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While Goldman Sachs examines its navel in search signs of where its once great fixed income sales and trading business went wrong, a defector whom the firm passed over as president ten years ago has taken on a cult-like status at its rival. Tom Montag, the former co-head of Goldman’s securities business, is Mr Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Bank of America declined to comment for this article, but BofA insiders and sources who’ve worked with Montag say the COO rules the global banking and global markets businesses with an iron, if eccentric, fist.

“He’s a piece of work – a force of nature. He carries the entire stress of the investment bank on his shoulders and his shoulders are huge,” says one Bank of America insider. “He’s just a massive guy. He dwarfs anyone he stands next to.”

A former high school athlete who once rode to work on a Vespa, Montag is no longer as svelte as he was. At over six foot and over 200 pounds, some suggest his weight is a threat to his health and that his punishing schedule is partly to blame. A former co-head of Asian equities and fixed income currencies and commodities at Goldman Sachs, Montag – who’s based in the New York – is said to travel for up to 40 weeks of the year, often to Asia, which he takes a keen interest in. Staff in local offices are said to joke about putting chocolate bars in prominent positions on their desks when he visits in order to gain his attention.

Montag is doing something right, though. In 2017, Bank of America’s fixed income market share was 12.5%, according to analysts at KBW, putting the bank in third place behind J.P. Morgan on 18.1% and Citigroup on 16.8%. Goldman Sachs, Montag’s employer for 22 years, languished at 7.3%. While Goldman and J.P. Morgan both lost FICC market share last year, Bank of America – like J.P. Morgan and Citi – gained it.

BofA’s fixed income success can be partly attributed to its strong corporate client base. However, as COO with an all-encompassing responsibility for BofA busineses that “serve companies and institutional investors” and for the “global research and global markets sales and trading business”, as described in the bank’s recent proxy report, Montag deserves some of the credit too. Under his watch, BofA has developed ‘Quartz’, a risk and pricing system similar to SecDB at Goldman Sachs. It’s also rationalized its technology platforms, cut costs and improved its U.S. middle market franchise – something Montag was talking about in June 2017, well before Goldman started doing the same in November.

Despite rumours of “strain” in the relationship between Montag and BofA CEO Brian Moynihan, Moynihan has praised and promoted the man who may one day take his job. In 2015, Moynihan credited Montag with being “really smart” and in July last year he praised Montag and his team for taking costs out of the trading business. In 2017, Montag was paid less than Moynihan with $19m to his boss’s $23m, but this hasn’t always been the case: Montag regularly out-earned Moynihan between 2010 and 2015.

A table released in a 2016 court case showing pay rates for senior markets staff at Bank of America suggests Montag amply shares the BofA bounty among his senior lieutenants. However, not everyone at BofA is enamoured of the big boss. “He fixed the business by streamlining costs, but he created fear,” says one BofA salesman. “It’s been all about closing the gap with Goldman Sachs and there’s been constant pressure,” he adds. “We were given very challenging targets and it made for an unpleasant and threatening environment.”

Insiders say Montag’s already large presence is writ larger by daily and weekly reports bearing his name and that together with Montag, Sanaz Zaimi, the ex-Goldman Sachs head of fixed income and Fab Gallo, the ex-Morgan Stanley head of equities, run a business that can be highly politicized. Eyebrows were raised when Zaimi hired her brother, Alireza, in 2014 (he left for Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund last October). In turn, Gallo has been accused of favouring colleagues he’s hired-in from Morgan Stanley.

“Montag’s a huge character,” says one headhunter. “And he likes to hire other characters. You have a lot of “interesting” people in senior roles at Bank of America and it can be very political there. The culture is very, very aggressive and very performance driven.”

Montag’s character was reportedly on display at a recent event led by Moynihan at Disney World in Orlando. “Montag spent his slot on the stage mostly talking about roller coasters and sharing pictures of himself on them,” says one BofA banker. “He’s just a very big guy.”

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Internships may not be starting in Hong Kong for a few months, but most global banks in the city have already selected their 2018 summer analysts.

A (very) small number of these elite students have recently updated their online profiles to reveal themselves as “incoming interns”. If you’re a finance student wanting a Hong-based internship at a large investment bank, here’s who you now need to live up to.

Mingjian Li, Goldman Sachs

Does Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong only hire interns with previous bulge-bracket experience? It seems not. Li got into Goldman’s securities team on the back of several internships in similar fields at smaller Asian firms. She started out in 2015 as a sales and trading summer analyst at CMB International and has since worked for China Galaxy Securities, AMTD Group, and UOB Kay Hian, according to her public profile.

Tony He, HSBC

He finished a BBA degree at HKU last year and is now completing a Masters in International Finance at HEC Paris, according to his profile. This summer he heads back to Hong Kong to intern in HSBC’s global banking and markets team. He worked for both China Investment Securities and Shanxi Securities last year – a further sign that Western banks are increasingly looking favourably on former interns of Chinese institutions.

Yining Pei, UBS

Pei is an incoming summer analyst in UBS’s equities team. She appears intent on a career in the function, having been a research intern at Essence Securities in Beijing last year. Her extracurricular activities are impressive: Pei was deputy director of the HKU chapter of Dynamite, a student-run conference, and vice president of education for her university’s UNICEF Club. Like many elite Hong Kong-based students, Pei has done overseas exchanges (at the University of Toronto, and Imperial College, London).

Jonathan Liu, Credit Suisse

While investment banks in Hong Kong recruit most of their interns from local campuses, Liu is an expectation: he’s studying Economic and Mathematics at Northwestern University in the US. Along with an overseas education (helpful for landing cross-border IB jobs in Asia), Liu has already done three internships. He spent last summer in Standard Chartered’s financial institutions group, while the previous year he worked for Chicago private equity firm Wind Point Partners and for KPMG in Hong Kong.

Arthur Fukuda Lam, Morgan Stanley

Lam is also one of the outlier overseas students: he’s doing a Business Administration degree at University of California, Berkeley. He has a wide range of extracurricular activities on his resume, from the table tennis team to the Undergraduate Finance Association. Lam is also a case competition ace, having placed first in events run by Huawei and PwC. He spent last summer at M&A advisors BDA Partners in Hong Kong and the previous one at private equity firm Leopard Capital…in Cambodia.

Herman Ko, Deutsche Bank

A lack of previous internship experience is not necessarily an impediment to getting into Deutsche. Ko is in his third year of a BBA degree at HKUST Business School, but unlike most aspiring bankers of his age, he hasn’t done an internship yet. He does, however, have an array of finance-related activities on his CV that would have appealed to Deutsche. He’s taken part in Deloitte ‘job shadowing’, HSBC financial dialogue events, and Morgan Stanley early insights days. Ko’s profile also combines two things that banks tend to admire: entrepreneurship and extracurriculars. He is the co-founder of the University Innovation and Entrepreneurship Association.

Siyu Lu, Citi

Lu has been clocking up internship experience across several areas of finance, potentially widening his graduate career options. He’s currently working at investment firm Ward Ferry Management, before he joins Citi’s investment bank this summer. The CUHK student’s previous stints at banks, however, were in equities sales and trading teams – at Morgan Stanley (2017) and CITIC (2016).

