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Many big banks, including Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank, have moved jobs from expensive cities like New York to lower-cost areas across the U.S. Now, Credit Suisse has joined them and has already started moving Wall Street jobs down to Raleigh, North Carolina, in keeping with a cost-cutting plan announced just last month.

While Credit Suisse has had a presence in Raleigh for more than 12 years, employing approximately 2,000 people, about 40% of whom are in technology, it recently decided to shift jobs to North Carolina from New York. The functions historically represented in the Raleigh office include operations, finance and technology in support of U.S. sales, trading and investment banking businesses.

Credit Suisse has also been adding risk management and cyber security professionals in Raleigh. The bank will continue to reduce its headcount at the New York office, currently close to 7,500, over time, while its plan is to increase Raleigh’s staff by at least 1,200 and up to 2,000 over the next several years. The bank has plans to relocate close to 500 roles to Raleigh during 2017, with 150 roles already added in North Carolina either through staff relocations from New York or through local hiring.

“Raleigh is a hotbed of tech talent, and we are looking to expand there on the development side and increasingly around the new technologies related to cyber security, automation and data analytics,” said Dan Seabolt, a managing director and the deputy COO for combined U.S. operations at Credit Suisse. “Over the next several years, we’ll be executing a move of another 1,200 jobs from New York to Raleigh as part of a long-term structural change for services that support our U.S. businesses.

“We’re building out the risk function in Raleigh, as well as cyber security and additional technology capabilities, and we expect that Raleigh will be the main corporate hub to support our U.S. business,” he said. “We’ve already done a chunk of pretty meaningful hiring, and we’ve really accelerated our hiring engine locally.

“We’re moving managers and other staff, and when we mention relocation opportunities, we talk about the great quality of life and lower cost of living in Raleigh.”

Currently, Credit Suisse’s New York office has close to 7,500 people, but that number will decrease roughly in proportion to the increases in Raleigh, barring any surprises.

As Credit Suisse works toward its goal of having 2,500 Raleigh-based employees by the end of this year, it has acquired temporary office space and intends to build a second building there in the near future. That will enable the bank to cross 3,000 employees in North Carolina sometime next year with a maximum capacity of around 4,000.

Front-office roles will mainly remain in New York, while almost all of the additional headcount in Raleigh will be back- and middle-office roles, primarily technology infrastructure/IT (including cloud computing specialists), software/application development (including mobile and Java developers), finance, CCAR compliance, market risk, operational risk, credit risk and cyber security.

“In New York there’s been a fair amount of restructuring across the industry, but the revenue-producing sides of our business have been pretty active,” Seabolt said. “However, in general the businesses are still working through the process of making sure they’re as efficient and profitable as they possibly can be, which involves role relocations.

“Some roles will be moved down to Raleigh, although we expect a fair amount of local hiring,” he said. “We’re seeing an ability to manage that through normal attrition – we can’t do it exclusively, but if we see a departure in New York in certain areas, then we can look to potentially fill it in Raleigh, depending on the function.

“I expect Raleigh to grow and the New York office to reduce a commensurate amount in an organic, sustainable progression.”

Credit Suisse has increased its virtual recruiting, especially for interns and graduate hires, many of whom will do their first interview via video conferencing. The current intern class that started recently in Raleigh is a feeder for the full-time technical analyst program.

Seabolt says that the total number of applicants for roles at Credit Suisse in Raleigh is up 81% year-over-year.

“Since the announcement, there’s been a real level of interest in Credit Suisse, in terms of our intake of applications, and internal staff are pretty excited for the potential for job expansion,” Seabolt said. “A number of senior AVPs, VPs, directors and MDs are considering moving or discussing a move, and that will continue next year and the year beyond.

“People see it as another opportunity open to them, and we’re looking for managers and subject-matter experts who can seed our capabilities in Raleigh,” he said. “Based on the nature of how we’re looking to expand, I would expect a fair bit of uptick in our graduate intake, and we’re looking for folks with experience as well, because there’s a degree of turnover every year, and you need to replace that.”
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If you stick it out in a front office investment banking job for three or four years and make it to associate, you’ll end up with at least $200k a year (once bonuses are factored in). But the chances of getting into finance remain slim – just 2-4% of those who apply to a graduate scheme make it in, usually straight A students with multiple internships, and even then a large proportion of people fall out after a couple of years.

Pay in banking is shrinking and while it still offers a good training programme and great exit options, there are easier options if money is your main motivator. In the UK, it’s the arcane world of working as a clerk – a kind of pimp for barristers – which pays $650k and doesn’t need a degree. In the U.S., the latest hard-to-fill job that pay at least six figures and don’t necessitate saddling yourself with a huge student loan is…working in a lumber yard.

Bloomberg reports that training schemes at of the country’s largest building supply firms, 84 Lumber Co, as well as other construction companies, pay $40k during management training. This figure increases to $200k a year at better performing stores, and it’s possible (although admittedly rare) to bring in $1m.

“You can go to college and learn the theology of the Roman Empire,” Sebastian Kleis, a college drop-out who just completed a 84 Lumber’s three-day training program. “You learn all this ridiculous nonsense, and when you get out, what are you applying that to? I know how to frame a house.”

These firms are hiring massively, and a lot of these jobs are left unfilled, creating a bizarre blue-collar bidding war, ever-more creative recruitment campaigns that use comedy videos and promises of potential riches (just like the glory days of investment banking – remember Barclays Capital’s brilliant recruitment ad?) These days banks are trying to instil passion and responsibility in their new recruits – not promises of big pay days – and recruitment videos are all high-fives and corporate slogans.

Maggie Hardy Magerko, CEO of 84 Lumber Co told Bloomberg: “I want people who work for me to retire in their 50s and own their own boats.”

Separately, should you fear the onslaught of automation? Jamie Dimon insists that it’s not going to lead to massive job cuts in banking. J.P. Morgan is starting to automate everything from back office processing to the more tedious tasks during the investment banking pitch process, but Dimon says that “bots” are not going to mean a reduction in headcount. “My guess is our headcount will go up over the next 20 years, not down,” he said during an interview on LinkedIn.

Meanwhile:

Oppenheimer is hiring for corporate finance and debt capital markets bankers in London (Bloomberg)

It’s official – Nomura has chosen Frankfurt for its EU HQ after Brexit (Nomura)

Skilled workers from the EU are the most likely to return home after Brexit, says Deloitte (Business Insider)

Mike Hughes has joined J.P. Morgan as global head of custody from Deutsche Bank (Financial News)

Hedge fund manager turned Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci has just landed a role as chief strategy officer of the U.S. Export-Import Bank (Reuters)

FT Partners, a fintech-focused investment bank, has opened a London office (PE Hub)

ZeroHedge readers are not all right wing conspiracy theorists (Alphaville)

The new hipster office essential – a climbing wall (CNN)

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When Fred Erhsam arrived at Goldman Sachs to trade G10 currencies in 2010, he was struck by the vested interests on his desk. “Algorithms were ruling the world, but I was hired onto a manual trading desk,” he recently told Khe Hy, the former Blackrock MD-turned philosophical blogger. Goldman clearly needed to add to the algo traders and subtract from the manual traders, but this wasn’t happening and Erhsam was in no position to effect a change: “You are 21 years old, it’s difficult to vent…the traders and engineers were viewed as second class citizens.”

