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When it comes to investing, the only content that matters is that which is relevant, timely and personalised. In a word, it needs to be actionable.

A shift in recent years has seen a rise in demand from both the buy and sell sides for actionable content, but there is a growing disconnect that’s giving the industry a serious headache.

The pain stems from the fact that there is too much unrefined financial content (data and news) and very little of it matches with the agendas and mandates of investors and sales people throughout financial services, most pressingly at hedge funds and asset managers.

Revenues down, homogenisation up

The failure to give sales teams content of sufficient quality is a serious problem for institutions. Firstly, with revenues at top tier investment houses lower than at any point in the last five years and continuing to fall, sales resources are being squeezed. MiFID II forced banks and brokers to rethink revenue models, ending the practice of bundling together trading and research. As a result, the cost of investing continues to fall and this is squeezing bank revenues and budgets for middle and back office functions, such as research and marketing.

This is leading to the homogenisation of content. It’s cheaper to create but it is often offering clients and prospects information that is irrelevant, out of date and impersonal. Content like this is damaging client/advisor relationships, as clients are tired of being sent recommendations that don’t matter to them. This is one reason why more investors are now directing themselves.

Headcount up, content quality down

In contrast to south-bound revenues, the number of sales people needing quality content is on the rise as hedge funds and asset managers increase headcount. With more sales people needing to keep more clients happy, the chances of personalised content being delivered to each of them – the type that leads them to action – is dropping through the floor. Poor content means little client engagement and action. And bank margins and revenues get even thinner.

As these trends diverge further, sales teams struggle on, trying to decipher and prepare data, information and news in an efficient manner for clients. Ironically, with more trading being executed electronically or by operations, front office sales teams should have more time to find actionable insights. But, without the resources and tools, they struggle. They need help.

Something to ease the pain

One way institutions can sooth the headache is with “cognitive content”, or “machine-intelligent content”, which aims to order language in a way that inspires readers into action. In financial services, relevant, timely and personalised, high-quality cognitive content – the sort that harnesses learnings from machine learning – nudges investors to engage and execute.

By embracing machine learning and AI, sales teams can scale up content creating capabilities, giving themselves a higher chance of being able to service an ever growing number of clients. Sales people can’t do it on their own. They don’t have the resources or the man power. But by embracing future tech, they may be able to win back the trust of their clients by giving them actionable insights. Cognitive content should be able to help ease the content headache.

The author is a former managing director at Deutsche Bank and Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Co-CEO of Arkera, a London-based financial technology company using its extensive financial expertise & AI to solve institutional challenges.

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Bank of America Merrill Lynch has hired a veteran cyber security expert from the UK’s financial regulator to oversee its cyber security public policy.

Simon Onyons, the principal cyber specialist with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for the last five and a half years, joined BAML as a senior vice president in its London office earlier this month.

Onyons’ arrival comes at a time when banks are sharpening their focus on managing cyber security risks, amid increasing attention from regulators and policymakers. Over the last few years, financial institutions have become prime targets for cyber criminals looking to steal money or data, or compromise critical infrastructure. The cyber risks that they face include attacks on operating systems, locking users out of their computers and data, theft or corruption of data and systems, and release of confidential data.

Meanwhile, regulators are under increasing threat of losing staff to banks because the job market in sought-after functions such as cyber security is competitive. Banks tend to pay more than regulators across most roles. A 2017 survey by recruiters Barclay Simpson found that senior market risk managers at investment banks earn in excess of £400k. In comparison, Daniele Nouy, the ECB’s top regulator, took home just €278k in 2016, according to a Reuters report.

Onyons started his career with the tech giant IBM in 1998 and spent over a decade there in various roles including business recovery specialist, business recovery manager, and service delivery manager for business continuity services. In 2009, he shifted to Phoenix as head of business continuity projects and outsourcing. He joined the FCA when the regulator was set up in 2013.

Image credit: monsitj, Getty

The head of Credit Suisse’s high-profile activist defense team has left the firm to join Jefferies in a similar role. Chris Young, a former Credit Suisse MD and head of contested situations, started at Jefferies in New York in August.

