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Feasting on a ‘self-developmental buffet’, travelling to California, Portugal and the south coast of England, and feeling the power of EY’s career mapping. Rich Armstrong, an Audit Manager based in Southampton, lifts the lid on life at an EY UK office.

Never standing still

“One of the things that defines EY is the career development – it’s at the forefront of everyone’s mind, from the moment you join.

As soon as I joined in 2014 from a smaller, local firm I was paired with a ‘counsellor’ (a career coach) who helps me set my personal and professional development goals. We have bi-monthly meetings to discuss my goals and measure my progress towards them – the idea being that I’m never standing still and always looking to evolve, improve and progress.

EY operates in more than 150 countries and has almost 250,000 employees, which means there are endless career opportunities available. You want to go and live in Australia for two years? You could do that. You want to live in New York to see what it’s like to work in the United States? That’s possible.

Every individual at EY has a different set of goals, so having a system that puts you first gives it that personal touch that other organisations don’t have.”

Clear and supportive career progress

“In some organisations career progression can seem a bit spurious or opaque. EY’s system is the opposite because, although there are many paths you can take, the counsellor system clearly lays them out for you, so as soon as you set your goals you’re surrounded by support networks that help you achieve them.

I suppose I’m proof of this, having been promoted through three different roles already – and I’ve been at EY for less than four years.”

EY can be your passport to the world

“My portfolio of clients is really varied. I work in the Southampton office so a lot of my clients are based around the South Coast of England, which can be just a 10-minute commute away. But I also have some internationally-based ones too, including a food business in Portugal and a technology company in San Francisco, which means I spend two weeks in California every year. It’s that kind of variety – being able to travel internationally while also working locally – that keeps me motivated and engaged in the work I do.

EY’s broad international client base has exposed me to fast-paced industries like technology in the United States, and everything from private equity-backed companies to local owner-owned businesses in all sorts of other industries too. Seeing the sights in San Francisco after work during the week and at the weekend isn’t bad either!

It’s this side that really helps you feel the power of EY. The reason I love working in Audit in Southampton is because you get the global scale and opportunities that EY offers but not at the expense of that local, community feel. EY operates in so many places, it can be your passport to many parts of the world.”

A self-development buffet

“I have around seven client engagements, which means I work with between seven and ten team members more senior than myself – partners, directors, or senior managers. They all have a wide variety of styles, skills and strengths so, rather than being led by a single mentor, I can cherry-pick from this buffet of learning opportunities to develop myself and my own style.

I think this really helps me to maintain my own authenticity and that, to me, is what really sets EY apart – the level of exposure you get to these talented and bright senior people from the very beginning of your career is amazing.”

A people business – built on people

“It may be a cliché, but it really is all about the people at EY. It’s the reason I keep getting out of bed and going to work, and the culture that EY creates really allows people to be themselves. It’s supportive too – for example, going from a smaller regional firm to a multi-national company like EY wasn’t as daunting as I thought because of the help from everyone around me in making that transition.

The flexible working EY offers is a key differentiator, too. EY’s working procedures and technology mean I can work from anywhere so, having just bought my first flat, I can easily stay at home to let the decorators in, for example. The other bonus is that it has taught me to be self-aware and know what hours of the day I do my best work. EY empowers me with an unbelievably high level of autonomy so I can manage my workload around my lifestyle.

We’re a people business – we don’t manufacture or sell anything, we only sell ourselves and the services we provide. EY are acutely aware of this and they appreciate those soft skills because, by making it a great place to work, this filters down through everyone and therefore onto our clients. There’s no requirement to conform and people are encouraged to be themselves; this helps make EY the vibrant place it is.

Yes, it’s a tough job at times – and you will work hard – but I can honestly say I’ve never been bored and I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else right now.”

If Rich’s story made you want to know more about building your career in Audit at EY UK, visit our website to find out more and apply for available positions with us now.

You might think you want to work for a big technology firm. After all, there’s all that free food. There are all those yoga sessions and climbing walls and there’s the prestige that comes for working for the sort of place that can’t quite be accused of causing a global financial crisis that unleashed years of austerity and the stagnation of people’s incomes. But there’s also a downside. – Your longest tenured colleagues. They are unfeasibly, irritatingly, rich.

There’s a bit of this in banking, where third year analysts earning £158k ($203k) can look in wonder at managing directors on seven figures. But banking is positively egalitarian compared to tech, where the luckiest cohort made billions.

It’s a distinction identified in an interview with April Underwood, the chief product officer at Slack (the messaging platform used by 65% of Fortune 100 companies) and former director of product at Twitter, on the Recode site.

Underwood, who spent two years at Google and five years at Twitter before joining Slack in 2015, says that when she arrived at Google in 2007 it, “felt late.” “You missed the billionaire period,” points out the interviewer, “the hundred millionaire period.” “I did, I did,” agrees Underwood, saying that joining Google in 2007 felt like, “arriving a party after the crush of people has left, and maybe they’re running low on certain supplies. The rosé is out.”

This is a Silicon Valley dynamic that’s been remarked upon before: it’s not easy working for a company where a few founders (and the office graffiti artist) are worth hundreds of millions or even billions and everyone else is drawing a wage. It’s also something that’s worth noting as young technologists and bankers leave finance for the likes of large established players like Google.

Clearly, the answer is to try to enter the founder class yourself. Underwood quit Google’s dwindling party for Twitter, which had 150 people when she joined and 4,000 people when she left. At Slack, half the 1,000+ employees have been there less than six months. The company, which was founded by Canadian CEO Stuart Butterfield just raised $427m which takes its valuation to more than $7.1bn. Underwood is back near the rosé. Banking technologists and juniors who leave finance for the big tech brands, are not.

Separately, while incoming Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon spins his tunes on sandy beaches to sycophants in bikinis, Crains has identified the sensible suited guy standing in the wings. John Waldron, Goldman’s co-head of IBD, is inline to become president to Solomon’s CEO, says Crains. The two men are friends but 49 year old Waldron (“He’s not someone who messes around with long-winded PowerPoints that, if you change the logo in the bottom corner, could come from anywhere”) is more buttoned-up. “David has a little devilish side to him and he enjoys that,” says the managing partner at private equity firm Advent International. “John is more straightforward.”

Meanwhile:

Unhappy MBA students are reaching for their lawyers: ‘They “bargained for a top-ranking education and did not receive it.” (WSJ)

Goldman Sachs won’t be opening a crypto currency trading desk in the near future after all. Instead, it will holds open a custody service that holds cryptocurrency and, potentially, keeps track of price changes on behalf of large fund clients. (Business Insider)

Antonia Rowan has been named UK head of advisory and corporate broking at Credit Suisse. She joined in January from Jefferies. (Financial News)

You will no longer find Timothy Broadbent as head of the leveraged loan syndicate at Barclays in the U.S. (Reuters)

Death of all salesmen: “At some point, when the client falls in love with the web portal and the company starts using algorithms to cross-sell and up-sell, pretty soon that salesperson is not doing much.” (Bloomberg)

Brexit schmexit: Even if the UK loses a quarter of its international financial sector as a result of Brexit, it will still be double the size of any other European business city. (Financial Times)

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com
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If work in an investment bank in 2018, you either want to be in equity derivatives or you want to be in commodities. So suggests the latest banking monitor from intelligence firm Coalition.

As the chart below (compiled by us) reflects, equity derivatives and commodities have both had an excellent start to the year. In equity derivatives, revenues rose 35% year on year in the first six months of 2018. In commodities, revenues rose 38%. Nowhere else came close.