Seven years later and five years after Erhsam quit and founded Coinbase, it seems that Goldman, of all banks, has moved on. With ex-chief information officer Marty Chavez as CFO, the firm is determinedly automating all that it can. Chavez’ vision is for a “data lake” that pulls information on transactions, markets and investment research and overlays it with machine learning. A third of Goldman’s employees globally are already working in technology. 39% of the jobs it’s currently advertising in EMEA are in the technology division and many of the others are for the quants or so-called “strats” who’ll provide the underpinning for Chavez’ plans. Insiders in the equities strats team talk excitedly about their numbers “doubling” in the years to come. Goldman is already advertising for data science juniors to join a new “front office machine learning strats team,” and it’s not alone – UBS is also on the lookout for someone to lead a team of developers working on artificial intelligence for its equities business. The future is upon us.

Some things haven’t changed, though. As was Erhsam’s experience in 2010, the dominant groups of the past aren’t about to cede control that easily. Goldman’s strats are paid well, but they still receive a lot less than traders in what was traditionally seen as the front office. Goldman insiders say vice presidents (VPs) in the strats teams that support salespeople and traders can expect to earn $200k to $300k (£155k to £233k) with seven years’ experience. That’s a lot, but traders could easily be making double.

If salary surveys from some of the UK’s leading recruitment firms are to be trusted, though, Goldman’s strats are unusually well looked after. At other banks, the machine learning and data specialists who are supposed to be the future are allegedly paid a pittance.

As the charts below show, Robert Walters says banks in London are paying data scientists with five years’ experience salaries of £60k. This could be dismissed as inaccurate or an anomaly – except that Morgan McKinley puts mid-ranking salaries for machine learning engineers at just £65k.

The diminutive pay for data and machine learning jobs is of a piece with the degradation of banking technology pay as a whole. “If you go into a development role in a bank, you’re going to start on £40k to £50k and that won’t much in the first three years,” says one London technology headhunter. “Nowadays you won’t get much of a bonus in technology until you’re at executive director level. Most people got nothing last year, although the bonuses in technology used to be pretty good back in the day.”

Poor pay may also be a reflection of the fact that not all data jobs are equal. Oliver Blaydon at Stonegate Search says compensation for data professionals depends upon the jobs in question are located within the banking taxonomy. “”If you’re a data analyst who sits in a technology division working with data, you’re not going to be paid as much as a data scientist in the front office who’s building AI solutions using the data,” Blaydon points out. In the latter case, he argues that pay is far higher: “If you have five years’ plus postgrad experience and a very good Masters or PhD, you should be on £170k to £220k a year in data science and the very top data scientists command significantly more.”

Banks which are paying the kinds of numbers indicated by Morgan McKinley and Robert Walters in the hope of attracting front office data scientists may therefore need to seriously reassess. Because banks’ data science and machine learning teams are small, Blaydon says there’s a tendency for them to try hiring experienced staff who’ve built and monetized applications at other firms. And these people come for a premium or not at all.

“Technology companies like Google and Palantir front-load pay to their top data scientists and engineers,” confirms one London recruiter, speaking off the record. “PhDs are given $150k to $200k of stock which vests over five years, so it’s incredibly difficult for banks pull them out.” Even hedge funds can’t compete: the CEO of Man Group recently complained that Google is “hoovering up” all the data scientists in the market and that his pockets weren’t deep enough to suck them back.

In the circumstances, therefore, banks which deign to pay top machine learning and data science talent less than £80k will be laughed out the market. Or be left with the dregs. Recruiters say the latter is already happening: “Over the last four or five years, the standard of technologists applying to banks has fallen significantly. They are having to deal with third tier graduates from mediocre computer science courses. “

Things may be changing. Blaydon says the penny has already dropped and that pay for data scientists and machine learning professionals in banks is, “going up very, very quickly.” In the process, pay elsewhere may need to fall. It’s time for the vested interests on sales and trading desks to cede pay to the incoming PhDs.

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The former global head of consumer products and retail investment banking at UBS, Nick Hassall, has quit the bank to go it alone.

Senior investment bankers who have decades of deal experience are increasingly leaving bulge bracket firms to launch their own advisory firms. Hassall who moved to London from Hong Kong in 2012 to head up UBS’s consumer and retail investment banking business, left in May after nearly ten years with the bank. He has just started Sequor Partners Limited, which is described as an ‘advisory consultancy’ focused on the consumer and retail sectors. Hassell joined UBS from Credit Suisse in 2008.

Hassall’s role leading UBS’s consumer and retail investment banking team in London was relatively short-lived – in 2014, it hired Ian Carnegie-Brown from Credit Suisse as head of consumer and retail team in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Hassall remained in the UK, but was moved to a purely client-facing role within the same team.

Going it alone is the new thing among senior investment bankers looking to break free from the shackles of large investment banks. Most recently, James Simpson, the former co-head of advisory for EMEA at HSBC, teamed up with Matteo Canonaco, the former head of financial sponsors, sovereign wealth funds and IPC coverage at the bank, to launch a private equity boutique called DuCanon Capital Partners. Meanwhile, Peter Bell, the former head of UK M&A at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, launched his own corporate finance boutique Cardean Bell in November and Mike Beadle, a managing director within Barclays’ UK investment banking team in London, started his own advisory firm Kinnerton Capital in March.

Peter Bacchus, the joint head of investment banking and global head of metals and mining at Jefferies, has also just launched his Bacchus Capital Advisors and added senior bankers to his team. Paul Cahill, a senior investment banker with 30 years’ experience who was latterly head of strategic relationships management at Anglo American, and Chris Johannsen, a former managing director in metals and mining at Standard Chartered, are also managing directors and co-founders at the firm.

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If you want to work in prop trading, you might want to get yourself along to Nomura. While U.S. and European banks closed their London prop desks years ago, Nomura’s prop team is still going strong. And it’s got a new leader in London.

Insiders say Jon Och, a former global head of rates risk and capital at Nomura has recently become head of the bank’s London “principal trading desk.” As such, he’s reportedly trading across multiple markets (not just rates) and may well be hiring.

Nomura declined to comment on Och’s ascension. The Japanese bank started a prop trading group in Hong Kong in 2014, led by Pradeep Swamy, a former equities trader at Barclays. Swamy quit in early 2016 to found his own hedge fund, however.

Och is likely to be less flighty. A long term colleague of Steve Ashley, the head of Nomura’s global markets business, he worked with Ashley in fixed income risk at RBS before joining Nomura in 2009. Ashley followed one year later.

Nomura isn’t the only London bank with a prop desk. Macquarie hired a trader from BNP Paribas to set up a prop desk in June. In the event that the U.S. weakens the Volcker Rule as suggested, plenty more banks could soon have prop desks in future.

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If you’re miserable in your current job, don’t assume you’re stuck. The robots may be coming for you, or your business area may be in structural decline. There is hope – follow these steps.

1. Get a feel for the market

Rather obviously, you shouldn’t blindly quit your job if there are no opportunities available. Kim Ann Curtin, the founder and CEO of The Wall Street Coach, advises disillusioned financial services professionals to take inspiration from those around them.

