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Deutsche Bank traders appear to have a faculty for making mistakes. In 2015 they accidentally paid $6bn to a hedge fund client in an FX trade that was afflicted by a fat finger. This was followed by a far fatter finger in April 2018, when $35bn was accidentally transferred to an outside account. There was also a $60m loss on a U.S. rates trade that went awry in June 2017.

Now Deutsche’s U.S. traders have done it again – although this time it may be the German bank’s often-criticized U.S. risk division that was really to blame.

Bloomberg reports that Deutsche’s U.S. traders suffered a one day loss in the first quarter of 2018 that was 12x higher than the amount that the bank’s risk officers considered to be possible for that day under their Value at Risk calculations. Nor does this seem to have been an isolated incident – while most rival banks made no losses in excess of risk calculations for the quarter, a U.S. regulatory filing shows that there were four days in the months to March 2018 when losses at DB U.S. Corporation surprised the bank’s own risk managers. On one day they were 2.6 times higher than expected; on another they were 1.6 times higher.

The surprise losses happened under the watch of John Cryan, the former Deutsche Bank CEO who left in April 2018. As new boss Christian Sewing sets about cutting 7,000 jobs across Deutsche, many of them from the U.S. investment bank, some of the layoffs may seem valid.

Deutsche’s London traders could forgiven for feeling some schadenfreude at the fates of their accident-prone American colleagues: on the day that the U.S. bank made the huge unexpected loss in Q1, Bloomberg says DB’s London traders offset the U.S. loss with “related gains.” The implications are twofold: that London bailed out the U.S., and/or that DB was engaged in a complex international trade that was ultimately neutral and made individual country-measures of risk exposure irrelevant anyway.

Separately, it’s usually the case that when a trader takes too much risk, he or she (although usually he) panics, and makes things worse. Think Kweku Adoboli or Nick Leeson. In the case of Harouna Traoré, a novice day trader with a background in performance analysis software sales at Thomson Reuters, the opposite seems to have happened.

The Financial Times reports that 41 year-old Traoré built up $5bn position in U.S. equity futures and turned a loss of €1m into a profit of more than €10m after mistakenly thinking that he was on a demo version of a UK trading platform. After realizing his mistake and the initial loss, Traoré said he panicked and could only think of his wife and family as he took more risk and ultimately set things right. The brokerage firm is refusing to pay Traoré his €10m and says he breached his contract. He is pursuing them in court.

Meanwhile:

Ali Almakky, who was heading Deutsche Bank’s corporate strategy team from London, and who doesn’t speak German, is leaving the bank. (Wall Street Journal)

Soon, doing data science will become as normal as doing Excel. In the meantime, there is something weird and desperate about traditional firms going out and hiring quants. (Bloomberg)

Jefferies just hired Michael Pope, a former managing director at Angelo Gordon who was a senior distressed debt trader there since 2012, as a managing director in sales. (New York Post)

Inside the Google rebellion as ethical engineers refuse to work on a project that would enable the company to win military contracts. ‘The engineers became known as the “Group of Nine” and were lionized by like-minded staff.’ (Bloomberg)

Why and how companies burn out their high performers. (Harvard Business Review)

Japanese worker punished for starting lunch three minutes early. Bosses bow in apology. (Guardian)

Clinton son-in-law running out of financial industries to try. (Dealbreaker)

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In theory, banking is the most highly paid industry to enter as a graduate. Figures from research company High Fliers suggest that graduates who go into investment banking earn an average of £47k ($63k) a year in starting salaries while those who go into law earn £44k. When it comes to compensation, it seems that entry-level bankers beat lawyers hands down.

Or do they?

Banks have been holding junior pay steady: starting salaries for first year analysts in London this year are £50k, exactly the same as last year. However, U.S. law firms have been hiking it. When shorter working hours are factored-in, law starts to look a lot more lucrative than banking.

The latest round of legal pay hikes were started by Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, which increased starting salaries for newly qualified lawyers globally to $190k at the start of this month. U.S. law firm Cravath and Swaine then matched this, followed latterly by U.S. law firms Kirkland & Ellis and Akin Gump.

RollonFriday, a UK legal site, says first year lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis are now on $195k (£147k) including bonuses.

Newly qualified lawyers aren’t exactly new graduates. It takes two years to qualify as a lawyer in the UK, meaning those ‘new’ lawyers on $195k are really the equivalent of third year analysts in investment banks. Third year analysts in investment banking divisions (IBD) are on around £113k ($150k) according to recruitment firm Dartmouth Partners, so the lawyers are still better off.

Junior lawyers also work slightly shorter hours than bankers. Law firm Legal Cheek says lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis work, on average, slightly less than 12 hours a day. By comparison, 70 hour weeks – or 14 hour days – are the norm in banking. On this basis, hourly pay for newly qualified lawyers now looks approximately 50% higher than for third year IBD analysts, at around £50 an hour vs. £34 an hour in IBD.

Does this mean you should choose a career law over a career in M&A for the sake of an easier life with higher pay? Maybe. However, law firms’ total compensation advantage doesn’t last.

As the chart below shows, even the highest paying law firms are trumped by banks’ compensation as juniors progress. Eight years into a career in investment banking in London, IBD juniors earn £46k a year more than lawyers at the same level. Of course, banking juniors may still work longer hours than junior lawyers – but U.S. law firms aren’t exactly known for offering an easy life either.

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Banks are cutting traders on Wall Street. Deutsche Bank’s cuts have been well-documented, but it’s not the only one trimming: Bloomberg reports that Nomura is cutting 28 global markets traders in the U.S. too. Securities professionals in New York City might want to watch their backs – or head for the banks with the best traders in the market.

Thanks to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, it’s possible to get an idea where the best traders are to be found. The council, which prescribes principles for five different financial regulatory bodies in the U.S. requires banks to publish quarterly reports on their risk exposure and the performance of their trading businesses in America. It was one of these reports that highlighted the trading irregularities at Deutsche Bank’s U.S. business, for example.

The reports illuminate the extent to which traders at different banks had loss-making and profit-making days in the three months to March 2018. The results, which are shown below, clearly reflect the tendency for traders at European banks in America to have a lot more loss-making days than their traders at their U.S. counterparts.

As the chart below shows, the U.S. trading businesses of HSBC, BNP Paribas and UBS all had far more loss-making than profit making days in the first quarter.

By comparison, the profit-making days at both J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley far surpassed the loss-making ones, with both U.S. banks making profits on 42 days and losses on just 22.