Young has spent the last eight years at Credit Suisse, helping build the unit charged with advising companies on contentious M&A transactions, proxy fights and corporate governance issues into one of the more well-known on Wall Street. Young joined Credit Suisse in 2010 after six years as the director of M&A and proxy fight research at Institutional Shareholder Services, which often makes headlines for advising institutional investors on how to vote on board seats and pay practices, among other shareholder issues.

Activist defense has become a bigger source of revenue for investment banks as more public companies face campaigns from the likes of activist investors such as Bill Ackman, Carl Icahn and Daniel Loeb. Hedge funds will often take large stakes in public companies and leverage their influence to chase off CEOs, earn board seats and push for strategic changes – like spinning off or selling parts of a business – in hope of ratcheting up the stock price. Private equity firms and other companies have also been making more unsolicited takeover offers, expanding the need for M&A advisors with experience dealing with hostile bids. Young was said to have worked within Credit Suisse’s M&A group.

Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs operate two of the more prominent activist defense teams, though each has now lost its high-profile head to smaller firms within the last three years. Former partner William Anderson sent shockwaves across Wall Street in 2015 when he left Goldman Sachs to join boutique investment bank Evercore as the head of their shareholder advisory business.

Young began his career as an options trader but moved into M&A after getting his law degree from the University of Boston, according to LinkedIn.

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A former macro portfolio manager at Moore Capital and BlueCrest has joined UBS as a senior LATAM rates and FX trader. Sergio Kostek started at UBS in New York in July as an MD.

Kostek represents the latest buy-side veteran to jump ship for a trading role at an investment bank. Goldman Sachs re-hired former macro prop trader Robert Surgent in June after he spent seven years as a portfolio manager working for Tudor Investment Corp. and Field Street Capital. Recruiters tell us that a bit of a theme has begun to emerge as several PMs have trickled over to the sell-side in the U.S. in recent months.

While the number of traders employed by investment banks will likely continue to shrink due to changes in technology, the current trading environment on the sell-side is improving, at least in the U.S. The Trump administration is relaxing rules on short-term trades at big banks and is rumored to be mulling additional cuts to Volcker Rule that could allow sell-side traders to be more aggressive. Hedge funds, meanwhile, have generally underperformed, with more shops closing than opening each year over the last three. While prop trading is likely never coming back, some of the chains may soon be lifted off traders at big banks in the U.S. Additional poaching from the buy-side could be a result.

Like Surgent, this isn’t Kostek’s first role with an investment bank. He was an MD in charge of LATAM trading at Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank before the financial crisis. Finra records confirm that Kostek is currently registered with UBS.

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As meteoric rises go, they don’t get much faster than this – seven years ago, Jannie Tsuei was an intern at Morgan Stanley. Yesterday, it was announced that she has been promoted to be their Chief Operating Officer for Southeast Asian investment banking. Looking at Jannie’s LinkedIn suggests that the COO title is not the whole story – she still lists herself as a VP – but even so it’s some impressive progress. What can we learn from this rapid rise?

First, you need to be an academic high flyer. Ms Tsuei is a graduate of Harvard and Wharton, who wrote for the prestigious university newspaper “The Crimson” as an undergraduate. That’s often a passport into high flying media jobs and is one of the best resume points there is. She also graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and cum laude from the Wharton MBA program, both indicating a position near the top of her year.

Second, some business experience in the real world helps. Rather than taking the undergraduate path into investment banking with successive summer internships on Wall Street, Ms Tsuei got a teaching qualification at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, then spent three years as a business analyst at the Sears Corporation, before going to Wharton to do the MBA with specialisms in Finance and Real Estate. Time spent at one of America’s biggest retailers – and a company which had no shortage of financial and real estate problems to work on – would have been excellent preparation for her first role at MS, on the US real estate advisory team.

Third, don’t be scared to move to where you will be most appreciated. In 2015, Ms Tsuei left New York to join the coverage team in Singapore. That could have been a shrewd move. It’s always good for a young banker to get international experience, and to demonstrate commitment to the job by taking on an expat posting. But for a young female investment banker, Southeast Asia seems to be a remarkably good place to get yourself recognised. In Malaysia, for example, the CEOs of three local investment banks, plus the country heads of Credit Suisse, Rothschild and OCB are all women.

