socks is a sadly far too familiar sight.”

Meanwhile, one Jefferies associate claims to have spotted colleagues without ties. A Morgan Stanley associate said most people wear trousers and shirts and, “sit near to the air conditioning.”

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Goldman Sachs has just released the 2017 results for its business in Germany. For anyone hoping to move to the Frankfurt office post-Brexit and carry on much the same as in London, it’s a bit of a wake-up call. Goldman Sachs’ Frankfurt office is certainly growing, but last year it was still tiny. It also paid its average employee quite a lot less than the Goldman Sachs office in London.

While Goldman Sachs’ London office employed 4,688 people last year and paid them an average of $523k (£399k), Goldman Sachs’ Frankfurt office ended 2017 with just 136 people and paid them an average of $459k (€359k) – 12% less.

The chart below helps to explain why.

While Goldman Sachs’ London office had nearly 1,500 people working in highly paid “institutional securities” (sales and trading) jobs in 2017, Goldman Sachs’ Frankfurt office was focused only on investment banking and investment management and support functions last year. As the chart shows, there were no salespeople and traders actually employed by the German entity at all last year – although up to 60 salespeople and traders have already been seconded across from Goldman Sachs International in London.

This could change. Although Goldman Sachs reportedly plans to fill all but a floor of its new office in London’s Farringdon, it’s also leased new space at its Frankfurt office and is reportedly looking to expand its Frankfurt headcount to 400 people as part of a broader strategy to boost its presence across Europe.

Following the recent success of Paris at winning staff from Frankfurt, and after Richard Gnodde, head of Goldman Sachs International‘s, declaration that Goldman plans to move “tens” of bankers to the French capital this summer, Goldman’s latest results also contain some good news for the German city. – It seems that Goldman Sachs plans to convert its German entity into a Societas Europaea (a European public company) and to merge it with its French subsidiary Goldman Sachs Gestion SA. The move is expected to make Frankfurt the seat of Goldman’s operations in Europe and is likely to mean that the offices in other member states will likely be run as branches of the new entity.

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You’re an analyst or associate in an investment bank, so have you bought crypto assets yet?

Maybe you should’ve: there are a lot of young traders and investors out there.

However, as a banking MD with two decades’ experience, I’d like to repeat to you what Warren Buffett has to say:

Rule number 1: Don’t lose money.
Rule number 2: Don’t forget rule number 1.

Seriously every decade every generation has it bubbles, has its excitement. When I was 22 in 1999 it was tech stocks that were booming. Stuff was going up and down 5-10% a day, and you felt you needed to get involved. I remember opening a Charles Schwab trading account age 20 in University to start trading AOL and Yahoo shares. It went on like that for a while, and then it ended.

A few years later, I saw the same cycle in 2006 and 2007. Capitalism creates new ideas, those new ideas create excitement and a ‘gold rush’. That leads to prices up moving up. That leads to capital flowing in.

It’s a timeless cycle.

It’s not the only one though. There’s another cycle on Wall Street and that is fear and greed. Greed and fear. Rinse and repeat.

The beauty of being in finance for almost two decades is that you start seeing human nature everywhere. You start seeing the way people think, the way they behave. Yes, the technologies, the acronyms, the companies change, but human behavior stays the same and that is the beauty of markets.

My advice to you before investing or trading – either in crypto or anything else, is therefore to study human nature. Study human behavior. Study yourself: what’s making you invest in crypto? What’s got you so excited? Is it FOMO – fear of missing it out?

If it is, watch yourself. The beautiful thing I’ve learnt about FOMO is that markets always go up and down you are never going to miss out. If you find something really attractive now, follow it, understand it, track it, trust me you’ll get a good time to buy it soon.

The times when I’ve seen people really mess themselves up financially is when they’ve moved based on FOMO and made decisions based on envy and what they see other people doing. Forget about how much money other people are making. STOP think rationally. THINK honestly about what the right thing to do is right now. Ignore the herd.

If – after doing the work, using your best judgment and thinking rationally – you still decide that you want to invest in crypto or anything else, then go for it.

A simple trick for slowing down your reptile, fear and greed-based brain and switching on your rational Buffett brain is to just write down your decisions. For example, I am buying Bitcoin now because….I expect this to happen, for this reason. I will get out if this happens, I will add if something else happens. A simple trading plan.

This is what the best traders and investors do. Outline their investment thesis and then test their predictions versus what actually happened. This is my advice to you.

The author is one of a group of senior bankers who blog at the site What I Learned on Wall Street (WilowWallStreet.com).

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Becoming a CFO is a career aspiration for many people with a background in finance but the road to success is not always obvious.

Hays Accountancy & Finance, which has been recruiting finance professionals globally for over 50 years, has taken a look at the career factors shared by successful CFOs in Asia, shedding light on the skills and qualifications people who aspire to the role should acquire.

Whilst the principle role of the CFO has been financial governance, there has always been a broader remit. As markets rapidly evolve and business models change, the scope of the role is becoming even more diverse.

As a result, whilst a strong academic background and in depth finance and business experience is still highly important, softer people skills, strategic thinking, exposure to a range of functions and a strong network are increasingly key requirements for CFOs today.

Hays found that three-quarters of CFOs in Asia had a degree in business, commerce, finance or economics, while half had also attained an MBA. The vast majority of CFO’s are also professionally qualified; so this would appear to be an essential stage of the journey.

Richard Eardley, managing director of Hays Asia, says: “Of course, to become a CFO, you must have a solid technical foundation, that’s the starting point. However, it is the learned experience post-qualification that is the most important factor. Working across sectors and exposure to a range of functions is an increasingly valuable career asset.

Hays found the average CFO in Asia had 16 years of practical experience, however, as many as 20% had less than six years of experience working in finance before they reached their current post.

Most CFOs have a breadth of experience across different corporations, with nearly half having worked for at least four companies, while a fifth had worked for six or more during the course of their careers. Loyalty can be a negative factor in career growth. Most CFO’s have worked for more than once employer, and nearly 50% have been with four or more organisations. A fifth had moved job 6 times.

It was not just working in different firms that Hays identified as being important for people on a CFO career path, but also experience across different departments.

“A recurring sentiment voiced by CFOs was the need for them to work across departments and understand how all areas of the business come together to achieve its goals,” Richard says.

“A CFO must expand his or her vision far beyond the finance department in order to be a true strategic thinker.”

International experience was also highlighted as a key ingredient for successful CFOs working in Asia.

