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Private equity is dying. So wrote Professor John Colley of the UK’s Warwick University Business School in an article for the Conversation this week. Blighted by a crowded market, competition for deals and risky investments, PE will make increasingly marginal returns, said Colley. – Try telling this to the junior Goldman Sachs bankers who still see the business as the crock at the end of the rainbow.

Goldman juniors’ new preferred PE fund seems to be Summit Partners, a Boston Massachusetts based-fund focused on technology, healthcare and “growth products”.

Summit has had an office in London since 2013. Its most recent accounts say it employed 18 people in the UK at the end of 2016, the same as the year before. However, Summit seems to have been adding juniors in 2017, and Goldman analysts have been only too willing to oblige.

Summit’s most recent London hire is Nik Ohri, a former Goldman leveraged finance analyst who quit the firm after only a year. In May it hired Matt Heims, a former Goldman consumer banking analyst, who quit after 23 months. Summit’s San Francisco office also hired Jessie Sheff, a former Goldman FX saleswoman who joined this summer after three years at GS.

Summit’s secret isn’t in its salaries. Average compensation at the fund’s UK operation last year was just £151k ($200k) compared to $337k at Goldman Sachs.

Needless to say, though, private equity’s appeal isn’t in the fixed pay. It’s in the carried interest, which gets paid out after deals are successfully exited and returns exceed a specified hurdle rate. This is what Goldman’s juniors are undoubtedly after. They just need to hope that Professor Colley’s private equity prognosis is flawed.

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Nomura’s not perfect. In 2016 it dumped 500 of its European equities traders almost overnight. It’s most recent global results, for its fiscal second quarter, showed fixed income revenues falling 20% year-on-year, while revenues in the stump of its equities business were flat. Its U.S. and European operations made a combined loss of $27m in the three months to September, and headcount in Europe was 100 people lower than the previous year. Why then, are traders eager to work there?

Nomura’s litany of sales and trading hires in 2017 has raised some eyebrows. The Japanese bank’s most notable additions this year include Gokhan Buyuksarac, a top Goldman Sachs emerging markets trader, who joined in London in April, followed closely by Meraj Khan, the former head of emerging markets macro trading for Europe at UBS, who joined in New York. Also in London, Nomura hired Fred Jallot, the former head of EMEA trading and structuring at Citi as its EMEA head of global markets in July, plus Omar Ghalloudi, the former head of investment grade credit trading at Citi, plus two senior emerging markets traders from Credit Suisse and Bank of America. In Paris, it hired Frederic Giovansili, Citi’s former head of French markets, to set up a new credit trading desk. In Singapore, it hired Ajay Abrol from Millennium for macro trading in July.

Of course, there have also been exits to the likes of Barclays, but Nomura’s ability to attract trading talent from top tier rivals has been often reiterated this year. For a bank that doesn’t even rank on Coalition’s tables of top banks (except in Asia), it’s quite impressive.

So what’s Nomura’s secret? The Japanese bank didn’t respond to our requests to comment for this article, but big promotions seem to be part of it. Jallot went from being the head of trading and structuring Citi to the head of global markets at Nomura. Buyuksarac is understood to be running Nomura’s emerging markets business.

There’s also the promise of being reunited with old colleagues. Citi’s markets professionals are seemingly being lured to Nomura by Wissam Farrah, a former Citi veteran who joined as head of EMEA global markets sales in October 2016. In the background is Steve Ashley, the highly-respected ex-RBS trader who heads the whole global banking and markets business.

And then there’s the pay. Nomura doesn’t disclose compensation per head within its global markets business, but its London operation paid an average of $321k (£243k) last year. However: headhunters say this is only half the story – if it likes you, Nomura will reportedly pay a lot. “They’re very punchy in terms of pay,” says one fixed income headhunter. “They’ll offer very high basics – I’ve seen VP’s there on salaries of over £250k sterling – and they’ll pay bonuses that are very closely aligned to performance.” A former Nomura trader agrees: “There’s a much closer correlation between P&L and compensation at Nomura than at other banks. If you make 10 bucks at J.P. Morgan or Citi, you have no idea how much you’ll get paid. At Nomura, it’s very clear.”

This isn’t all though. While other banks closed proprietary trading desks and resorted to low risk market-making, Nomura created a new “principal trading desk” in June this year – only to close it again in October after making a loss, although six people in the ten man team are thought to remain with the bank. “Nomura have a much more proprietary approach to trading than other firms,” says the trader. “They appeal to people who want to take risk. They’re less heavily regulated and less bureaucratic – if there’s a good reason to do something, it happens quickly, ”

One of the bank’s recent hires agrees. “Nomura is smaller and more flexible,” he says. “It can move fast. It’s a more entrepreneurial place.” With many hedge funds struggling, traders who might otherwise quit banks for the buy-side can choose to join Nomura instead.

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Photo credit: Nomura by Nobuyuki Hayashi is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Investment banking is not for the faint-hearted, but rather it’s a sector that seems almost designed to create stress. Tight deadlines, aggressive targets and a competitive working environment – don’t expect to ever feel zen.

But stress can be a good thing. Investment banks have been pushing the need for resilience among their employees for years, and being able to handle stress makes you better equipped to deal with life’s challenges.

There are, of course, some pretty big downsides. I worked in investment banking for nearly 14 years, and saw its affects first hand – weaker immune system, high blood pressure, fatigue, depression and heart disease.

Unhealthy levels of stress are not only bad for you, they’re bad for your career. It hinders your thought-process and raises anxiety levels, neither of which endears you to clients, colleagues or managers. No one wants to give the impression they can’t cope.

I’ve given up on investment banking, and now run my own company that promotes empowerment and confidence over conflict. I’ve learned valuable ‘tricks’ to make the stress of working in banking more manageable. Part of my role involves mentoring young professionals on how to deal with stress. This is what I share with them,

Clear your head, reboot your mind

Take just one minute to ‘go back to the body’. Choose a part of your body, any part (an elbow, a knee, anything) and focus entirely on that to the exclusion of everything else. Close your eyes if it is makes it easier and just think about that part of the body. This forces the mind to expel other thoughts and allows it to re-focus. This process acts as a ‘reboot’ for the mind. It’s often easier to do this away from the prying eyes of an open-plan office; lavatory cubicles are a good space for this, as they’re private and don’t arouse colleague curiosity.