Within these broad categories, there were some particularly thriving subsectors. In equity derivatives, Coalition says the Americas outperformed EMEA and APAC with U.S. flow derivatives doing well. Global strategic equity transactions also had a good six months. However, structured equity derivatives declined marginally thanks to a poor start in index products and single name exotics. In commodities, Coalition says the rebound is down to the unusually poor performance of commodities businesses in 2017 and to one off gains in energy and base metals trading.

Coalition doesn’t say so, but given that some of its other research puts J.P. Morgan as the market leader in both commodities and equity derivatives trading, the U.S. bank would seem to be the place to work now.

By comparison, credit trading businesses and G10 rates trading desks had a particularly bad start to the year, with revenues declining 7% and 13% respectively. Coalition points to poor performance in EMEA cash rates, repo and munis, and to underperformance in G10 investment grade, G10 high yield and emerging markets flow credit, but to a strong performance in collateralized loan obligations.

The bad news is that none of this is feeding to through to front office job opportunities. In the first six months of 2018, front office producer headcount fell 1% to 51,900 according to Coalition, with particular reductions in equity research, Americas M&A and oil and gas and healthcare teams. There were cuts in macro teams too, but these were offset by hiring for credit (despite the drop in revenues). The only good thing about the dwindling front office job opportunities, is that the coincidence of rising revenues and falling headcount in areas like equities is leading to rising productivity. In an ideal world, this might be expected to lead to a rise in pay.

For those of you who are interested, we’ve added all the Coalition charts below.

Fixed income revenues, by business
FICC revenues by production Coalition 1H2018

Equities revenues by business
Equities revenues coalition 2018

Investment banking division revenues by business
IBD coalition 2018

Front office headcount by business

headcount coalition

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If any front office jobs are going to move out of banks in London because of Brexit, they will be sales jobs. – Post Brexit, salespeople touting products to clients in the European Union will almost certainly need to be sitting in the European Union itself. For this reason, the migration of many sales roles seems a given between now and March 2019.

As we reported earlier this year, Goldman Sachs has already been building out its equity derivatives sales team in Paris. Now it seems that Morgan Stanley may be up to something similar. The U.S. bank just recruited Francesco Ponti as a Paris-based vice president in equity derivatives sales. Formerly an associate at Credit Suisse in London, Ponti arrived in Morgan Stanley in Paris this September.

Morgan Stanley declined to comment on Ponti’s Paris presence, which insiders say is not related to Brexit. It follows rumours earlier in the summer that the U.S. bank had begun asking its London-based equities salespeople to consider moving to the countries they were covering. In January, Morgan Stanley president Colm Kelleher said the bank would boost its offices in Dublin, Paris, and Frankfurt due to Brexit.

For the moment, however, there’s little sign that MS is hiring additional salespeople in Paris. Antti Kari and Sean Flanagan, the MD in equity derivative sales and global head of equity derivative structuring whom Morgan Stanley hired from Deutsche Bank in June, are both said to be joining in London soon.

Morgan Stanley already has a sizable equities presence in Paris, with longstanding salespeople like Rafael Parrilla, who was hired from BNP Paribas in 2010. Bank of America is widely expected to begin moving equities salespeople to Paris soon, after senior fixed income salespeople at the bank migrated in July.

One equity derivatives sales professional at a Swiss bank in London said sales professionals are being located to regional offices. While Paris is unlikely to be a main hub, he says it will benefit from the rehoming of French salespeople plus Benelux coverage professionals. “My manager said the bank will say yes to any salesperson trying to relocate to Paris. We expect this to happen in early 2019,” he added.

Meanwhile, there are signs of activity in Frankfurt. As our German editor reported yesterday, UBS (which pays its average investment banker €393k in Frankfurt) has begun advertising 25 new jobs in the German city – predominantly in middle office areas like compliance and regulation.

A report yesterday from think-tank New Financial found that even if London loses a quarter of its financial sector as a result of Brexit, it will still be double the size of any other European business centre. However, as @_Financeguy pointed out on Twitter yesterday, this may understate the risks of London losing critical mass.

“Finance has high operational gearing: i.e (very) high fixed costs that make profits very sensitive to marginal revenue. So a loss of even 20% of revenue might tip many firms into losses resulting in a need to rethink the cost base completely.”

— Brahman (@_Financeguy) September 5, 2018

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Nearly 80k people sat for the CFA Level I exam in June – a record total that is expected to be eclipsed during the December sitting. The number of new candidates has increased two-fold over the last decade and by 15% since 2017. With the standard registration deadline for the December exam just a month away, we put together a list of important facts you should know before deciding if you want to join the frenzy.

Fees add up

The cost of earning a CFA charter is not a fixed number because it depends on how proactive you are. There’s a one-time program enrollment fee of $450 plus the $950 standard registration fee for each level. However, you can save $300 by registering a full nine months before the exam (March 14th for December exams and October 10th for June). But if you wait too long, the CFA Institute will charge a late registration fee of $1,380 during the month after the standard deadline passes. So, the bare minimum you’ll spend on exam fees is $2,400, though that number can top out at $4,590 if you procrastinate. Of course, the total will increase with every failed attempt.

Other costs

While access to the online curriculum is included in the registration fee, it will cost you $150 plus shipping to get your hands on the physical version. If you eventually earn you charter, you’ll have to pay $275 per year in membership dues to remain an official charterholder.

Getting started early

You don’t actually need to have your bachelor’s degree to sit for the Level I of the exam; you can take it during your senior year, though you need to graduate before registering for Level II.

Calculators

Believe it or not, only two types of calculators are allowed: the Texas Instruments BA II Plus and various versions of the Hewlett Packard 12C.

Think carefully if you live in the U.K.

Four out of 10 CFA candidates said they expected employment opportunities for investment management professionals to increase in their home market over the coming year, with just 11% believing opportunities will decrease, according to a recent CFA Institute study. In the U.K., only 22% felt the employment outlook was improving while 28% expected it to worsen – the biggest percentage among the 20 countries included in the study. The most optimistic test takers are in India.

ID required

You need to have a valid passport to register for a CFA exam.

Check your country status

Residents of a handful of countries are barred from taking the CFA. Click here to make sure your country is on the list or you won’t get your registration fee returned.

The 300-hour rule is a bit of a fallacy

The common refrain is that it takes 300 hours of study, on average, to prepare yourself for passing each exam. While this is true for Level I, the average exam preparation time is 328 hours for Level II and 335 hours for Level III, according to the CFA Institute.

You better know about fixed income

The fixed income section is deemed to be one of the three most difficult topic areas for each level. The ethics section is known as the second most difficult to master.

Passing Level I won’t benefit you much

People who pass Level I see no significant increase in their income, according to one recent study. If you pass Level II, you can expect a 20% bump in pay, after adjusting for work experience and seniority. Charterholders earn around 32% more than colleagues who never sat for the exam.

Related work experience is subjective

Most everyone knows you can’t simply pass all three levels of the CFA to earn your charter. You’ll also need four years of related work experience that the CFA Institute deems to be related to investment management. Part-time work doesn’t count, neither do internships. However, you can gain the necessary level of experience after passing all three levels and then apply for your charter – something many test takers are now doing to get it out of the way before life becomes too hectic.

What you can bring, what you can’t

You can bring a manual pencil sharpener, ear plugs, backup batteries and even a small screwdriver to the exam (to open the battery door of the calculator). But you can’t wear a smartwatch, carry your cell phone or bring a bag of any kind.

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If you apply for a graduate technology job at Goldman Sachs now, you’re going to need to complete a screening test on Hackerrank – like plenty of other banks, the firm requires you to solve a series of coding challenges as part of its application process.

You may have read that Goldman Sachs’ Hackerrank test is easy. It’s not. Believe me – I have taken it, and passed it, and it is as challenging as they come. As far as I can work out from talking to the other people on my course (computer science, top London university), only 10% to 20% of people make it through.