Although only a handful of CFOs identified working abroad as a critical skill, 42% of people who had attained a CFO position had worked outside of Asia at some point, and among those who had, three-quarters said the experience had been of considerable benefit to their career.

North America was the most popular destination in which CFOs in Asia had worked, followed by Europe and the UK, and Australia or New Zealand.

Not only did CFOs think there were more opportunities in international markets, but they also felt their roles were more varied overseas.

Hays found that while a strong financial background and good analytical thinking were both necessary components of a CFO’s DNA, several other skills also appeared to be critical to career progression.

Strategic planning topped the list of important attributes for aspiring CFOs to cultivate, followed by people management, commercial acumen and communication skills.

Richard says: “Many of the top skills needed to succeed as a CFO are non-technical, including people management, strategic planning and communication.

“As businesses globalise, CFOs must be able to communicate clearly, lead multicultural teams, and exercise sophisticated people skills.”

Alongside these skills, there were also a number of personal characteristics that set CFOs apart.

Six out of 10 existing CFOs in Asia said having a proactive nature had been a major factor in their success, while 46% credited their hard work for their career progression and 42% thought their analytical skills had been key.

Being collaborative was also seen as important, suggesting CFOs also need to be good team players.

They must also be prepared to take on advisory roles to help their organisations keep up to date with new regulations and respond to emerging challenges.

Finally, they must be pro-active and enterprising if they are going to get ahead.

Richard says: “The role will always evolve. The CFO will usually work hand in hand with the CEO, meaning they need to understand all facets of the business. Aspiring finance professionals would be well advised to ensure they pick up a broad range of experience as they navigate their careers, and develop both technical and non-technical skill-sets.”

Want to get ahead at Goldman Sachs under soon-to-be chief executive David Solomon? You may need to get a bit more in touch with your feelings. Having something to talk about other than work likely won’t hurt either.

Unlike outgoing CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who’s been known to engage and sometimes disarm those around him with dry wit, Solomon is more expressive and less opaque. He appears to want to see the same qualities in his colleagues. Solomon believes that leaders need to be “more vulnerable, they have to put themselves out there a lot more than they probably are comfortable doing,” Brian Levine, Goldman’s co-head of global equities trading, told CNBC.

Solomon proved those comments to be in earnest almost immediately, telling a room of interns the day after his announced appointment that he “was shaking” when Blankfein called him up to the stage to introduce him as the bank’s new CEO. “I was pretty emotional about it, it really affected me,” he said. You rarely if ever hear such introspective words from a Wall Street chief, particularly one heading up Goldman Sachs. The culture Solomon is likely to sow sounds like a far cry from the “radical transparency” demanded of employees at Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates, but one can still expect a clear shift in tone come October 1. It may take some getting used to – “vulnerable” isn’t exactly the first word you’d think of when describing a banker.

Meanwhile, another possible change coming to Goldman Sachs could be a slight work-life balance improvement. CNBC unearthed a podcast from October of last year where Solomon spoke of his side-hustle as a DJ. He stressed the importance of having passions in life outside of work and incorporating them into your professional life. “If you can’t…it’s just harder to have the energy to keep on doing this,” he said. Outside hobbies didn’t seem as important to Blankfein, who once told a group of interns that he spent his weekends reading briefings, taking work calls and answering emails.

Elsewhere, former Trump strategist and ex-Goldman Sachs banker Steve Bannon recently took part in a Sunday Times feature chronicling his political aspirations for Europe. While cursing out basically everyone, Bannon’s ire was aimed particularly at French president and fellow former investment banker Emmanuel Macron, whose pockets are filled with loose change, according to Bannon. “Lil Mac is a Rothschild banker that never made any money,” he told the Times. “I’ve got not just f***-you money, I’ve got f***-everybody money” – which is basically all he said throughout the interview.

Meanwhile:

Speaking of David Solomon, Goldman’s current COO and part-time DJ, known as D-Sol, just dropped a remix called “Don’t Stop” that debuted at No. 39 on Billboard’s Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart. It’s an acquired taste. (Billboard)

Deutsche Bank is cutting dozens of trading, treasury and operations jobs within its Chicago office. It’s also moving half of its European clearing business from London to Frankfurt. (Bloomberg)

Goldman Sachs and a host of boutique investment banks are expanding their U.S. M&A teams in the Midwest, adding headcount in Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Louis, among other cities, as they aim to place bankers closer to potential clients. (Bloomberg)

Banks are also honing in on Nordic countries, where M&A activity has spiked. J.P. Morgan seems to be leading the charge. (Bloomberg)

Activist investor Edward Bramson’s proposal to dramatically shrink Deutsche Bank’s investment bank hasn’t been met with ringing endorsements. A fellow fund manager called the proposal “bizarre,” while another top investor said Bramson’s push prompted “complete bewilderment.” (The Times)

As the newly-minted sole head of global equities at J.P. Morgan, Jason Sippel is calling his shot. The bank will overtake Morgan Stanley as the top equities shop by 2021, according to Sippel. Equities traders at J.P. Morgan outpaced rivals at Goldman Sachs for the first time on record during Q2. (Bloomberg)

Recently-deceased Wall Street mogul John Jakobson may have fathered another child unknown to his immediate family: TV actress Marina Squerciati, who said she kept the relationship a secret for 36 years due to promises that she would be provided for in his will. (NY Post)

Swedish banks have the automation bug. Firms like Nordea, SEB and Handelsbanken are actively cutting staff as they implement more technology solutions. (Bloomberg)

Quant funds like Renaissance Technologies, PDT Partners, WorldQuant and Two Sigma have some serious fringe benefits. Their funds that are only open to employees and early investors are killing it. (WSJ)

Being cast on a reality TV show like “Love Island” is more lucrative than earning a degree from Oxford or Cambridge. (Independent)

Follow @BeecherTuttle

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: btuttle@efinancialcareers.com
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Goldman Sachs has made a big appointment to its equities technology team, hiring Matt Kilsby, the former chief operating officer of Systematica Investments, as a managing director.

Kilsby had been a non-executive director at Systematica since July 2017 and Goldman therefore seems to have brought him out of semi-retirement. Launched in 2015, Systematica is a multi-strategy spin-off of BlueCrest Capital Management’s systematic trading division.

Kilsby’s arrival comes as GS is strengthening its electronic trading capabilities. In October 2017, it brought in Mike Blum, the former chief technology officer at the high-frequency trading firm KCG Holdings as the CTO for its electronic trading unit. Blum is a partner based in Chicago, Kilsby will be based in London.