Curtin has seen burnt-out Wall Street professionals find something completely out of the industry, becoming everything from advertising executives, actors and yoga instructors to consultants and entrepreneurs. Others start their own hedge funds or find another niche within financial services.

“Talk to more than a handful of people to make sure it’s what you want to do,” Curtin says. “Especially if you’re no spring chicken, there’s not a lot of time to waste, so talk to people about the downside as well as the upside.

“If you’re miserable, you think any change will be an improvement, but sometimes the devil you know is better the devil you don’t know,” she says. “Offer to take people out to lunch, coffee or drinks and ask about the hours they work, the money you’re hoping to make and the negative aspects of the role.”

2. Look internally

Your best bet for a career switch is making a change within the organisation you currently work for. Michele LoBianco, a career coach and the founder of Michele LoBianco Consulting who previously worked at J.P. Morgan, encourages her clients to explore other opportunities across different areas within their current company if at all possible.

“If you feel comfortable, have a career conversation with your manager and ask for support and advocacy,” LoBianco says.

“Ideally companies will support employees who want to make internal moves,” she says. “It benefits the company in many ways, because if they don’t, they’ll lose these employees.”

LoBianco worked with a portfolio manager at an asset management firm who thought he wanted to leave his organization, but it turned out that he really wanted to go for his executive MBA and then work in alternative investments.

“He communicated his desires, and that’s exactly what he got – the firm paid for his MBA and he was able to manage more alternative asset classes,” she says. “Organizations that develop a framework for how to do that can retain top talent rather than losing them.”

3. Tap into your networks

If you’re in financial services already chances are that you have classmates and former colleagues who are at other banks, hedge funds or private equity firms. Seek out your contacts to see if they have employee referral programs where they might endorse you for a job in a new area, says Janet Raiffa, the former head of U.S. campus recruiting at Goldman Sachs and a career adviser working with MBAs and lateral Wall Street job seekers.

“The fact that you have connections within the firm who are willing to endorse you can help mitigate HR and line concerns about a change in job sector or focus,” she says. “Applicants who come through employee-referral programs are more likely to receive first-round interviews and may already be seen as a culture fit because they have internal support.”

Get involved in an association related to your job target, one which includes people who can hire you, suggests Robert Hellmann, the founder of Hellmann Career Consulting who previously worked at J.P. Morgan and American Express. That way, people in the association will not see you just as bulletpoints on a resume but as that great person who was so helpful in the association’s last meeting.

“Many Chartered Financial Analysts who gave gotten involved in their respective CFA societies or the CFA Institute have had an easier time making significant transitions because of the relationships they’ve built there, Hellmann says. “And when I say ‘get involved,’ really get involved – for example, run, or help run, an association committee, such as events, marketing or budgeting.”

4. Work out if your skills and achievements apply to other sectors

Think about ways to customize your resume for a new job, but continue to focus on your achievements in your old job, Raiffa says. If you have an overview or key competencies section, review the new job description and think about your overlapping skills.

“Highlight your skillset and match in these areas, including using important keywords for both ATS and recruiter review,” Raiffa says. “While you may be able to customize a bullet or two, the bulk of your resume should still highlight achievement, quantifiable success and accolades in your prior jobs.

5. Show results

Changing careers, even if you’re staying in the financial services industry, is about proving to employers that you can get results in the area you’re targeting. Employers hire for results, not potential, says Caroline Ceniza-Levine, career expert at SixFigureStart who previously worked at Goldman Sachs and Citi. A career-changer is a risk because they’re untested, and therefore, your job as the candidate is to mitigate their risk.

“Previous employment in the area – what non-career-changers bring – is valuable because it is track record of results in that area,” Ceniza-Levine says.

“The bottom line is that you have to appear not to be changing careers in order to successfully change careers.”

6. Bypass HR

Don’t just apply and then wait for the search firm, HR executive or hiring manager to call, Hellmann says. The reason: you need to be “perfect” to get noticed through these channels, as this is the front door that everyone goes through.

“And if your background doesn’t line up perfectly, that might be an issue,” he says. “Also remember that the initial screen is often a computer or a junior HR person – someone who doesn’t really know the job and is just looking for keywords on your resume that line up on the description.”

So what to do? Get introductions to get in front of people, or even contact ‘strangers’ directly via email, phone or social media. Try to make these meeting requests mutually beneficial, and include something in there both about them and what makes you interesting, Hellmann says.

“It’s not even about interviews at this stage – just ‘meetings’ with people in a position to hire you,” he says. “Then, if you’re pitching yourself the right way, and you keep in touch with these people, and you’re having enough of these meetings, the interviews will come.”
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Arrowgrass Capital Management, the $3.5bn hedge fund set up by former Deutsche Bank bond traders, increased headcount in its London operation by over 20% last year, despite revenues tumbling by 28% over the course of the year.

Arrowgrass, which has just released its accounts for the year to 31 December 2016, had 95 employees in London at the end of last year – up from 79 in 2015. In another example of counter-cyclical hiring in hedge funds, it indulged in this recruitment despite posting revenues of £42.9m in 2016 – down from £60.4m for the previous 12 months.

The hedge fund has not been entirely loose with the purse strings, however. It paid its employees an average of £285.3k last year, down from £369.4k for the same period in 2015.

Arrowgrass also brought in more partners last year – it hired two senior staff to take its member headcount to 14. Again, though, pay was down – it spent £24.2m on its partners’ remuneration last year, down from £35.2m a year earlier. The highest paid member earned £13.7m, meaning the remaining 13 senior staff earned an average of £807.6k.

Arrowgrass hasn’t been indulging in a lot of recruitment so far this year, but has made some significant hires. Sumit Kendurkar, head of single stock flow dispersion for EMEA at UBS, joined as a portfolio manager in April.

Arrowgrass grew out of Deutsche Bank’s convertible bond franchise, which was set up in 1998. In 2004, the team was renamed DB Omnis and moved on to its own proprietary platform. This was later spun out into a separate entity, with Deutsche Bank claiming a stand-alone firm would have more trading flexibility.

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Has Deutsche Bank’s golden boy from Goldman Sachs become the tiniest bit tarnished? Sam Wisnia, the former Goldman fixed income quant who’s risen through the ranks at Deutsche and was made global head of FX and rates trading in only May may have a blemish beside his name. The $60m loss on a U.S. inflation trade reported by Bloomberg falls within his broad remit. There’s no indication that Wisnia was directly involved, but it’s his division.

The loss comes as Deutsche has been setting out to recover market share in its fixed income trading business. Last September’s revelation that the bank was due to be fined as much as $14bn by the U.S. Department of Justice promoted fears over Deutsche’s stability. Fixed income sales and trading revenues at the German bank fell 11% last year versus 2015; only Credit Suisse did worse. This year, a newly recapitalized Deutsche has declared its intention of building the business back up again after the bank’s market share fell from 14% to 11.5% last year. Revenues accordingly rose 10% year-on-year in the first quarter, but Deutsche was still outshone by rivals like Credit Suisse (up 29%) and RBS (up 75%).