Humanise your barking boss

One thing I’ve learned from having a screaming MD barking instructions or chastising me for something I have or haven’t done is to…humanise them.

Try to consider what may have led to their short fuse. Commissions falling? Redundancies looming? Computer keeps crashing? Or maybe something in their private life? The psychological term ‘helicoptering’ suggests looking from a high vantage point in order to gain a broader and more objective perspective. This helps to distance emotion and free up your rationality.

Take the higher ground

There’s also the ‘Parent-Adult-Child’ theory. When someone rounds on another it can seem like a chastisement or admonishment (‘parent’) or it can take the form of a tantrum or something petulant (‘child’).

It is easy in a situation such as this to react in a similar way. Don’t ‘get in the ring’ with them as the situation will only descend into a falling out or an argument – and probable career suicide for you.

The solution here is to bring the conversation back to the ‘adult’. Staying calm, try to address the issue constructively and impartially. Your MD then has no option but to reciprocate in the same way.

Don’t manage your frustrations down

It’s always easier to take our frustrations out on those we outrank because the consequences are less serious. Again, the reason is likely to have nothing to do with the person on the receiving end.

It can be easy to feel guilty or regretful but it is important not to ruminate or let the situation linger. Find the earliest opportunity to apologise. This can also make you appear magnanimous, especially if it’s done in the open. Make it short but explain what it is you’re apologising for. A pre-emptive apology is almost always disarmingly effective. It also allows you to frame the context of the dispute, to end it and to move on.

Don’t wallow in failures

A deal’s fallen through? Your stock recommendation is going against you? Don’t wallow. Start the day again. This can be done through something that is associated with uplifting or happy memories.

It can be through the reminder of something personal, such as a poem, keepsake or photograph. It can also be something work related; anything you feel was a mark of achievement. It just needs to be something that prevents you dwelling on the negative replacing it with a more positive mindset.

One key point to remember is that this happens to everyone – good days and bad days. Starting your day again allows you to regain the equilibrium needed to rekindle the good days.

The bottom line is that proactively managing stress has a self-perpetuating effect. We are less likely to become stressed in the first place. This will lead to a boost in our confidence, which is the foundation of every successful career.

Heidy Rehman is a former equity analyst who worked at Citigroup for nearly 14 years. She now runs am ethical and feminist clothing company called Rose & Willard

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Technology is central to Goldman Sachs’ business, particularly now that former chief information officer Marty Chavez has moved across to the CFO job, and it’s just created a crack-team to work on big strategic projects that will stretch across the organisation.

The newly-created research and development team, headed by Neema Raphael, who joined Goldman Sachs as an analyst in 2003 and was promoted to MD ten years later, will tackle everything from cyber-security to how the bank invests in artificial intelligence projects. The team was unveiled at the end of October. Alongside Raphael, Paul Burchard – a managing director with a focus on artificial intelligence and algorithmic market making – is the lead researcher new unit.

It’s also been hiring. Vijay Saraswat joined the bank last month as a vice president and technology fellow. Saraswat worked at companies such as Xerox, AT&T and IBM, as well as the startups Vayusphere and Kirusa, before becoming a professor of computer science and engineering at Penn State University. He was lured back into the private sector, however, and for the past 14 years has been at IBM, latterly as chief scientist of cognitive computing and machine learning in the TJ Watson Research Lab.

Saraswat will be focused mostly on artificial intelligence projects in the R&D group, but there is not a formalized AI lab or structure at this point, according to a Goldman spokesperson.

The new technology team is focusing on projects related to software engineering, financial modelling, infrastructure engineering and cyber security that will apply across the organization. The restructuring involves internal promotions, as well as a recruitment push, for the group tasked with tackling very high-level, complex and strategic technology projects.

Umesh Subramanian, a partner and the co-head of technology, sent a memo out to Goldman staff on October 31. “This group will partner with divisions and engineering teams across the firm to execute long-term projects requiring significant technical research to support our businesses as they grow,” he wrote.
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If you wanted the top job in an investment bank’s markets business in the past, you worked your way up in either sales or in trading. Nowadays, you might want to take the operational route instead.

As banks shake up their sales and trading businesses to take account of MiFID II and other regulatory initiatives, chief operating officers (COOs) of trading businesses have become the nexus for decisions that will shape markets teams for the future. A role that was once seen as bureaucratic has become anything but.

We spoke to four COOs of trading businesses at a selection of major banks. Speaking off the record, each said the same thing: in recent years, their job has become both more interesting and more important.

“COOs have moved up the priority queue,” said one. “I manage our regulation and our market structure teams. both of which have grown a lot.”

“The COO is the central point of coordination for all the regulation and the business activity,” said another. Yet another boasted that, “My job is as broad as it can be: it touches everything from the front office to the back office.” As well as implementing new regulations, he said his role has become about creating a “footprint” for the business in terms of headcount and location that’s as efficient as possible.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that as Goldman struggles to turn around its fixed income business, it’s created a new batch of COOs to take the helm. – Earlier this month, Jim Esposito and Justin Gmelich were appointed co-chief operating officers of FICC. Previously chief strategy officer, Esposito had been tipped as a potential replacement for Lloyd Blankfein as CEO.

COO jobs are also secure. Because COOs are the ones making cuts, they also have a degree of immunity to being cut themselves. “Brokerage businesses are going to want fewer of everyone post-MiFID, but they will still need good COOs to clear the desks so that the remaining salespeople and traders can get on with their jobs,” says another COO with an equities focus.

This same COO points out that she and per peers are at the centre of decisions on how to restructure businesses to take account of Brexit: “When you combine cost-cutting with MiFID II and Brexit, this job has never been more important than it is now.”

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It’s happened again: another senior banking professional has quit the finance sector to join a Chinese technology company.

Veteran tech analyst Andrew Lin left CICC in June and has now resurfaced at semiconductor firm Allystar as head of strategic investment and M&A, based in Beijing.

Lin was an executive director in CICC’s private equity arm for the final five months of his four-year tenure at the Chinese investment bank. His previous CICC role focused on Hong Kong and China tech-hardware research.

Both established and emerging Chinese tech companies have developed a strong taste for bankers and analysts over the past two years. Like Lin, many of these new recruits have gone into business development jobs, helping their employers to make domestic and overseas acquisitions.

Last year Credit Suisse head of China technology coverage Catherine Liu joined internet services provider Qihoo 360 as its chief strategy officer, while Ling Zhang, head of China health care at J.P. Morgan, moved to biotechnology company BGI Genomics as its chief operating officer.

