Juniorisation of the trading floor is so 2016. So, you’ve made managing director at Goldman Sachs before you hit 30? Big deal – you should’ve hit partner. You’re managing your own multi-billion dollar hedge fund portfolio at 28? About time – you can join the buy-side straight out of college now.
To be a big deal in finance in your 20s these days, you need to be leading your own disruptive fintech company, or working as a quant. So suggests Forbes’ new 30 Under 30 list for the financial sector. 2016 was dominated by 28-year-old MDs at Goldman and young hedge fund managers. These are still on the list this year, but it’s the fintech entrepreneurs that appear the most impressive.
Take 29-year-old Richard Craib (29), founder of artificial intelligence tournament cum hedge fund, Numerai. Craib is himself a machine learning expert who paid machine learning homeworkers under $200k to create hedge fund strategies for a fraction of the price of those working in large hedge funds.
Then there’s Matthew Humphrey, who is 29, founder of mortgage fintech firm LendingHome, which has just secured $100m in VC funding and Eugene Marinelli – also 29 – who has set up Blend, a mortgage lending platform backed by Peter Thiel.
In truth, the list this year is once again full of young over-achievers from all areas of finance that will make the most of us feel inadequate. But while last year’s ranking featured young traders bumped up to managing director at big banks, 2017’s pick is much more tech-focused.
23-year-old Zach Harmed (23), for example, is a product manager in Goldman Sachs’ strats group responsible for its ‘Studio’ Marquee app. On the advisory side, Brandon Watkins, 28, leads a coverage group focused on emerging internet finance companies at Goldman. David Smalling, 29, co-head of a quantitative systematic trading unit at BlackRock also makes the ranking.
Separately, Jamie Dimon loves London. He wants to keep J.P. Morgan’s European jobs in the UK. He even wears cufflinks made from British coins. He told Financial News in a wide-ranging interview that J.P. Morgan will keep its investment banking jobs in London if it possibly can. The problem is, it might not be able to.
“If there is not a clear transitional period decided early in the process, where passporting rules still apply for a few years after negotiations, then we’d likely have to accelerate our timetable in complying with new rules,” he said.
Dimon is not alone. London has a “real stickiness”, Gary Campkin, director of policy and strategy at CityUK, told the Guardian, and firms don’t want to move. Nonetheless, Andrew Gray, head of Brexit at PwC, thinks firms banks could start making announcements as early as next month when they release their full-year results.
Paris, which has made it clear that it has no problems housing an influx of 20,000 bankers from London, is also convinced that banks are accelerating their moves and decisions will be taken “in the first semester”.
Meanwhile:
Don’t get carried away with the Trump rally. By the time he’s in, stock markets could be “uncertain and volatile” (Bloomberg)
Recruiters think that, actually, banks will start hiring for their FICC teams again (Financial News)
Rothschild has had a good year (Financial News)
Ray Dalio versus the WSJ (LinkedIn)
Banks will foot 83% of the €2.5bn cost of MiFID II (Financial News)
“I’m not sure how much more we need to learn before we can sit back, let the machine take over and all go to the beach. But while that may happen one day, I can’t see it happening before I retire.” (South China Morning Post)
How hedge funds will develop in 2017 (Hedgeco)
Hedge funds and private equity firms are your new landlords, and they take no prisoners (Bloomberg)
Homo sapiens have fewer facial expressions than extinct human species, but we can talk more (Biorxiv)
Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com
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