The pressure is therefore on – and all the more so given that the rates business is supposed to be at the helm of this year’s recovery. “We expect debt sales & trading revenues to be higher year-on-year with steepening yield curves and diverging monetary policy driving increasing demand for rates products,” said Deutsche’s first quarter report. It doesn’t help that people are leaving – Insiders say Jim McCrindle, a director in U.S. FX sales, just left for BAML. Chief U.S. economist Joe LaVorgna quit yesterday. A job offer to Rob Allard, who was supposed to be joining as head of U.S. fixed income sales, inexplicably fell through.

$60m isn’t the end of the world given that the rates business alone has been known to generate €900m ($1bn) in revenues a year. Nor is it entirely clear what went wrong. Deutsche didn’t respond to a request to comment, but Bloomberg suggests DB made a wrong bet on bonds linked to inflation. The bank is reportedly examining whether risk limits were exceeded and has escalated the case to its advisory board. However, traders say the real issue is whether the loss relates to a new position – or simply to a legacy position that was repriced.

Either way, the U.S. macro business under Wisnia will need to up its game for the rest of the year. Deutsche’s traders received zero performance bonuses for 2016 and the compensatory retention bonuses look like being worthless. Traders at the U.S. bank will therefore want to maximize their bonuses this year. The $60m loss looks like a setback. They have five months to make it up – and to hope they don’t blow up again in the process.

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It was while Charmian Yeo was studying chemistry for her bachelor’s degree that her career plans first began to head in a new direction.

“I was focused on analytical chemistry and I realised that I was more interested in the maths and numbers underpinning the subject, rather than the chemistry itself,” she says. “So when I considered which job would allow me to work with numbers, it was an obvious decision: accounting.”

Her career choice certainly paid off. Later this year Charmian starts work at one of the world’s largest auditing firms, EY.

But the initial challenge for Singapore-based Charmian was how to break into the profession, having not gone down the traditional route of doing an undergraduate degree in accounting.

Fortunately, Charmian found a pathway into accountancy that is specifically designed for people without a qualification in the area: the Master of Professional Accounting (MPA) at Singapore Management University (SMU). “I wanted a grounding in accounting within an industry-focused environment. The SMU MPA allows you to build up your basic knowledge before you get into more advanced topics,” says Charmian.

Students begin the MPA, which can be completed in two years part-time or one year full-time, with courses on the fundaments that underpin how businesses operate. They then take six core accounting courses (such as financial accounting and management accounting) and finally they study three fields within professional services: audit and assurance, taxation, and corporate advisory.

The curriculum at SMU MPA is industry and profession centric, says Fumin Feng, a deputy director at the Monetary Authority of Singapore who, like Charmian, is in his final semester of the programme.

“I started my career in the MAS finance department after graduating with a business degree,” says Fumin. “While I’ve picked up accounting skills on the job, pursuing the MPA allows me to plug knowledge gaps and gain useful exposure to accounting-related areas such as tax and audit.”

Fumin says he particularly enjoyed the corporate reporting and financial analysis module, facilitated by Associate Professor Wang Jiwei, the programme director of MPA. “We researched a Singapore-listed company, performed accounting adjustments and financial forecasts, and developed our own insights – similar to what a financial analyst would do. These hands-on experiences help prepare MPA students for the assignments they’ll face as industry practitioners.”

An interactive approach to teaching is also infused throughout the MPA, which has been running since 2006 and now has expanded to two annual intakes.

“The classes are small and interactive. We aren’t just spoon fed information and we often have to contribute our views,” says Fumin. “The professors use relevant case studies to facilitate learning and put it into a business context. There are no right or wrong answers – it’s more about getting us to think,” adds Charmian.

Both students say SMU’s faculty bring the subjects they teach to life. “They’re passionate, committed academics and they have practical industry experience – some of them are experienced partners at Big Four firms – so they share insights on current developments in audit and taxation,” says Fumin.

The diversity of the student cohort also helps set the SMU MPA apart. “My classes have part-time students in them too, most of whom are experienced professionals from a range of countries and industries,” says Charmian. “As someone who’s starting my career, I’m learning a lot through getting their varied perspectives on business and accounting.”

The relevancy of the MPA curriculum is evidenced by the accreditation and endorsement it’s received from 10 regulatory, professional and academic bodies, such as the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants, CPA Australia, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

The degree also goes beyond giving students technical accounting expertise. “Doing regular group presentations definitely helps to improve our presentation skills,” says Fumin. “The professors encourage us to ask them questions – so I’m now used to the type of open communication with senior people that will be crucial when I work for EY,” adds Charmian.

The MPA is also “geared towards getting you a job”, says Charmian, and that’s not just because of the industry-focused course content. Fumin highlights a recent career networking event in which alumni from several sectors came back to SMU to talk to students about their work.

“They each brought different expertise with them – it was interesting to learn what a forensic accountant does on a daily basis, for example,” says Fumin. “And they didn’t just chat about the technical nature of their jobs; they gave us practical advice about how they entered into their field and the challenges they face.”

Meanwhile, SMU’s career services team can help full-time students secure (optional) internships during their extended winter breaks, subject to employers’ assessment of their suitability.

Charmian took advantage of her break to complete a two-month internship in EY’s audit department for the resource and transportation sector. And she impressed the firm enough to then land a full-time job in the same team, starting in September. “My internship gave me real experience working in the accounting industry. I wasn’t just given mundane tasks, I was part of the team and could talk directly to the managers,” says Charmian.

Fumin will rejoin MAS at the end of the course in a new role supporting Singapore’s growth as an international financial sector, with a focus on developing the asset management industry. “A good understanding of accounting is necessary to make sense of the information underlying my role. As the financial industry develops and accounting becomes more complex, the skills and accounting fundamentals I’ve gained at SMU will be put to good use,” he says.

At the start of the programme, however, Fumin wondered whether he could cope with the rigours of a demanding Master’s degree, having been away from university for a long time. “It’s definitely not an easy course and it takes a lot of hard work,” he says. “If you’re looking to develop your career in accounting and are prepared to put in additional effort towards that goal, the MPA is the right programme for you.”

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Pity the world’s most prestigious investment banks, for their deep and often proclaimed love of STEM students is not requited. Those fickle young engineers with an urge to “make an impact” and work on cutting edge technologies are giving banks’ legacy systems a miss and going straight for tech firms, or car companies, or FMCG companies, or oil companies. – Anything, anything but finance.

So says a new study of 149,000 engineering and IT students’ preferred employers by Universum, a research company. When asked for their ideal employers upon graduation, the students put Google, Microsoft, Apple, General Electric and the BMW Group in the top five slots. Only two banks featured in the top 50 – Goldman and J.P. Morgan – and they ranked 27^th and 32^nd respectively. In a further reflection of banks’ unpopularity among their chosen recruits, engineering and IT students said they’d rather work for L’Oreal, Johnson & Johnson, or the Coca-Cola Company (among others) than either of the biggest-name banks.

What’s the students’ problem? Universum suggests it might have something to do with banks’ bad image among their preferred hires. Banks didn’t gain plaudits for their “creative and dynamic work environment.” Nor did they come out on top for, “innovation.” The only thing Goldman ranked highly for was “high future earnings” and even here it was trounced by McKinsey & Co and Exxon Mobil…

Separately, something’s certainly going on at UBS. The Swiss bank, which has developed a recent habit for hiring fixed income traders from Goldman Sachs, is now stocking up on credit traders, formerly of Credit Suisse. UBS just hired Robert MacNaughton, the ex-head of head at distressed debt trading at its Swiss rival. MacNaughton retired from Credit Suisse last year, so on this occasion UBS will at least have been absolved of the need to pay a big guarantee.