Finally, think about your career in the long term. Many people would be resistant to a promotion which took them out of the front line of revenue generation and put them into a back office COO role. If your main concern is immediate bonus potential, this is not a bad way to think about things. But if you have designs on the most senior roles, it can make sense to sacrifice short-term greed for long-term ambition. Moving between front office and operational roles is often the sign of a true high flyer. If someone is being groomed for even more senior posts in the future, then at some point in their life they are going to be in a position where they are responsible for these issues, so they might as well get some experience now.

Not many of us could follow these examples exactly – Ms Tsuei is clearly a bit special. But this doesn’t mean she can’t be emulated. And if she’s not your role model, you can always follow the trajectory that took Jim Ratcliffe from private equity to becoming Britain’s richest man.

Separately, while MS is bringing on the new generation, the Swiss banks are continuing with the project of replacing employees by robots, with varying degrees of success. The data science team at UBS are working on “Netflix-style” algorithms to recommend trades to clients based on positions they have taken in the past.

This could go either very well, or very badly. Giuseppe Nuti, the head of the UBS team responsible for this idea, is correct when he tells the FT that one of the key skills of a salesperson is to know a comment and his or her trading style, and to recommend ideas which suit that particular client. But the key skill here is to present these ideas in a reasonably tactful way. Nobody, least of all a hedge fund trader, wants to be thought of as predictable or set in their ways. If the algorithm is going to come up with things like “hey Steve, you like shorting tech stocks and you don’t like larger than life CEOs so why not short Tesla?” then it is still going to need a trained professional to make things sound convincing.

Credit Suisse’s “Amelia” also needs human beings to work with her for the time being. Amelia is a chat bot, which sometimes serves as the first point of enquiry for CS employees when they try to get the help desk to sort out some of their IT problems. The idea was that Amelia would be able to recognise enough human language to give canned responses to the most common issues like forgotten passwords or full email boxes, leaving more time for the professionals to deal with more complicated things. At present, Amelia can understand around 13% of the questions which come in, which could be good – the programmers reckon she does the work of a dozen professionals – or could be seen as indicating that human beings will be needed in banking technology for a while longer.

Meanwhile…

Morgan Stanley has launched the first employee childcare scheme in Canary Wharf (Goldman Sachs already had one, but not in that part of London). Via a salary sacrifice scheme, employees can sign up to get places which have been bought from Bright Horizons, a private nursery provider. (City AM)

Brexit preparations are now being described as “panic” as fund management houses including Artemis, First State and Newton attempt to get the right to authorisations for their Luxembourg and Dublin offices to be able to continue offering their products on the same basis as they do now. (Financial News)

In Asia at least, the staff cuts at Deutsche Bank are now nearly complete. That’s the message from a interview given by James McMurdo, the regional CEO, in which he says that “our core banking team has stayed together” and that Deutsche is now making more revenue in the region despite lower staff numbers (Bloomberg)

If you’ve been following the Goldman / Chris Rollins legal case, Bloomberg have a background piece on Lars Windhorst, who is widely believed to have been the “notorious European businessman” responsible for the compliance breaches which got Rollins dismissed (Windhorst, through a spokesman, denies this identification and says the case is nothing to do with him). The issues raised about who owns the relationship with a big client will be familiar, although people are usually more likely to be trying to take the credit rather than avoid the blame (Bloomberg)

Paul Greenwald, a former hedge fund millionaire who lost his fortune and who had been sleeping rough, has gone missing from the hospital he was staying in. (New York Post)

Another day, another senior level hire at Goldman Sachs. Healthcare banker Jonathan Piazza, joining from Barclays. Not clear whether he will be joining at the partner level, but given his rank and experience (Managing Director who came to Barclays with the Lehman acquisition) it’s certainly possible. (Business Insider)

London is not just under threat from Frankfurt, Paris and Dublin – Manchester wants to give it some domestic competition in the fintech sector (Finextra)

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)

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It’s not just traders and researchers who can move from banking to hedge funds. Rokos Capital Management, the growing London hedge fund founded by former Brevan Howard trading star Chris Rokos, also has a thing for hiring from banks’ more middle office functions, sometimes at a comparatively junior level.