Alibaba is particularly keen on bankers. It appointed 20-year Goldman veteran Michael Evans as its president in 2015, and a year later named another ex-Goldmanite, Douglas Feagin, as head of international business for its online finance arm, Ant Financial Services. As we noted last month, it’s also made a string of other recent hires from Western investment banks in Asia, including tech research analysts.

Lin is somewhat of an outlier among bank-to-tech movers because his two most recent employers were Chinese. Before joining CICC he worked for almost five years at asset manager China AMC.

He does have experience within Western institutions, however. After starting his career as a New York-based proprietary trader at Citigroup in 1996, he moved to Societe Generale Securities in Boston four years later to specialise in downstream technology research. In 2003, Lin relocated to Hong Kong as a VP-level analyst covering the Asian semiconductor sector.

As Chinese tech firms expand overseas, they are targeting banking professionals who combine local knowledge with experience in more mature markets.

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There have been plenty of stories of traders being boorish, profane, immature and lewd, but surely that was back in the bad old days before bankers cleaned up their act, right? Well, actually, some might have more work to do.

A former Crédit Agricole banking analyst claims that she heard colleagues talk about prostitutes and drugs and saw them exchange pornography while working on the trading floor.

Nadia Moukaideche filed charges of sexual discrimination and harassment, asking for £79,500 ($105,147) in compensation, according to Financial News.

Moukaideche recalled that various “disgusting and childish behaviour such as animal noises, burps, passing of wind and ball games” as well as “misogynist jokes” took place on the open-plan trading floor.

“They were sometimes showing each other pornographic images and videos right on the desk,” she said, adding that her colleagues “created an offensive and degrading environment” to work in, per FN.

Hermal Mistry, Moukaideche’s manager at the time, said that “loud and boisterous” joking about “brasses [prostitutes] and drugs” was simply part of a “running gag” on his team.

Moukaideche accused Mistry of excluding her from social events with the team. After getting fired, she gained 20 kg (44 lbs.) in weight and struggled to get a new job in the financial sector.

The bank denies her claims and said that her contract was not renewed because of her performance and taking too much holiday and sick leave.

Separately, ever since the Great Recession of 2008, the leading business schools that funnel MBAs into Wall Street – Wharton, Columbia, Booth and NYU Stern – have seen fewer of their graduates headed into the core finance jobs in investment banking, investment management, private equity, venture capital and hedge funds. When the recession hit in 2008, 47.8% of Wharton’s graduating class went into the financial services sector, while five years ago, the financial sector hired 41% of Wharton’s MBAs.

The numbers of Wharton MBAs going into the financial services industry reached a new record low this year, falling to 32.7% of the graduating class. The single biggest fall occurred in investment banking and brokerage jobs, which hired just 12.7% of the class, down from 16.1% a year earlier, according to Poets & Quants.

Meanwhile, 28.3% of this year’s crop of Wharton MBAs went into consulting, up from 26.6% a year earlier and just a single percentage point below the 2013 high point. A record 16% of the class landed jobs in the tech sector, up from 12.6% last year.

Overall Wharton MBAs saw a 2.8% rise in estimated total median compensation to $152,990, from $148,875 last year.

The highest median base salaries of $150k were in two financial categories: hedge funds and private equity. Just 3.7% of the class landed jobs with hedge funds, while 8.3% got jobs at PE firms.

Wharton reported that the median base salary for MBAs entering the consulting industry hit $147,500 this year.

Meanwhile:

A U.S. judge tossed a female investment banker’s race- and sex-discrimination lawsuit against Barclays, saying the undisputed evidence established that the firm’s decisions were based on her performance and its decision to reorganize its operations. (Reuters)

U.S. buyout firm Cerberus could convince Germany’s largest banks, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, reconsider a potential combination. (Bloomberg)

MiFID II will force investment firms to pay separately for client services they receive from banks and brokerages, rather than bundling them with trading commissions. While corporate access is among the most-valued services banks offer their buy-side customers, paying separately may prompt more investors and companies to engage without banks as middlemen. (Bloomberg)

The new E.U. regulation will provide a “shake-out” to the investment banking industry and “will have some impact on investment banking revenues,” according to Howard Davies, the chairman of RBS. (CNBC)

Goldman Sachs’s latest area of focus is the marketplace where many of the high-risk loans its bankers make ultimately end up after being bundled together into securities known as collateralized loan obligations (CLOs). (Bloomberg)

Goldman is creating a Frankfurt-based holding company to prepare for Brexit. (Bloomberg)

Hedge fund strategies managing director David Mullane has left Goldman after ten years to join Balyasny. (HFMWeek)

Credit Suisse is considering spreading its trading, investment-banking and wealth management activities across several European locations after Brexit. (Swissinfo.ch)

The banking industry is asking U.K. politicians to strike a Brexit trade deal ensuring the free movement of professionals that is vital to preserving cross-border flows. (FT)

Ireland may return to full employment next year even as the threat of Brexit looms. (Bloomberg)

Wellington Management has hired ex-Balter Capital Management CCO Jim Fricano. (HFMCompliance)

At the upscale pawn shop New York Loan Company, financial services professionals can sell valuable belongings, purchase others’ goods at a discount or get a short-term loan using their luxury items as collateral. (Business Insider)

A conservative woman gives a defense of the Alpha Male. (Medium)
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Photo credit: The Wolf of Wall Street (Directed by Martin Scorsese; produced by Red Granite Pictures, Appian Way & Sikelia Productions)
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It’s the Holy Grail: a front office banking job that pays well, but doesn’t involve excruciating hours and a hideous work ethic. A new study from pay benchmarking company Emolument.com suggests it exists. Just not in London (and probably not in NYC).

The chart below shows Emolument’s figures for front office compensation at analyst, associate, vice president and managing director level in various European finance cities. Predictably, London pays by far the best. However, the other European cities don’t pay badly – you can still earn nearly £200k ($265k) as a VP in Frankfurt and over £300k as an MD. And Frankfurt, in particular, offers something that might be more important than cash.

While 39% of bankers in London complained that to Emolument they didn’t have a good “work life balance”, in Frankfurt just 30% of bankers did. – The implication is that while Frankfurt bankers might be paid less than in London, 70% of them are at least cool with their lives.