The information isn’t infallible. We don’t know, for example, whether the profits that were made on the profit-making days far outweighed the losses. Goldman Sachs’ traders made profits on the same number of days as Deutsche Banks’ – even though we know that on one of the 27 days that DB traders made a loss, the loss was a huge 1,197% of that day’s expected value at risk.

Nonetheless, on balance, U.S. banks’ trading divisions look like the best places to be on Wall Street – with J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley’s the best of the lot. Meanwhile, Deutsche may not be the only bank with a U.S. risk management problem – HSBC and BNP Paribas also had days when their U.S. businesses made losses that exceeded estimated Value at Risk in the first quarter, although at 166% and 108% of expected VaR, the miscalculations weren’t nearly as extreme as at Deutsche Bank.

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Landing a job at a hedge fund is no easy task. Just getting an interview typically requires attending a top university and completing several prestigious internships. For those lacking one or both, there is an alternative option – one that can literally guarantee you a seat in front of a hiring manager at a hedge fund. You’ll just need to out-argue the masses while proving that you’re a stock market junkie.

Several fintech companies have partnered together to launch the Stocks Debate Challenge, an online video-based competition that will reward the three top performers with a job interview at New York hedge fund Apex Capital Holdings. The idea behind the challenge is to try to develop new pipelines for talent that may be hiding in the weeds at lesser-known universities.

“Even if a particular student at the University of Missouri is as good as the best investor at Harvard, there is simply no way they would have access to the same opportunities,” said Alexey Loganchuk, founder of program co-sponsor Upgrade Capital, which partners with financial firms to screen and develop traders. “This disparity reflects massive inefficiency in the way the industry currently looks for talent.”

The format is rather simple. Contestants are divided into two groups. Those in the first group put together a one-minute video where they pitch a long or short investment idea that will be posted on Micgoat, an app developed by co-sponsor Thinknum that lets users debate various issues. People in the second group will then choose their adversary and counter with a one-minute response that takes the opposing position. Each pairing will debate back-and-forth several times before the full videos are posted. The judge for the first round is the general public, along with three experts. The 24 people with the most number of upvotes move on.

Round two is a little more formal. The jury is made up of three seasoned investment pros: Sahm Adrangi, founder of Kerrisdale Capital Management; Keith Weissman, director of research at Sibilla Capital Management; and Peter M. Lupoff, managing member of Lupoff Friends and Family Interests, an impact investment firm. They’ll pair off the remaining 24 contestants, provide the topics and ultimately decide which three earn the interviews.

Winners will be interviewing for analyst positions, but the actual roles will be further defined by Apex Capital, according to Micgoat CEO Marta Lopata. Candidates will be judged by the technical skills they show off, their overall market knowledge and their ability to verbalize their message, she said. Micgoat, of course, will likely count as another winner. The competition will surely generate loads of new app users, especially during round one when applicants are scrounging for upvotes.

This is the group’s first competition, so there’s no precedent to suggest whether any of the interviews will result in job offers. We’ll have to wait and see. Lopata said they’re planning to offer additional competitions in the fall. Registration closes on Sunday, June 24th, and the competition begins just a day later, so you better already know how to read a financial statement and get camera-ready ASAP.

Follow @BeecherTuttle

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Where are all the high yield traders when you need them? Not on European trading desks, it seems. – Following an unprecedented number of job moves and market exits in 2018, one headhunter is warning that around 40% of Europe’s leading sell-side high yield risk takers are out of action.

“There are just an awful lot of people out of the market,” the headhunter says, speaking on condition of anonymity. “You’ve either got people who’ve gone to the buy-side, or who have moved back to the U.S., who are between sell-side jobs, or who are simply not working for one reason or another.”

The list of people who were trading high yield in Europe and who aren’t any more, is certainly a long one.

It includes people like Dan Cohen, the ex-head of high yield trading at HSBC, who resigned in April to join Nomura but has yet to arrive. There’s also Mike Anderson, a high yield credit trader with five years’ experience at Barclays, who’s rumoured to be en-route to Goldman Sachs. There’s Dominic Surry, the former head of high yield at Deutsche Bank who quietly retired at the start of the year. Or Nadia Egorova, a director of high yield trading at Deutsche, who’s currently on maternity leave.

There are also the European high yield traders who’ve moved to the U.S. market. They include people like Evan Remmes, a former head of high yield trading at Bank of America in London, who’s gone to New York; Ovie Faruq, a former high yield trader at Barclays in London, who moved to Barclays in New York in February 2018; and Sam Page, the former head of European high yield trading at Citi, who went to America in December 2017.

To add insult to injury, Vidur Khanna, a vice president level high yield trader at Citi, left to do an MBA this month. And Chris Derry, the former head of high yield trading at RBC Capital markets, and an experienced risk taker, swapped across to high yield sales in February 2018.

In combination, headhunters say the moves mean that a market which houses a small number of traders at the best of times, is now seriously lacking in experienced personnel.

The jury is out on whether this matters. Russell Clarke, founding partner of fixed income headhunting firm Figtree Search, said the high yield market in Europe has experienced juniorisation as banks have become less willing to hold high yield inventory: “Nowadays it’s all about the primary market and flow, and that means banks need a different type of trader.”

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Large Chinese companies are increasingly hiring senior investment bankers – many of them based in Hong Kong – to help them with their takeovers, listings and international expansions. It’s a trend that started about three years ago and it shows no signs of abating, particularly within China’s technology sector.

Who are the bankers who’ve quit the bulge bracket for top jobs at Chinese conglomerates? Here’s a selection.

Patrick Kwan: Barclays to HNA

HNA International, a subsidiary of Fortune 500 company HNA Group (whose businesses include tourism, industrials, logistics and ecological technologies) appointed Barclays veteran Kwok in April last year as its chief investment officer. Kwan was with Barclays in Hong Kong from 2001 to 2016, latterly as co-head of investment banking for Asia Pacific and country manager of Hong Kong. He began his career at Goldman Sachs and has held various senior positions in markets and investment banking with Peregrine Fixed Income, TD Securities and Deutsche Bank.

Winston Cheng: BAML to LeEco to JD.com

Cheng has taken the banker-goes-corporate trend a step further – he’s now moved to a second Chinese tech business. Cheng, the former head of technology for Asia at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, was hired by electronics company LeEco as head of corporate finance and development in 2015, but the firm’s global expansion plans since floundered. In April last year, Cheng joined Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com as president of international. While at BAML, he worked on JD.com’s 2014 listing and also advised it when Tencent purchased a stake in the company. Cheng is also a former Goldman Sachs MD and was head of Asia ex-Japan technology at the US bank between 2007 and 2013.