The first thing you need to know (and this applies to all Hackerrank tests) is that the problems your friends got, may not be the same as the problems you encounter. Questions differ from person to person (otherwise you could easily prepare ahead). If you’re lucky, you’ll get questions you can answer. If you’re unlucky you won’t.

That said, Goldman Sachs always seems to ask a range of questions that cover dynamic programming and graph theory. A particularly common problem is the ‘coin change problem,’ where you’re asked to imagine that you’re working on the cash counter at a funfair and that you have different coins in infinite quantities. The value of the coins is already given and you have to determine the number of ways of providing change for a particular number of units given the coins available. This requires dynamic programming and is one of the more challenging questions you’re likely to come across in Goldman’s test.

Another banking problem, and this isn’t specific to Goldman, is the matrix rotation question. Here, you’re asked to imagine that you have a 2D matrix, A, of a set size, and positive number R. You have to rotate the matrix R times and then print it. Your rotation needs to be in a clockwise direction.

It is possible to prepare for the Hackerrank problems posed by Goldman and other banks. Most tests will be specific to the coding language you choose (eg. Python, Java or C) and you simply need to make sure you’re familiar with data structures in your given language and comfortable with designing simple algorithms on the spot (eg. searching and sorting algos). If you can do this quickly, you’re half way there.

Whichever language you’re coding in, you will need to be able to create effective algorithms that are also simple and efficient. The questions you’re asked to solve will usually involve the use and manipulation of data structures and will have a strong focus on algorithmic design. You typically write a program that is put through a series of test cases that automatically evaluate how many good your algo is. The test is timed, so you need to be able to code under pressure. You also need to be accurate and to keep silly bugs to a minimum – ie. not forgetting a semi-colon or indenting wrongly in Python.

Personally, I practiced a lot – and this helped me make it through the Goldman tests. The good news is that if you can make it through the Goldman Hackerrank test, you should have no problem with the tests set by technology companies, which tend to be harder still. One of the most difficult tests I’ve come across is that set by Improbable, the company that makes the SpatialOS games development platform. If you think the Goldman test is hard, you’ll have no chance getting through this.

Eswar Laghari is a pseudonym

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One of Goldman Sach’s most cutting-edge units is hiring in Hong Kong. Eighteen months ago we reported that recruitment for the bank’s FAST team was centred on New York and Bengalaru – now some of the focus has shifted to Hong Kong as the bank seeks to better support its equities operations in the city.

FAST (an acronym for franchise, analytics, strategy and technology) is a cross-divisional team that partners with sales, traders, and franchise managers in the equities businesses “to understand and quantify opportunities, inefficiencies and workflow obstacles”, according to Goldman’s careers website. It’s doing this by developing analytics tools (based on large-scale complex financial data sets) that the front-office can use to turn data-driven insights into action and ultimately make better business decisions.

Goldman’s current Hong Kong-based FAST vacancy, for an engineer, provides some insights into what it takes to make it within this expansionist team. For starters, you’ll get to learn Goldman Sachs’ proprietary technologies: Slang and SecDb. But you won’t get pigeonholed into being a GS-language-only specialist because the job also requires the use of Java, Python, C++, and Linux, as well as big data tools such as Hadoop and Spark.

According to Goldman’s vacancy, the projects you might find yourself working on include, “building a chatbot that uses natural language processing to automate trade idea retrieval, building a web app that utilizes vital franchise data through machine learning to suggest potential trades, or designing metrics that analyze inquiry and trading activity to enhance client relationships”.

These are exactly the type of emerging-technology tasks that banks in Hong Kong are currently struggling to offer, leading more technologists to depart for Alibaba, Google and other pure-play tech firms. Given that FAST offers them in spades, Goldman should not be short of applications to current or future Hong Kong-based roles.

But weeding out the right people for FAST jobs may not be so straightforward. Away from the tech, these roles also demand an “entrepreneurial approach”, and constant communication with traders, salespeople and other front-office types. “In Asia, many candidates come with great tech skills, but fall down when it comes to their ability to communicate, so they wouldn’t cut it at Goldman,” says a Hong Kong-based recruiter.

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As the hit romcom Crazy Rich Asians tops the US box office and flaunts the lifestyles of Asia’s mega-wealthy elite, spare a thought for the bankers who serve the region’s real billionaires.

Bankers in Western markets are typically lumped among the blue-blooded classes, but in Asia many of them lack the social status of their business-owning clients. As a result, bankers are upping their personal spending in an effort to gain the respect of the wealthy families and company CEOs upon whom their careers depend.

“If you want to become extremely wealthy, banking isn’t the way. The new Asian elite are first-generation entrepreneurs and business owners,” says Hong Kong finance professional Matt Huang, who recently published Young China Hand, a fictionalised version of his own stint dealing with wealthy tycoons and financiers in China. “And banking isn’t a traditional career choice in Asia if you’re already from an established ‘crazy rich’ family.”

It’s a sentiment echoed in Kevin Kwan’s original book version of Crazy Rich Asians. “The only acceptable majors were medicine or law (unless you were truly dumb, in which case you settled for accounting),” writes Kwan when describing the early life of a key character, the beautiful Singaporean socialite Astrid Leong.

Astrid, who hails from Singapore’s wealthiest family, is at one point in Kwan’s novel wined and dined (and fawned over) by her private banker during a lavish Parisian ball. This part of the story seems not so far removed from reality. “Some bankers live a luxury lifestyle to impress clients by putting themselves on a par with them – that could be anything from a golf-club membership to a flashy car,” says a Hong Kong banker who asked not to be named.

Former Deutsche Banker Benjamin Quinlan, now a consultant in Hong Kong, adds: “There’s a cultural side to this – it’s about keeping face. When I dealt with Chinese bankers, some of them would show off about their amazing wine collections, for example. The more extravagant bankers are almost always men in their 20s and 30s. You see them splashing the cash at clubs with girls who’d be way out of their league if they weren’t a bit wealthy.”

Crazy Rich Asians boasts its own 30-something banker character, Eddie Cheng. While Eddie’s parents are among Hong Kong’s wealthiest property investors, he loathes their deliberately modest lifestyle and spends time hanging out with “dubious Chinese billionaires”. “People like Eddie become bankers as a channel to meet more rich people and hope to share their success,” says Huang.

Eddie may be a work of Kwan’s imagination, but his longing to ‘look the part’ in front of rich clients is a common enough desire in the industry. “Many senior bankers don’t think twice about spending US$50k on a watch, and Patek Phillippe is an obvious choice if they don’t go for an Audemars Piguet,” Eric Sim, a former Hong Kong MD, who now works as a careers coach, wrote on this site recently.

Ultimately, though, bankers in Asia are just there to service the billionaires. Eddie may own five cars, 70 watches and live on Hong Kong’s Victoria Peak, but he’s locked out of his family’s fortune, relies on his banking job for money, and feels “extremely deprived compared to most of his friends”. In the novel, Kwan describes the “envy” coursing through Eddie’s veins when visiting his friend’s new triplex penthouse (complete with computer-control wardrobes) in Shanghai.

“When bankers visit rich people in China, they’re often confronted with staggeringly blatant displays of wealth, which can cause them to feel inadequate,” adds the Hong Kong banker. “In this early stage of China’s development, success is measured by your ability to show off your wealth in the houses you own, the cars you drive and the luxury brands you wear.”

Kwan’s comic novel also provides an Asian spin on the Western phenomenon of ‘banker bashing’. Bankers are maligned in the story for being too poor, not too rich. When a group of young women from wealthy families gathers on a tropical island, the talk soon turns to whether one of their rank should marry her banker boyfriend. One of the characters scoffs at his likely net salary – $500k – and then ruthlessly breaks down the astronomical annual costs of living in style in Singapore. The marriage, she says, is “impossible” because the banker just doesn’t make enough money and there are plenty of “eligible Beijing billionaires” waiting in line.