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Setio Darmawan, a veteran HSBC technologist who was latterly its chief information officer for Indonesia, has moved to UOB as the Singaporean firm continues its digital hiring drive.

Darmawan joined the Republic’s third largest local bank at executive director level earlier this month, relocating from Jakarta to Singapore in the process, according to his public profile.

UOB has been among the more aggressive recruiters in the Singapore banking sector of late. Its headcount rose by almost 300 people last year compared with 2016.

This increase was largely fuelled by hiring techies like Darmawan. The bank is still taking on more engineers, analysts, digital designers, architects, project managers and data scientists, Susan Hwee, head of group technology and operations, told us previously. About 4,500 people work in Hwee’s department.

Darmawan’s moves comes just weeks after UOB took on senior IT infrastructure manager KV Anup Kumar, who was previously regional application platform hosting head for ASPAC and EMEA at Citi. In October, UOB recruited executive director Christopher Wee from Standard Chartered to help run its digital product development in Singapore.

These hires reaffirm the ability of the three Singaporean banks – UOB, DBS and OCBC – to poach tech professionals from the upper ranks of global firms. Citi, HSBC and Stan Chart are particularly popular hunting grounds for local banks because of their large IT headcounts in Singapore.

Close to a quarter (24%) of available positions across UOB, DBS and OCBC were in technology and digital banking, according to our analysis of their vacancies late last year.

Darmawan spent three years at AIG and GE Money before moving to HSBC in Indonesia in 2007 as an IT development manager. He worked for the bank in Hong Kong between 2011 and 2014 in technology management roles. Returning to Jakarta in 2014, Darmawan became the local head of software delivery and was promoted to CIO the following year.

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If you’re looking to advance your career in the finance world or want to improve your current job prospects, then the highly acclaimed Masters in Finance (MiF) at London Business School is the perfect platform for you.

The much sought-after programme has taken top spot in the Financial Times’ rankings of post-experience Masters in Finance programmes for six out of the last seven years. Hundreds of people apply from all over the world every year for good reason.

Based in the heart of London, MiF students have access not only to world-class faculty, but also a networking community of experienced professionals from a wide range of leading financial institutions.

These connections can prove invaluable when it comes to finding an edge in the competitive financial services job market. This is where the Career Centre team at LBS come into their element.

“We’re in constant dialogue with employers to understand the latest finance trends, their talent needs and what they’re really looking for in a candidate to help them achieve their business goals. Many employers are alumni of our School, keen to connect with the next generation,” explains Simon Lyle, who leads the Career Development Programme for the MiF at LBS.

He says more employers are emphasising the need for interpersonal skills, “It’s becoming increasingly difficult for many financial institutions to create competitive advantage through their products and services, so their people become more of a differentiator. Those with strong interpersonal skills, great analytical skills and commercial judgement, can add value, influence and provide real insight for their clients,” explains Lyle.

“We’ve put increased attention on interpersonal skills in the programme. We design and deliver a lot of training in groups to provide peer learning and networking opportunities, but also one-on-one coaching, as we recognise individuals have specific needs. This is a core part of the MiF programme which complements the technical finance elements and helps enable achievement of goals in the competitive labour market.”

There are many more reasons why the LBS MiF is such an enticing prospect for both students and recruiters. Aside from the fact that LBS is a renowned brand in the UK and worldwide, there’s also the international flavour to the School. Over 90% of the students on the programme are from outside the UK. This brings different perspectives and experiences into the classroom.

“The possibilities to learn about other cultures and how different countries’ markets work, and network with potentially influential people from across the globe are incredible,” enthuses Lyle.

There are different global options on the programme, including exchange opportunities, exposure to Asset Management firms through an experiential programme and career treks to other parts of the world, for example in the US and Asia.

There are several student clubs in the area of finance at LBS, which work closely with financial institutions. Senior leaders from major finance companies are brought in for panel events to discuss the latest finance issues. LBS also regularly facilitate opportunities for targeted networking activities. “Our Career Centre and Programme Office teams recently hosted a speed networking event, which had more than 100 people attending, over a third of whom were finance alumni. Up to 10 years on, they’re now leaders in their field. That is the power of LBS,” adds Lyle.

Being able to call on people in industry is hugely beneficial, as recent graduate Pippa Johnson found when she was studying on the MiF. “Conceptual material is much more approachable when you engage with someone who has already applied it in a real-world scenario. Faculty would often call on people with relevant experience to support case study work – it was a great way to build an awareness of different working practices,” says Johnson, who transitioned from Head of Group Tax at Network Rail before the course to Senior Manager, Corporate Strategy and Business Development at The Walt Disney Company afterwards.

The MiF programme can be undertaken either part-time or full-time, and students have the option to undertake the full time option over either three or four terms. Those who do it over four terms tend to seek an internship, which is a great vehicle to assist in making a career change.

Within the programme itself there is further flexibility. Alongside core finance modules, students can choose a range of electives. “So if they want to particularly work in a certain area of finance or deepen existing knowledge, they can tailor their modules to suit,” explains Lyle. “We recognise everyone has their own needs and requirements, so look at ways to tailor their studies and help them on their career path. We explore what they want to do, how to plan, and then execute on those plans.”

This careers in-person training and coaching is augmented with innovative digital career learning, which has been developed considerably in recent years. There are now digital resources including advice on sectors, what’s required to get roles in each sector, and CV tools using algorithms to help students make their resumes as impactful as possible.

The job opportunities available to graduates have also expanded. “Ten years ago, most hiring would come from a dozen organisations – now the range of companies is more extensive and we have seen growth in areas such private equity, as well as the emergence of fintech,” says Lyle.

Additionally a growing number are going into corporates and the programme offers concentration opportunities for students seeking to develop careers in corporate finance or along a CFO track.

Not one to rest on its laurels, LBS is now in the process of going through a strategic programme review, helped by industry leaders, finance recruiters, alumni and stakeholders across LBS. “We’ve already got some great insights internally and externally to help us stay ahead of the curve, and look forward to developing the highly successful MiF programme even further” says Lyle.

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Once upon a time, there was a bank that cared – really cared about its employees. A bank that was properly like a family, where everyone was kind and friendly and the camaraderie was intense. Well sort of. That bank was Bear Stearns.

To mark the 10 year anniversary of Bear’s passing, Financial News has spoken to some of the people who worked there. A decade later, they’re still pretty cut up.

“It felt like everyone’s effort mattered, from the junior analysts through to the senior executives,” says Louis P. Friedman, former chairman of global M&A at the bank. “It was probably the most rewarding eight years of my investment banking career. The leaders had an ability to cement everyone together. It was a close, personal relationship. You felt part of something.”

“Bear Stearns was a family to us — it wasn’t just a business,” says the former head of capital markets. “I thought my kids would work there.”