Loh Long Hsiang: Stan Chart to Dianrong.com

Online lender Dianrong.com (formed in 2012 and often called the ‘Lending Club of China’) pulled off a recruitment coup in January last year when it poached three senior managers from the traditional finance sector. Loh, the biggest hire of the lot, was brought in as COO. He was previously deputy CEO at Standard Chartered in China and had been with the bank for 18 years. In December last year, Dianrong.com promoted Loh to CEO and he currently oversees all aspects of its day-to-day operations, including loan originations and servicing, investment products and marketplace lending solutions.

Michael Evans: Goldman Sachs to Alibaba

Evans is still the most well-known banker to join a Chinese corporate. He moved back in August 2015, helping to kick start the trend, and he took on arguably the most powerful Chinese corporate job ever occupied by a former bulge-bracket banker: president of Alibaba Group, the world’s largest online retailer. Evans was vice chairman of Goldman Sachs, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia and was a partner in the firm for 20 years. He was also a member of the Canadian men’s eights rowing team that won gold at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

Douglas Feagin: Goldman Sachs to Ant Financial Services

Evans is far from the only Goldman banker to be poached by a Chinese conglomerate. Other high-profile hires include Douglas Feagin, who moved to Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial Services, China’s most valuable financial technology company, in 2016. Like many ex-bankers, Feagin was hired to lead a global expansion – he’s head of the firm’s international operations. Feagin had a 22-year career at Goldman Sachs, most recently as head of its financial institutions group for the Americas. He was also the head of FIG in Asia from 2004 to 2010.

Tony Yau: Deutsche Bank to Heung Kong

Hong Kong-based Deutsche Bank MD Yau left the firm in February last year, after a tenure of more than 10 years, to join Heung Kong Financial Group as CEO. Heung Kong Financial – part of a wider conglomerate which covers industries from furniture to real estate – specialises in loan financing, funds management and equity investment. Yau began his career as an auditor at Arthur Andersen in 1996, before switching to investment banking with BNP Paribas in Hong Kong in 2000. He started at Deutsche six years later and his experience includes M&A, capital markets, derivatives and private equity.

James Mitchell: Goldman Sachs to Tencent

James Mitchell, chief strategy officer at Tencent, China’s largest gaming and social-networking company, was formerly head of communications, media and entertainment research at Goldman Sachs in New York. He was with Goldman for 11 years and also worked at the firm in Hong Kong and Sydney. Tencent’s president, Martin Lau, also hails from Goldman, although he left the US bank more than 10 years ago.

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The number one topic of interest whenever two employees of different banks meet is always “who’s paying best this year”? And this year, the survey carried out by HR consultancy Emolument for Financial News shows a pretty consistent pattern; U.S. banks, in London at least, are paying substantially better at the VP level than Europeans.

There are plenty of caveats to the data. It’s based on 140 responses, which is enough to form a valid statistical sample, but means that it could be based on as few as a dozen data points per bank. And the response rate to these surveys might itself be biased in an unknown direction – on one hand, people who get low bonuses might be too ashamed to talk about them, while the real high fliers might feel they have better things to get on with than replying to surveys. Not so long ago a similar survey raised eyebrows when it found that Nomura was the best paying bank in London.

But when you have a gap as big as the one between Citigroup (£292k) and SocGen (£150k), and when there’s such a clear geographical pattern to the differences, it does feel like it’s not likely to be a data glitch. The U.S. banks are making more money, so their employees are making more money. It’s as simple as that.

There are a few more truisms that are reinforced by this data. Most obviously, the banks which pay the biggest base salaries, also pay the biggest bonuses. This is true both in absolute and relative terms; toward the top of the scale, VP’s at JP Morgan earned £143k basis and £141k bonus; at the lower end (BNP Paribas and Barclays), bonuses were more like 50% of base, and this fell to 20-30% at Deutsche and SocGen. Some banks often claim that they pay low base salaries in order to keep fixed costs down, but are competitive on total compensation; it’s rarely true.

It’s also noticeable that different banks have different cultures when it comes to sharing the wealth. Deutsche, for example, is right down at the bottom of the league table when it comes to VP pay, with £120k basis and £40k bonus. One rung up the ladder, however, and the German national champion is almost competitive with JP Morgan at director level, where DB paid total compensation of £350k. That one notch of promotion is a lot more important at Deutsche than at HSBC, which is at the top of the European pack for Vice-Presidents (£130k basic plus £85k bonus for a total of £215k), but much lower down for Directors, who only take in £55k more at HSBC than VPs do.

The biggest caveat to place on this sort of survey, though, is that the individual variation is always more important than the averages. Poor performers will get poor bonuses even at the best paying firms, and it’s still possible to get rich at a failing bank if you manage things right. Being in the right place at the right time helps, but getting the right pay for the right job is what really matters.

Some people who might be nervous about this year’s compensation round might be in the compliance departments of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. In a week’s time, we will find out if the capital plans of the big banks have been approved, and if they’re going to be able to pay out the dividends and buybacks that they planned to their shareholders. And although the overall picture from the first round of stress test results seemed favourable, the two big-paying Wall Street investment banks were much closer to the pass-fail mark than they might have expected.

If a capital plan is rejected, it’s a significant embarrassment for the top management and potentially a serious disappointment for the share price. But who would carry the can for it? There are several candidates – the CEO who sent a too ambitious plan to the regulators in the first place, the traders and bankers who acquired the assets that made the bank look risky, and the risk managers who got out of touch with how the regulators might see them. But the probable most likely candidate for the blame in any bank is the bearer of bad news, and that means the person with the regulatory relationship who has the job of carrying the Fed’s decision to the board. Good luck, guys …

Meanwhile …

Half of all women working in hedge funds have experienced #MeToo behaviour, 30% at their current employer. (Financial Times)

Banks are using “Lehman style” window-dressing to make their capital ratios look good. (Bloomberg)

Wells Fargo reduces equity research headcount … (Bloomberg)

…And Nomura cuts 28 global markets staff. (Bloomberg)

Could Brexit really be the end of London’s dominance in European finance?… (Bloomberg)

… although a new “settled status” for EU citizens might help banks retain staff. (Financial Times)

Stuart Roden, chairman of Lansdowne Partners, is leaving the hedge fund he co-founded. (Financial Times)

Barclays appoints Steve Penketh as CFO and COO of Barclays International, the investment banking part. (The Street)

China Renaissance Group is to IPO, with a valuation as high as US$800m. (Reuters)

After David Drumm’s sentencing in Ireland, here’s a short list of all the other bankers who went to jail. (New York Times)

What is it about tech firms that attracts “incels”? (Wired)

Do rich people really have less empathy? (Financial Times)

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Ken Lee, the former head of Barclays’ European equity research, who left the firm last September has re-emerged doing something that couldn’t have been more different than his previous investment banking stints. He joined the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) as an associate professor earlier this month.