But there is one way to be crazy rich and still stay connected to the finance sector: come from a family that owns a bank. Some of Kwan’s minor characters fall into this category and the author himself is the great grandson of a founding director of OCBC, Singapore’s oldest bank.

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Digitisation is transforming the business landscape creating new opportunities and challenges. As a result, it is more important than ever that accountants and other professionals in the financial sector ensure their skills are up to par.

The award-winning Kaplan Learning Institute has launched a series of contextualised courses to do just that. In the “Digital Proficiency for Accounting and Finance Professionals”, the course aims to help those in the sector broaden their knowledge.

The subjects covered are based on Kaplan’s International Computer Driving Licence courses. They range from becoming competent with Excel and basic spreadsheet functions, right through to understanding the key concepts of data security.

Faye Chua, ACCA Head of Business Insights, explains: “Professional accountants must maintain their technical excellence and strong ethical grounding, and supplement this with certain personal skills and qualities.”

In line with the growing importance of data, Kaplan also offers higher-level courses in this area to help professionals make the best use of information.

Its contextualised “Perform Advanced Spreadsheet Functions” module teaches professionals basic database creation and management, enabling them to pinpoint key data quicker, provide more sharply defined analysis and more sophisticated reports.

It is also crucial for today’s professionals to have adept communication skills, enabling them to address the age-old stereotype that data presentations, especially those given by accountants, are too technical.

With this in mind, Kaplan has also customised the “Perform Advanced Presentation Functions” module to help professionals plan and design more effective presentations in order for them to make a greater impact.

It covers the skills needed to customise layouts, manipulate images, charts and graphs, and even incorporate sophisticated multimedia elements. Another important skill that is likely to become increasingly relevant in the digital age is online collaboration.

The “Perform Online Collaboration” module walks students through the key concepts relating to online collaboration and cloud computing, from setting up accounts to using online storage and web-based productivity applications, to interacting through social networks, blogs and wikis.

But digital literacy is not the only skill that will be needed in the economy of the future.

While accounting and finance professionals have long been respected for their business insights, ethical grounding and ability to help drive growth in organisations, they now need to add new skills to their repertoire to create further value for their clients.

Kaplan has a long-standing partnership with the ACCA to help accountants and finance professionals not only pass their industry exams, but also to keep abreast of changes in the rapidly developing sector.

Damien O’Sullivan, Chief Executive Officer, ICDL Foundation, says: “The accountants and finance professionals are at the forefront of digital transformation and are embracing new developments in the area of artificial intelligence and data analytics. Working in partnership with ACCA gives us valuable insights into a fast-changing work environment and with the support of Kaplan we can ensure the best solution is provided.”

Following research by ACCA into the skills likely to be needed by the accountant of the future, Kaplan has also customised two Leadership & People Management Workforce Skills Qualifications (WSQ) to provide accountants with the management skills they need to stay ahead in their field.

In its research, ACCA identified seven professional quotients that it believes will be essential in the future, namely vision, creativity, intelligence, emotional intelligence, experience and digital capability, all underpinned by strong technical and ethical competencies.

Kaplan’s programmes not only equip accountants with these skills, but also enable them to gain formal recognition for their competencies within a nationally recognised framework, while also counting towards their Continued Professional Development (CPD).

ACCA members and other professional accountants can use the courses to help meet their annual CPD requirements, with each hour of training typically equating to one CPD unit.

“WSQ Professional Diploma in Leadership and People Management” is aimed at accounting and finance professionals working in executive, supervisory and mid-managerial levels. It is also open to ACCA graduates who do not yet have professional experience.

There is no fixed timeline in which the programme must be completed, offering maximum flexibility for professionals to study while they are working.

Each module requires two days of training, and students themselves decide how many training modules they want to complete, subject to availability.

The “WSQ Specialist Diploma in Leadership and People Management” is a similar programme aimed at professionals working in senior management, heads of department, or directors.

Each module requires 1.5 to two days of training, with professionals again given flexibility on the timeline and number of modules they take.

Wayne Marriott, Executive Director, Kaplan Learning Institute (Singapore), says: “Leadership skills contribute to an organisation’s success. That’s why we are infusing our leadership and people management programmes with the seven quotients to help accountants make effective decisions at all levels.”

Sivaram Ganapathy was keen to build on his distribution role in banking to one that was more technical. Aware of the need to acquire strong financial technical skills, he decided to pursue ESSEC’s Master in Finance (MiF), which is highly reputable and technically challenging.

His investment in himself paid off even before he graduated. He secured a position in a structuring team for capital markets with Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong. Ganapathy says: “The MiF equipped me with the right skills and allowed me to position myself well to secure this job.”

When selecting a Master’s programme, the ESSEC MiF appealed to him for several reasons. The most notable was its strong academic standing, as it came in 3^rd in the Financial Times’ 2017 Master in Finance global ranking. “I was looking at a few schools and ESSEC really stood out in terms of its reputation in the market and the strong technical focus of its programme,” he says.

“Experts in the field, as well as senior members and many French colleagues from my company, recommended this programme to me. They all had positive comments about the school and alumni.” Ganapathy also liked the fact that the programme offered the flexibility to study in both Singapore and France.

Another significant draw was that ESSEC’s MiF offers specialisation in one of these tracks: Corporate Finance, Financial Markets and Asset Management. This let students tailor the programme to meet their career aspirations. Ganapathy chose the Financial Markets track.

He says: “The option is really important because students would want the programme to complement their interest in the industry. I chose Financial Markets because the courses offered under this track were more technical in nature. Thanks to this, I became skilled in advanced modelling and programming whereby I had to master two different programming languages.”

Not only did the programme give him a solid foundation in financial engineering, it also taught him a new way of understanding and solving modelling challenges. “The program shapes one’s mind to think as a finance professional. Through exposure to case studies and live market data, students are primed to tackle real challenges when they enter the industry,” he says.

“In fact, you are better prepared than some of your colleagues in terms of being up to date with the latest technology. It gives you a substantial advantage.” Ganapathy found courses on Financial Econometrics and Portfolio Optimisation particularly helpful.

He explains: “The econometrics course let us understand statistics in a financial environment. We applied statistics and translated simple probability into complex financial matrices before applying them to live market data.” In the portfolio optimisation course, students competed with one another to use available market data to create the best fund portfolio.

Ganapathy explains: “Our lecturer structured it as a game for us. Students each picked their own basket of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and optimized their portfolios using theories learnt in class. It was very challenging to synthesise the theories taught with live market data. It was also very demanding to do all these using only programming code. Looking back, it was fun and certainly one of the highlights of the programme.”

One aspect of the programme that really stood out for Ganapathy was the overseas study trip. Students get to choose between two major financial hubs – New York and Hong Kong. Ganapathy travelled to Hong Kong and spent a week visiting major investment banks, private equity and security firms.

He says: “We were split into different groups according to our specialisations. My peers and I who were from the Financial Markets track networked with professionals in Structuring and Sales & Trading. “On top of that, the school encouraged us to leverage our study trip by meeting people we knew. Given that I had already applied for a few jobs in Hong Kong, I took the opportunity to attend interviews while I was there.”

One of these interviews led to Ganapathy getting a job in a structuring team for Capital Markets with Standard Chartered Bank. Another aspect of the programme that Ganapathy found hugely beneficial was student diversity, with approximately 50% of the cohort being international students.

“It was an interesting experience being with international students as they bring diverse ideas to the team and it allows you to explore new ways of solving problems,” he says. Ganapathy advises those who consider doing the ESSEC MiF to ensure they are fully committed before they start. He explains: “The programme is extremely demanding. Students need to have a strong desire and drive to do well.”