This might be because Frankfurt as a city is easy to commute in and out of, and therefore easier to work in than London when you have children. – Emolument founder Alice Leguay says bankers’ work-life satisfaction typically plummets everywhere once they have offspring. It also might be because Frankfurt bankers say there’s less of an after work drinking culture there, that life is cheap and that you get a whole hour off to eat your lunch.

Of course, Frankfurt’s apparent leisureliness is unlikely to survive Brexit. The incoming influx of overseas bankers is already destablizing the Frankfurt housing market and squeezing school spaces. And bankers in London famously took long lunches until the Americans arrived in the mid-1980s.

There’s also the possibility that Emolument’s intimation that Frankfurt bankers work less hard is wishful thinking. This time last year, a doctor was summoned to Goldman Sachs’ Frankfurt office after a junior banker working on a live deal collapsed at 2.30am and bankers in continental European financial centres typically insist that they work harder than their colleagues in London because teams there are smaller. If Frankfurt bankers say their work life balance is better than Londoners’, maybe it’s simply because their expectations are lower than peers’ in the UK?

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If your much-appreciated banking boss leaves and offers you lots of money to do the same (after a timely wait to allow for non-competes), you’re going to follow him. This applies to Wissam Farrah, who’s busy poaching ex-Citi staff for his new home at Nomura. It also applies to Daniel Kaye, who quit his job as the head of cash execution for pan-Euro markets at Credit Suisse in May. Kaye now works for Macquarie, and is luring various former CS colleagues to join him.

Kaye’s latest recruits are said to be three members of Credit Suisse’s London program trading team, the most senior of which is understood to be Kenneth Kane, Credit Suisse’s former managing director of program trading.

Credit Suisse declined to comment, but Kane’s ex-colleagues confirmed that he quit yesterday along with “others.”

The hires represent a coup for Macquarie, whose March year end puts it on a different hiring cycle to other banks, which tend to slow recruitment in the final months of their fiscal year.

Earlier this month, Macquarie hired Emanuele Di Stefano from Citi as senior managing director in its quantitative investment strategies (QIS) business. Last month, it hired Tom Price from Morgan Stanley as head of commodities.

The fact that Macquarie’s hiring this late in the year would appear to suggest that it’s buying out bonuses in an effort to prepare for growth in 2018. Kaye didn’t respond to a request to comment on the hires.

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If you’re thinking of joining a bank’s tech team, you might be excited about what you’ll get to wear. After all, while most people in banks are only permitted to wear “smart casual” as their most outré clothing option on a Friday, technologists at the likes of Goldman Sachs have been released from the confines of sartorial scrupulousness and can wear whatever they want, whenever they like.

Except they don’t. If you’re going to work in a bank’s tech team, there are clothing norms and you will need to observe them.

“There’s the odd hipster here and there, but a lot of us here are very conservative,” says one technologist at Goldman Sachs. “The older techies here haven’t changed their dress codes much and still wear shirts, and the younger ones kind of follow them. No one wears a hoody, for example.”

What about that photograph of Marty Chavez surrounded by a group of hoody-wearing technologists from 2015? This was at a hackathon, explains the tech associate. – Those outfits are not usual.

You especially must not wear a hoody if you work for J.P. Morgan’s tech team in London. Although we understand that hoodies are “everywhere” at J.P.’s more relaxed Bournemouth office, the bank’s London technologists say they’re not common in the bank’s tech-focused John Carpenter Street office in London’s Victoria. “Management have banned hoodies for being too unprofessional,” says one J.P.M London tech associate. “Although some people wear them anyway.”

If you can’t wear a hoody as a technologist in a bank, what can you wear?

“We just tend to wear jeans, a T-shirt and a jumper,” confesses the technologist at Goldman Sachs.

Part of the problem appears to be the front office. – No one in tech wants to be seen wearing an old T-shirt and hoody when the bankers in the front office are still dressed in suits or chinos.

“The technology team here is usually dressed more casually than the rest of the bank, but we don’t dress that casually,” says a technology analyst at Citi in Canary Wharf. Typically, he says he takes the lead from the front office: “On a usual weekday I wear what the front office people wear when they dress down – an Oxford shirt, chinos and driving shoes.” Only when the bankers in the front office wear this outfit themselves, does he go a notch more impromptu: “I wear a hoody, jeans and trainers on a Friday,” he adds.

In this sense, the notion that anything goes in terms of banks’ technology dress codes couldn’t be more wrong. The Goldman associate says the whole thing is just a ruse to attract juniors: “Most senior people here know better and don’t pander to it. In any case, who’s going to pick banking over tech just because you can wear particular clothes.”

Finally, while you can’t (usually) wear a hoody to work in a bank as a technologist, it’s also worth noting that you shouldn’t really wear a suit. “I used to wear a suit and tie to work every day when I first joined,” says the Citi analyst. “This was considered very strange in technology and everyone kept asking whether I had an interview coming up.”

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If you’re an equity research analyst in an investment bank (the sell-side), you probably want a job with a hedge fund, private equity fund, or mutual fund or pension fund (the buy-side) instead. How can you effect this most sought-after of transitions? A new study* by academics at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto suggests some analysts find it easier than others.

The Toronto academics looked at employment data from Linkedin and the Thomson Reuters IBES database. Of 1,100 analysts who swapped jobs out of IBES-listed sell-side firms between January 2007 and December 2013, they found that 41% went to the buy-side, 21% went to sell-side firms not listed in the IBES, 21% got corporate jobs and 17% found jobs doing something completely different.

In other words, moving to the buy-side isn’t that hard – a lot of people do it, but it’s not for everyone.

The study found that the analysts who made the move from the sell-side to the buy-side shared distinct features. Overall, they were more accurate in their forecasts, more likely to have an undergraduate degree in a subject related to the business sector they were following (eg. a pharmaceutical degree when they were following pharma stocks), more likely to have worked on the buy-side before, and less likely to have postgraduate education. In other words, forget the MBA.

The study also found that there was a negative correlation between analysts’ seniority and “all-star” stature and their chances of moving to the buy-side. The academics surmised that this was because there are fewer openings for super-senior, super-expensive star analysts in buy-side firms.

The analysts who successfully moved to the buy-side were also more likely to cover a broad range of industries rather than a broad range of companies. “The sell-side prefers analysts who follow more companies so that they can service more clients,” said the academics, before suggesting that buy-side firms are more interested in analysts with an understanding of entire industries than those who specialize in particular firms in a sector.