Lee began at Barclays in 2009, when it launched its European equity business and was instrumental in building it up. He left the firm last year, after Barclays hired Rupert Jones, Morgan Stanley’s former head of European equity research to replace him.

Equity researchers have been squeezed under MiFID II, which requires banks to charge separately for their research services. When Jones left last year, Barclays said he had been actively involved in briefing Morgan Stanley’s customers about the impact of MiFID II. “As we head into MiFID II, research is all the more central to the success of our overall European equities business,” Barclays said.

When Lee left, he was said to be pursuing, “interests outside of banking.” Those interests were clearly going into academia. Immediately after leaving Barclays, he became a teaching fellow at Aston Business School, and a senior lecturer at Roehampton University. According to his LinkedIn profile, he still holds these positions.

In some ways, Lee’s career seems to have come full circle. He began his career in 2000 as a training consultant at BG Consulting, which offers customized financial training courses. He then moved to Citi Investment Research as an accounting and valuation analyst in 2004 and remained there till he joined Barclays as a managing director and head of equity research, EMEA.

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If you want a technology job in banking now, it will help to have three words on your CV: equities trading technology. As banks build out their algorithmic trading capabilities, senior technologists with experience working on high speed trading systems are the new hot thing.

Goldman Sachs is among those in the market for technologists with experience in the area. It recently hired Jee Wayn Ong, a former vice president at Bank of America Merrill Lynch with seven years of experience in equities electronic trading technology. A Java developer with experience of technology supporting both algorithmic trading and the central risk book, Ong joined Goldman as an executive director in the London office earlier this month.

Ong isn’t Goldman’s only executive director hire into the electronic equities space. The bank also recently recruited Sami Haj Slimane, a former director at BAML with historic experience in equity quantitative analytics and algorithmic trading.

Meanwhile, banks are having a hard time retaining their existing tech talent. For instance, J. P. Morgan recently lost one of its most senior equities trading technologists, Asif Adatia, and will need to find his replacement.

Adatia, who has more than 27 years of experience, 15 of which were at Goldman Sachs, served as a managing director at J. P. Morgan before leaving the bank earlier this month. Adatia didn’t respond to a request to comment on his exit, which may mark his retirement. It comes after J.P. Morgan appointed Mike Grimaldi as head of technology in the investment bank in September last year.

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Saturday was CFA exam day. To judge by the post-exam comments of some of the 227,031 people who sat the notoriously difficult examinations, it was also a day blighted by problems of a scatalogical sort.

On of the most popular Reddit posts on the exams concerns a candidate in New York who says his, “risk tolerance was high,” and so he ate some, “crazy spicy halal chicken for lunch.” This turned out to be a mistake: his stomach needed to, “write down the value of [its] intestinal assets with a vengeance about 90 minutes in.”

Another candidate on the same thread says he was busy doing positive affirmations and “power poses” in a stall when someone came into a neighbouring stall and destroyed the vibe.

In Chicago, there were complaints about an “ethics violator,” who allegedly hid papers in a toilet cubicle and had a look at them halfway through. In Boston, a candidate was allegedly eliminated for taking too long in the toilet and holding up the start of the morning exam. In Toronto, a candidate was apparently seen running to the front of the bathroom queue before the afternoon session whilst shouting, “diarrheaaaaaa.” Another Toronto candidate complained that the queues for toilets there were so long that he had to go in a bush in the parking lot.

Bodily functions weren’t the only issues on Saturday. In one New York test centre (number four) candidates said there was a concert happening next door: “Bass starting blaring periodically through the exam,” complained one test-taker. In Vancouver, there was pigeon flying around the examination hall. And in one, unnamed venue a male candidate began crying 20 minutes in and was refused permission to leave.

The CFA exams are notoriously difficult: each of the three exams requires at least 300 hours of study and the pass rates vary from 43% for level one to 54% for level three. The six hour exams – broken into morning and afternoon sessions – are therefore a period of high tension. Now that the exams are over, some candidates complain they’re oppressed by the sudden eruption of free time. Their digestive systems, however, have time to recover.

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There may not be a better time to be a senior M&A banker with some big deals under your belt. With the recent spike in global M&A activity, you’re bound to get multiple offers and maybe even a chance at a big promotion, if you play your cards right.

Take Ben Frost, the former head of consumer retail investment banking at Morgan Stanley who left the firm in April. At the time, Reuters reported that Frost was in talks with Goldman Sachs, though the two had not agreed on terms. Two weeks later, Business Insider confirmed that Frost did in fact ink a deal with Goldman Sachs but only after first negotiating with Evercore. Goldman reportedly “swooped in” at the very end.

Now we have an idea how Goldman won the deal. Frost started this month at Goldman but not as a managing director. The bank made him a partner MD as part of the offer. Whether that sweetener was added to pry Frost away from Evercore is unclear – Goldman didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry on Frost’s hiring – but making a senior dealmaker a partner as part of the hiring process shows how competitive recruiting has become in M&A.

Frost is no job hopper. He spent 17 years at Morgan Stanley before leaving to join Goldman. He reportedly advised Unilever when it became a takeover target of Kraft Heinz in 2017 and worked with Mars Inc. on its $9 billion deal to acquire animal hospital chain VCA.

Global M&A revenue was up 60% year-to-date as of the end of May, according to Dealogic. And it seems the latest poaching war is just ramping up.

While losing out on Frost, Evercore increased its number of senior MDs by eight during the first quarter alone, a particularly impressive stat considering it’s a boutique. Meanwhile, UBS is looking to double its number of senior dealmakers in the U.S. The Swiss bank hired two from Deutsche Bank and one each from RBC and Bank of America in the past few months.

Goldman’s offer of partnership status comes after various executive directors have left the bank this year, despite allegedly being in line for promotion to managing director in 2019. There are suggestions that the managing director title at Goldman Sachs is less prestigious than previously after a record number of managing directors were promoted last year.