“ESSEC graduates have a strong reputation and are well-recognised in the industry. As such, the demands for the program are high. Students who graduate from the programme are well-prepared not only in terms of working in the financial industry, but also adding value to it.”

“The ESSEC MiF is really unparalleled in terms of the extent to which financial technical skills are taught with a view to groom competent professionals for the industry.”

Goldman Sachs Chief Financial Officer Martin Chavez dropped one of President Trump’s favorite phrases on Thursday, calling a report that the bank is ditching plans to open a crypto trading desk “fake news.” However, in his denial of the reporting, Chavez then appeared to confirm that the bank in fact does not have any near-term plans of setting up a trading desk to make markets in digital currencies. It’s all very confusing.

“I never thought I would hear myself use this term but I really have to describe that news as fake news,” Chavez said in response to Wednesday’s Business Insider report, according to CNBC. He noted that Goldman’s initial conversations over potential cryptocurrency offerings, first reported back in December, were exploratory and would evolve over time. “Maybe someone who was thinking about our activities here got very excited that we would be making markets as principal and physical bitcoin, and as they got into it they realized part of the evolution but it’s not here yet,” he said.

Chavez is therefore confirming the crux of Wednesday’s report – that Goldman has no immediate plans to trade cryptocurrencies – and is rather taking issue with the idea that bank ever set ink to any physical trading plans in the first place. “The CFO of Goldman Sachs just called a story ‘fake news’ while also confirming the contents of said story. Weird,” Matt Turner, Business Insider’s executive editor, tweeted on Thursday night.

The issue, it seems, goes all the way back to late last year, when Bloomberg reported that Goldman is “setting up a trading desk to make markets in digital currencies,” and was assembling a team in New York. With that narrative set, anything other than the launch of a trading desk would appear like a deviation in strategy, though in fairness the bank didn’t confirm Bloomberg’s initial report, noting at the time that it was “exploring how best to serve” client interests in digital currencies.

At the end of the day, Goldman Sachs isn’t playing market maker in crypto – at least not in the near-term. Instead, the bank is exploring over-the-counter bitcoin derivatives Chavez referred to as “non-deliverable forwards,” according to CNBC, which said Goldman has been clearing bitcoin-linked futures contracts since May. Chavez may have been inclined to clear the air on Goldman’s cryptocurrency strategy as the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fell off a cliff on Thursday following the Business Insider report. Historically, Goldman remains rather mum on media reports.

Elsewhere, Deutsche Bank is letting it be known which clients it loves best. The German lender, which has taken a knife to its U.S. prime brokerage unit, invited a select group of hedge fund managers and other institutional investors to a Thursday meeting aimed at reassuring big clients that it’s pared down unit can still deliver all the required brokerage services, according to Bloomberg. Deutsche Bank is reportedly severing ties with less valuable clients to concentrate its efforts more on high-revenue generating funds. The bank trotted out all its big-name U.S. executives for the meeting. No attendees were named, though Renaissance Technologies, Och-Ziff Capital Management and AQR Capital Management are among Deutsche’s biggest clients.

Meanwhile:

Amid speculation, Credit Suisse Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam said he will not be leaving his post to run for president in his native Ivory Coast. “My task is not yet completed and I have every intention of continuing,” he said. (Bloomberg)

Citigroup is combining its corporate and investment bank (CIB) with its capital markets origination business under the leadership of Manolo Falco, formerly head of corporate and investment banking in Europe. The reshaped global investment bank has an acronym that is bound to confuse more than few people: BCMA. (Financial News)

The Wall Street Journal just published a profile on Kathleen McCarthy, Blackstone’s co-head of real estate. The former Goldman Sachs exec has turned into a fundraising superstar. She once turned some heads of investors by setting a specific day when fundraising needed to be completed: her due date. The real-estate fund raised a record $14.5 billion, closing one day after she gave birth to her daughter. (WSJ)

Berea College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Washington, Seattle offer the best bang for the buck when it comes to the value of undergraduate degrees, according to a new study. Harvard University, which has earmarked $200 million in financial aid this year and doesn’t expect contributions from parents earning less than $65k annually, finished in 6th. (WSJ)

An unnamed U.K. hedge fund manager carried on an extramarital affair that included role play at his office, where the woman dressed as a sexy secretary for a “job interview.” When the affair went south, she allegedly repeatedly contacted the man’s wife and eventually showed up to confront him at his office. (The Sun)

The Justice Department has launched an investigation into Wells Fargo’s wholesale unit following a Wall Street Journal report that indicated some employees had been altering documents of corporate customers without their knowledge. Officials are reportedly looking into whether pressure from management could be partially to blame for some of the bank’s recent scandals. (WSJ)

J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said that any law-abiding graduate from a U.S. university should be given a green card, and that President Trump told him behind closed doors that he agrees. (Business Insider)

Follow @BeecherTuttle

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It’s still happening. No sooner did we suggest that hedge fund traders who once worked for investment banks were returning to their former homes than senior bank traders have begun leaving for hedge funds all over again. There have been at least two in this month alone.

The latest hedge-fund leavers include Corrado Giovanelli, a former managing director for global markets sales in Italy, who’s turned up at a hedge fund in Milan, and Laurent Henrio, the former global head of credit trading at SocGen, who’s arrived at Axiom Alternative Investments, where he’ll be running a fund. Both men had been long-term sell-side employees previously – Giovanelli spent nearly eight years with Credit Suisse and nearly 10 years with Merrill Lynch; Henrio spent nearly eight years with SocGen and seven years with J.P. Morgan.

Giovanelli will be managing director at Incus Capital, a Madrid-based fund focused on capital credit lending. He will be working in the Milan office after leaving Credit Suisse in June. Henrio, who also left SocGen three months ago, will remain based in London with Axiom.

Henrio and Giovanelli’s moves come as hedge funds are increasingly hiring from within their own ranks. ExodusPoint Capital, the $8bn hedge fund set up by Michael Gelband, a former star fixed income trader at Millennium Management, has shown a preference for hiring established traders from other hedge funds (read Millennium). It’s just recruited Andy Hill, a former trader at Balyasny and Millennium who started his career at UBS, as head of trading in London.

““

There is discomfiture at Deutsche Bank. So far this year – since reaching a high of €19.8 on January 4th, the German bank’s share price is down 42%. It’s the kind of fall that doesn’t play well when top managing directors have their entirety of their deferred bonuses withheld for 4.5 years, or when half of last year’s bonuses for material risk takers in Deutsche’s corporate and investment bank were paid in restricted shares that won’t vest until March 2022 and then need to be held for another twelve months before they can be sold.

In the circumstances, the decision by Deutsche’s major shareholder HNA Group to divest its holding in the bank, is not reassuring. The year-to-date share price fall means that Deutsche’s 2017 bonus recipients have already seen last year’s stock bonuses nearly halved and there are fears they could fall further still. Following various voluntary exits of senior staff, is it time for DB to introduce a new retention package?

As we’ve reported previously, Deutsche introduced retention bonuses under former CEO John Cryan in 2017. However, Cryan’s scheme is currently worthless: it will pay only if Deutsche’s shares are trading at €23 in the first few weeks of 2021; pigs are more likely to fly.

In the meantime, senior staff are trickling away. Last week’s exit of Tadhg Flood, head of the financial institutions group (FIG) team for Centerview, is understood to have been a surprise internally as Flood, a DB lifer, had been saying positive things about Christian Sewing’s strategy. As senior bankers seek the security of new roles elsewhere, some juniors are following. Insiders point to the resignations this week of Ethan Kok and Nicholas de Vibe, an analyst and associate respectively on Deutsche’s tech banking team as symptoms of a spreading malaise.