Meanwhile:

Deutsche Bank wealth management wants to hire 100 new front office staff within 12 months and just recruited a new head of its UK business (Michael Morley from Coutts) to get things started. (Financial News)

Fund managers should resist the need to be seen to implement quantitative investment strategies. Good old yield curve analysis is perfectly adequate. (Quartz)

Fund manager articulates the key advantage of computers running machine learning programs: “They never sleep, do not go to the toilet, have no girlfriends or boyfriends.” (Bloomberg)

Reminder: Frankfurt has 75,000 people employed in financial services, London between 400,000 and 700,000 (estimates vary). While London is a global city, Frankfurt feels like a provincial outpost. (Financial Times)

Richard Rosenblum, former global head of crude oil and derivatives trading at Goldman Sachs just co-launched Rose Commodities, a hedge fund. (WSJ)

Working in adult entertainment is a terrible let down: “I definitely imagined it would be a lot more lucrative and easier. Fans think doing this job is pure fun and money, but that really isn’t the case.” (Vice)

Seven years ago, the average Rolls Royce owner was 56. Now he’s 45. Soon they’ll be selling to Millennials. (Bloomberg)

People with money eventually ruin everything, and now they’ve gentrified sleeping in a van by the side of the road. (Bloomberg)

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Anshul Gupta spent 10 years working for HSBC’s investment bank in Dubai, heading up its regional M&A business and leading one of the biggest advisory teams in the region.

As of this month, he’s ditched bulge bracket banks and – like senior investment bankers around the world – decided to go it alone. Gupta is now CEO of his own boutique and consultancy Qatalyst in Dubai (not that Qatalyst), which he says offers a combination of management consulting, project management and deal feasibility studies.

“After having done a long stint at HSBC, it was the natural next step to set up something of my own and create an independent boutique consulting firm,” he tells us.

Gupta was promoted to head of M&A for the Middle East and North Africa at HSBC in April 2013, replacing Omar Mehanna, who moved on to become chief strategy officer for HSBC’s Saudi Arabia operation, SABB. He’s now global head of merchant banking at National Bank of Abu Dhabi.

Gupta left his role as head of M&A for MENA in March 2014, and headed up the bank’s regional industrials investment banking team instead. He has experience across multiple sectors and M&A, IPOs and other strategic advice.

Gupta left HSBC in May 2015, to join local investment bank Al Masah Capital, where he was a partner running its advisory business. He left in March and started Qatalyst earlier this month.

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It’s a tough time to be a very senior cash equities salesperson who’s out of the market. If you’re a mid-ranking electronic equities salesperson or trader who’s in a job, however, you’re in luck. Banks are hiring.

Both Citi and J.P. Morgan have recently made director and executive director-level additions to their electronic teams in London.

Citi is understood to have hired Joseph Sidibe, a highly experienced electronic equities trading from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Sidibe had been at BAML 10 years, after joining from State Street in 2007. BAML confirmed his exit although Citi didn’t respond to a query about his arrival. Sidibe’s said to be on gardening leave and is expected to join in London office in the coming months.

J.P. Morgan pulled a director out of BAML. It’s just hired Nikki Acton, a director and BAML’s head of international electronic sales in New York. Acton’s joining as an executive director and head of global liquidity solutions in J.P. Morgan’s New York office.

The moves come as various banks strengthen their electronic trading capabilities ahead of MiFID II and in response to rising equities revenues and squeezed and margins. As we reported earlier this month, Barclays is said to be rethinking its U.S. equities trading business and has brought in John Neary, former head of equities trading for the Americas to consult on the project. Joe MeCane, Barclays’ former head of electronic equities quit for Citadel Securities a few weeks ago, leaving a hole at the top of the business, which has been problematic for the British bank ever since the dark pool scandal of 2014.

One headhunter who covers electronic equities trading in London says UBS and Goldman are also looking to strengthen their teams. “Electronic trading is still an area of growth,” he says.

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The private equity and venture capital firm Vista Equity Partners acquired financial services technology company D+H and merged it with its portfolio company Misys earlier this month. It claims that the combined entity – rebranded as Finastra – is now the third-largest ‘fintech’ company in the world.

With around 10,000 employees across offices in 42 countries, surely there will be redundancies – there always seem to be opportunities to cut costs by trimming headcount after a merger or acquisition. Despite the fact that it will take some time to figure out the exact structure of the combined firm, Finastra is currently hiring in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and across Europe and Asia-Pacific.

The company says it wants to hire people in sales, ideally with banking experience, finance, legal, IT support and human resources.

Above all, Finastra is recruiting software developers to work on its open Fusion software architecture and cloud ecosystems.

Finastra partners with a number of universities and attends on-campus events across the globe and has a number of internship and graduate programs in place – in fact, the firm’s goal is for 60% of new hires each year to be at the graduate level. A high proportion of its graduate hires work in software development.

Each year, Finastra gets around 114,000 applications and the firm has hired around 2,400 people over the last year, not counting internal moves – meaning just 2% of applicants got a job offer.

Historically, the core recruiting focus of both Misys and D+H was on attracting candidates with expertise in programming languages such as C++ and Java. However, Finastra wants to evolve its technology stack and move towards a more dynamic, cloud-ready IT environment, so it increasingly wants to hire Maven, Sonar and Jenkins developers. Finastra says that those platforms allow higher architectural flexibility compared to C++ and the right balance between adding features in-house and enabling a customizable “Platform as a Service” model. The firm is sill hiring Java programmers as well.

Banks deciding between buy vs. build

Martin Häring began his career at Sun Microsystems, which sold computers, software and IT services and that created the Java programming language. After working there for more than a decade, Oracle acquired the company and Häring jumped to Akamai Technologies, a cloud services provider. In 2013, he became the chief marketing officer of Misys, and he was promoted to the CMO of Finastra earlier this month.

Häring says that Misys and D+H are complementary, with only 10% to 15% overlap from a product standpoint. The reason is that Misys clients are mostly tier-one, two and three banks – it claims to work with 48 of the 50 biggest banks worldwide – whereas D+H mainly serves tier-four and five institutions, primarily community banks and credit unions.

While his department hires demand generation, field marketing, corporate marketing and communications professionals without financial services experience, Finastra requires solutions and product marketing professionals to have experience working in the financial sector, preferably for a bank.

“You can’t create good marketing if you don’t know the personas you are marketing to, so we look to hire people coming from banks or other financial services companies, or who have been analysts covering the financial services sector and are deep experts,” Häring says.

He believes that the current competition between fintech firms and traditional banks is unnecessary.

“If you’re smart, open a platform and let fintechs integrate seamlessly with your apps to create new innovation,” Häring says. “Banks that believe in closed proprietary software will fall behind – innovation happens outside of the banks and they need to leverage this.”

Moving to a more open software development model would also mean that banks would employ fewer in-house developers and data analytics professionals.