This wasn’t all though. The academics also broke out the sorts of sell-side analysts who moved to private equity funds and hedge funds from the analysts who move to stodgier mutual and pension funds. They found that being better at forecasting only really matters if you moved to hedge funds and private equity – mutual fund analysts are nothing special. Equally, not having a postgraduate qualification only really helps if you want to move into the PE and HF too – possibly because these funds are focused entirely upon performance, whereas mutual funds and pension funds are still dazzled by education. Similarly, it was only the mutual funds and pension funds who liked to hire people with previous buy-side experience, and who were less likely to hire senior all-star analysts.

Fundamentally, therefore, if you want to move to a pension fund or mutual fund you have to tick several boxes. If you want to move to a hedge fund or private equity fund you have to tick one: you need to be very, very good at forecasting and that is all.

*Navigating Wall Street: Career Concerns and Analyst Transitions from Sell-Side to Buy-Side

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Photo credit: Several seconds by leap is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

When recruiters or hiring managers ask you what you’re looking for in your next employer or position, there is a right way and a wrong way to respond. Venturing out into the job market now is a risky business. On the one hand, you want to show you’re a good candidate for the job. On the other hand, you don’t want to overstate your ambition and knock yourself out of the running.

If you’re asked about what you want from your next job move, here’s how to respond.

1. Remember the ‘passion’ factor

Growth. Challenge. An opportunity to learn more and do more. A chance to manage or make positive change. Passion and confidence are two of the most positive traits in job-seekers, according to Janet Raiffa, an investment banking career coach, the former head of campus recruiting at Goldman Sachs and a former associate director in the Career Management Center at Columbia Business School.

2. Avoid money talk

More compensation is a primary reason for moving, but it isn’t something to cite as a motivating factor.

“I’d also steer clear of talking about the types of people you want to work within the next employer or position, since it might be construed as a negative comment about former colleagues,” says Raiffa.

That said, you should be ready when recruiters bring up compensation – they will ask about your salary history. They will want to know that your salary expectations are in line with your desired position and what you’ve been earning, according to Roy Cohen, career coach and author of The Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide.

“If the number you say sounds high, recruiters will want to hear that you can easily explain why you want and expect a certain number, which they will ask you for,” he said.

3. They want to know your skills and experience fit

Recruiters want to make sure that you have all of the skills and qualifications to for the job, Cohen said. They want to ensure that it’s not too big of a leap from where you are currently, that is, your current level of experience, compared to where you want to be.

“They want assurances that the role is an obvious and logical next step for you, that everything you’ve done up to this point in time prepares you for what you’re looking to do next,” Cohen said. “They are being paid to find a candidate who matches the job specs item for item.”

4. Don’t stretch the truth

If you claim an important role in a transaction but can’t talk through the strategy or many specifics, then you will be found out in the phone screening or in-person interview, that is, if you do eventually make it that far. Recruiters serious about hiring a candidate will always do a thorough background check that will expose any egregious truth-stretching.

5. Don’t be vague or use clichés

Recruiters want you to be specific about what you are looking for and why you are looking, according to Connie Thanasoulis-Cerrachio, career coach and partner at SixFigureStart. Being specific is important because recruiters and hiring managers want to fill the role with someone who has done specifically what they are looking for.

“Include specific results you’ve achieved and things you’ve accomplished and make sure you state the value to the company,” Thanasoulis-Cerrachio said. “When asked why you are looking, you can say that you want to increase your responsibilities because you have mastered your level and even done parts of your boss’s job.”

6. Be clear about what you want from your next move

Make it clear you want to do.

You should be able to articulate your top interests, key motivators, skills you want to employ, ways you want to contribute to the organization and find your purpose, your top strengths and talents, your best qualities, your best work environment, activities you get the most enjoyment from and your expectations for salary and benefits.

Recruiters also want to know that there is zero B.S. in what you want, Cohen said.

“When you go into an interview or when you’re talking to a recruiter and you’re telling them ‘I’m open to anything’ and express no preferences, then you’ll come across as not forthcoming or not well-informed, he said. “Recruiters expect transparency.”

7. Acknowledge past missteps that could come back to haunt you

Recruiters hate unpleasant surprises, because it usually ends up making them look bad.

On the other hand, if you’re upfront with them and disclose a past indiscretion, misstep or issue, then they are more likely to process it the fuller context of your candidacy, rather than see it as a deal-breaker.

“They want to know that the skeletons in your closet are explainable and not a potential embarrassment,” Cohen said. “Once a recruiter reached out to my client who neglected to explain an embarrassing situation that could’ve been identified in a Google search, and it was.

“The recruiter emailed my client in the middle of the night, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?!’” he said. “It’s better to disclose information that is potentially inflammatory so it doesn’t eliminate you from the search.”

8. Follow up with an email, not a call, driving home your dedication

Many recruiters will make more than 50 calls a day and be on the phone for north of four hours. If you’re just checking in to get interview feedback or to stay on their radar and cement your relationship with them, shoot them an email.

That is your opportunity to drive home the point of what you’re really looking for in your next move, what you really feel framed in a way that they will want to hear, demonstrating a strong commitment to – and impressive experience in – the area you’re applying to.
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““

What’s life actually like in the big blue, blue-chip world of large corporates? Once in a while, there are reports back from former bankers who’ve tried it: they say the hours are shorter in corporates, the culture is kinder, the work can feel more rewarding. On the flipside, there are also claims that emails take a while to get answered and that corporate colleagues are “less impressive.”

The real question though, is the pay. If you leave a bank to work for a corporate, will you face a life of comparative impoverishment? A new study by the Bank of New York Mellon, suggests you won’t, unless you’re a woman – in which case you’re probably better staying in banking.

The BNY study applies to investor relations – a popular escape route for disaffected equity researchers in investment banks. BNY says average mean pay for men in investor relations is $275k (£208k), which isn’t bad, although is probably around a third lower than compensation for the average mid-ranking to senior equity researcher in a bank. By comparison, the average female investor relations professional earned an average of just $190k (£145k), well below the banking average.

What’s behind the discrepancy? BNY thinks it might be because corporate boards are overwhelmingly male and that male boards pay their male investor relations professionals more. Or because the pay differential pre-dates corporates and that equity researchers join with different levels of pay baked-in from banks. The biggest reason, however, is likely to be the fact that female investor relations professionals often work for small and mid-cap corporates, while men go for the large and “mega” caps.