Meanwhile, Florian Miciu, Deutsche Bank’s EMEA head of equities product, who resigned around July, is understood to be arriving at Saxo Bank in London early next week – suggesting that even smaller regional banks are seen as a desirable alternative to the German behemoth.

“It’s beyond absurd here,” complains one Deutsche Bank managing director. “No one ever cut their way to growth. Ever,” he adds of Sewing’s intention to get costs below €23bn for 2018.

Another senior DB banker says the challenging cost target means Sewing and his lieutenant, Frank Kuhnke, the COO responsible for implementing the cost cutting programming, have their hands tied when it comes to offering a new retention package to their most valued staff. “Their problem is that they can’t offer anything unless this cost target is surpassed. The most they can probably hope for is that they lose enough managing directors and directors to exceed their cost target, and that they can then to try and stem the tide of exits with the savings they’ve made,” he says.

However, the same banker suggests that this is a risky policy because the departure of too many good client-facing senior bankers will hobble Deutsche’s ability to win business and therefore encourage juniors to quit too. “A one-off retention bonus (especially if it’s a target share option type) is not going to stop people leaving if it looks like we won’t win any mandates with sub-par seniors.”

Of course, there is another alternative – and this is that Deutsche meets its cost-cutting target and the bank’s share price rises of its own accord and keeps restless staff in situ. Deutsche declined to comment for this article, but this is clearly Sewing’s aim. It helps that HNA plans to exit its stake only gradually over an 18 month period and that the stake is controlled through derivatives, which mean that the negative effect on Deutsche’s share price could be less dramatic than would otherwise be the case.

“”

While it may not be a household name across the globe, New York’s Baruch College has quietly been a major feeder for Wall Street firms for decades. But over the last few years in particular, one of Baruch’s master’s degree programs has become a bit of a golden ticket for students who want some of the hottest jobs in finance: quants, data scientists, algo traders and other high-level engineering positions.

Launched in 2002, Baruch’s master’s in financial engineering program is small and extremely selective; only 48 of the 622 applicants were admitted in the fall of 2018, despite the fact that the program is committed to not capping the number of seats available, according to director Dan Stefanica. “No other program I know of offers unlimited seats,” he said. Stefanica and his staff interviewed more than 300 applicants, but only four dozen were admitted.

Candidates have good reason to want to earn a coveted spot. QuantNet just ranked Baruch as the top financial engineering and quantitative finance program in the country, ahead of the likes of MIT, UC Berkley, Columbia and Princeton. Tuition is around $40k, less than half of that for MIT’s master’s in finance program. One of the reasons for the program’s success is its willingness to evolve alongside recent changes in technology and the new demands of Wall Street, said Stefanica. They’ve introduced 25 new courses since 2010, including a class on blockchain launched just this year.

The program also allows students to use 24 of their 36 credits on elective courses, while offering many half-semester classes as well. Course subject matter ranges from machine learning, big data in finance, commodities and futures trading, and derivatives hedging and valuation, among other topics. Technical workshops on popular banking programing languages like C++, VBA, Python, R and Matlab are interweaved.

Stefanica also points to some unique career training offerings available to students, 80% of whom are international (Baruch is one of the most diverse colleges in the country). While students must be fluent in English to be accepted, Baruch holds a speech seminar to help with enunciation, along with a variety of career-focused talks from subject matter experts on topics like interview preparation.

But what truly sets the program apart is its alumni network and the relationships it has with top employers, according to Stefanica. “If [previous graduates] weren’t successful, we wouldn’t be able to put students in front of the right people,” he said. “Alumni know first-hand that if they help one of our students get hired, they’ll look good” [with their employer].

Indeed, the numbers back up the talk. The placement rate at graduation over the last three years was 96%, with average first-year compensation of $126k – a particularly impressive number considering graduates over that stretch had a medium of only 1.5 years of previous full-time employment. The high was $210k while the low was $85k.

Recent graduates found positions as quants, credit strats, index flow traders, trade management application developers and software engineers, among other titles. Employers include Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Point72 Asset Management, Citadel and AQR Capital Management.

Of course, you’ll need a strong resume to be considered. The average undergraduate GPA is 3.68 with a GRE quant score of 169, tied for the highest among master’s programs ranked by QuantNet. More than a third (34%) of students already have a master’s degree or PhD. The most well-represented undergrad majors are finance, mathematics, engineering, economics and computer science.

Follow @BeecherTuttle

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BANK OF AMERICA MERRILL LYNCH

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 full-time graduate jobs

Deadline: 28 September 2018

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 summer internship jobs

Deadline: 19 October 2018 (late deadline) and 14 September 2018 (early deadline)

BNP PARIBAS

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 full-time graduate jobs

Deadline: 31 October 2018 [Jobs in: investment banking, ALM treasury, FIC, ITO, loan syndicate and sales, global markets, coverage and territories credit management, transaction banking]

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 summer internship jobs

Deadline: 30 November 2018 [Jobs in: investment banking, ALM treasury, FIC, ITO, global markets, transaction banking]

CITI

Singapore 2019 full-time graduate jobs

Deadline: 23 November 2018 (late deadline). Citi encourages students to apply by the early deadline of 21 September 2018 as applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. [Jobs in: markets and securities services, corporate banking, global consumer banking, international personal bank (offshore wealth management), commercial banking, technology]

Singapore 2019 summer internship jobs

Deadline: 23 November 2018 (late deadline); and 21 September 2018 (early deadline). [Jobs in: markets, corporate banking, investment banking, treasury and trade solutions, private bank, global consumer banking, international personal bank (offshore wealth management), commercial banking, technology]

*Hong Kong information to follow

CREDIT SUISSE

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 full-time graduate jobs

Deadline: 4 November 2018 [jobs in: private banking only. All other positions have already been filled via internship conversions.]

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 summer internship jobs

Deadline: 12 October 2018 [HK jobs in: APAC financing group, APAC Markets, investment banking and capital markets, international wealth management, risk, technology. SG jobs in: APAC financing group, investment banking and capital markets, private banking, risk, technology]

DEUTSCHE BANK

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 full-time graduate jobs

Deadline: 30 September 2018 [HK jobs in: finance, global markets, human resources, wealth management. SG jobs in: global markets, technology, wealth management]

Hong Kong 2019 summer internship jobs

Deadline: 31 October 2018 [Jobs in: chief regulatory office, corporate finance, DWS, global markets, global transaction banking, wealth management]

Singapore 2019 summer internship jobs

Deadline: 14 October 2018 [Jobs in: chief regulatory office, corporate finance, DWS, global markets, global transaction banking, wealth management, technology]

GOLDMAN SACHS

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 full-time graduate jobs

Deadline: 14 October 2018

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 summer internship jobs

Deadline: 14 October 2018

HSBC

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 full-time graduate jobs

Deadline: 22 October 2018

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 summer internship jobs

Deadline: 22 October 2018

J.P. MORGAN

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 full-time graduate jobs

Deadline: 28 October 2018 [Jobs in: software engineering]

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 summer jobs

Deadline: 28 October 2018, apart from investment banking (2 December 2018), and quantitative research (3 February 2019). [Jobs in: global treasury management, investment banking, investment banking, markets, quantitative research, risk management, human resources, corporate, finance and business management, software engineer, asset management, wealth management]

*J.P. Morgan’s summer jobs are a mixture of different programs, such as the summer associate program, the summer associate program and the summer internship.

MORGAN STANLEY

Hong Kong 2019 full-time graduate jobs

Deadline: 21 October 2018 [Jobs in: technology]

*Morgan Stanley is not offering any full-time graduate jobs in Singapore for 2019.