The Bear-Stearns-was-like-family meme has a history. People were saying it back in 2008. The big daddy was CEO Jimmy Cayne. People loved him, or at least he thought they did: “These people would jump off a cliff for me. That’s how I feel,” he’s quoted as saying in William Cohan’s book House of Cards.

It wasn’t all peace and lurrve at Bear though. As in all the best families, there had been a patriarchal feud. The Financial Times wrote in 2010 that Bear’s camaraderie was the product of its voluntary isolation: “Bear executives took pride in their exclusion from the club. They cared about money, particularly their own, and not the pretensions that accompanied wealth elsewhere on Wall Street.” More revealingly, Vanity Fair observed in 2008 that the sorts of people who worked for Bear Stearns were those who, “disdained secret handshakes and towel snapping in favor of an extended middle finger toward pretty much everyone.” To the extent that they cared, it was in this context.

Separately, there’s been an upset at SocGen. Didier Valet, the deputy chief executive and head of the corporate and investment bank, has resigned. Valet’s exit has something to do with a disagreement over SocGen’s LIBOR investigation. Whatever the cause, it’s all a big sudden. Valet pushed SocGen’s growth in fixed income trading. His role has been assumed by chief executive Frédéric Oudéa.

Meanwhile

David Solomon wants to make Goldman Sachs hip like Virgin. (Business Insider)

David Solomon’s alter-ego, ‘DJ D-Sol,’ has been hanging with celebrities at pool parties. (CNBC)

Harvey Schwartz was not sufficiently at ease with soothing chief executives, journalists and outside directors. (Financial Times)

Goldman accidentally revealed who donates to its philanthropy fund: tech billionaires. (Bloomberg)

J.P. Morgan invested in a company whose technology uses algorithms to sift through data from fragmented fixed income markets and present the outcomes in a real-time customisable dashboard to help sales staff better visualise and anticipate client activity. (Finextra)

J.P. Morgan banker who quit for the buy-side has returned to Citi. (Reuters)

Gazprom is moving hundreds of London gas trading jobs from London to St. Petersburg. (Reuters)

Swiss hedge fund cities are also known for their high cocaine intake. (Bloomberg)

Ex-Barclays bankers are worried about the bank’s share price and think the investment might be best divested. (Business Insider)

Tidjane Thiam has no intention of moving on. (FiNews)

Chimpanzees with superior nut-cracking technologies will conceal their superiority just to fit in with a new group. (Science Direct)

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Goldman Sachs seems to have an issue on its European rates desk. A week after the disappearance of Simon Kingsbury, head of European interest rate swaps trading, another trader has left the same desk. Patrick Stewart is understood to have exited earlier this week.

Stewart’s destination is unclear. Stewart’s LinkedIn profile simply describes him as “front office.” He’s understood to have been a former strat who ran the firm’s euro book in short macro swaps.

Both Goldman Sachs and Stewart didn’t respond to a request to comment on Stewart’s exit.

As well as Kingsbury and Stewart, Goldman has lost Seb Fassam a junior swaps who was a rising star, Stanley Sheriff, a top junior macro trader, and Sebastien Angles-Dauriac, a senior structurer in the macro division.

The exits come after a miserable year for Goldman’s fixed income currencies and commodities business (FICC) and intimations that bonuses might not have been great after compensation costs were cut 32% in the fourth quarter. If and when David Solomon takes over as CEO at Goldman Sachs, he’s expected to steer the bank back towards corporate finance.

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Whether you work on Wall Street or elsewhere, you may want to consider a move to Bay Street, the center of Toronto’s Financial District.

Why? Here are the top reasons that industry insiders gave to move to Canada’s biggest city.

There are plenty of banking jobs in Toronto

Canada’s Big Five banks are having a strong start to the year in mergers-and-acquisitions advisory for the most part, and all have their operational headquarters in Toronto. BMO Capital Markets and RBC Capital Markets are first and second, respectively, in Dealogic’s 2018 year-to-date Canada M&A rankings, while TD Securities is sixth, Scotiabank is tenth and CIBC is 21^st.

“The big five banks are all hiring – especially in IT, we can’t keep up, and investment banking hiring is picking up too, as well as institutional sales and trading,” says Brett Evans, director of capital markets at Bay Street Staffing Group, a Toronto-based recruitment firm. “All of the banks are making fintech campuses and going crazy there.

“We’re working with some American firms that are here as well and actively ramping up their headcount here in Toronto,” he says.

It’s easier to master the Bay Street ecosystem

Comparing Bay Street to Wall Street, financial services job functions, roles and responsibilities are structured very similarly, but there are many more players in the U.S. and at a market level it’s more competitive on Wall Street.

That’s according to Vuk Magdelinic, the CEO and co-founder of Overbond, a Toronto-based fintech firm that digitizes bond origination and issuance, who formerly worked at Deutsche Bank, BNY Mellon, CIBC, PwC and Deloitte. His Big Four experience was in New York.

“From a front-office, capital markets perspective, for me, what was interesting or surprising coming to New York from Toronto is how things at first seem similar, at least not hugely different on an individual level,” Magdelinic says. “In Toronto, there are a few vendor systems and platform to consider, while in the U.S. there might be 10 or more competing for your mindshare.

“There’s more variety, more options and larger complexity on Wall Street,” he says. “Because it’s more competitive and there are more options to consider, the pressure to innovate quicker is more pronounced on Wall Street, because the players have to preserve their edge.

“It’s more fragmented [than Toronto], as more competitors are battling for market share.”

Your compensation goes farther in Toronto

While your compensation working on Bay Street is unlikely to be as high as it would be on Wall Street for a similar position, the flip side of that coin is that the cost of living is less expensive in Toronto. In particular, it’s much easier to afford real estate that is in or near the city center.

“Toronto is a good city – homes are relatively less expensive compared to New York,” Evans says. “The cost of living advantage is significant – in New York, they’d have to make incrementally more to have the same standard of living.

“A lot of people come in from the suburbs but there’s been a huge re-gentrification of the downtown core, with tons of condo development,” he says. “That’s a huge factor when we speak to people.

“I think people have a better standard of living here than they would in New York, particularly real estate, as bigger homes with bigger lots are less expensive.”

It’s easier to get a table at a trendy restaurant where everybody knows your name

The greater Toronto area has around 6.5m people, while the New York metropolitan area has more than 20m.

“Toronto is a very accessible city, and it’s less transient than New York,” Magdelinic says. “A lot of professionals who live in New York for a period of time, they’re coming to New York to work, but are not from there, they’re commuting in or they’re only there for a short period of time.

“Toronto is definitely less transient, steadier and more accessible,” he says. “If you want to go to a good restaurant, you don’t have to book it a month or two in advance, maybe a week or a day, not that they’re half-empty, just that it’s easier to book things and get around.”

Canadians are nice people

Generally, Canadians tend to live up to their reputation for being very nice, although there could be a higher percentage of people who break the mold among those in the financial services industry. Still, if you’re looking for affable colleagues, rather than cutthroat rivals, then you’d probably take your chances in Toronto over most other financial centers.
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Morgan Stanley has chosen Frankfurt. In July last year, Bloomberg reported that Morgan Stanley picked Frankfurt for its new EU post-Brexit trading hub, with the potential movement of 200 jobs. Nine months later, there are signs that something’s underway.