“In the past, banks had a huge tendency to build it themselves over past 10 or 15 years – banks have huge development departments, some with more than 10,000 developers, but since the breakdown in 2008, now cost is something they need to dial down on,” Häring said. “They’re feeling huge cost and margin pressures, and many can’t afford to have so many in-house developers and vendors, so they’re consolidating vendors and their own development efforts.

“In every industry, 95% of innovation is happening outside of your company, and if you don’t leverage that, you’re missing the trick,” he said. “Do you really want to trust that your 5% is what you really need, or would you like to look outside at fintechs and [independent] developers to create innovation on your behalf?

“The demand for faster time to market and cost cutting drives banks toward buy and away from build.”
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Housing is a huge topic in London. The city is famously expensive and the Grenfell Tower tragedy has served to highlight the inadequacy of its accommodation for the least advantaged. If you’re an intern an investment bank you’re already one of the privileged few, but you’ll also have 10 to 12 weeks in which living quarters are going to be the last thing on your mind. So, where do you stay when work finally ends?

The answer, according many of the interns we’ve spoken to, is “with your parents”. A surprisingly high number of investment banks’ summer analysts in London are either Londoners or from the London suburbs – and as is typical of the new cost-conscious attitude among young bankers, they’re not about to spend their money on rent.

“I’m just living at home and commuting in and out,” one typical intern tells us. “It’s much easier that way. A lot of interns do this now.”

European interns clearly don’t have this option. However, banks will help, to a degree.

Banks in London don’t actually arrange accommodation for their summer analysts. This level of provision is reserved for spring interns, who are typically first year university students and considered less able to fend for themselves. By the time you’re a second or third year student and a summer analyst, you’re expected to make your own arrangements, which banks will subsidize.

Some banks are more generous than others. At Barclays, for example, summer analysts are given £2k ($2.6k) to cover accommodation during their nine week internships (graduates at Barclays are offered £6k to get settled when they join full-time). Elsewhere, the rate varies between £1k and £2k. Interns aren’t obliged to spend this money on living costs – those who stay with their parents are able to save it up or spend it on a post-internship holiday (hence the incentive to linger at home).

When interns live in rented accommodation, banks usually provide a reference and act as the guarantor of their rent. Favourite banking intern hangouts include Liberty Court in Clerkenwell or Claredale House in London’s Bethnal Green. Claredale boasts its popularity with interns at UBS, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Ernst & Young, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and Barclays Capital and charges from £171 to £183 a week. (It was here that Bank of America intern Moritz Erhardt was staying when he died in 2014). Interns with more money, or a more generous living allowance, are more likely to choose Pure City London. Based in the Barbican and costing from £265 to £470 a week, Pure City tells us it has interns from “all industries” staying during the summer months.

Although you might blow all your allowance – and maybe more – paying for accommodation instead of staying in your childhood bedroom, interns who’ve splashed out say it’s worth it. “If you want to be in the office at 6.30am or 7am and you’re living an hour away with your parents, you’re going to need to get up at 4.30am,” says one. “You’re going to have a long commute and a lack of sleep, and neither will help you secure a long term job.”

As for the social scene in the intern accommodation, there is none: “Most people come back to their apartment/room and sleep,” one intern says.

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David Waill, the head of leveraged loan management at Deutsche Bank, has taken the well-trodden path towards private equity late on in his career.

Waill, who spent 18 years at Deutsche Bank, has just joined private equity firm Benefit Street Partners in New York as a managing director.

Investment banks’ leveraged finance divisions are prime hunting grounds for private equity firms, but most bankers make the move at analyst or associate level. A buy-side move is far more rare at the senior end of the career ladder, but Waill has made the switch after 28 years in investment banking.

Benefit Street Partners is a $13bn credit manager that offers leveraged loans, high yield, structured credit and commercial real estate debt. It has around 70 employees and is part of private equity firm Providence Equity.

Waill worked at Deutsche Bank for 18 years, having joined from Merrill Lynch in 1999, where he was also a managing director. He started at Merrill Lynch in 1989 after completing an MBA at New York University.

There’s been an unusual amount of movement among senior leverage finance bankers this year. This week, Toby Ali, the co-head of leveraged finance at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in EMEA, left to join Citigroup. Simon Francis, who previously worked at Credit Suisse, was also hired by Citigroup as co-head of leveraged finance earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Ray Doody, the had of EMEA leveraged finance at J.P. Morgan, left in January and turned up as HSBC’s head of leveraged and acquisition finance.

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Most industries are struggling to find data science expertise, but Wall Street especially has particularly keen to hire in this area. Data has always been a big part of the finance industry, and over the last few years, top financial services firms have ramped up their spending, investing millions of dollars to recruit and train data scientists.

The skills you need to become a data scientist at a bank or hedge fund

There are constant debates about how to become a data scientist – whether to study data science, mathematics or statistics in a university, try to teach yourself or attend a boot camp. No matter how you decide to proceed, you must learn some skills one way or another in order to get hired and have a successful career.

Most people who want to have a career in data science have a background in math. Basic algebra, statistics and calculus form the foundation for understanding this field. In addition, it’s recommended that you learn C++, Java and Python or at least have a basic understanding of those programming languages. Most data scientists suggest being fluent in Python, and if you’ve already mastered those languages, then learn R, PHP, C or JavaScript.

Data scientists typically have a certain specialty and tend to take online courses or attend boot camps to become proficient in data mining, data munging, data analysis and machine learning. Different industries have different needs for data scientists and their respective specialties. Those who know they want to work on Wall Street can narrow their studies a bit; however, the finance industry seems to be recruiting pretty much anyone who specializes in data science.

How Wall Street deploys data scientists

Data science teams are relatively new at most Wall Street firms, which means whoever wants to work as a data scientist in a financial company must be a leader. A data scientist in finance is still a new, yet highly sought-after position, so someone that understands how to harness big data in a financial setting and with the ability to hire and manage a team is a dream candidate for these big firms.

Banks and financial institutions have the cash flow to hire a data science team, but many lack the knowledge and understanding of what exactly they need. Plus, Wall Street firms are in competition with each other to create better algorithms to make trades and build out highly functioning technology, making the desire to find a strong team even more immediate. That means the right candidates can expect a bidding war for their services.

Information security

Security on Wall Street is a top concern, so companies are moving data scientists onto teams that solve issues such as cyber security breaches and identity theft. Data scientists can create algorithms to detect uncommon behavior and alert the necessary parties. Furthermore, data scientists are applying machine learning concepts, so these algorithms constantly learn and improve. These teams are being tasked with improving models that detect malicious behavior company-wide. From internal threats to customer security, data and machine learning is improving safety.

Furthermore, data scientists are applying machine learning concepts so that the algorithms they create constantly learn and improve. These teams are being tasked with improving models that detect malicious behavior company-wide. From internal threats to customer security, data and machine learning is improving firms’ safety and reducing reputational risk.

Those interested in financial risk management or cyber security should focus on machine learning models and frameworks, such as Mahout, predictive analytics and UNIX tools.

Research and development (R&D)

R&D in finance is another area where Wall Street needs data scientists. Companies can create financial indicators through unstructured text, so they use data scientists for text mining. Scientists collect text and analyze the content and its sentiment to produce market indicators.