Hong Kong 2019 summer internship jobs

Deadline: 14 October 2018 [Jobs in: institutional securities group – fixed income division, global capital markets, institutional equity division, investment banking division, quantitative finance. Infrastructure divisions – compliance, corporate services, finance, human resources, technology]

Singapore 2019 summer internship jobs

Deadlines: 16 September 2018 for equity research and investment banking division; 14 October 2018 for other divisions [Jobs in: institutional securities group – equity research, investment banking division, fixed income division, global capital markets, institutional equity division]

SOCIETE GENERALE

Hong Kong 2019 full-time graduate jobs

Deadline: 31 October 2018 [Jobs in: front office]

Singapore 2019 summer internship jobs

Deadline: early May 2019

*SocGen is not offering any graduate-programme jobs in Singapore for 2019.

*Separately from its (fixed-deadline) Hong Kong ‘graduate programme’ (see above), SocGen also runs a ‘trainee programme’ in both Hong Kong and Singapore with no annual application deadline. Hiring is on a rolling basis throughout the year.

STANDARD CHARTERED

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 full-time graduate jobs

Deadline: 31 December 2018 [Jobs in: commercial banking, global banking, corporate finance, financial markets, retail banking, transaction banking, wealth management, risk and compliance, information technology and operations, group CFO functions]

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 summer internship jobs

Deadline: 31 December 2018 [Jobs in: commercial banking, global banking, corporate finance, financial markets, retail banking, transaction banking, wealth management, risk and compliance, information technology and operations, group CFO functions]

UBS

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 full-time graduate jobs

Deadline: 12 October 2018 [HK jobs in: operations, technology, securities sales (equities), securities trading (equities), compliance and operational risk control, human resources, client advisor (GWM), investment platforms and solutions (GWM). SG jobs in: operations, technology, group risk control, human resources, corporate client solutions (IBD), client advisor (GWM), investment platforms and solutions (GWM)]

Hong Kong and Singapore 2019 summer internship jobs

Deadline: 02 November 2018 [HK jobs in: operations, technology, securities sales (foreign exchange, rates and credit), securities sales (equities), securities trading (equities), group asset liability management, finance, communications, human resources, corporate client solutions (IBD), client advisor (GWM), investment platforms and solutions (GWM). SG jobs in: operations, technology, securities sales (foreign exchange, rates and credit), securities trading (foreign exchange, rates and credit), group asset liability management, finance, communications, human resources, corporate client solutions (IBD), client advisor (GWM), investment platforms and solutions (GWM)]

I have a confession to make: I used to work for Morgan Stanley. I am not however, being paid to write this. Nor do I have a vested interest in what I’m about to say, but it needs to be known. The bankers at Morgan Stanley are leagues nicer than those anywhere else. I may be partial, but after going through the analyst programme there and seeing how other banks treat their analysts, I would not have started my banking career anywhere else.

Sycophantic as this may sound, the senior bankers at Morgan Stanley care. When my director knew I was busy working on stuff he’d often unexpectedly show up in the morning with a coffee and a croissant. When I worked late one day, they made me go home at 4pm the next. Ok, we still had to work horribly hard on live deals, but our managers were always solicitous of our well-being. And although Morgan Stanley famously avoided implementing restrictions on working hours like other banks, we never seemed to be working harder than colleagues at banks who sent people home on Saturdays.

The real difference though was that Morgan Stanley had an, “‘all in this together” attitude, where they were really invested in juniors’ development. It’s seriously not like this at other banks. For example, as an analyst I worked on plenty of projects where I would attend (and even lead parts of) meetings for deals we were co-advising on. I was there in the meetings, but our co-advisors wouldn’t even let their associates attend the meetings – let alone speak.

All of this begs an obvious question: why did I leave? Well, I’d always wanted to work in private equity. For me, banking was only ever a stop-off. I’ve been on the buy-side for several years now and I have no regrets about moving. This isn’t to say, that I didn’t go with a heavy heart, or that I don’t miss my colleagues at Morgan Stanley. I seriously loved it there!

Arnaud Juillet is the pseudonym of a former MS analyst who now works in private equity

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It’s coming up to the tenth anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, and so we can expect a lot of retrospectives looking back on that day, and on the lessons learned. For example, John Authers in the FT recalls the day that he saw queues of Wall Streeters trying to shift their money out of Chase and Citigroup, but didn’t get a photographer to get pictures, because he was worried that if the FT published this story it might cause a general bank run. This is illuminating, but when most people look back on Lehman and the crisis, their main questions is what happened to bankers’ pay?

In a thrown-away remark in an interview on the “crisis of capitalism”, U.K. Archbishop Justin Welby offers an helpful insight. Welby mentions that he was recently in a meeting in which a group of senior bankers reflected upon their diminished compensation. One said that “back in 2007 many of us were on eight-figure salaries — ie over £10m […] If you look around this room, there’s not one of us who’s getting paid more than £5m a year”.

It’s something of a broad brush statement, but the Archbishop is actually quite close to being right. At the top end, total compensation has more or less halved. And yet from the perspective of anyone looking in from outside – it’s still abnormally high.

If we look, for example, at the Lehman Brothers 2007 compensation report, the lowest paid employee in the top fifty was taking $8.2m home, with $16.75m marking the start of the top ten. Scroll forward to a more recent top pay table (from Megan Messina’s equal pay lawsuit against BoAML in 2016), and there are “top traders” including the head of loan trading, getting barely into seven figures, let alone eight.

A pay cheque of $5m, and certainly £5m, would certainly put you into the ranks of the top hitters these days. The regulatory disclosures made by London offices of the top banks confirm this; the equivalent of €1m is the going rate for top risk takers, and €5m is very much a big-hitter level – only 14 people at JP Morgan earned this much or more, and only 32 at Goldman Sachs. The number of employees still in “eight figures” could be counted on one’s fingers.

What’s changed? There’s a big clue in the Lehman disclosure, where two of the top ten earners were not MDs, but only of Senior Vice-President rank. These super high-paid VPs worked on proprietary trading desks, a function which simply doesn’t exist in big banks any more, but which used to not only drive the overall profits and bonus pool, but also to a substantial degree drive the norms for pay across the bank. It’s also interesting, though, how even in 2007, there were plenty of the top earners in “Administration” roles at Lehman; the move toward greater recognition for compliance, technology, COO and admin roles had already begun, and has only accelerated since.

Of course, the top end of the distribution doesn’t tell the whole story and nor do the headline total comp figures. At the lower end of the pay scale, the basic salaries awarded to junior ranks have grown substantially, at least partly because they are no longer supplemented by mega bonuses in the good years. Not only have “good years” for the investment banking industry been in short supply since the crisis, but the regulation of compensation in Europe has affected norms across the industry, with a multiple of 100% of salary now being seen as an aspirational goal for top performers at most levels, rather than the baseline expectation for a competent year’s work.

There have been other changes in the working environment too; more and more of us do at least some of our work from home, logging on to the office system remotely. But this can mean that “work” data and “personal” information get intermingled, in a way which makes it difficult to decide what information is whose property, and what rights the company has to snoop. A court case in New York, where a former managing director at Brevet Capital LLC is suing Brevet under the federal anti-hacking laws, is bringing a lot of these issues out into the open.

One fact which seems relevant in the Brevet case is that the company bought the laptop which Paul Iacovici also used as his family computer. When they suspected him of downloading confidential documents that they thought he might use to start a competing business, they decided to first sack him, and then use remote access to go through his hard drive. They are pleading that they had bought the computer, and their IT support team had been given the passwords, so nothing illegal was done.

Experts involved in the case seem to be suggesting that once your personal information touches an employer’s company network, you have to assume that it’s accessible to the employer. Even something as innocent as connecting your phone to a work computer to update iTunes could create enough of a digital trail to allow your boss to access your text messages. This is true in the USA and under standard employment contracts there, that is; in Europe, employees probably have more solid privacy rights, which might partly compensate for the lower wages.