The U.S. bank is currently advertising 20 jobs in Frankfurt. Most are in the middle and back office, but many reflect the need to build local infrastructure functions to support an expanded Frankfurt trading floor. They include, for example, a “Trade Support Associate”, a “Team Manager Trading Operations Control”, and various positions in risk management and regulation.

Most interestingly, Morgan Stanley is recruiting a Frankfurt-based ‘head of EU institutional group product operations,’ to manage the operational side of its Frankfurt trading business. There are indications that the bank might be struggling to fill its Frankfurt vacancies, however: the head of EU institutional product operations vacancy has already been open for three months. Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

Morgan Stanley’s Frankfurt recruitment follows last week’s news that Goldman Sachs is shifting over a dozen U.K.-based trading and banking staff to the German city.

In January, Morgan Stanley president Colm Kelleher said the bank will have a “multi-centered approach ” after Brexit, with operations in Frankfurt, Paris and Dublin. Dublin is expected to get asset management, while Frankfurt will get sales and trading. Kelleher said decisions will be made on job moves early this year.

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Financial services recruiters and hiring managers are becoming pickier than ever. When they skim your resume initially, they often do a six-second scan; they typically look at the job titles you’ve held, the companies you’ve worked for, how long you’ve been at each job, and whether or not you’re local. That means the first word after each bulletpoint that encapsulates your professional accomplishments has to jump off the page.

Here are tips to best highlight what you’ve accomplished when you’re writing and revising your resume.

1. Go beyond a description of tasks

Roseanne Donohue, an executive recruiter, a career coach who worked at J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup, recommends describing your experience with an eye toward its scope, tasks, action and results.

“Typically people just list tasks or duties, but recruiters and managers want to see quantifiable achievements, so use metrics, dollars and percentages,” Donohue says. “If you were in a revenue-generating role, how much revenue you brought in; if you were charged with cutting costs, including the dollar amount or percentage you saved the firm is powerful. Bullets need to be your most impressive achievements, and whenever possible, quantify the results.”

2. The perfect ratio of ‘how’ and ‘what’

Donna Svei, resume writer and retained search consultant, reviewed the resumes of her clients who got hired most quickly and found a 70/30 distribution between “what” and “how” verbs. While you should include more of the former, the latter are key complementary elements.

What verbs are typically about change or results – for example, “Accelerated loan portfolio growth by 24%,” “Initiated,” “Launched” and “Produced.”

How verbs usually relate to either managerial or people skills – for example, “Collaborated with marketing and accounting on an initiative that generated $5M in new revenue,” “Cultivated” and “Negotiated.”

“It’s an important distinction, and while what verbs are even more important, people need both types of verbs,” Svei says.

3. Context matters

People often throw in numbers and feel that takes care of quantification, but you have to provide context and include results so people understand what you’re talking about, according to Alyssa Gelbard, the founder and president of Resume Strategists.

“Any experience you have raising capital is so important, so specify what kinds of clients or investors, the amounts you are talking about, the sources – with whom did you work to raise the capital?” she said. “If you’re growing AUM, client deal flow or number of clients, say by how much.”

Saying that you grew revenue by 250% is great, but anytime there is a percentage increase, the questions are “From what base number?” and “Over what period of time?”

“If you were involved in financing projects, how big were they? With whom were you working?” Gelbard said. “If you helped to develop a business model for reducing risk or increasing efficiencies, what were the results?”

4. Brag if you beat a deadline

The specific time frame of your accomplishments is not something you have to include, but if you’ve done something amazing before a deadline, then you should include it, Gelbard said.

“If you’ve achieved great results in a really short amount of time, then highlight the time frame in the bulletpoint,” she said.

5. If you’re short on accomplishments, make the most of whatever experience you have

For students, recent graduates and early-career-stage professionals, it can be difficult to come up with many accomplishments that will really wow financial services hiring managers. That said, for internships and entry-level jobs, the bar isn’t set as high and your work experience won’t need to be quite as impressive. That’s where your college years will be key.

“Investment banks and Big Four accounting firms have training programs, and the types of skills they look for in students and recent graduates are leadership, analytical skills, project management, experience with team projects and process improvement,” Donohue said. “Highlight any types of leadership roles, class projects, activities, honor societies and relevant courses you’ve taken.”

6. Demonstrate that you’re a survivor

Because the business environment has changed so much, anytime that you can show that you have weathered the storm through restructures, cost-cutting, mergers and acquisitions, you’re likely to come off well. Sometimes merely surviving a notorious round of cuts is an impressive accomplishment.

“If you’ve survived all that, or even managed integrations and transitions, think about how best to describe the processes, whether you were reengineering processes as part of a reorganization or took on more responsibility after one,” Gelbard said. “Were you actually leading a reorganization? Think through what else happens when there’s a restructuring that you could position as an accomplishment, not just strategic planning, but financial and operational execution as well.”

7. Include a bulletpoint for every promotion you’ve earned

If you got a promotion, that is not the place to trim to save space.

“List whenever you’ve been promoted, because hiring managers looked for rock stars, for example, ‘Promoted within five months, given additional responsibilities above and beyond the regular job description,’” Svei said.

8. Avoid passive voice

Use an active verb whenever possible. Don’t write it like it’s a job description, Gelbard said.

One of the most important differentiating factors is featuring action words that are strong, for example, “Generated,” “Catapulted,” “Boosted” and “Penetrated,” the latter in reference to breaking into a new market.

“Don’t say ‘Responsible for…;’ instead, write ‘Spearheaded,’ ‘Directed’ or ‘Lead,’” she said.
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With the hedge fund industry shrinking and hedge fund clients disappearing, working in hedge fund sales can be a hard ask. One former Goldman Sachs hedge fund salesman has come up with an interesting alternative.

Until October last year, 28 year-old Matt Amalfitano was a VP in a cross asset sales team at Goldman Sachs who specialized in working with hedge funds. Now, Amalfitano runs RaisedBy.Us, a workplace social good program that connects small and medium-sized companies with the technology and infrastructure that enables their employees to give back to charities of their choice without all the pain points.

Amalfitano didn’t found RaisedbyUS, but he was the charity’s first non-volunteer hire, and he came in as CEO. He’s supported by three big-name board members: VaynerMedia CEO Gary Vaynerchuk, Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn and Thrillist CEO Ben Lerer.

The concept is simple: making it easier for employees at small companies to give. “The vast majority of Americans want to give back to charity but often stop short of fulfilling their initial commitment. You have to make is easy,” says Amalfitano. RaisedBy.Us facilitates the process by allowing employees to donate directly to more than 1 million charities through its platform. Funds can be deducted from an employee’s paycheck or donors can use a credit card or PayPal.

After a donation’s been made, employees are kept informed of the impact of their contribution by “employee ambassadors” who talk about the impact the campaign has had on them personally, currently works with startups including Foursquare, Birchbox and Squarespace, among others.