With the new role, Kilsby’s career seems to have come to the full circle. He began his career with GS in 1996 after completing his software engineering from the University of Manchester. During the nine years he spent at GS, he held various technology roles covering risk, wealth management and fixed income trading, eventually becoming VP of FICC Electronic Trading.

He moved to Citadel in 2005 as the head of European technology. In 2009, he joined a high-frequency trading start-up to head business strategy and technology leadership, only to shift to UBS a year later as the MD and the EMEA head of equities IT. In early 2013, Kilsby joined BlueCrest Capital Management as the head of Systematic Technology. When Systematica Investments spun out two years later, he joined as COO and CTO.

Last July. he assumed the role of non-executive director at Systematica. Now he’s back at the coal face.

As we reported last week, Goldman Sachs is also hiring for a new team called ION, which is building trading and pricing systems from scratch for flow products in the fixed income market.

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A junior banker has died at a mid-market boutique in Chicago. The reasons for his death are not clear, but colleagues had complained about long working hours.

The junior in question was working for Lincoln International, a global mid-market investment bank based in Chicago. He is understood to have been working in the Chicago office, and may have been a summer intern.

The death was first reported on Wall Street Oasis, the investment banking forum website that first revealed the death of Bank of America intern Moritz Erhardt in 2013. At the time, there were claims that Erhardt’s death was linked to an alleged 72-hour shift which may have triggered an epileptic seizure. A tribunal subsequently found that exhaustion from overwork could not be conclusively linked to Erhardt’s death, although fatigue could have been a trigger. Unnamed sources on Wall Street Oasis suggest that the Lincoln International junior who died had worked, “some crazy amount of all-nighters.”

A spokeswoman for Lincoln International confirmed that a junior banker at the firm passed away, but said it was not the result of “working all night shifts,” and that Lincoln International has “standards and systems in place” to prevent these from occurring. “The health and well-being of our professionals is our highest priority,” she added.

Lincoln International employs over 400 people and has offices in 20 locations globally, including London, Paris, Zurich, Madrid, Milan, Amsterdam and Frankfurt and has been expanding globally. Last year, it opened offices in Dallas and Munich. This year it has been hiring in Sweden.

The company scores 4.4 stars out of five on Glassdoor from employees as a good place to work, and 90% of people there say they would recommend it to a friend. However, 27 out of 73 employee reviews cite erratic working hours and 17 complain that the hours are long (“as with all investment banks…”). Employees praise the management team for being “ethical” and taking an interest in juniors. However, there are also complaints of long hours, weekend work and a need to be available around the clock.

Following Erhardt’s death, most banks implemented systems to restrict juniors’ working hours. However, many young people coming into finance still expect to work until the early hours of the morning. A separate thread on Wall Street Oasis suggests interns at bulge bracket banks have had their hours trimmed to between 60 and 70 a week thanks to the new restrictions, which typically limit working at weekends. However, boutique firms (although not Lincoln International specifically) typically have longer hours than the rest.

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It’s getting harder to make big money in banking: the harder you work, the more money banks pay to their shareholders. Just look at Goldman Sachs, where the compensation ratio for the second quarter of 2018 fell to a historic low, as the firm devoted just 37% of its revenues to compensation.

In the circumstances, you might want to move somewhere where you get to eat more of your kill. If you work in M&A, there’s always Evercore, where bankers take home 60% of the firm’s revenues and earn an average of $600k each. Alternatively, there’s the strategy consulting firm Bain & Co. There, you’ll earn less, but a huge proportion of the revenues you bring in could be yours to keep.

Accounts recently filed by Bain & Co. Inc United Kingdom for the year ending December 2017 show that Bain’s UK entity earned £149m ($195m) in revenues last year, up from £139m in 2016. In 2016, 77% of Bain’s UK revenues went to paying its UK staff. Last year, 80% did.

The high compensation ratio reflects the fact that Bain & Co. is a privately owned company without any public shareholders to keep happy. It’s also reflective of the low capital intensity of consulting businesses – with no public shareholders and limited capital invested in the business, employees are the main beneficiaries when the the company makes money. Bain & Co. isn’t alone in its generosity – at Boston Consulting Group, 60% of turnover went on staff costs last year and a further 32% (the profits) was redistributed between partners, with the result that BCG employees and partners combined received 92% of the takings.

At BCG, the average of the firm’s 700 UK-based employees earned £101k in the year to March 2017 and the average partner got £1.1m. Bain & Co. didn’t break out its UK headcount in its report, but the company employs over 8,000 people in 36 countries globally, around 800 of whom are listed on LinkedIn as working in the UK. Presuming that Bain & Co. UK employs around 1,200 people, the implication is that the company spends an average of around £100k per head each year on compensation.

This is a lot less than the average investment bank (eg. Goldman Sachs International paid an average of £399k for 2017), but it does at least come with one consolation: that you’re primarily for yourself. – Unless of course, you’re junior and the firm’s senior staff take most of the money set aside for pay for themselves, which is a distinct possibility.

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&nbs

Yet another high-profile portfolio manager has left the hedge fund world to return to the sell-side. Stephen D’Silva, who spent nearly a decade as a portfolio manager at two different New York hedge funds, has joined Bank of America as a managing director.

D’Silva cut his teeth for more than three years in derivatives research and trading at Lehman Brothers until the crisis hit in 2008, according to LinkedIn. He spent the bulk of his career at hedge fund sponsor Laurion Capital Management as a portfolio manager. D’Silva worked for the past year in the same capacity at Capstone Investment Advisors before taking an MD role at Bank of America.

After a decade of traders fleeing investment banks, whether on their own accord or due to mass layoffs, several have recently made the trek back to the sell-side. Hedge funds are generally struggling – more closed than were launched for the third straight year in 2017 – and the average fee continues to drop. Meanwhile, traders at investment banks have booked several strong quarters in a row and are looking forward to presumptive changes to the Volcker Rule that should allow them to take more risks. “Don’t expect a mass exodus, but the sell-side is becoming more attractive for veterans who can earn MD titles” said one New York headhunter who asked to remain anonymous.

The news comes just a few weeks after former macro prop trader Robert Surgent rejoined Goldman Sachs as a managing director following eight years as a portfolio manager. He previously spent 17 years at Goldman in proprietary trading.

Bank of America confirmed D’Silva’s arrival. An internal Lehman Brothers document now available online shows that D’Silva covered natural gas at the now-defunct bank. He was also a natural gas options trader at RBS Sempra Commodities and a portfolio structurer at U.S. Power Generating Company.