In other words, if you want to quit banking for the corporate world and earn good money, choose a behemoth. If you want a pay cut, go to an SME.

Separately, beware taking your bonus complaint to court if you’ve worked for HSBC. Bloomberg reports that HSBC is counter-suing Rajesh Parmar, a former member of its private bank who himself is suing HSBC for £1.8bn in unpaid bonuses and damages. Parmar says HSBC owes him the money. HSBC, however, says Parmar helped a client evade taxes and is counter-suing him for wasting the bank’s time.

Meanwhile:

Morgan Stanley hired a senior syndicate banker from Deutsche. He won’t start until February. (Reuters)

Morgan Stanley’s head of commodities trading, Nancy King, is beating Goldman into submission with revenues of $400m to $500m so far this year. (Bloomberg)

John Cryan says European banks could benefit from merging, especially German ones. (Financial Times)

Credit Suisse just poached two top analysts from UBS. (Business Insider)

The headmaster of one of Frankfurt’s most popular international schools was once an MD at Credit Suisse. (Guardian)

The cities you can afford to live in in the U.S., given your salary. (Marketwatch)

Founder’s pay calculator. (ChristopJanz)

Irrespective of how much you actually exercise, if you think you exercise less than your peers you will die younger than they will. (BPS)

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It’s late November and Goldman Sachs is adding managing directors (MDs). Despite the lateness of the season, despite the fact that Goldman only just promoted its own biggest ever class of MDs, it’s bringing in more outsiders. If you want your bonus bought out by Goldman Sachs, now’s the time.

Goldman’s latest MD-level recruits are both in areas relating to trading technology, the two of which account for the bulk of the firm’s lateral trading hires this year. They are: Dave Clarke, the former head of electronic FX trading at Deutsche Bank and Michael Steliaros, the former global head of quantitative execution services at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Both men have just joined GS as MDs. Clarke’s new title is unclear. He left Deutsche after nearly six years in July 2015 and has spent the past two years working for Mporium Group, a company which provides “digital marketing solutions” to mobile phones using analytics to manage the pricing, timing and selection of digital advertising campaigns. Steliaros’s title at Goldman is global head of quantitative execution services. He left BAML in October, suggesting Goldman has fully compensated him for walking away from this year’s bonus.

Both Clarke and Steliaros are based in London where, thanks to the European Union’s bonus cap, Goldman has a reputation for paying very generous salaries. Headhunters say managing directors at the firm are typically on salaries of £500k plus.

Needless to say, stepping into a £500k job at Goldman Sachs isn’t easy. Nor is it instant. – Steliaros actually resigned from BAML in August, so his arrival at GS now is the culmination of a long process.

Getting a new job at Goldman before Christmas may therefore be wishful thinking, although the firm could possibly make an exception for exceptional people. Quants, trading technologists, experts in artificial intelligence and relationship managers who can sell its trading capabilities to corporates are top of the Goldman shopping list. If this is you, and you want a big salary before the festive season, you might want to get in touch. The firm is clearly gearing up for 2018 before it begins.

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Ed Budd, the former 20-year Deutsche Bank veteran responsible for some of its most innovative technology projects, has signed up to a blockchain firm that has just launched in London.

Budd, who was previously chief digital officer for the global transaction bank (GTB) at Deutsche, has just joined ConsenSys – which describes itself as a “design studio” for blockchain-based open-source platform, Ethereum – to help launch its new UK office.

ConsenSys has around 450 employees globally, but earlier today announced that it was launching a new European hub in the heart of hipster-land – the ‘Silicon roundabout’ technology hub in London’s Shoreditch. It’s on a massive recruitment drive – having doubled in size over the past year across its offices in New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Dubai, Singapore and Brisbane.

It already has 12 employees in London including many who joined from banks. Nelson Pimenta, its lead product designer, joined from J.P. Morgan, project manager Joshua Cassidy came from Credit Suisse, while its chief of staff Jeremy Millar started life as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs.

Budd left Deutsche Bank in September, and was replaced by Thomas Neilson, who joined from Tesco Bank. Budd had worked at Deutsche Bank for his entire career, having joined after graduating from Loughborough University with a degree in Management Science in 1998. He worked at Deutsche’s investment bank until 2010, when he moved across to its global transaction bank.

Despite his lofty title at Deutsche, Budd’s role was essentially leading the development of new digital products at the bank and spearheading efforts to embrace some of the most innovative technology. He oversaw the bank’s efforts with distributed ledger technology and its interaction with fintech firms related to the GTB.

Budd is also a farmer, raising cattle on a farm in Hay-on-Wye in Hertfordshire. He has a large beard, which he told Financial News was a “farming beard”, rather than an attempt to fit in with technology hipsters. He is, according to Companies House, running his own consultancy called Budd Digital, which he launched in October.

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““

2018 will be a big year for Goldman Sachs. The firm is chasing $5bn in extra revenues. J.P. Morgan’s banking analysts are not entirely convinced, but they suggest you might want to work for Goldman anyway.

In a new report on the state of global investment banks, J.P. Morgan’s banking analysts list their current preferences in order of partiality. Goldman Sachs is top. Deutsche Bank is 8th.

Needless to say, these are the preferences of banking analysts. They’re not rating banks for work life balance or bonus payments: they’re rating them on the basis of the upside in their stock and the viability of their strategy. However, both things have implications for employees, particularly now that large portions of senior bankers’ bonuses are paid in stock.

J.P. Morgan’s preference for Goldman Sachs reflects the firm’s emphasis on shareholder returns. While revenues floundered, Goldman increased its return on equity from 8.7% in the first nine months of 2016 to 10.3% in the first nine months of this year. The implication is that the underlying business is healthy. Even better, JPM says Goldman could thrive in 2018 as volatility picks up, the commodities business turns around and its “best-in-class” cost management continues. The only downside is that JPM’s analysts don’t believe the $5bn story: they think that only $1bn of the new GS revenues will come through.

Even so, Goldman clearly looks like a better bet than Deutsche Bank, which J.P. Morgan says has yet to persuade everyone that it can increase revenues whilst cutting costs, which has a return on equity below its cost of capital, and which is still too geared towards fixed income trading. Similarly, Goldman looks like a better bet than BNP Paribas, whose revenue projections for the corporate and investment bank (CIB) are deemed, “very ambitious,” or Barclays, which JPM says has a good plan but risks being hindered by the political repercussions of Brexit.