Follow @BeecherTuttle

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As you will know by now if you read this site often, people in banking work hard. However, they do so for a reason: in return for persistent 13-17 hour days, front office banking jobs still offer an opportunity to make very good money.

How good? Look at the chart below.

By aggregating the latest total compensation figures for investment banking division (IBD) jobs (ie. jobs in M&A and capital markets) from recruitment firms like Dartmouth Partners, Arkesden and Page Executive, plus new figures for director-level compensation from Financial News, we’ve produced an estimation of the amounts you can expect to earn in salary plus bonus if you stick with an IBD career in the City of London- if you’re lucky.

Between 22 and 25, as you go from analyst 1 to associate 2, you can expect your pay to rise from £72k ($96k) to £93k ($123k). Between 25 and 30, as you go from associate 2 to vice president (VP), you can expect your pay to rise £294k. From 30 to 35, as you go from VP to director, you can expect your pay to rise to around £380k. And 35 to 40, if you make managing director (MD), your pay might rise as high as £1.1m, or more.

Naturally, it might not happen this way. These figures are for front office investment banking jobs in the investment banking divisions of major investment banks – you won’t get anywhere near these numbers if you work in, say, risk. You may not survive much beyond your late 20s or early 30s and either way you probably won’t get promoted to managing director. Even if you do get made managing director, there’s no guarantee you’ll be paid as below – the figures for MD pay (35 to 40) are based loosely on Page Executive’s survey. Most MDs have up years and down years rather than experiencing a continuous increase in pay as they age.

Even so, it is not inconceivable that you will end up earning as much as the chart suggests. Goldman Sachs, for example, paid its 700 most senior bankers in the UK an average of £1m in 2016, the last year for which figures are available. At the very least, this summer’s IBD interns may want to use the potential for their pay to progress exponentially as a pick-me-up when they’re still working at 2am on a Tuesday in mid-July…

Follow @MadameButcher

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When I graduated in Singapore about seven years ago I wanted a role where I could start to build my own set of clients while I was still a junior. I couldn’t do this in private banking (it takes too long to become a proper RM), nor in investment banking (your clients change from deal to deal). Corporate banking seemed like a better bet for me as a grad.

It offered the chance to foster long-term relationships, and the bank I ended up joining gave me clients to manage after less than two years of ‘shadowing’ a senior banker. I was only in my early 20s and I was already in the game. Another way of putting it is that I was thrown into the deep end. Yes, knew the basics – I understood products like cash management, trade finance, asset-backed finance, FICC and equities – but I didn’t really know how to handle clients on my own.

To make matters worse, the industry sector I was covering in Singapore started to experience a downturn just as I became a stand-alone banker. Many people think corporate bankers stroll from lunch meetings to golf courses as they schmooze clients whose businesses are ever expanding. This is not so. At my first bank, many of my clients were struggling financially. A few of them had businesses that were on the verge of bankruptcy – and they owed my bank money. The bank, a Singaporean firm, made its junior corporate bankers get their hands dirty. We had to call our clients directly and ask when they would be settling their debts. As a junior, I found doing this intimidating.

I was looking after small and medium-sized family businesses and many of my clients would get really emotional on the phone and promise they’d ‘pay us back tomorrow’. When the money didn’t arrive the next day, my boss would ask me to call them back again – it was a nightmarish cycle. However, provided you can keep your job, you can learn a lot as a corporate banker during a downturn. Many of my counterparts didn’t experience what I did at analyst-level and now (as an associate) I think I’m better equipped than them to handle difficult client problems.

When I moved to my next corporate banking job – this time at a large British bank in Singapore – I faced a whole new set of challenges from my clients. At my previous employer, I looked after one industry so I could build knowledge cumulatively. Now I was suddenly working across sectors – learning about each one took me a long time.

Moreover, I was now no longer meeting family-business owners; I was meeting regional CEOs of large companies. Don’t underestimate how different this kind of client interaction is. My previous clients only cared about their industry and competitors but my new ones want to keep up to date with macro-economic and financial trends.

I never know what questions they might throw at me each day. I try to read the financial news on the way to work and I have access to great internal research at my bank. But the difficulty is actually finding the time to read all the information you need to deal with client demands.

My large corporate clients also have very high expectations when it comes to everyday transactions – like FX and cash management. It’s vital to keep this kind of flow income going and keep clients ‘sticky’ to your bank. But if mistakes are made, your clients might go elsewhere because the corporate banking market is very competitive in Singapore. Your clients have options, and this heaps pressure on you as a banker.

It also means you need to forge strong internal networks – never overlook the support staff if you’re in the front office. If there’s a problem with your client’s online banking, for example, you can resolve it far quicker if you actually get on with the people in your tech team. Internal relationships can make or break your relationships with clients.

The Holy Grail for a corporate banker is, of course, showing initiative to your clients and not always being reactive. In other words, how do you create an opportunity for them that they never thought of before? How do you create a new ‘need’ for them that will open up new business for your bank? For example, changing the capital structure of their company or suggesting a more innovative product. This is a huge challenge and I’m not there yet. But it’s one of the reasons I’m staying in corporate banking despite the constant ups and downs I have with my clients.

Lucy Ng (we have used a pseudonym to protect her identity) is a corporate banker at a UK bank in Singapore.

Image credit: nito100, Getty

The junior ranks of global investment banks in Hong Kong are increasingly dominated by mainland Chinese bankers as Mandarin becomes a prerequisite for deal making in North Asia. But where are US and European banks in Hong Kong getting their Chinese graduates from?

Many of them are already based in Hong Kong, having moved there to study at local universities, while others are so-called Haigui, who went to college in the West and have returned to Asia to work.

It is, however, possible to attend a university in mainland China itself and still secure a role at the likes of J.P. Morgan or UBS in Hong Kong. Just be careful about where you study. Our analysis shows that global banks in Hong Kong typically only hire from five elite Chinese universities.

We examined data from the public profiles of people who studied in China and are now analysts and associates (i.e. up to five years of experience) at 11 leading global banks in Hong Kong. When then filtered out Chinese universities supplying fewer than 10 graduates to the total across all banks, eliminating Nanjing University and Beijing Normal University among others.

Rare exceptions aside, Hong Kong banks are recruiting almost exclusively from the following institutions when they hire mainland-educated candidates: Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Zhejiang University. While the data only includes people who have online profiles, it is strongly indicative of Hong Kong banks’ favourite Chinese universities.