Data is used in pricing and risk assessment as well through machine learning algorithms that can aggregate price estimates, assign a value and understand discrepancies based on the market.

R&D is a broad category in financial firms, but those interested should study machine learning.

Data science is infiltrating Wall Street

There are many other avenues individuals can go down to grab a data science job on Wall Street. Data scientists are constantly evolving, as certain elements of the industry become automated and new techniques arise. Large Wall Street firms are hiring quickly to build robust data science teams to maintain their competitive position in the market and improve their technology infrastructure.

However, data science teams are new concepts; therefore, individuals taking on that role at a bank or hedge fund must be able to evolve and adapt to structural changes. Machine learning is a highly in-demand skill for Wall Street, so those that want to secure a place in finance can smartly invest in learning new algorithms and techniques in that field. That said, there is still a need for more basic skills as well.

Eventually, data science knowledge will become the norm among Wall Street staff, but for now, it will help to separate you from the pack during your job search.

Vivian Zhang is the founder and CTO of the NYC Data Science Academy, an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University and the co-founder of SupStat Analytics and the NYC Open Data meetup. She is a former bio-statistician and scientific programmer at the Brown University Center for Statistical Sciences.
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Are Deutsche Bank’s dire bonuses for 2016 finally driving people away? After insisting that staff turnover was no greater than usual in the first quarter, DB seems to have lost more than its fair share of senior in the past week. David Waill, the U.S. head of leveraged loan management, has just joined a private equity fund. Jim McCrindle, a director in U.S. FX sales, is understood to have left for BAML. Matthew Geh, a senior European technology banker has left for J.P. Morgan. And chief economist Joe LaVorgna has absconded to “elsewhere.”

Those who haven’t left have been bought back. One of Deutsche’s most senior U.S. traders was understood to be on the cusp of joining Barclays this week, but has seemingly been offered a big inducement to stick around instead. Deutsche insiders talk of massive buybacks whenever significant people try to escape: a director in the London investment bank reportedly achieved a 35% hike in his salary plus a guaranteed bonus; a managing director in Sam Wisnia’s macro business was allegedly bid-back $3m after earning $1.5m last year.

Nonetheless, people are leaving and Deutsche Bank is hiring – both for replacement and for growth. Some of those hires have raised eyebrows on the Street. While Deutsche Bank itself counts as a second tier bank, several of its recent recruits have come from organizations considerably lower down the hierarchy.

Take, for example, the recent senior additions to Deutsche’s U.S. healthcare team – from BMO Capital Markets and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Or Garret Rowan, who joined as a loans trader from US bank. Or Jonathan Rose, who joined as head of metals and mining in the Americas, also from BMO.

“Deutsche Bank always used to hire from the creme de la creme,” comments one observer, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s like they can’t get those people any more,” she adds.

Deutsche Bank declined to comment for this article. However, it would be wrong to suggest that the bank is only able to hire from less prestigious firms. This week alone it’s announced the addition of Bill White from Citi as head of U.S. life sciences and Jeff Vergamini from J.P. Morgan as an MD in M&A. Robin Rousseau from Goldman Sachs is joining in September as head of M&A in EMEA. And Angus Yang from Citi is joining soon as head of prime brokerage in Asia.

Nonetheless, headhunters suggest it’s easier to get into DB than it was and that the bank has opened its doors to recruits from rivals who wouldn’t previously have been granted admission. One of those recruits is Jacob Bourne, who joined from Scotiabank at the height of Deutsche’s troubles in October 2016. Bourne is head of U.S. inflation trading at DB – the business which reportedly made a $60m loss earlier this year.

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The gender compensation gap in financial services is well-documented, and it appears that it also extends to the Big Four professional services firms.

Female auditors and accountants who work at PwC in the U.K. earn 14% less than their male counterparts on average and get significantly smaller bonuses – 40% smaller, in fact, according to data provided by the firm.

Why would PwC spill the beans on that fact? It was following the law. It’s only the 19th U.K. company to comply with new British government rules requiring organizations to disclose wage differences between men and women, the Financial Times reported. The goal is to call attention to workplace inequality in the hopes of eventually ending it.

The professional services firm has more than 19,000 U.K .workers, and it is one of the largest businesses to join the British government’s mandatory “gender pay gap” register of public and private companies with at least 250 employees.

Men make up 61% of the top quartile and 53% of the upper middle quartile for pay at PwC. Just 160 of the firm’s partners are women compared to 938 male partners. Women make up 54% of the lower middle and 53% of the lower wage quartiles.

So what’s the explanation for the discrepancy in compensation? PwC told the FT that its female workers were paid less because there were “more men in senior higher-paid roles and more women in junior and administrative roles.” Out of 938 partners at PWC, just 160 are women. By comparison. there are 1,651 female “support staff” compared with 411 male. If you’re wondering who occupies the most menial jobs in finance, therefore, the answer is clear: it’s the women.

Separately, the biggest banks in the world all passed The Federal Reserve’s stress tests, potentially dampening pressure to break them up and freeing up capital. However, bankers hoping for a piece of the pie in the form of a raise may be disappointed.

The Fed told large banks that they have enough capital reserves, and many – including J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America – rushed to announce plans for stock buybacks and to boost dividends for their shareholders. Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley also announced stock buybacks. Soon after, they added more than $25bn in market value.

That shows how banks are desperately trying to generate investor interest – even though many of them are still struggling to meet profitability targets and the shares of some are trading below book value, according to Bloomberg.

Bankers are counting on President Donald Trump to ease rules forcing banks to reduce risk-taking and increase internal controls, which took a toll on revenue and caused costs to balloon. In addition, Jay Clayton, the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said he’s going to introduce rulemaking initiatives to boost IPOs, which will benefit banks.

The annual review is a key piece of the Fed’s strategy to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis and taxpayer-funded bailouts. Firms demonstrated that they have enough capital to handle turmoil, such as surging unemployment, a sharp drop in housing prices or an extended stock slump, per Bloomberg. That led the Fed to say that they can proceed with payouts to shareholders.

This is all good news. Predictably, however, employees aren’t getting a look-in. As conditions improve, it’s all about rewarding shareholders. Staff are at the very back of the queue.

Meanwhile:

Evercore Partners is adding Paul Stefanick, a top industrials banker and the ex-head of Deutsche Bank’s Wall Street operations, as a senior executive, the latest move in its ongoing hiring spree. (WSJ)

An ex-Salomon Brothers banker and the former head of investment banking at Barclays, Tom King, has joined the board of healthcare M&A boutique Leerink Partners. (Reuters)

Faced with uncertainty, banking CEOs in London are wondering whether to accelerate plans to move operations into the E.U. (WSJ)

The U.K. is threatening Ireland over its use of Brexit in its pitch to attract jobs. (The Telegraph)

This woman went from CFO of an auto-parts manufacturer to an analyst, then an EY auditor and now an HSBC portfolio manager whose $1.3bn small-cap fund is so popular that she’s had to stop accepting new investments. (Bloomberg)

Pine River Capital Management will spin off a nearly $2bn government bond-trading fund into a stand-alone firm. (WSJ)

Ex-Lehman Brothers banker Giles Coppel, the head of trading at Brevan Howard’s New York office since 2012, is launching his own hedge fund with $200m from his former employer. Talk about leaving on good terms. (Business Insider)

A 33-year-old credit trader from the $7bn (soon-to-be-defunct) hedge fund Eton Park is raising $200m-plus to open his own firm. (Reuters)

Some feel that the first modern financial crisis took place in 1997. (Bloomberg)

“These days we don’t hire MBAs. If you want to get into trading study math, not finance.” (CB Insights)

Should financial services firms let their employees work remotely? It’s complicated. (Bloomberg)
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Since Nadir Mehadji left his job in hedge fund sales at Barclays in 2015, he’s been indulging his creative side. He’s a semi-professional photographer, he’s advising creative agencies on how they thing about design, and also teaching himself coding and machine learning techniques to better position himself for any potential return to an increasingly automated financial sector.