Follow @BeecherTuttle

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As March 2019 draws ominously closer, it’s becoming increasingly common for banks to build up their equities and equity derivatives sales and trading teams in continental Europe. Goldman Sachs, for example, has been hiring equity derivatives salespeople in Paris since February and Morgan Stanley and Bank of America are expected to start building teams in the French city soon. BNP Paribas, meanwhile, just made a major equity derivatives hire in Madrid.

The French bank recruited Joaquin Gutierrez from Goldman Sachs to work in its Spanish office. At Goldman in London, Gutierrez was an executive director in equity derivatives sales with clients based in Spain, Portugal, Andorra. At BNP Paribas in Madrid, he will be the head of equity derivatives sales for Iberia. It sounds like a promotion.

Guiterrez’s move comes after a Spanish newspaper reported that Credit Suisse is preparing to move 50 people from its global markets and advisory unit in London to the Spanish capital. The Swiss bank told Bloomberg it’s preparing for a hard Brexit by preparing multiple locations across Europe, but that it also wants to use the Madrid office to help expand its presence in Latin America.

Gutierrez isn’t BNP’s only equity derivatives sales hire. Insiders say Jelle Van der Wind has joined from J.P. Morgan. Ultimately, Van der Wind may move to Amsterdam, but for the moment he’s at Harewood Avenue, BNP’s office in West London.

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Don’t. However much you want to get or to keep a job in banking, don’t sacrifice your health in the process. That means sleeping a lot more than three or four hours a night and being kind to your body.

This is the message from a former second year analyst at a ‘major European bank’ who spoke to Business Insider. Following yesterday’s news of the tragic death of Shivam Choski, a second year analyst at Chicago-based M&A boutique Lincoln International, it seems very pertinent.

‘Laura,’ the ex-analyst in the BI article, says she regularly worked until 4am. Despite being previously healthy and having no underlying conditions, she was also hospitalized three times in two years and developed a throat infection which (because she couldn’t have time off to recover) spread to her heart and resulted in a heart attack due to infective endocarditis. Doctors told her: “If you keep working you will die.” Her husband told her to get out of the industry: “The money’s not worth it.” She did.

Laura’s story can’t be dismissed as a one-off. Dr. Ahmed Elghamaz, a consultant cardiologist at London North West University Hospital, said it’s become more common for people aged 25 to suffer heart attacks caused by stress. Dr. Arjun Ghosh, a consultant cardiologist at Barts Heart Centre in London estimated that heart attacks among bankers under the age of 30 have risen 10% in the past decade, and that around 10% of his patients in this age range work in finance.

Laura’s experience suggests things haven’t changed. Juniors’ working hours are supposed to have improved since banks introduced restrictions to juniors’ working hours in the wake of the death of Bank of America intern Moritz Erhardt in 2013. However, Laura nearly died in 2015. As people here us a few months ago when we asked about sleep in banking, the new rules haven’t always made things better. “Saturdays off” simply means longer hours on Thursdays and Fridays. Saturday might be a rest day, Sunday is back to work.

Separately, Taylor Lorenz, a staff writer at the Atlantic, has had a Twitter hit with a post about being ripped off by Seamless, the food delivery system used by most banks. It’s below, and has inspired copycats.

I Seamlessed a $22 avocado toast and this is what just arrived pic.twitter.com/PFNzWIeOY5

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) July 29, 2018

wow I just seamlessed $65 water and THIS is what arrived! pic.twitter.com/QZxgVNGWGP

— jordan (@JordanUhl) July 31, 2018

Meanwhile:

Credit Suisse is planning to relocate 250 people because of Brexit. 50 of them will go to Madrid. (Bloomberg)

There’s been progress (sort of) in reaching a post-Brexit agreement for banks in London. On one hand, London now accepts that Brussels can ultimately decide whether UK financial services rules are equivalent to its own, with no further right of appeal, which in effect gives the EU veto power over some UK financial reforms if it wants to retain access to the European market. On the other, the Europeans are willing to discuss ‘mechanisms for co-ordinating rule changes,’ and guarantees for equivalence. (Financial Times)

Big Four accounting firms had some tense talks about their futures at a secret location in London. ‘The atmosphere worsened when a fire alarm went off halfway through, leaving several executives “petrified” that they would be spotted by journalists if they were forced to huddle on the steps outside of the building ‘ (Financial Times)

Bank of America hired Jill Schwartz, the former global head of leveraged finance at Barclays. (Global Capital)

HSBC has got a special piece of software called ‘MyDeal’, accessible by iPad, which it says will transform primary issuance. (Euromoney)

Blame the back office for the decline of Dubai private equity fund Abraaj: “The back office was not keeping pace in terms of sophistication or best practice.” (Bloomberg)

Bankers are still benefiting from 2008 stock options. Goldman partners have made pre-tax profits of around $3bn. (WSJ)

WeWork is revamping a decrepit UBS office in New Jersey with a meditation room and juice bar. (BizJournals)

Boss blanket-emails his employees: “You are really getting on my tits.” (NewsAU)

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Something seemed to finally snap at Credit Suisse’s global markets division in the three months to the end of June 2018. After years of talk about restructuring and cost cutting, the Swiss bank’s global markets job cuts apparently came all at once. – The CS global markets division ended the quarter with 350 people fewer than it began. While everyone was looking at Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse was removing headcount from sales and trading too.

Or was it? Credit Suisse isn’t commenting, but insiders at the Swiss bank say the disappearance of hundreds of staff from the global markets division was actually due to the reallocation of staff to different business areas within the bank. Where exactly? We don’t know. Credit Suisse as a whole was down 940 permanent employees in the past quarter and that the only division to end the three months with more staff than it began was the corporate centre, which added 10 people. Nonetheless, the global markets division is said to only have made “tens” of people redundant, whilst hiring over 20. It’s all rather opaque, particularly compared to the visibility of the cuts at Deutsche.

Of course, 350 vanished jobs aren’t much compared to the 1,760 or so people DB has let go this year. They’re also only 3% of Credit Suisse’s global markets headcount (now 11,270), but the disappearance is unprecedented in Credit Suisse’s recent past. In the second quarter of 2016, Credit Suisse employed 11,620 people in global markets. In the second quarter of 2017, it employed exactly the same number. In the first quarter of 2018, there were just 10 fewer people at 11,610. And then suddenly CS’s own numbers suggest everyone disappeared during the past three months. The bank is known to have cut 10 rates traders in the U.S. and London and CEO Tidjane Thiam today referenced cuts to the U.S. rates business in particular. Quiet cuts were also made to emerging markets and prime broking in both March and July. But what exactly happened to the other 300 or so people remains a mystery.