The appearance of Peking and Tsinghua at the top of our table is perhaps no shock – they have both also been ranked by QS as the leading two universities (across all disciplines) in China. Like the other three schools, they are in the C9 League, China’s equivalent of the Ivy League. Peking’s Guanghua School of Management, meanwhile, is building a global reputation for its undergraduate business and finance programmes.

But the extent of Peking and Tsinghua’s dominance is still surprising. Over the past five years, Peking University alone has educated more than a third of the former mainland-based students who are now working at international banks in Hong Kong.

Which bank has hired the most people from Peking University since 2013? Goldman Sachs. As the chart below shows, Goldman employs 17% of the Peking graduates among the 11 banks we looked at. HSBC, which is pivoting its entire business toward North Asia, is in second spot at 13%.

Our final table (see below) highlights differences between banks when it comes to recruiting from the five Chinese universities. J.P. Morgan is the main outlier. It gets 33% of its mainland grads from Shanghai Jiao Tong and 22% from Zhejiang – higher proportions than any other firm for both universities.

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: smortlock@efinancialcareers.com

Follow @simonmortlock

Image credit: danielvfung, Getty

There’s a new top team to belong to in Goldman Sachs’ securities (sales and trading) division, and it’s not comprised of traders.

As we noted yesterday, this year’s in-demand skill-set is that of technologists with experience of working on high speed trading systems. Goldman Sachs has been hiring people of this ilk. And now Business Insider reports that the firm has set up a new crack team within its engineering unit to oversee the ‘front-to-back development and management of trading systems.’

Managed by Raj Mahajan, the former CEO of high speed trading firm, Allstom Trading, who joined Goldman in early 2015, the new group (which doesn’t seem to have a name), will reportedly deal with every aspect of the trade lifecycle and be as attuned to client needs as front-line traders. In the past, BI says Goldman had a “patchwork” of technology teams that didn’t always always report to securities division leaders. Now Mahajan will report to Goldman CIO Elisha Weisel and to Ashok Varadhan, who now heads the securities business.

The move confirms that engineers are at the forefront of Goldman Sachs’ securities division before David Solomon becomes CEO. Solomon is determined to improve Goldman’s electronic and algorithmic trading systems after years of neglect during which Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan ate Goldman’s lunch.

Mahajan isn’t the only man to know: the new team will be co-headed by Konstantin Shakhnovich, head of Goldman’s fixed income systematic market making group, under whom the firm has built an algorithmic fixed income engine praised by Solomon in a recent presentation, and by Ezra Nahum, a senior strat at Goldman Sachs, who was previously running fixed income sales strats globally and will therefore bring client awareness to the mix.

As Goldman seeks to recover market share, the new group is confirmation that the war will be won or lost on the ability of quants and engineers.

Separately, it may be harder to get into strategy consulting firm McKinsey & Co. than into any leading investment bank. In an interview with the Financial Times, Kevin Sneader, McKinsey’s incoming managing partner, said the firm received 750,000 applications from people who wanted to work there last year. This compared to “just” 110,000 applications to Deutsche Bank and a mere 100,000 at Morgan Stanley. Sneader said fewer than 1% of McKinsey applicants are accepted.

Meanwhile:

Andrea Enria, the head of the European Banking Authority, says banks aren’t ready for a situation where the UK crashes out of the EU with no transition period in March 2019. (Financial News)

Citi hired James Fleming, who ran equity capital markets for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at BAML, into a similar role. (Financial News)

Pascal Boillat, the former chief information officer and head of operations, corporate and investment banking for Deutsche Bank, joined Commonwealth Bank as the new CIO. (Finextra)

UBS is investing further in Evidence Lab after corporate, private equity and supranational clients asked to look at its very many datasets. (IFRE)

Richard Buxton, chief executive of Old Mutual Global Investors, says his firm is “inundated” with CVs from analysts at investment banks who are trying to escape from MiFID II. (Financial Times)

Commerzbank is experimenting with artificial intelligence technology that automatically generates sports reports to see if it can write basic analyst notes, as Mifid II forces banks across the world to trim research costs. (Financial Times)

How hedge funds paid for their very own Brexit polls before the referendum result, and were able to preemptively short the pound as a result. (Bloomberg)

How self-employed ex-bankers working from home with their dogs and a handful of employees are beating big banks to Silicon Valley convertible bond issues. (WSJ)

Inside the new office J.P. Morgan built to make technology workers feel special. (Business Insider)

Natural language processing and machine learning discern that hedge fund names contain common root words like: value, street, point, river, hill, rock, view, pacific, bridge, blue, wealth, new, creek, alpha and stone. ‘A very typical name construction using root words would be something like Value Street Capital.’ (PIonline)

Deutsche Bank's austerity measures are working https://t.co/86FdmLEtV5

â Thornton McEnery (@ThorntonMcEnery) June 25, 2018

Citi isn’t the only one building its equity capital markets (ECM) division in London: Barclays is at it too.

The British bank just hired Kate Gaertner, a former executive director covering Germany at Goldman Sachs, as its new head of North European equity capital markets. Gaertner is understood to have started two weeks ago, with a mandate to focus on German-speaking Europe, the Netherlands and Nordics, and the tech sector in particular. Insiders say Barclays is also in the process of hiring an AVP for the team from Nomura.

The additions come after Citi hired James Fleming from Bank of America to run its equity capital markets business in Europe as it aims for a top three slot in Europe the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) ECM revenues.

First quarter EMEA ECM volumes were the third highest on record according to Dealogic as deals surged in January. EMEA IPO volume reached $15.8bn from 58 deals in the first quarter, compared to a recent record of $20.6bn via 81 deals in the first quarter of 2015.

Barclays doesn’t break out its ECM revenues. The British bank has been busy hiring across its business this year as it compensates for years of frozen recruitment. Earlier this month we reported that the bank had added eight managing directors to its investment banking division this year, almost all of them in London – even though they’re covering Continental Europe.

Gaertner spent over eight years at Goldman Sachs after previously spending a little over a year each at Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.

Her arrival comes as Nick Gradel, Barclays’ head of ECM origination in the Netherlands, Nordics and Ireland, is said to be considering his future at the bank with a view to moving into a new role or leaving. Gaertner’s arrival is not understood to be related to Gradel’s potential exit.

Barclays declined to comment.