J.P. Morgan’s analysts rank Morgan Stanley and the Swiss duo of Credit Suisse and UBS behind Goldman. However, while these three banks might be popular from a shareholder and group strategy perspective, J.P.’s analysts rated them mostly on the basis of their wealth management and private banking businesses rather than their investment banking prowess. If you’re an investment banker or trader the implication is that it’s GS or bust – unless of course you work for J.P. Morgan itself.

Separately, before things get better (in 2018), J.P. Morgan’s banking analysts think things will get worse in 2017. Their forecasts for investment banks’ revenues in the fourth quarter, for 2017 as a whole, and for next year are shown in the chart below.

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PJT Partners, the boutique advisory firm founded by former Morgan Stanley banker Paul Taubman, is making a habit of hiring from bulge bracket investment banks this year.

Its latest hire is Joe Lenehan, a former managing director within Goldman Sachs’ internet investment banking team in New York. Lenehan joined PJT earlier this month as a managing director within its Wall Street office.

Lenehan worked at Goldman Sachs for more than 10 years, and was part of a team of five managing directors focused on internet companies at the bank within its investment banking division.

His exit is the latest change within Goldman Sachs’ technology banking team. Goldman promoted Ryan Limaye and Nick Giovanni as co-heads of its technology division in January. Lev Finkelstein, an MD within its tech investment banking team in San Francisco, left to become VP of corporate finance and strategy at Dropbox in August.

Lenehan is the latest senior deal-maker to switch out of a large investment bank to join PJT Partners in 2017, although most have come from Taubman’s former employer, Morgan Stanley.

Michel Antakly, a top natural resources-focused investment banker at Morgan Stanley, joined PJT from Morgan Stanley in October. Emmanuel Gueroult, the former chairman of global capital markets and co-head of equity capital markets for EMEA at Morgan Stanley, joined PJT as a partner in March.

Further down the tree, PJT has also been picking up investment bankers this year. Charles Burrows, who was latterly head of the special situations division at Goldman Sachs until his exit in April last year, joined as an adviser earlier this year. Meanwhile, Jonathan Hall, who was a VP at Goldman, joined PJT as a director in April.

PJT posted revenues of $78.5m in the third quarter, down from $121.3m at the same point in 2016 when it benefited from some big ticket M&A deals. Overall, M&A revenues were down by 40%, it said.

In the UK, its accounts for 2016 showed that it had 106 employees in London, up from 89 in 2015. It paid them an average of £533k, up massively from £195.4k the previous year.

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Americans don’t do Frankfurt. So says Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. In an interview with the Le Figaro, Blankfein said Goldman will be opening offices in Frankfurt and Paris post-Brexit because, “many Americans would prefer living in Paris than Frankfurt for various reasons.” In other words, Goldman’s senior Americans want their own Parisian enclave.

However, one senior U.S. banker who spent over 20 years in London says Goldman bankers’ Parisian pretensions are misguided. – Frankfurt has much going for it, Americans just need to get to know the German city a little bit better.

“I’ve worked extensively in Frankfurt and would feel comfortable living there,” he says. “All business people in Frankfurt are fluent in English, the countryside just outside Frankfurt has great castles and vineyards, and the people are friendly. The lifestyle is very healthy – believe it or not, not all the food is sausages and beer!”

He suggests that his American colleagues only like Paris because it’s older and it’s bigger. “Paris is a larger, more cosmopolitan city. The population of Paris is ~2.2 m versus Frankfurt at ~750k. Americans who’ve lived in London, like Paris because of its size – they think it’s going to be like London. Paris also has great architecture, whereas Frankfurt has very few old buildings because of the war and it feels a lot more modern.”

However, Paris also has its disadvantages. He points out that comparatively few French people speak English. That the food isn’t as good as it’s supposed to be, and that Paris has had terrorist attacks and isn’t necessarily safe. “It’s a sprawling city that’s difficult to get around.”

Paris is seen by some U.S. bankers as a kind of extension of London. “Americans like Paris because it’s just a hop away from London on the Eurostar,” says another American banker in the City. “But the bonuses there tend to be lower – you’re going to get paid less.”

Having also spent time working in Frankfurt, he too says that U.S. bankers should be more receptive to the German city. “If you live in the countryside outside Frankfurt, you can have a better quality of life than you can in the countryside outside Paris. People in Frankfurt seem to be fitter and healthier than people in Paris because of all the wonderful places to go and take exercise. – You don’t get those in Paris. It’s nicer for families.”

Blankfein told Le Figaro Goldman’s bankers will be able to choose where they’re located. If he’s right, there’s a risk that U.S. staff (who are typically senior management) who are currently in London will occupy the Paris office, leaving Frankfurt to the juniors and mid-ranks.

Senior U.S. bankers with families will, however, need to defer to their spouses when choosing their locations. Here, Paris is likely to win out. ” Americans see Paris as quite romantic, while Frankfurt is seen entirely as a business center,” says another U.S. finance professional.”- There is no musical titled, “An American in Frankfurt” for a reason.”

Another says his wife doesn’t want to move out of the UK and will insist he changes jobs if he’s compelled to go. And if it comes down to a choice between Paris and Frankfurt? He says she’d almost certainly choose Paris: “She’s not aware of the beautiful countryside outside Frankfurt. I guess we ought to visit soon.”

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““

Machine learning jobs are supposed to be the big new thing in financial services. After all, Goldman Sachs has created an elite new AI team, J.P. Morgan’s assigned ex-credit trader Samik Chandarana to develop machine learning strategies and has already unleashed LOXM, a new self-teaching trading algorithm, and UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti says 30% of banking jobs are due to dissolve because of this kind of automation in the next 10 years.

It might seem therefore that you should be positioning yourself now to chase machine learning jobs (even though Bank of America CTO Catherine says you’re already too late). But what if the finance jobs of the future are a lot less exciting than the finance jobs of the past?

This is a possibility raised by Saeed Amen in a new blog post. A systematic trader who’s worked for Lehman Brothers and Nomura, Amen is a now a systematic trading consultant and writer. He knows a lot about machine learning and he says its uses are more mundane than you think.

“The basic idea of many of the techniques which underpin machine learning is find relationships between variables,” says Amen. “The difficulty with finance is that relationships tend to be less stable (financial time series are not stationary), and often we don’t have sufficient data,” he adds. Outside of finance, Amen says machine learning is best used for image classification – identifying whether a car is a car. Inside finance, this can be harder: a car always looks the same, but financial time series are mutable.