Mehadji has been on both sides of the fence – working with high-earning investment bankers in London and Singapore and more creative types who are much less concerned about money. But, he says, there’s a common theme – both don’t have much of an idea about how to handle their own personal finances.

“Just because you work in banking, doesn’t mean that you’re able to make the best of your own finances,” he says. “Most people are specialists in one area – bonds, commodities, M&A– and having a comprehensive approach to investing is a different skill entirely.”

To the man on the street, financial markets remain intimidatingly complex, he says. “The majority of creative people I’ve worked with since leaving banking tend to invest in one thing – the house they live in,” he says. “They’re among the smartest people I know. But investing is seen as risky and complex, so the thought of learning how to make the most of their money is intimidating.”

Mehadji believes he’s come up with a creative solution to help both parties – he’s written an illustrated book that aims to guide people through the complex world of investing and shake-up the “stuffy” world of finance textbooks.

The Cat and the Banker is a 21-chapter illustrated tale of a moggy called Socrates who inherits some money from his uncle. He’s advised to contact a financial adviser – a ‘banker’ called Catsby – who tells him that if he merely lets the money sit in his bank account, inflation will slowly erode its value.

What follows is a story that guides readers through different investment types – stocks, bonds, commodities, property, currencies – as well as how each relates to the ‘real world’. Catsby also explains to Socrates the concept of leverage, managing risk through diversification of investments, liquidity and reaching the ‘magic number’ of 69.

There’s even a splash of real-life drama – Catsby is fired after his bank is acquired by a rival, and an unscrupulous new financial adviser tries to flog complex financial products to Socrates.

Mehadji’s financial services background has helped the way he’s approached the book. He hasn’t just written it and started searching for a publisher. Instead, he’s created a webpage testing the appetite for the book, where readers can pre-order the story and pay between $21 and $1,500 to get the project off the ground.

So far, he’s halfway through his target of 1,000 pre-ordered books, and has received over $10,500 in funding. The most interest, he tells us, has come from other financial services professionals.

“Some bankers don’t fully understand the products they sell,” says Mehadji. “Many bankers also don’t know how to invest their own bonuses well. It’s a complex area, and most investment guides are dry textbooks – I wanted to see if there was an appetite for something more fun.”

In the pre-crisis glory days, financial services professionals would climb their way up the career, ladder, amass big bonuses and then retire in their 30s. Leaving the industry rich after a decade or so is an increasingly elusive dream. Banking still pays better than most professions, but bonuses have been shrinking and most people leave with an ambition to start a second career, rather than to sip cocktails on a beach.

Making the most of their money is therefore increasingly important, believes Mehadji.

“Paradoxically, many bankers are risk averse,” he says. “There’s an increasing number who want to change careers, but they are fearful of what might come next. Pay is shrinking, and it’s no longer easy to retire early. Being able to make the most of your money is really important, even for finance professionals.”

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It’s happened again: another associate at Goldman Sachs has left for a far bigger title at the helm of a fund on the buy-side.

The latest junior to evacuate Goldman is Jorge Suarez de Lezo, a former associate in Goldman Sachs’ M&A financial institutions group (FIG) in London. Suarez de Lezo just left Goldman’s London office after nearly four years, and is off to become managing director of a venture capital firm in Spain.

The precise name of this VC firm is unclear and Suarez de Lezo didn’t respond to our request for clarification. The implication is that Suarez de Lezo is founding a fund of his own. If so, he’s not alone: Stuart Smith, an associate at Goldman’s Houston office left after 22 months in May and set up “Southern Creek Capital”.

Now may be an auspicious time for a Spanish-born Goldman Sachs associate to move home and start a venture capital fund. The Spanish venture capital market is one of the most under-invested in Europe and new funds raised rose nearly 50% in 2016. There’s also Brexit looming on the horizon, as a discouragement to talented European nationals who might otherwise have stayed in London.

Goldman, meanwhile, has been doing its best to discourage its juniors from leaving for more interesting jobs elsewhere. The bank began fast-tracking people through its analyst programme in 2015 and is now making its analysts into associates after two years instead of the traditional three. Suarez de Lezo, however, joined Goldman as an associate in 2013 after completing an MBA at Columbia Business School. After four years at that level, he clearly thought it was time for something else instead.

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Credit Suisse MD says jobs moving from NYC to Raleigh, NC on schedule

Morning Coffee: The $1m+ job desperate for 20-somethings. Jamie Dimon says don’t fear the robots

Meanwhile:

The demanding new finance jobs that pay dismally

UBS heavy-hitter has just quit to launch his own boutique

Meet the new head of Nomura’s London prop trading business

What to do if you’re in the totally wrong job

1. Get a feel for the market

2. Look internally

3. Tap into your networks

4. Work out if your skills and achievements apply to other sectors

5. Show results

6. Bypass HR

Hedge fund increases headcount by 20% after revenues slide by 30%

Are Deutsche traders trying too hard to recover that lost market share?

I studied chemistry but now I’m joining the Big Four in Singapore. Here’s how

Morning Coffee: J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs rejected by the 21 year-olds they’d love to hire. UBS fixed income build continues

Meanwhile:

HSBC’s former head of MENA M&A has decided to go it alone

J.P. Morgan and Citi are adding directors to electronic equities teams

Newly merged, rebranded fintech giant hasn’t stopped hiring

Banks deciding between buy vs. build

Frugal banking interns save money, stay with parents

Deutsche Bank’s head of leveraged loan management has just switched to the buy-side

Data scientists are in demand on Wall Street. Here’s what you need to know to land a job

The skills you need to become a data scientist at a bank or hedge fund

How Wall Street deploys data scientists

Information security

Research and development (R&D)

Data science is infiltrating Wall Street

Why has Deutsche Bank been hiring from 4th tier rivals?

Morning Coffee: Here’s who really occupies the worst jobs in finance. Banks make it rain but not to boost pay

Meet the ex-Barclays VP with a fun solution to helping bankers retire early

Goldman Sachs associate quits to become MD of venture capital firm

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1. Get a feel for the market

2. Look internally

3. Tap into your networks

4. Work out if your skills and achievements apply to other sectors

5. Show results

6. Bypass HR

Related articles:

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Related articles:

Related articles:

Meanwhile:

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Banks deciding between buy vs. build

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The skills you need to become a data scientist at a bank or hedge fund

How Wall Street deploys data scientists

Information security

Research and development (R&D)

Data science is infiltrating Wall Street

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