Junior investment bankers go into the industry preaching passion and commitment, but the reality is that a lot of millennials taking a bulge bracket job these days have one eye on bolstering their resume and moving on. If this is your intention, don’t bother applying to Lazard.
Lazard, which is still something of a pure play advisory firm (and asset manager, of course), recruits junior bankers for “life”, according to its CEO William Rucker, who interviewed with Financial News. Analysts are, he says, “feedstock for the future partners of the firm”. M&A and other investment banking advisory work is all about fostering long-term relationships with clients. Hiring in a bunch of analysts only to have them leave after a couple of years for a fintech start-up isn’t conducive to this.
“We’ve put an enormous amount of effort into recruiting, training and development, performance measurement. And I think most investment banks are not very good at this stuff,” he said.
Work/life balance is important to junior bankers he says, but Lazard hasn’t introduced free weekends or restrictions on working hours. Instead, it’s tried to limit the size of pitchbooks: “We’ve talked to our clients – they hate big books, and most people hate producing them, so we try to keep the length down.”
Juniors don’t mind working long hours, he says, but there needs to be a live deal, not working on a marketing book that is never used, or being forced to implement the whims of demanding MDs at the drop of a hat with no guidance. “You can’t expect a 24-year-old to know exactly what you want to say to the chairman of a FTSE 100 company.”
Separately, while investment banks and other financial services firms have been banging the drum for access to the single market, there’s a bigger concern – still being able to hire from the European Union. The free movement of people has been a boon to the City, and around 11% of those working in a financial services role in London are from another EU state.
As a reminder, Theresa May’s ‘hard Brexit’ tactics include clamping down on immigration to appease the Leave voters and sacrificing access to the single market in order to be able to implement them. Johannes Huth, European head of private equity group KKR, told the FT that some sort of reassurances on retaining access to talent from the EU was “a matter of the most immediate and important concern”
“The government quite correctly characterises the UK as being an open economy, and is desirous of further and increased investment. It would be ironic and harmful to that policy if ‘open’ means ‘closed’ to skills necessary to realising the benefits of such investment,” added Sir Win Bischoff, chairman of JPMorgan Securities and of the Financial Reporting Council.
Meanwhile:
Jamie Dimon responds to Clinton’s Wall Street barb: “When people blanket a whole class of people by making statements I think it is unfair to everybody. I can do the same thing about media or politicians or lawyers. They are never accurate. This business is full of high quality, qualified, talented, ethical people smart and ethical as you’ll find in institutions almost anywhere.” (Dealbreaker)
Giles Graham, the chairman for financial institutions at Citi in Europe, is leaving (Financial News)
Banks want to come to Ireland after Brexit? It needs to be more than a brass plaque (Irish Times)
HSBC has a new head of corporate credit trading (Financial News)
Sean Carmody, head of financial institutions advisory at J.P. Morgan in New York, has joined Centerview Partners. He’s a partner focused on the financial services industry. (Bloomberg)
Deutsche Bank has been hiring internet investment bankers (Business Insider)
John Vaske spent 28 years at Goldman Sachs in M&A. He was promoted from managing director to partner in just 2 years and, before joining he was known as the ‘Terminator’ for his defensive basketball skills. He’s now retired. (WSJ)
European banks have eliminated 20,000 jobs (City AM)
“Women on Wall Street were not very popular.” (Bloomberg)
Evercore chairman Robert Altman: “One of the things going on here is that Deutsche Bank’s under pressure for a number of reasons, but one of which is it’s so small.” (Bloomberg)
Jamie Dimon: there’s no reason why Deutsche Bank couldn’t be fine (Bloomberg)
“There is a ‘la la la la la la’ moment going on. Financial services companies are not the top priority at the moment” (Financial Times)
Want to get by on four hours sleep a night? It’s all in the genes (Quartz)
Related articles:
Morning Coffee: Sad lives of 23 year-olds on trading floors. Theresa May’s message to banksLife as a junior in IBD can be harsh, but is your youth spent any more productively as an analyst or associate on a trading floor?
Morning Coffee: How this 29-year-old trader pursued a $25m golden hello. Deutsche Bank is cutting 1,000 jobsA group of traders allegedly made out like bandits, especially the ringleader. Plus: For Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank, when it rains, it pours.
Morning Coffee: How J.P. Morgan suppresses its jerks. Deutsche’s end game?J.P. Morgan has a method for stopping obnoxious people progressing too far.