As the charts below reflect, the vanishing jobs at Credit Suisse’s markets division seem to have coincided with under-performance in fixed income trading compared to U.S. rivals (but not to Deutsche Bank). Thiam is unperturbed: in today’s call he blamed last year’s “uniquely strong” quarter in credit trading for the poor comparative quarter and said he was happy with the markets results overall.

Is this the end of job reductions in the markets division? Hopefully. Both Thiam and Credit Suisse CFO David Mathers said today that the restructuring at the bank is over, and that despite the fall in second quarter revenues there are no plans to cut costs below the established CHF4.8bn global markets target.

Even so, Credit Suisse markets professionals who want to position themselves for the future might want to think carefully. The best place to work at the Swiss bank no longer looks like institutional sales and trading, but the International Trading Solutions (ITS) division which serves up institutional products to private clients.

Thiam says ITS is being personally overseen by, head of the global markets division, Brian Chin, and is growing at a rate of 17% per year as high net worth clients seek to hedge their wealth in volatile markets. “They [ITS] are the most excited people in the bank right now. They are very happy, very excited, creating new products and meeting new clients,” said Thiam. ITS are also, “very successful and this is what makes people happy,” Thiam added.

While the markets division under-performed, Credit Suisse’s investment bankers had an exceptional quarter: M&A advisory revenues were up 54% year-on-year. Again, this might have something to do the comparable quarter in 2017, when Credit Suisse’s M&A revenues were down 24%, but Thiam didn’t say so. – The strong M&A result was down to the bank’s enlightened strategy of focusing on, “large cross border transactions,” he said. Credit Suisse’s investment bankers were rewarded with a 21% hike in compensation spending during the quarter as a result.

[Hover over the charts to view the results by bank.]

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A former senior trader at Bridgewater Associates who’s yet to crack 30 years of age has founded his own hedge fund. Erick Quay launched the eponymous Quay Capital in New York late last month.

Quay has climbed the career ladder at lightening speed. He spent three months as a summer analyst at J.P. Morgan in 2013 before taking on a full-time position with the bank the following year after graduating from Williams College. Quay then jumped to the buy-side after less than a year when he joined Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates in 2015. He was eventually promoted to senior trader before deciding to hang his own shingle in July.

The new hedge fund, which reportedly has assets under management of between $10m-$50m, won’t focus on traditional liquid financial products. Instead, Quay will take positions in more “esoteric and concentrated” opportunities, according to the firm’s website. It’s unclear whether Quay Capital is actively hiring, though the site says the company is accepting resumes and is always looking for talent.

Quay is launching his own firm at an interesting time. While some well-established and smaller firms – particularly quant funds – are cranking out double-digit annual returns, many big-name hedge funds like Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital and David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital have suffered from an extended run of losses and redemptions. Meanwhile, several veteran hedge funds like Blue Ridge, Eton Park and Hutchin Hill closed their doors in 2017, while others like Tudor Investments have shuttered underperforming funds. The number of new hedge fund launches have declined for six straight years while closures have increased every year over the last three.

That’s not to say everyone is suffering. Former Millennium Management star trader Michael Gelband’s new fund just set a record for the biggest hedge fund launch ever. ExodusPoint Capital Management raised $8 billion despite an aggressive fee structure and a delayed launch date caused by a legal spat over hiring. Quant funds like Renaissance Technologies, PDT Partners, WorldQuant and Two Sigma are also said to be crushing it, as is Steven Cohen’s Point72, though that’s nothing new. Quay declined to comment on the direction of the new fund.

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After the last financial crisis, it seemed that quants might fall forever out of fashion. After all, it was their devilishly complex products – that seemed to mitigate risk but didn’t – that spurred the crash. Nor did quant funds acquit themselves well when markets seriously panicked when the structured products had been found out. Ten years later, however, quants back on top. If you’re not a quant, you’re a strat. And if you’re neither quant nor strat, you’re a structurer.

Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein outlined Goldman’s big emphasis on hiring quants and strats (and engineers) in a presentation six months ago. Now, Stacy Selig, the head of Goldman Sachs securities division’s Americas equity structuring group, has explained why it is that structurers are the thing all over again in 2018.

In a new Goldman Sachs ‘briefing’ presentation, Selig says demand for structurers and for the so-called “sales strats” who help construct products for clients is being driven by the increased complexity of the market. “We’re in the midst of a multi-year change in market structure,” says Selig. Whereas in the past investors relied upon macroeconomic factors to explain market moves, Selig says they’re now looking at less fundamental issues and at so-called ‘factor-based investing,’ which means analyzing things like size, volatility, value and momentum as predictors of returns.

The shift has meant building new quantitative models to help identify exactly what’s driving performance, says Selig. – In the past, an investor who owned Apple stock might just have hedged-out the market and sector beta relating to Apple. Now they want to hedge out factors like momentum too.

The upshot is that there’s growing demand for quants and equity structurers to work on new models and products and that they have a far broader scope than before. The new structured solutions require, “a deep understanding of the other asset classes, such as currencies, interest rates, funding and credit,” says Selig. They also need to take into consideration clients’, “risk tolerance, tax, accounting, regulatory and jurisdictionally driven needs.”

Across the Americas equity structuring group as a whole, Selig says there’s therefore demand for, “people, systems, tools and overall technology infrastructure to help identify, explain, access or hedge these newer dimensions of risk and return.”

Selig’s comments help explain Goldman’s interest in hiring equity derivatives professionals this year, and in the robust demand for equity derivatives expertise across the market. Credit Suisse said today that its equity derivatives team had an excellent second quarter as clients sought to hedge against market volatility.

Kevin Peacock, a London-based recruiter at the Sartre Group, says demand for structurers has been “steadily increasing” in 2018. “The focus of the modern structurer tends to be on minimising risk rather than maximising yield. This is why some new areas of business, such as Alternative Risk Premia, are flourishing,” he adds.

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Morgan Stanley has hired an expert in crytpocurrencies from Credit Suisse.

Andrew Peel, Credit Suisse’s self-described former ‘trading subject matter expert for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies’ has joined Morgan Stanley as head of digital asset markets according to his LinkedIn profile.