As we’ve commented before, the departure of executive directors from Goldman Sachs has been notable this year. As the rung below managing director, executive directors are typically loyal in the hope of getting an MD promotion, but Goldman has been hiring EDs externally and the next round of Goldman MD hires isn’t until 2019. – It seems some executive directors at the firm can’t be bothered to wait.

““

I have passed all three levels of the CFA exams and am a Charterholder. It took me two years and one attempt. To say that it was something of a stretch is an understatement – it took my heart and soul, left me emotionally drained and addicted to cigarettes.

It was a roller-coaster ride to Charterholder status, a ride through loneliness, addiction, insecurity and a fluctuating career.

I enrolled on a distance learning course taking the CFA programme, assuming that this would allow me time to focus on my own business (I work in financial services marketing). How wrong I was.

500+ hours of studying for Level I

I took lessons to understand CFA Level I. It was all totally new to me. I read all the books from the CFA Institute and also the Kaplan material – I must have gone through them five times, which took me about 500 hours.

Even after doing this much reading, it wasn’t enough. I only scored 50% in my first sample exam. It was scary; I couldn’t sleep as a result.

I re-read my books and took more sample exams. In the last one, which I sat seven days before the real exam, I scored 70%.

In the three days before the exam, anxiety took over. And with the anxiety came smoking cigarettes – smoking a lot of cigarettes.

Exam day was the worst. I woke up at 5am and sauntered over the exam centre.. It was a huge crowd. I was overcome with social anxiety on the spot. I handed in the first paper, but couldn’t find anywhere nearby to eat afterwards. I therefore sat the second exam on a diet of cigarettes and anxiety.

Peak cigarettes for Level II

I passed CFA Level I and opted to go straight into Level II. I was unaware that it was the hardest level of all and that I only had a few months to prepare.

I signed up to a coaching centre, but my overworked tutor was awful. In the end, I borrowed a few Kaplan books and a video from my friend.

I started smoking more and then more. Where once I smoked two cigarettes a day, now I was smoking eight, and then ten, and then more again. Had it not been for all the cigarettes I don’t think I’d have cleared level II. Yes, they’re bad for your health – but they’re also very good for stress. And I was stressed: as before, I was scoring less than 50% on sample tests.

Rather than giving up, I decided to smoke more. Because I was studying at home, I could smoke as much as I wanted. And I did.

I started reading Kaplan again, whilst smoking cigarettes. My focus was far better. I improved very slowly and steadily and I passed the exam – but it left me a wreck. I had severe headaches and dreamed of financial concepts for months. I was also serious addicted to nicotine. It didn’t help that all my friends flunked level II, so there was no one to celebrate with. One friend – who failed – refused to speak to me for months.

Still smoking for Level III

I was still determined to take the CFA level III at the earliest opportunity and although it took me a couple of months to start functioning properly, it was much easier. I got a private coach seven months in advance.

CFA Level III is easy compared to the others, but it has a subjective paper. I hate written exams, my handwriting is terrible and I always get marked down for it. I kept smoking.

I passed. The CFA Charter is a qualification for obsessive masochists and I am one.

These are my tips:

Learn speed-reading
Put aside at least 500 hours to study. Less than that is not acceptable
Get a coach. It helps a lot.
Practice exams are important. I took every exam that was available.
Bulk-buy Marlboro Lights.

The author is an anonymous CFA Charterholder

““

As the biggest hedge fund startup ever, ExodusPoint Capital Management has some very deep pockets. The fund, led by former Millennium Management star trader Michael Gelband, is leveraging part of its $8 billion in startup capital to poach droves of big-name portfolio managers.

At least a dozen PMs have been hired to work in ExodusPoint’s East 55th Street office within the last two months – and the firm is likely far from done with its recruiting efforts. Gelband’s initial plan was to build around 30 fixed income and equities teams within its New York headquarters and at its smaller London location. Additional offices in Asia are also said to be in the plans.

The lion’s share of recent hires come from well-established rival funds in New York. Recent additions include former Tudor Investment Corp. portfolio trader Gustavo Figueiredo Pereira; former Pine River Capital PM David Sun; and Geoffrey Sherry, who came over from Caxton Associates after six years as a partner at now-defunct credit fund Lucidus Capital.

ExodusPoint has even turned to investment banks to fill some of its PM seats. Walton Kingsbery, a former executive director at Nomura, and Hari Manappattil, ex-director of algo trading at Cantor Fitzgerald, both joined in May as portfolio managers. The fund has also filled its coffers with several former employees of Hutchin Hill Capital, which closed its doors at the end of 2017 after three years of poor performance. Several quants and a good deal of ExodusPoint’s tech talent has come over from defunct hedge fund Hutchin Hill.

Still, the biggest poaching target has, rather unsurprisingly, been Millennium Management, which helped delay the official launch of Gelband’s new fund for roughly a year over a now-settled legal dispute related to hiring. Soon after quitting Millennium following a spat with founder Izzy Englander, Gelband poached his former firm’s global head of risk, its global business manager for fixed income and its head of risk technology – not to mention Hyung Soon Lee, Gelband’s fellow co-founder who was in charge of equities at Millennium.

At least 10 other former Millennium employees now work at ExodusPoint, giving some credence to rumors that the name of the fund may have been a subtle departing jab by Gelband aimed at his old employer. He could have just named it PoachedPoint.

A dream gig on paper?

Portfolio managers have plenty of reasons to want to make the jump to ExodusPoint, beyond its record-setting asset total. With most funds reining in standard fees, ExodusPoint is passing all its costs down to investors, from commissions to bonuses to office furniture, according to Bloomberg. And yes, investors are on the hook for recruiting costs as well, giving the fund plenty of leeway to maneuver as many rivals struggle, both in terms of performance and fundraising. PMs at ExodusPoint are also likely to prefer the fund’s expected “eat what you kill” compensation structure, where teams get paid out according to the performance of their own portfolio, as at Millennium.

For the third consecutive year, more hedge funds closed than opened in 2017. Meanwhile, former star trader Greg Coffey hasn’t had near the fortune of Gelband when it comes to fundraising. Coffey is reportedly struggling to hit his $2 billion investment goal. Yet ExodusPoint just raised $8 billion from the likes of Blackstone and BlackRock despite its aggressive fee structure and a delayed launch date.

Follow @BeecherTuttle

“”

Are you happy with the amount you earn for your finance job? If the answer is yes, you’re an aberration. Our recent survey of nearly 3,100 global finance professionals suggested the industry is almost equally split between those who are happy with their compensation, those who are neutral, and those who are annoyed. – The annoyed comprise 34% of the total, compared to 32% who are neutral and 30% who are happy. If you’re in the 30%, you’re special.