Amalfitano’s interesting idea has been to use the network of hedge fund clients he developed at Goldman Sachs to help develop his new role. His target market is now hedge funds and small asset managers, which are often interested in philanthropy and may have deeper pockets and be better able to match employee donations than startups outside the finance sector.

“I loved my time at GS,” says Amalfitano. “I credit GS with giving me the tools to think critically about systems and understand customer needs. I left because RaisedBy.Us also required these tools but at the same time gave me a platform to take a big issue — philanthropy — head-on.”

Within five years, Amalfitano believes his new employer can help deliver $100 million to charities. RaisedBy.Us helped raise around $725k for charity in 2017. His experience at his former employer is helping him along the way: “I’ve been incredibly touched with number of colleagues at Goldman who have volunteered their time, money, and have made introductions since I left,” he says.

If you’re looking for a banking job in Hong Kong or Singapore, or if you’re just keeping in touch with recruiters in case an opportunity arises, it pays to play by recruiters’ own rules.

What should you avoid saying or doing? Banking recruiters in Asia have come up with this list of pet hates.

1. Don’t demand an interview

“The thing that annoys me is when candidates call about a role and just demand an interview with the bank, thinking they’e a godsend – the best guy in the market,” says Angela Kuek, director of search firm The Meyer Consulting Group in Singapore. “They forget that recruiters are paid by the client, so we work to get the best-fit person for them.”

2. Guilt trips won’t work

“Sometimes candidates are desperately looking for a role and keep hounding the recruiter to get them a job, heaping on the guilt and making us feel like a failure when nothing happens,” says Kuek. “We’re not obliged at all to get them a job, nor responsible for their employability. Each person is responsible for their own careers; candidates who expect to be just served up jobs by recruiters get my goat.”

3. Avoid the catch-all CV

Too many senior finance professionals in Asia are being overlooked for specialist roles after submitting unfocused, generalist CVs that don’t hone in on niche skills, says James Incles, group country director at recruiters iKas Group in Singapore. “This is an understandable mistake as they’re attempting to profile their diverse skills to gain a competitive advantage. However, in today’s hiring market, banks are more interested in specialists – for example a fixed-income product controller – who can hit the ground running immediately.”

4. Too many applications to the same recruiter

The theory is that if you send your CV to a recruiter for a relevant role, why not hedge your bets and apply for other (less relevant) jobs at the same agency, at the same time. “But multiple applications make it seem like you don’t know what you want,” says Ben Batten, country general manager at recruiters Volt in Singapore. “Many candidates don’t even remember what they’ve applied for when I contact them. It really takes away from the strength of their CV.”

5. Too many applications to different recruiters

Applying for the same role via another agency will also make recruiters’ blood boil. “A candidate recently told me that his CV hadn’t been submitted to a bank, but in fact he had let two other recruiters submit it and had an interview arranged,” says a Hong Kong recruiter. “He thought the hiring manager seeing his CV more than once would help him – but the opposite is true. Candidates seem oblivious to how CV duplication affects their application and how much of a problem they cause recruiters and HR.”

6. Bypassing a recruiter during salary negotiation

“Sometimes candidates are rejected for being too aggressive when they disregard my judgement and ask for a salary that is over my clients’ budget,” says Damian Babis, managing director of recruiters Capital People in Hong Kong. “That’s really annoying because it appears to our clients that we weren’t professional, when in fact we had told the candidate what their reasonable expected salary should be.”

7. Taking a counter offer

Recruiters naturally hate counter offers because their fees are put at risk, but they also say that counter offers are bad for candidates. “Most people who take counter offers end up leaving within a year anyway,” says Winnie Leung, a director at Pure Search in Hong Kong. “And hiring managers at the new bank often take note of indecisive candidates and may not reconsider you in the future. Anyone who decides to leave their bank shouldn’t look back – don’t ruin a future relationship for the sake of a current relationship that doesn’t work.”

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UBS bankers in Hong Kong wanting to leave the firm in the wake of its 18-month suspension from sponsoring initial public offerings will be in high demand at rival banks. The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has imposed the ban on UBS and fined it HK$119m in relation to an undisclosed IPO that it has been investigating. The Swiss firm is appealing the rulings.

“The top IPO bankers at UBS will probably wait for these further hearings to take place, but I expect some junior to mid-level bankers to consider making an exit sooner,” says investment banking recruiter Jason Tan, an associate director at Kelly Services.

Those that do leave will likely be snapped up by other banks as Hong Kong prepares for a series of potential blockbuster Chinese tech listings in 2018 that could see total flotations in the city rival their 2010 record. “These UBS bankers will find a job very quickly,” says Tan. “My recent conversations with ECM bankers in Hong Kong and China suggest that there will be a surge in ECM recruitment soon, now that Chinese New Year is over.”

UBS has traditionally been one of Hong Kong’s leading sponsors of IPOs, sponsoring 10% of all companies that have listed on the city’s main board over the past decade, according to Dealogic. This share fell to 3% in 2016 and 2% in 2017, however, following SFC investigations into some of its listings.

The skills of UBS bankers will be in “high demand when the next influx of HK IPOs comes”, says Yvette Kwan, a former APAC investment banking COO at UBS, now a partner at Hong Kong consultancy Quinlan & Associates. “UBS has historically been very strong in HK IPOs, with strong technical knowledge of the listing rules and deep IPO execution experience.”

Chinese banks, which now dominant Hong Kong listings, are likely destinations for departing UBS bankers, says Tan. Led by China Merchants Bank and CICC, seven mainland firms made the top-10 banks for underwriting Hong Kong IPO deals in 2017, according to Bloomberg. “We’ve already seen this talent flow to Chinese banks in the last few years,” says Kwan. “Their bankers are often already well connected with the Chinese companies that they are helping to list in HK.”

Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse – the leading Western institutions on the IPO table, in sixth and ninth places respectively – may also try to tap UBS bankers.

The extent of any departures from UBS depends on how badly its Hong Kong IPO business is affected by the ban over the coming months, say industry experts. Andrea Orcel and David Chin, global and Asia Pacific heads of UBS’s investment bank respectively, have told employees in a memo that it is “business as normal” until the bank’s appeal is heard, which is likely to be in the fourth quarter. UBS can continue to underwrite IPOs, a service which generates much higher fees than sponsorship alone.

Still, sponsor banks are typically also appointed in the lucrative role of lead underwriters, so the SFC suspension could diminish UBS’s underwriting income just as rivals look to cash in on Hong Kong’s buoyant 2018 IPO pipeline. The 18-month ban is also longer than the six months many bankers in Hong Kong expected, reports Reuters.

“There are underwriting roles beyond sponsor available to UBS,” says former UBS COO Kwan. “Nonetheless, the news is a big blow to current and prospective clients’ perceptions about the ability of UBS to execute for them, regardless of whether or not any appeal to the suspension and fine is successful. So there will be a lot of communicating with clients to placate them.”