Peel will be based in Zurich and London. He previously spent 12 years at Credit Suisse, and worked as a derivatives trader and on the Delta One desk for over nine of them. He says he’s been advocating crypto markets since 2013 and was made a vice president for sales and trading innovation (including crytpocurrencies) at CS in 2016.

Peel’s move comes as Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman has been less critical of crytpo-currencies than some of his counterparts (Jamie Dimon). At Davos in January, just as Dimon was voicing his regrets about calling Bitcoin a fraud, Gorman said Bitcoin was here to stay. In March, Morgan Stanley started hiring crypto talent for its equity research unit. And in May there were unconfirmed reports that Morgan Stanley was preparing to add crypto currencies to its suite of trading products.

Credit Suisse held a major conference on cryptocurrencies in November 2017, where CEO Tidjane Thiam said bitcoin speculation is the, “very definition of a bubble.” Peel’s exit comes after Brian Wirtz, the founder of Credit Suisse’s New York-based crypto asset and investment banking unit left in April 2018. Wirtz has since founded his own company called the Blockchain Advisory Group. He and Peel aren’t the only CS crytpo exits: in April, Nelson Minier, a CS trader, left for crypto exchange Kraken, and in May ex-Credit Suisse FX trader Petro Levchenko set up a crypto hedge fund.

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Boutique investment bank PJT Partners road the recent M&A wave to an impressive second quarter, posting revenues of $130 million, up 20% year-over-year. The firm is rewarding its employees for their efforts, allocating a massive 72% of total revenues to the compensation pool. The average pay per head is staggering considering PJT’s size. They are growing quickly, but still have a much smaller footprint than other big-name boutiques.

PJT set aside $198m for compensation and benefits during the first six months of the year. In a recent report, the company noted that it employed 470+ people as of the end of 2017. Even if you assume the firm added 50 people over the last six months, the implication is that the average PJT employee made roughly $380K during the first half, putting them on pace to take home over $750k if the firm’s strong year continues. For the 60-plus partners, those checks will be even bigger.

A burst of M&A activity has put rainmakers at boutiques in an ideal position. Rival Evercore is on pace to pay out its 1,600-plus employees an average of around $600k for 2018. M&A bankers at bulge-bracket firms are doing well themselves, but no big bank will ever have a comp-to-revenue ratio that reaches anywhere near 72%.

Like most boutiques, PJT Partners is hiring. It added six net partners during the first half of the year, according to the Buckingham Research Group, which likely means they made several junior hires as well to fill out their teams. The firm “remains optimistic” about recruiting during the second half of the year within advisory, according to Buckingham.

Now appears an ideal time to get your foot in the door at PJT, Evercore Moelis and other boutique rivals. It won’t be easy, though. In a recent ranking of the hardest investment banks with which to interview, boutiques accounted for the top seven spots – well ahead of the likes of Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan.

Follow @BeecherTuttle

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Ernesto Magnani is passionate about the potential of solar power to transform the energy sector. Working from his hometown of Parma, Italy, he runs Stern Energy, a thriving business which develops, constructs, manages and invests in solar parks across the country.

But to compete in such a cutting-edge and competitive sector, Magnani says he needs to ensure his own skills remain relevant and dynamic.

“I’m proud of what I’ve achieved as an entrepreneur, but in business it’s important to believe that the sky’s the limit,” says Magnani. “So I think education should never end – I’m always trying to add new areas of expertise that I couldn’t get on the job.”

In 2012, for example, Magnani decided that as his company expanded, he needed to improve his knowledge of finance.

Not having the time in his busy work schedule for a Master’s degree, Magnani looked for shorter courses in finance that he could comfortably fit around his business and family commitments.
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And after researching courses locally and globally, he enrolled on an Executive Education programme – Financing the Entrepreneurial Business – at London Business School (LBS).

Since that point, Magnani has travelled from Parma to London annually. He has completed two week-long LBS finance programmes (Valuation and Mergers and Acquisitions), and supplemented his finance knowledge with leadership and strategy skills by taking the Essentials of Leadership and Developing Strategy for Value Creation programmes.

Why does Magnani keep coming back to LBS?

“Because LBS offers so many finance courses for business leaders like me, I’ve been able to build up the type of skills I’d get from a Master’s degree, while studying at my own pace and tailoring my learning to meet my needs as an entrepreneur,” he says.

Magnani also chose LBS because of the school’s international reputation.

“I’ve done courses in Italy and the US, but my classmates at LBS are much more international in comparison. I’m studying at the heart of the world’s leading financial centre and working closely with people from Japan, the Middle East, South Africa – all over the world,” says Magnani.

Another “big differentiator” for LBS Executive Education programmes is the “amazing calibre” of the participants, many of whom are C-level leaders, he adds.

“We did a lot of group work, and the brainstorming sessions opened my mind and got me thinking about new ways to approach challenges in my business. I was receiving high quality ideas from senior people who I wouldn’t otherwise have access to,” says Magnani.

LBS Executive Education classes are made up of participants from around the globe, representing a wide variety of sectors. This allows peer-to-peer learning from an exceptional group of diverse professionals and encourages a new way of thinking.

“Entrepreneurs shouldn’t only spend their time with people from their own sector. At LBS I had to explain my business in clear language to people who weren’t familiar with it, which is a good exercise in pitching and presenting,” says Magnani.

Magnani says the Executive Education programmes all gave him new skills that are now benefiting him on the job.

“I took the financing the entrepreneurial business course when my company was just starting to grow and I wanted to get in-depth insights into the best ways to finance it. For example, I now understand the logic behind what venture capital funds do – the timing of their investments and their expectations,” says Magnani.

“I’m using the skills I learnt from the valuation course when I’m purchasing assets for my company, while the leadership course has improved the way I communicate, motivate people, and speak in public,” he adds. “And because they’re intensive programmes, I’ve been able to see the benefits at work straight away.”

All the Executive Education programmes Magnani has taken are led by world-class LBS professors some of whom are consultants to large organisations globally. They bring both their latest academic research and their consultancy expertise into the classroom, he says.

“They have experience of various industries, so they’re up to date with the latest trends in their area. They encourage interaction and they’re very approachable, so you can discuss issues with them one-on-one,” he says.

“Guest speakers – from senior bankers to the CEO of a VC fund – also came to my courses. This gave us additional perspectives on the topics we were studying and the chance to put questions to and debate ideas with very senior people, who we wouldn’t otherwise have access to,” adds Magnani.

After completing three Executive Education programmes, Magnani became part of the 16,000-strong LBS alumni network, which is spread across more than 150 countries.