Because finance data is so tricky, Amen suggests that one of the best uses for machine learning in a financial context is simply the cleaning and processing of data. – The trick is turning raw, partly irrelevant time series into something that can in turn be used to create new algorithms. His own company, for example, has created an index to measure the sentiment of communications by the Fed. The biggest part of constructing this index was, “collecting together all the Fed communications and speeches and sorting, before doing any sort of natural language processing or index construction.” For the moment, this kind of processing is still done ‘manually’, but ultimately Amen says machine learning algorithms should be able to discern the most important parts of text and ignore those that are not. This then, is the machine learning Holy Grail: data cleaning. Suddenly it doesn’t sound so alluring after all.

Separately, an equity researcher in the shadow of MiFID II has made an inexorably bleak utterance: “…this just feels like death,” he complained to Reuters in reference to his job as a researcher. He’d rather be working for a company in Silicon Valley: “It’s not even the money; it’s the optimism that I envy. Those guys are building a brighter future.”

Meanwhile:

Merrill Lynch thinks Barclays is going to have a good 2018 thanks to its investment bank, which has “a re-invigorated strategy, bigger balance sheet and new leadership team.” (Financial Times)

The attention and capital being lavished on Barclays’ investment bank have left some executives in the retail unit feeling sidelined. All the top managers in the markets business have been replaced in the past six months. (WSJ)

Michel Barnier pointed out that banks in London will lose the right to passport into the EU. (Bloomberg)

200 European Banking Authority staff are moving from London to Paris. (Independent)

“Our view is that the Government frankly is in chaos,” said a senior executive at a US bank. “We are really nervous.” (Independent)

Lloyd Blankfein on Brexit: ““Everyone needs a script, and fast.” (Guardian)

Six of the seven last U.S. Treasury heads have gone into finance. (Bloomberg)

Former trader who became a teacher: “The most difficult thing is the total loss of control. The timing of the day is completely set out, there’s no ability to decide to come in late…and during the day, every 55 minutes basically there’s a bell ringing.” (TES)

Rest before you are tired. Even if you love your job, (Medium)

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Photo credit: Cog by Alan Levine is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

It’s finally happened; after years of deep cuts to investment banks’ fixed income currencies and commodities (FICC) teams, headcount finally stabilised in the last quarter for the first time in six years.

Investment banks employed 17,300 fixed income professionals in the third quarter of 2017, exactly the same as the previous year – the first time in over half a decade that banks haven’t trimmed a few hundred front office staff, according to new figures released by research firm Coalition.

This seems like strange timing, given that most investment banks posted double-digit percentage declines in FICC revenues during the third quarter. Coalition says that there’s one place to be, however, and that – as we’ve said previously – is in credit. Banks are still trimming across FX, rates and commodities, but have been selectively hiring for their credit teams throughout 2017, which has ensured that the headcount figures remain stable.

Equities and advisory divisions have cut front office headcount, however, with 500 equities professionals departing over the past year and 300 jobs stripped out of M&A, equity capital markets and debt capital markets combined.

Screen Shot 2017-11-20 at 16.34.35

The best places to work in M&A and capital markets now

The vast majority of investment banks have pointed to the massive recovery in their equity capital markets divisions during the third quarter, so it’s no surprise it’s enjoyed the biggest uplift – revenues were up by 37% across the business in Q3.

Coalition says that both U.S. and EMEA ECM bankers have been the biggest beneficiaries of this bounce back in revenues, thanks to an increase in both IPO and follow on activity. Financials and technology were the top-performing sectors.

M&A revenues were up by 11% year on year, but it’s bankers in the U.S. who have received the lion’s share of this. M&A revenues were flat in both EMEA and Asia, says Coalition, and Americas was the top-performing region, particularly within energy, industrials and real estate.

Leveraged finance is the best place to be in debt capital markets right now. Revenues were up globally by a comparatively modest 6%, according to Coalition, to $9.5bn. Leveraged finance was leading this – the top ten lenders in this space have already beaten 2016 revenues.

Screen Shot 2017-11-20 at 16.39.30

Credit and securitisation are the places to be in FICC

Commodities traders are the longest-suffering professionals within banks’ FICC divisions, and revenues of $2bn – 35% down on last year, and half that of the same period in 2015 – help explain why. FX teams were also down by an average of 20% on Q3 2016, while rates sales and trading divisions made $18.7bn, down by 11% year on year.

Credit teams may be expanding, but revenues were largely unchanged compared to Q3 2016, at $11bn. Investment grade and high yield debt both suffered from tighter spreads in the third quarter, but structured products took up some of the slack, said Coalition.

On the face of it, securitisation was the stand-out performer in Q3, with revenues up by 20%. However, Coalition suggests performance was poor across all products, and the increase was just a “normalisation of trading revenues” after a positive first half in 2017.

Screen Shot 2017-11-20 at 16.40.06

Equities is comparatively stable

Compared to FICC revenues, equities revenues within most large investment banks were stable in Q3. The exceptions were Barclays and Deutsche Bank, which posted 24% and 16% year on year declines respectively.

Cash equities trading is still suffering, down 7% year on year after a significant decline last year, with EMEA and the U.S. suffering and Asia-Pacific posting a slight uptick in revenues.

Both prime services and equity derivatives were comparatively flat, however. Delta One trading is down, says Coalition, but the “core” prime services revenue streams are still growing it says. Equity derivatives are still suffering from a lack of volatility in the markets, and are flat on a poor Q3 2016, but structured products bounced back in both EMEA and APAC.

Screen Shot 2017-11-20 at 16.40.41

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““

Goldman Sachs juniors keep joining a PE fund for ‘moderate’ pay

How Nomura became traders’ preferred place to work

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Meanwhile:

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How to make Wall Street recruiters love you

1. Remember the ‘passion’ factor

2. Avoid money talk

3. They want to know your skills and experience fit

4. Don’t stretch the truth

5. Don’t be vague or use clichés

6. Be clear about what you want from your next move

7. Acknowledge past missteps that could come back to haunt you

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Morning Coffee: If you leave banking for a corporate, this is how much you’ll earn. HSBC’s bonus warning

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“I’m an American banker who’s worked in Frankfurt. It’s not that bad.”

Morning Coffee: Confessions of a machine learning specialist who works in finance. Most miserable man in banking

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