“UBS can still underwrite, so it will try to find a way to utilise its ECM team effectively,” adds Stanley Soh, a Hong Kong-based regional country director of financial services solutions. “But as UBS is in the appeal process, there could be a negative effect on client retention and origination moving forward.”

In the long-term, and beyond ECM, the SFC ruling is unlikely to impact recruitment and retention at UBS in Asia. “The UBS brand remains strong in Asia – this is not like the financial crisis or the princelings hiring scandal,” says Tan. “I think UBS will bounce back strongly as it has been investing heavily in Greater China and its relationships here remain solid.”

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Accountants have never been more sought after in Singapore and globally, but data-driven technology is radically reshaping the skills needed to succeed in the profession and is putting traditional jobs at risk. Accounting is no longer just about collecting information; it’s about analysing the big data sets that corporations now rely on to run their operations, reduce risk, and discover new opportunities.

The business world has been transformed by improvements in computing power, which have led to companies producing structured and unstructured data on a scale that would have been unimaginable just 10 years ago. And the rise of big data has gone hand in hand with the rise in importance of the accountancy profession and the ‘disruption’ of accountancy roles.

In accountancy, technology disruption is much more than a catch phrase: it’s both a boon and a potential threat to jobs. Accountants who cling to their old number-crunching routines risk losing their careers to automation, while those who upgrade their skills – so they can interpret and organise data to influence business strategies – are in high demand.

But where can you get these new skills from? If you’re already an accountant, how can you ensure you aren’t left behind by technological change? And if you’re looking to gain accountancy skills, where should you study to get a data-focused grounding in the profession?

Fortunately for accountants and business professionals in Singapore and across Asia, Singapore Management University (SMU) has launched an innovative programme tailored to meet the demands of people who want to thrive in the new accountancy environment. The SMU Master of Science in Accounting (Data and Analytics) is the first Master degree in Asia specialising in accounting data and analytics. Unlike traditional accounting degrees, it provides a clear career pathway for people to move into jobs with accounting data and analytics applications.

There are more and more of these roles becoming available as technology fundamentally changes the way accountants work. Large companies who would previously have deployed accountants to collect and process data now use powerful accounting information systems to automate these tasks. But they still need accountants to turn the data into useful nuggets of information and help facilitate management decisions.

“Mundane, tedious, and low-level work will be automated,” says Lee Kong Chian Chair Professor Cheng Qiang, Dean of the School of Accountancy at SMU. “But the availability of massive amounts of data has created a high demand for skilled data analytics professionals who can analyse such data and obtain the insight needed for informed decision making.”

Accountants therefore need to better develop the skills – including critical-thinking, judgement and communication skills – that will equip them to prosper in a more data-driven world. The SMU Master of Science in Accounting (MSA) is designed to help them do just that. In the programme, you learn how to analyse large amounts of data and find new insights that will give your company and your career a valuable competitive advantage. “We want our students to be future ready. Memorising accounting standards and being able to record journal entries for transactions will not be sufficient,” says Professor Cheng.

Starting in August, the MSA programme is taught over two years part-time, or over one year full-time, and comprises 12 courses under three key themes: accounting foundation, data technology, and accounting analytics. Its diverse and cutting-edge modules include forecasting and forensic analytics, programming with data, analytics for value investing, and data modelling and visualisation.

If you enrol in the MSA, you get to use the latest analytics technology and gain real-world experience from discussing case studies of actual companies in Asia and globally. A capstone project at the end of the course involves partners from various organisations, where you will be able to be mentored by both faculty and industry professionals to solve real problems companies are facing. Gaining a knowledge of how and where to apply technological expertise will enable you to perform the higher-level analytics tasks that are increasingly expected of accountants.

You will study in the centre of Singapore, the accounting hub of Southeast Asia, at a world-class business school that boasts high standards of accounting research and education. SMU’s School of Accountancy is ranked first in Asia and third in the world for both archival research (all topics) and archival research (financial), according to the Brigham Young University Accounting Research Rankings.

Many of SMU’s faculty members have accounting industry experience and bring this practical understanding to the classroom. Their interactive, seminar-style teaching encourages debate and allows you to voice your opinions. “We help students develop important skills in small classroom discussions, group projects and presentations,” says Professor Cheng. “We challenge our students with important questions, and provide them with opportunities to have a dialogue with professionals on the current and future status of accounting professions.”

SMU also has a diverse student and alumni population, from many different countries and industries, who bring their equally diverse personal and professional experiences into your network. And you can take advantage of comprehensive guidance from the school’s dedicated career services team to help you uncover data and analytics job opportunities.

Employers in Singapore and across Asia are finding it hard to recruit qualified accountants who also have data and analytics skills – there aren’t enough of them to meet the growing demand. The profession-centric SMU MSA will put you in a strong position in the job market as companies look to pay a premium to hire people with the ability to shape their day-to-day decisions and long-term business objectives.

Image credit: Getty

Do you want a finance job that will be good until 2022, or are you looking for something a little more durable?

If you want to do any old job in finance and make a long career out of it, then you should work in technology in the back office, where jobs are already plentiful and will become more so. On the other hand, some front-office jobs at wholesale banks and asset managers are predicted to shrink and are therefore a risky bet, despite considerable upside, and other front-office jobs are going to expand, although there’s downside.

In addition, the lines between front-, middle- and back-office will become increasingly blurred as technology evolves and becomes omnipresent.

The recent Morgan Stanley and Oliver Wyman compensation spending study found that technologists are going to be in demand, with engineering, tech, quant and analytics staff making up a bigger chunk of bank front-office operations, and IT making up a huge portion of the back office.

The report estimates that up to 40% of the asset management workforce “will require fundamental re-training,” intensifying cost pressures on asset managers, which will in turn translate into added cost pressures for the wholesale banks that serve them – with significant repercussions for those employed in the finance industry, according to Business Insider.

The MS/OW report found: “As banks adopt new technologies and build new businesses, the talent model will need to shift profoundly. In the front office, demand for quants will increase significantly, while technology experts such as user experience (UX) specialists will need to be aligned with business teams to enable agile proposition development. We estimate these two roles will grow to represent 25% of compensation from <5% today.

Charts

“In the back office, IT will make up ~60% of future compensation, driven by higher salaries for more specialized, in-demand technology skill-sets such as user interface (UI) developers.”

The report suggests asset managers could cut costs by 30% thanks to automation and outsourcing, according to BI. It said:

“We expect headcount to reduce due to automation and externalization of the skill-set…. compensation structures will shift. Investment management will continue to demand the lion’s share of compensation spend. Technology and Data Management’s share of compensation will grow fourfold whereas relative spend on automated back-office functions will decrease. The share of Distribution will remain largely flat but we expect this role to shift most fundamentally as data and technology will be increasingly important at the interface to customers.”

One of the biggest challenges is attracting skilled technologists to finance, with the report saying “wholesale banks will need to evolve their talent models to compete.”

Separately, Goldman Sachs President David Solomon – a.k.a. DJ D-Sol – has a talent for spinning electronic dance music, and he also has had luck as a gamblin’ man. Just like Kenny Rogers at the card table, he knows when to hold ’em and knows when to fold ’em.