As the charts below show, however, some people in finance have a greater chance of pay satisfaction than others.

Our respondents suggested you’re more likely to be happy if you’re the right age, if you’re working in the right sort of job, and if you’re at the right sort of firm. You might not want to be a 50-something compliance professional at Citi, for example…

Happiness with your pay peaks in your early 20s

Responses to the survey reflected the cliché ‘that more is not always better. Although pay in banking rises with age (25% of our respondents aged over 40 said they earned more than $500k, compared to just 5% under 30), so does dissatisfaction with its quantum.

As the chart below shows, when you work in finance your happiness with your pay will probably peak when you’re aged 20-25 – when you’re on a good income, but have minimal responsibilities. After 35, your pay satisfaction declines significantly compared to the early years – and if you stay in banking until you’re aged 45-50, your disgruntlement is likely to increase further still. This is partly because not everyone over 40 in finance is on big money (around 20% of our respondents this age were on less than $200k), but it’s also likely to be because the money you do have needs to go further than before.

Happiness with pay is highest at…Deutsche Bank

Surprisingly perhaps, our survey disproved the notion that people working for American banks are happiest with their pay. – They’re not. As the chart below shows, our happiest respondents were at Deutsche Bank and Barclays. Our least happy were at Citi (followed by SocGen and Credit Suisse).

Deutsche bankers’ contentment follows the German bank’s decision to pay good bonuses for 2017 after withholding performance pay for 2016. It was an act of generosity that is thought to have contributed to the exit of former CEO John Cryan. Deutsche Bankers may well end up less happy with their bonuses for 2018, although Cryan’s replacement Christian Sewing has promised that good bonuses will still be paid this year.

Pay happiness is highest among quants (hover over the chart to see the sectors)

Surprisingly, our survey revealed a very high level of compensation satisfaction in the quant community. Less surprisingly, it also revealed a high level of dissatisfaction among people working in compliance and risk.

Quants’ happiness with their pay isn’t necessarily a reflection of its level. – Although quant pay has risen in recent years, 45% of our quant sample said they were earning between $100k and $200k. Their contentment may be attributed to comparatively low expectations. – In sales and trading, where only 30% of our sample were earning between $100k and $200k and most people earned a lot more, pay dissatisfaction was significantly higher.

People in finance are unhappiest with their pay in Hong Kong (hover over the chart to see the location)

Our survey revealed a high degree of disgruntlement in Hong Kong, where only 13% of respondents were happy with their pay and 47% were not. This compared to Singapore, where 33% of respondents were happy with what they were earning and just 19% were not.

Lastly, the survey also revealed that moving to the buy-side is no panacea for pay problems: the division of happy, neutral and unhappy respondents was similar in both areas of finance, at 32%, 32% and 36% respectively.

Vice presidents at investment banks in Hong Kong are, in theory, well placed in the current job market. Banks continue to hand them extra work as they trim more senior jobs. And because graduate hiring in Hong Kong was cut during the downturn in 2010, VPs are now comparatively hard to find.

However, headhunters say the VP candidates they are talking to this year are increasingly worried about their long-term future in the banking sector as more of their colleagues quit for fintech or corporate development roles.

Here’s what VPs in Hong Kong are asking recruiters, and here’s what recruiters are advising them.

Should I quit investment banking for the corporate sector?

Expansionist Chinese companies are on the hunt for bankers to guide them through mergers and IPOs. VP bankers are now being proactive and asking recruiters about these jobs in increasing numbers, says Eunice Ng, director of search firm Avanza Consulting in Hong Kong. Interest in the corporate sector is now roughly equivalent to the traditional mid-career longing for the buy-side. But although these bankers want to share in the success of Chinese corporate expansion, Ng says improving their work-life balance is their main motivation for moving.

But do I have a sufficient safety net?

When weighing up whether to leave the finance sector, Hong Kong bankers tend to be highly risk adverse. A big concern is often whether their savings are large enough to justify removing the iron rice bowl of a VP job. “If candidates have the personal means to allow them to pursue their passions outside of banking, I strongly endorse this choice,” says Amanda Lote, MD of headhunters Lote & Partners in Hong Kong. “I saw an IB candidate who halved his pay to join an e-commerce firm, but he was independently wealthy and said money was unimportant – he was attracted to the scalability of the business plan.”

Which of my key skills are becoming obsolete?

Recruiters view a lot of job descriptions so they are often quizzed by VPs about which skills are becoming popular and which are falling out of favour in their field. “The financial landscape is changing – some roles are being outsourced and are never coming back,” says Adrian Choo, CEO of Career Agility. “In five years’ time, even some risk management functions might be replaced by business analytics or artificial intelligence software. VPs need to constantly monitor the market to see if their skills are sustainable in the long run. You don’t want to be obsolete by your 40s.”

Can I transfer out of the back-office?

Back-office professionals who’ve reached VP level increasingly face an uncertain future as banks continue to offshore operations jobs away from Hong Kong. “But people in product control, trade support and price verification often make excellent internal transferees into the governance world – in particular operational risk, where technical product knowledge and an understanding of internal procedures give these controllers an edge,” says a Hong Kong-based headhunter.

Does my loyalty make me a salary loser?

“The market in Asia still promotes job hopping by offering fairly large salary increments every time someone moves,” says the Hong Kong recruiter. “Those who remain loyal often get left behind on pay and by the time they reach VP they can end up with below-market salaries. This eventually causes frustration and they want to move themselves, but I’d advise them to have an open conversation with their boss prior to any job search.”

My sponsor quit – so what now?

“I meet a lot of excellent candidates who’ve been fast tracked and sponsored early on in their career but have now hit a glass ceiling as they’ve got older and become a VP,” says the recruiter. “Often this promotion process goes wrong if their main sponsor leaves the bank. I always advise them to realistically compare possibilities for internal career progression with any external roles available on the market.”

Follow @simonmortlock

Image credit: baona, Getty

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500+ hours of studying for Level I

Peak cigarettes for Level II

Still smoking for Level III

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Happiness with your pay peaks in your early 20s

Happiness with pay is highest at…Deutsche Bank

Pay happiness is highest among quants (hover over the chart to see the sectors)

People in finance are unhappiest with their pay in Hong Kong (hover over the chart to see the location)

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Should I quit investment banking for the corporate sector?

But do I have a sufficient safety net?

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Does my loyalty make me a salary loser?

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