Meanwhile….

The extraordinary corporate governance of JD.com, where not only is the board prevented from meeting in the absence of Liu Qiangdong, but the rule which prevents this explicitly makes it clear that this is not waived even if the absence is as a result of being compulsorily detained (as Mr Liu currently is) (WSJ)

Neil Horlock, a long-serving technologist and exchange connectivity architect, is leaving Credit Suisse after 20 years (TheTrade News)

A former GS banker in Australia decided on a career break, spent some time driving a hearse, and is now launching a funeral services startup (Australian Financial Review)

Generation Z have some new ideas about retirement savings – 63% of “affluent” people between the ages of 18 and 22 say that their financial security is dependent on inheriting money. Nothing unusual there, except that 17% of them think that this inheritance will come from “friends” rather than their parents or grandparents. (Bloomberg)

Tidjane Thiam rules out a move into politics, so the citizens of Cote d’Ivoire will not, for the time being, see their country shut down some of its loss-making regions in order to focus on Asia (Financial TImes)

The “evolutionary algorithms” hedge fund, Sentient, is shutting down after two years. With generally poor performance across AI funds, some researchers are suggesting that “winter is coming” after the rush of excitement over deep learning. (Bloomberg Tech)

The ECB is continuing to increase pressure on banks which are moving operations to Euroland post-Brexit, now requiring details of staff and operational moves, in order to be certain that there will be no “brass-plate” moves (The TImes)

Andrei Tyurin, the hacker behind the JP Morgan data breach and the “biggest financial cybercrime of all time” is now in custody in the USA after extradition from Georgia (Forbes)

Showing that the securitisation market is more robust that it used to be – the departure of Palm Lane Credit Opportunities, the JP Morgan hedge fund which used to provide warehouse lines to CLO managers, has hardly affected issuance in August, (Bloomberg)

A former star broker from UBS’ Boston wealth management arm is suing the company for gender bias in the distribution of the best client accounts. (Bloomberg)

For a change, a financial crime story in which Deutsche Bank are the good guys; it appears that the Danske Bank Estonia money laundering scandal started to fall apart when Deutsche withdrew correspondent banking services after becoming concerned about the branch. (Bloomberg)

““

Alex Woodgate has just landed one of the most interesting jobs at J. P. Morgan.

The former Goldman Sachs executive director and TMT (technology, media, telecom) research specialist joined J. P. Morgan as an incubation product manager earlier this month in London. The new role suggests that Woodgate will be managing the technology products that come from J.P. Morgan’s incubation programme.

J. P. Morgan launched its incubation program, In-Residence, for financial technology startups in mid-2016. Under the program, emerging fintech companies join the bank for six months during which they get access to JPM’s facilities, systems, and expertise.

Daniel Drummer, vice president, data science, fintech and innovation at JPM, previously headed In-Residence, left to manage J.P. Morgan’s Roar programme for crowd-sourced data earlier this year.

J.P. Morgan has been sharpening its focus on technology. JPM’s annual tech spend reached $9.5 billion in 2016 and 2017 and is poised to touch $10.8 billion this year.

Woodgate started his investment banking career with Berenberg as a graduate research analyst for banks, construction, and telecom sector in 2012 and moved to equity sales two years later. He joined Goldman Sachs in 2015 as an analyst and became an associate six months later. He became an ED at in Goldman’s TMT global investment research team in July last year.

Companies sponsored by J.P. Morgan’s incubator include AccessFintech, a post-trade startup created to help buy-side and sell-side firms manage vendor and operational risk across the trade life-cycle, and Mosaic, a company providing insights into bank transaction and market data. The ability to spot a good incubation opportunity is becoming a valuable skillset for banks – Citi hired Alex Sion from J.P. Morgan to run its D10X startup incubator in July. By comparison, research jobs have been dwindling under MiFID II – last week’s market intelligence report from Coalition identified equity research jobs as a particular area of decline in the first half of 2018.

““

Barclays has brought in a Credit Suisse banker with more than three decades of experience in audit, compliance, and quality assurance to help protect its reputation, which has been marred by scandals over the last few years.

Stefano Toffolo joined Barclays as a managing director earlier this month in London. He will head the Chief Control Office and oversee its partnership with the compliance division and the company secretariat on key group reputation and conduct risk programmes, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Barclays has been hit by a succession of scandals in recent years. They include controversies related to manipulating LIBOR, which resulted in a $453 million fine from U.S. and U.K. regulators in 2012, manipulating foreign exchange rates which landed the bank with $2.4 billion fine by the U.S. government in 2015, and mortgage mis-selling in the run-up to the financial crisis which saw the bank paying $2 billion to the U.S. regulators earlier this year. Barclays was also fined £72m pounds by British regulators in 2015 for failing to safeguard against the risk of being used to facilitate financial crime.

The most recent scandal to hit Barclays was chief executive Jes Staley’s attempts to unmask a whistleblower who sent letters to the board in 2016. This led to Staley himself being fined £642k by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority in May.

Toffolo’s expertise may therefore come in useful. Prior to joining Barclays, he spent almost two decades at Credit Suisse. He started out at the Swiss bank as a director in 1998 and rose through the ranks to become a managing director in 2007. During his tenure at CS, Toffolo had various roles including global head of investment banking operations, head of investment banking front to back process design and delivery, and chief compliance and regulatory affairs officer (enterprise front to back) and compliance QA.

““

There is an exodus from banks in London. Few people in the industry are talking about it, because even in banking Brexit raises high emotions, but people are trickling away in large numbers and it is only going to get worse.

I am one of them. I spent over ten years in London and was a managing director at a major European bank, but this autumn I am going back to work in my home country. I’m not alone. I know many more people at my level who have decided to relocate to continental Europe. More people are choosing to leave London than at any time during my career – far more than after the financial crisis in 2009 and 2010, for example.

The disappearance of a layer of senior Europeans from London is rarely discussed in banks themselves. The exodus is too political. Senior bankers are as passionate, loud and opinionated about Brexit as the rest. Better just to let people silently slip back to Europe. Just don’t presume it’s not happening.

For me, a preemptive exit seemed best. I know what’s coming: I was part of the internal discussions on the bank’s strategy. As part of the sales team, I knew we were going to be asked to move soon: the bank simply can’t afford to be left in a position where licenses are removed post-Brexit and it’s unable to serve clients in Europe. A forced migration was coming: I decided to jump before it arrived.

For my colleagues and I, Brexit comes at the end of a difficult decade in London. First we had the financial crisis. Then we had vicious cost-cutting – in the past three years my team was cut again and again. Brexit is an excuse for more cuts, and a trigger for more upheaval. Look around you on a London trading floor: the gaps are obvious and the exodus of people to Paris, Frankfurt, Zurich and Milan is already well underway. It’s gathering pace.

A lot of us have sound financial reasons for returning. European countries have begun competing for talent with generous tax packages: if I go to Milan now I can pay a flat rate of €100k a year instead of income tax on my overseas earnings; if I go to Paris, I can get a tax break as an expat. London has become an expensive place to be.

Of course, this might change. But for the moment, London is not where the opportunities are. Banks are not investing in London: there are fewer good job opportunities in the City than there used to be. This has not gone unnoticed. People in finance are flexible – they will move to Asia if this is where the best jobs are found. For the moment, though, some of the best opportunities seem to be in Paris, Frankfurt or Milan – many of these markets are under-developed, particularly on the buy-side. Senior bankers have sniffed an opportunity to position themselves ahead of time, and like me plenty are acting on it.

Henri Ouvrard is the pseudonym of a managing director who recently left a European investment bank in London

““

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