“The networking opportunities at LBS are fantastic, both during the courses – with the faculty, guest speakers and participants – and when you’ve finished,” he says. “I got to know my classmates socially over lunch and dinner, and we still exchange emails. If I need to get a fresh perspective on an issue affecting my business I can always ask them or reach out to the wider LBS network.”

Image credit: franckreporter, Getty

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Nurhyati Mohd Moor,a senior oil trader at Freepoint Commodities, has written an opinion column in the FT on the age old subject of “can women prosper in the bro-culture of trading?”. But she also touches on an equally interesting question – why do women get pushed toward sales? Ms Moor notes that this has been a constant in the industry for quite a while. As an entrant to the industry, she had a mentor who “tried hard to steer me into sales”, and ten years later she finds herself talking to young women who have received the exact same advice.

There are all sorts of rationalisations given for this, often based on alleged necessary characteristics of sucessful traders which the amateur neuroscientists of the investment banking industry are able to confidently assert are found in one gender more than the other. After all, a trader needs to be an aggressive risk taker, but also obsessive about risk management and losing money. He needs to be logical and analytical, but also to follow a gut instinct and sense of the market. It’s an industry which appeals to aloof and obsessive nerds, but of course it’s a people business where relationships are vital. In actual fact, there are successful traders of all sorts of different personalities and styles, and the idea of an essential essence of traderness is usually an excuse for a decision that has already been made on other grounds.

And those other grounds are quite deeply psychological and sociological. In a securities business, the traders are the tip of the spear; everyone else contributes to the business, but the money is made when someone buys a security at one price, then sells it for a higher price. Whatever the formal hierarchy of the business, the traders are always a law unto themselves, because they are the ones who make the profits, and they know it. Even the most junior trader on the desk commands a certain degree of respect from even senior management in other functions; not least because the traders have the last word on price. And this is why there’s a lot more psychological resistance among male managers to putting a young woman into a junior trading role than into a junior sales one. It’s just a lot easier to think of a young woman fetching coffee and obediently laughing at clients’ jokes, than it is to think of her telling men much older than herself that the transaction they have been working on can’t be executed at the price they need.

This everyday sexism of markets businesses has been an irritation for ages, but looking forward, it’s much more of a tangible danger. The biggest result of MiFID 2 in Europe and worldwide has been to reduce the ability of investors to direct commissions, and without directed commissions, where is a salesperson’s revenue line? Generalist sales in both equities and fixed income is increasingly likely to be a career graveyard; an account management and customer-handling function which ends up looking more like overhead than part of the franchise. If it’s a career graveyard into which women have been disproportionately directed, that’s the makings of yet another scandal for the industry.

One trader who had all the right characteristics, until he didn’t, was Stephane Esper, formerly of SocGen. He was one of the 11 employees accused by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office of conspiring to rig Euribor back in 2015. Although the French courts refused to extradite him to face charges in London, SocGen appears to regard him as having chief responsibility for the $267m of fines that they had to pay to settle investigations into Euribor. They are not happy that he is suing them for $9m of compensation at an employment tribunal in France.

Esper’s case is a modern morality play about the relationship between a bank and an employee. His lawyer says that Stephane was working for SocGen, and the allegations made against him reflected his duties at the bank. Instead, they have cut him loose, identified him as the single bad apple and made him unemployable and under constant fear of arrest. The $9m (EUR8m lawsuit) covers the psychological harm caused by this, as well as lost earnings and an indemnity for the legal bills he will undoubtedly face if the UK criminal case against him proceeds.

For their part, SocGen say that they identified him as the bad apple because that’s what he was, that the fines they have paid are more than enough punishment for failure to supervise him, and that his demands are “extravagant”. The judge is set to decide in October.

Meanwhile

In other extradition news, Stuart Scott, formerly of HSBC, has won his appeal against the Department of Justice, who wanted to try him in New York on charges of front-running a $3.5bn forex deal HSBC had agreed with Cairn Energy. This case had been watched closely by the FX community, as it was felt that the US authorities were pushing the envelope when it came to redefining common market practices (many of them agreed with the client) as criminal (Financial Times)

Perella Wasserstein is in a quite serious legal dispute with its former restructuring team, over the circumstances in which the team was fired and whether they were intending to start a new bank. This dispute has gone on for a while, and several of the companies involved might have hoped to have kept working with their restructuring bankers. However the legal agreement is with PW, and the bank has been aggressive in enforcing it, as well as the non compete parts of the team’s contracts. (Financial Times)

Credit Suisse put in a fairly solid set of results for the second quarter, although they came in some more worse than expected in the trading divisions. Tidjane Thiam has been defending his bank against critics, noting that they won’t going to chase revenue if It means a higher capital requirement.(Yahoo, Bloomberg)

In contrast to the trading performance, capital markets and advisory were a bit of a bright spot for CS. That looks like it might continue into the second half of the year, as the pipeline for high yield debt issuance is full. Investors have been pushing back against some aggressive pricing, though. (Bloomberg)

After Goldman Sachs, the next big succession planning circus is Morgan Stanley after James Gorman. BI profiles the likely candidates, including international head Franck Petitgas, Ted Pick from the institutional securities franchise, and CFO Jonathan Pruzan. Possibly a sign of the times to see that the head of technology, Rob Rooney, is also in the frame. (Business Insider)

It’s interesting to note that two very similar banks with very similar problems, Barclays and Deutsche, have taken almost diametrically opposed approaches to the FICC flow monster business lines that put them up at peak before the crisis. Barclays is attempting to rebuild, what Deutsche is refusing to allocate any new capital to this area. They can’t both be right, can they? (Global Capital)

Some advice for dealing with ingrates, credit stealers and other irritants, without looking too much like you are whining. A bit of passive aggression and use of email trails can work wonders (FT)

Picking rich parents is the highest probability way to end up rich yourself, but it’s not necessarily the highest return. Jeff Bezos’ mum and dad were the early stage venture capital in Amazon – it’s not publicly disclosed how much their initial $245,000 investment is worth now, but credible estimates put it not far off 30 billion dollars. (Bloomberg)
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com
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Things aren’t exactly going to plan over at BNP Paribas.

Under the French bank’s 2017-2020 business development plan, the corporate and investment bank (CIB) is supposed to increase revenues at a compound annual average rate of 4.5% each year (5% in the global markets division). In 2018 this is not happening. Revenues at the corporate and investment bank are not growing at all; they are shrinking.