Las Vegas tycoon Sheldon Adelson made an offer to Solomon in the spring of 2014 to run his casino empire, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Solomon had been Adelson’s banker since the 1990s. He had honed his craps game and poker skills on weekend getaways to Atlantic City, N.J. He was 52 years old and seen as a long shot to become the chief executive of Goldman.

However, Solomon turned down the casino job, and that patience paid off this week when current CEO Lloyd Blankfein picked him over Harry Schwartz to become the heir apparent to Goldman’s throne.

Solomon is all in. He either bluffs well or was holding a straight flush all along. He’ll lay his cards on the table whenever Blankfein steps down, possibly as soon as the end of this year.

Meanwhile:

How does a large bank like Goldman hold on to its people who want to swap their suit jacket for a Silicon Valley hoodie? It launches an incubator. (Business Insider)

Goldman sees a reshaping of industries, which it believes will drive M&A deal activity. (Reuters)

House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling says the House won’t rubber-stamp the Senate bill that would roll back banking rules. (Bloomberg)

Equity research revenues are down almost across the board – and some firms are facing declines of as much as -60%. (Business Insider)

At the three-century-old private bank Coutts & Co., where Queen Elizabeth II keeps money, female colleagues accused star banker Harry Keogh of physical and verbal harassment. (WSJ)

HSBC has a 59% gender pay gap, the biggest among British banks. (Reuters)

Women are less likely than men to have careers aligned to their field of study and are more likely to believe that their work makes the world a better place. (Bloomberg)

From hedge funds to venture capital, these are the rising stars of marijuana’s investment scene that everyone from Wall Street to Silicon Valley should know. (Business Insider)

Singapore is the world’s most expensive city for the fifth straight year, with Paris and Zurich tied for second place. (Bloomberg)

Connecticut is the new center for America’s power couples, followed by New York, New Jersey and California. (Bloomberg)
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““

Another day, another exit from Goldman Sachs’ EMEA rates team, this time of someone who’s Goldman career had barely begun. .

Insiders say Emmanuel Biensan, a London-based director in structured rates sales to the French market has quit for Deutsche Bank. Biensan, who previously spent 13.5 years at Credit Suisse, only arrived at Goldman in May 2016.

Biensan is one of a whole string people to leave Goldman’s London rates team this year. As we reported yesterday, Patrick Stewart, a junior rates trader, is understood to have quit this week. Simon Kingsbury, head of European interest rate swaps trading, Seb Fassam a junior swaps trader, Stanley Sheriff, a top junior macro trader, and Sebastien Angles-Dauriac, a senior structurer in the macro division, have also left in the past month.

Goldman Sachs didn’t respond to a request to comment on Biensan’s departure. Sources said he will be joining Deutsche Bank’s rates team under Panos Stergiou, European head of rates sales and structuring. Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

Goldman’s exits come as it steps up external hiring in its fixed income division, particular at the executive director level. The exits from its rates team, including that of Biensan who only recently arrived, suggest that it may need to do more to keep hold of the staff it’s already got.

“”
Photo credit: DNY59/Getty

Deutsche Bank’s compensation report is out. For anyone wondering what salaries are bonuses were like on average at Deutsche’s corporate and investment bank for last year, all is now clear.

Firstly, Deutsche Bank paid bonuses for 2017. Despite losses of €700m for the year, the bank said it felt compelled to offer performance pay because, “another year with drastically reduced variable compensation or no specific recognition of individual performance would have led to attrition risk with respect to both key employees that are critical to our future success as well as many other employees who all worked hard to help our bank navigate through times of continuous change. “ In other words, people would leave.

As the chart below shows, average salaries and bonuses for the 984 material risk takers (senior managers and people taking significant risk on behalf of the bank) at Deutsche Bank, compared favourably to pay at the investment banks of Barclays, RBS and HSBC, but less well to UBS which so far tops compensation for risk takers at European banks last year.

Notably, it’s bonuses that Deutsche remains weak on: while risk taker salaries at DB were an average of 13% higher than at UBS, bonuses were an average of 16% lower. Averages aren’t everything: as we reported previously, investment bankers at Deutsche Bank appear to have been very happy with their bonuses for 2017, but there’s clearly a reason why DB has a reputation for paying generous salaries.

Now that bonuses are back in DB’s investment bank, euro millionaires are back too. 385 people were paid bonuses of between €1m and €1.5m last year, compared to 183 last year and 330 in 2015.

At the top end, Deutsche’s population of the highest earners looks stable. For each earnings bracket above €3m the number of people was generally the same in 2017 as in 2015. The implication is that Deutsche’s gamble with 2016 bonuses paid off: high earners didn’t leave just because they were zeroed once.

It’s not all good news for Deutsche’s high earners though. The bank today confirmed the continued existence of its 4.5 year cliff vesting program for its, “senior leadership cadre” (defined as people reporting to the management board, significant influencers and “stewards” of the bank’s long term health and performance.” People in this category will see nothing of 2017 bonuses until mid-2021.

Deutsche also said today that it’s “decided to apply a stricter approach” to bonuses for its directors and managing directors. In future, the rate of deferral will increase rapidly for anyone earning over €130k (€50k) if they’re a material risk taker. And anyone earning over €500k in total compensation will have the entirety of their bonus deferred.

Deutsche also reiterated today that it doesn’t consider Goldman Sachs part of its peer group when it comes to compensation comparisons. Given some complaints about the level of bonuses at Goldman Sachs this year, this may be just as well.

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““

I am a Frenchman in the City of London. I like to start the day with a croissant or a pain au chocolate. I like to have a cafe au lait and I like to listen to Charles Aznavour with my AirPods. I like to be meticulous about things.

The same cannot be said for my British colleagues. Especially on a Friday. Even before I get to the office, Friday mornings in the City of London are tainted by pools of crispy vomit around the side of buildings after the heavy drinking the night before. When I arrive on the floor, many of my colleagues aren’t at their desks: they’re either at the canteen or a nearby cafe buying something greasy to palliate their Thursday night. And things only get worse.

By about 10.30am on a Friday, after four hours of non-taxing work, British people will start discussing what to have for lunch. Because it’s Friday, there’s a tradition of ordering something from outside, or sending the junior to pick up food. Burgers, burritos and pizzas are the norm. If people are feeling a bit ethnic they might go for Nandos, or maybe Wagamama; maybe even Haz, which is a Turkish restaurant near St. Paul’s. Non-calorific options are never on the menu.

When the junior gets back, the fun begins. Friday afternoons are for food competitions. Brits love them. So do Americans. Europeans like me look on in horror.

The worst I’ve seen is the McNuggets task. This is where an individual – usually a junior – tries to ingratiate himself by volunteering to eat as many McNuggets as possible. The record is around 40. The protagonist is almost always sick and usually comes in the next week covered in acne. If it’s not McNuggets, it might be wasabi: how many huge spoonfuls can you swallow for a hundred pounds? It’s Friday afternoon spectator sport: people chip-in £10 and if the hapless junior eats the most nuggets or ingests the spoon of Wasabi, he’ll get the cash. It’s demeaning and it’s disgusting.