BNP Paribas released its second quarter results today. In the three months to June, revenues in the CIB fell 7% year-on-year. For the first six months of this year as a whole, revenues are down 8% on last year. The salespeople and traders in BNP’s global markets division are partly to blame: there, revenues are down 10% this year; in corporate banking they’re down 11%; in securities services they’re up ever so slightly.

BNP isn’t saying its shrinking revenues are a problem – yet. It is blaming events beyond its control, like a weak environment for rates traders in Europe and a feeble market for FX and credit trading. But as the chart below shows, the French bank’s fixed income sales and trading division really hasn’t done very well at all. In the second quarter it under-performed (even) Deutsche Bank.

[Hover over the chart to highlight each bank]

This is a problem to the extent that, a bit like Barclays, BNP is supposed to be growing itself to glory. Yes, there’s a cost-cutting plan, but it’s a comparatively modest one (this year the bank intends to cut €1.1bn or 13% from total costs) and is based on streamlining and simplification rather than heartily hacking at entire trading desks. While costs are being gently shrunk, BNP’s boat is supposed to be lifted by what the bank describes as ‘deeper penetration of global markets products within the corporate franchise,’ the sale of ‘cross-border solutions’, and ‘deeper relations’ with clients. In fact the boat isn’t being lifted, and BNP may need to loose some weight.

There is reason to believe the bank will cut costs more aggressively in the next six months 2018 anyway. Of the €1.1bn of costs to be cut this year under the existing plan, just €394m were removed in the first half. The CIB is likely to bear the brunt of the changes: of 42% in costs removed across BNP since the 2020 plan was launched, have come from the corporate and investment banking division.

Will BNP decide that 2020 was just a pipe dream? Not yet. For the moment, the bank seems to be hanging onto the notion that it can grow its way out of trouble. The French bank is known for its brilliant macro team, which has achieved some excellent results in the past. Away from macro, however, Coalition says BNP’s fixed income trading franchise most ranks 10th or below. As a marginal player in a competitive market, BNP may soon need to make some hard choices unless revenues turn.

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Banking interns spend almost a full summer grinding out 80-hour weeks with one clear goal in mind: leverage the internship into a full-time offer. Unfortunately, an offer is far from a sure thing, even for those who put in the maximum effort. Banks will never disclose their offer rates for interns, but they typically fall between 50% and 75%, depending on the firm, the division and the year.

Summer analysts who don’t receive a golden ticket are faced with needing to get an offer at a competing firm that doesn’t know much about them other than the fact that they likely didn’t make the cut at a rival that had 10 weeks to make an assessment. While small boutiques sometimes need to turn away interns who they may have hired in previous years due to a limited number of seats, large banks rarely withhold offers from top recruits based on a lack of space, recruiters tell us. They’ll over-hire one year if they need to.

The good news for those who interned at tier-one banks is that they’re likely to receive an offer from another firm as long as there are no major red flags. The bad news is that the offer is more likely to come from a lesser-regarded firm, according to recruiters. “Goldman Sachs isn’t going to pick up the scraps left by J.P. Morgan or Morgan Stanley,” said one New York recruiter who asked to remain anonymous. Second- and third-tier banks will, but only after a vetting process, he said.

Of course, starting a career at a less prestigious firm is far from a career death sentence, just like getting a job at a top-ranked firm is no guarantee of future success. Still, an emotional toll can be taken on those who earned a shiny internship yet failed to convert it into an offer. “For a while, I felt like I was carrying around a Scarlet Letter,” said one former Goldman Sachs intern who now works in consulting after failing to receive an offer. “When people found out I interned at Goldman, a few asked why I didn’t want to work there,” he said. Most didn’t inquire, however. They already knew the reason.

“Sometimes I wish I never even interned at Goldman” he added, despite enjoying the experience. “I feel like some look at it as a blemish on my resume, like it implies some sense of failure.”

A former J.P. Morgan intern who likewise didn’t receive an offer said he was disappointed and frustrated that he had to re-start the job search but stopped thinking about it after getting an offer at a different investment bank. “Once [the job] starts, why look back?” he said. The main pain points outside of needing to interview again were social and short-term. But seeing fellow interns who became his friends receive offers was difficult, as was starting at a new firm with analysts who had already developed relationships during the past summer.

An uphill battle

Hiring managers at other firms will almost always ask candidates about their last internship within the first few minutes of an interview, according to the headhunter. Of course, it’s a two-way street. Some interns won’t like the experience, the division or the hiring manager, and will turn down an offer and voluntarily seek work elsewhere. But this is rare at tier-one banks. Firms like Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan consistently tout an acceptance rate of around 90%.

If you didn’t receive an offer, don’t outright lie and say you did, advises the headhunter. “It’s a small world – someone at Bank A will know someone at Bank B.” Instead, steer the conversation toward what you learned during the internship and how it’s applicable to the role for which you’re interviewing and move on, he said. And never badmouth the other firm or manager.

Follow @BeecherTuttle

““

Faced with crazily hot weather, bankers are taking matters into their own hands

Lower pay at Goldman Sachs’ still-tiny office in Frankfurt

After 20 years in finance, here’s my advice to all the young bankers investing in crypto

Hays releases the DNA of a CFO Asia detailing the steps you need to take to reach the top job in finance

Morning Coffee: The new criteria for advancement at Goldman Sachs. The reviled ex-banker with “f**** everybody money”

Goldman Sachs made a very big hire in trading technology

Junior banker dies at M&A boutique. Firm denies working hours to blame

Here’s how much you earn working for Bain & Co. in the UK

Bank of America the latest to hire an ex-hedge fund portfolio manager as an MD

Goldman Sachs London ED quits for a bigger job at BNP Paribas in Madrid

Morning Coffee: Harsh warning from 2nd year analyst who regularly worked until 4am. Stupidly expensive Seamless orders

Meanwhile:

What caused the big drop in Credit Suisse’s global markets jobs in the second quarter?

From J.P. Morgan intern to hedge fund founder in just five years

A Goldman Sachs partner explained why equity structurers are so hot

Morgan Stanley hired a crypto trading specialist from Credit Suisse

Average pay per head may crack $750k at PJT Partners

“I’m an Italian entrepreneur. Here’s why I come to London to boost my business skills”

Morning Coffee: Why are women pushed into sales over trading? And the trader demanding $9m compensation

Meanwhile

It looks like BNP Paribas needs to make some traders redundant

The sad fate of the banking interns who didn’t get an offer

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