The strange thing is that it’s only really the Brits and the Americans who participate in this eating. Frenchies like myself stay away. I might eat a burger and fries, but I’m not going to eat ten. French bankers in London have style: we live in South Ken, we like to spend time with our families, we’re not into gross behaviour at work. Nor will you ever see a Nordic banker indulging in this sort of thing: they’re far too elegant to stuff themselves for someone else’s entertainment.

So, if you’re a British or American banker indulging in a Friday afternoon food binge, I’d like to ask you to spare a thought for people with finer sensibilities than your own. I don’t want to see you vomit in the waste bin. Nor do I want to see you covered in spots or gaining weight. Instead of that late trip to Krispy Kreme or M&S for dessert, try a little self-restraint. You might thank me one day: you’ll feel much better for it. And if your boss is from Europe, I can assure you that your decorum will be noted.

Sebastian Charron is the pseudonym of a French man at a U.S. bank in London

““

The economy seems great right now, but it’s only a matter of time before the next financial crisis hits, and when it does, I’ll feel more confident working in the cryptocurrencies space than at a traditional Wall Street bank.

I started my banking career at J.P. Morgan in 1999 as a software engineer. Over a decade, I had stints at Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs in New York. I believed that the financial system was mostly stable. Then in March 2008, Bear Stearns melted. The S&P 500 dropped to 666. Everyone was in panic mode. We were convinced that the financial system as we knew it was done and would need a reboot.

The history of the financial system is one plagued by periodic crises every 10 years or so, many of them catastrophic. Curiously, any regulations added as a reaction to a crisis seem to be unable to prevent the next. Why is a system so carefully designed with checks and balances, separation of responsibilities and tons of reports and paperwork fail every decade or so? It was clear to me that something is not right with our financial system.

I reached the conclusion that regulation is not the problem. The issue is that regulatins are ignored. Detection and enforcement simply cannot keep up with the volume. Even with precise, error-free information, regulators simply do not have the time to respond to each instance. The few hundred prosecuted cases a year represent a tiny fraction of hundreds of millions of transactions and unknown portion of violations.

Most people act in their own economic interests. Given that everyone’s incentives were misaligned, the fact that the financial system functioned at all is quite a surprise.

A fresh approach was needed. I decided to move away from finance and focus on technology – then I discovered Bitcoin, a self-regulating system whose rules cannot be broken because the incentives of all participants are aligned to enforce the rules. I immediately realized the immense potential of blockchain technology. It was going to remake finance and was what I wanted to do for the next decade.

There were cryptocurrency exchange failures in 2012 and 2013. I decided that an unhackable exchange was the most useful product anyone could deliver. I started to work on a Bitcoin futures exchange that was partially non-custodial. We wanted to bake compliance into the product such that many regulations would be impossible to violate.

For example, allowing depositors to only withdraw to addresses they control meant money transmission was not possible and the exchange would not be attractive to money launderers. Segregating everyone’s funds into individual accounts meant that regulation was automatically enforced.

My experiences working in a blockchain startup versus Wall Street are like night and day. Blockchain startups innovate incredibly fast: even a couple of months of delay on delivery would mean ceding ground to competitors. There is also a forgiveness for failure that isn’t seen in the traditional finance world. Wall Street is lukewarm and ambivalent; the excitement in the blockchain world is palpable and infectious.

We see ourselves on the precipice of change. Crossing the chasm will define the financial future of the world. We all know that we have to jump. Some will fly, while many will fall. But I’ll be damned if any of us will walk back in fear and return to the big banks.

Bharath Rao is the founder/CEO of coinpit.io, a blockchain exchange, and Leverj, a decentralized leveraged exchange built on Ethereum. Previously he worked as a software engineer at Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse.

““

Are you a technologist? Would you like to work for Deutsche Bank? The German bank has got a whole new proposition for you and it’s about more than just consolidating systems and bringing tech jobs in-house.

For those who haven’t encountered it already, Deutsche has a new-new thing called “Fabric.” Deutsche CEO John Cryan discussed it in the bank’s first quarter call and he mentioned it again in his recent exciting interview with German newspaper Zeit. It’s worth flagging because Cryan – at least – seems to think Fabric is a big thing as the bank invests an additional €2bn in new technologies to change the way DB works.

Fabric is, “a new platform which, “allows developers to deploy applications in minutes rather than months,” said Cryan during Deutsche’s investor call. Fabric is, “based on a software-defined network running a cloud which is written in standard languages that any young millennial would understand,” he elaborated in the Zeit interview.

These new languages are C++, Python and HTML5, said Cryan. Using Fabric, he said Deutsche has established a new application programming interface which allows third parties to access Deutsche’s data and to co-create applications that are relevant to the bank’s clients. “It’s exactly the same as Apple,” he told Zeit, “Apple produced iOS and now you have apps all over the world that conform to Apple standards.”

The implication is, that using Fabric, Deutsche intends to become a sort of banking app store which millennial technologists can contribute to. For more on Fabric, see the presentation below from Deutsche CTO Pat Healy last May.

““

You’re looking to start an accounting qualification that will get you a job or advance your career in the Singapore financial services sector. Which one should you choose?

We searched through our CV database to find Singapore-based professionals who work in accounting jobs and who have a mainstream accounting designation (ACA, ACCA, CA, CPA, CIMA) – and we calculated the proportion of people holding each qualification.

The chart below shows which qualifications are most popular in Singapore among people in the financial services industry.

At 35%, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) qualification is the most common in Singapore. The city state is an international hub for accounting talent and ACCA is among the more globally recognised accounting qualifications. ACCA works with about 170 “approved employers” in the city state, including the Big Four and banks such as Credit Suisse, DBS, HSBC and UOB, says Reuter Chua, head of ACCA Singapore.

Many people starting their accounting careers in Singapore, however, first obtain the CA Singapore, run by the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (ISCA). The qualification (rebranded from the CPA Singapore in 2013, with local CPA holders automatically given the new designation) is held by 27% of Singapore accountants on our database.

“Singapore CA candidates are very transferable across all accounting functions in banking in Singapore – as are people with international CPAs,” says Bien Law, a senior finance consultant at recruiters Eames Consulting in Singapore.

The Certified Public Accountant (CPA) qualification is a common route into the Big Four in Singapore. Accountants in the Republic hold CPAs from a number of foreign markets, in particular Australia (16% of the overall total), a country that is both a source of expat talent and a popular destination for Singaporean students.

Only 4% of CVs on our database in Singapore have the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) qualification, reflecting the more specialised nature of management accounting.

And 3% have the ACA, awarded by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). “It’s obviously a good qualification, but in Asia it’s not seen as so international as the ACCA and is mainly held by people who studied in the UK,” says a Singapore-based finance recruiter.

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4. Too many applications to the same recruiter

5. Too many applications to different recruiters

6. Bypassing a recruiter during salary negotiation

7. Taking a counter offer

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