Rokos’ recent hires include a litany of programmers and quant developers, typically from a banking background. The fund is also hiring a new graduate with an interest in machine learning for its engineering function.

New recruits include Giovanni Merlin, a former analyst in market risk and capital analysis at Goldman Sachs, who joined Rokos this August after just 26 months at GS. Then there’s Zlatko Stoev, who joined in July as a senior software developer after nearly five years at Barclays and a period contracting at Credit Suisse. Or Baris Acar, who also joined in July as a senior quantitative developer after 12 years at Barclays. In June, Rokos hired Mark Hoyle, a former head of quant technology at Fidelity Worldwide Investment. Rokos is also bringing on Adam Taylor, a computer science graduate from the UK’s Durham University who wrote a thesis on the application of machine learning in the retail sector.

Rokos’ enthusiasm for hiring engineers and risk professionals from banks follows the arrival of Dan Azzopardi as chief technology officer from Barclays in December 2017. It also comes after the fund doubled the floor space at its headquarters at 23 Savile Row in January 2018.

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The exits from Deutsche Bank aren’t all taking place under sufferance as CEO Christian Sewing cuts costs. Deutsche insiders say a managing director (MD) in the German bank’s financial institutions group (FIG) team has just quit entirely voluntarily.

Kristian Triggle, an insurance-focused MD on the FIG team is said to have handed in his notice last week. Deutsche Bank declined to comment, but Triggle is no longer listed as a Deutsche Bank employee and colleagues said he has left the bank. Triggle, who joined Deutsche from UBS in 2010, is understood to be off to RBC Capital Markets. RBC did not respond to a request to comment.

Triggle’s exit comes as Deutsche Bank is in the process of cutting 7,000 jobs from across the bank globally. Sewing has been pruning investment banking teams that are focused predominantly on non-German and non-European clients. Cuts have included the oil and gas team in May, Alasdair Warren (ex-head of EMEA corporate finance) and various members of the healthcare investment banking team in June, and the shipping team in July.

Front office job cuts in the investment bank were theoretically completed in July, suggesting Triggle’s position at Deutsche Bank was safe. However, Virilo Moro, the ex-head of Deutsche Bank’s financing and solutions (FSG) group for Spain and Portugal, was said to have been quietly trimmed last week.

DB insiders suggest that Triggle was a “solid” member of DB’s FIG team, which is run globally by Tadhg Flood. FIG is one of Deutsche’s stronger teams and as such should be immune to Sewing’s cost -cutting. Indeed, the bank has been strengthening the team: it hired Tom Spreutels as head of FIG corporate banking coverage from Citi and Sandeep Kamat as vice chairman of coverage, including SoftBank. However, both came in May before Sewing’s plan really took effect.

As a single exit, Triggle’s exit may be no big deal. But headhunters say they’re receiving increasingly frequent calls from Deutsche Bankers looking to move. One disaffected MD in the investment bank tells us his department is being ravaged by cost-cutting: “Senior managers have been told one thing – reduce costs,” he says. “Not even reduce costs and increase revenue. – Just, reduce costs. If someone is a revenue producer but is expensive, just fire them and don’t bid them back if they try to leave.”

Another Deutsche insider says well-publicized cost cutting measures like doing away with fruit are immaterial. “The whole fruit thing is ridiculous. In London, no one below senior management has had access to free fruit for YEARS…. they’ll save maybe £50 a month,” he says.

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Today is the day. Sometime soon, hopefully within the next hour, the tens of thousands of people who overcame various washroom disasters to sit the CFA Level I and II exams in late June will receive their results. Until then, nails are being chewed to the quick.

Astute readers of this site will recall that last year’s CFA exam results day was blighted by all sorts of problems. In particular, there was widespread freaking out after results didn’t turn up at 9am Eastern Time as promised. Instead, some people received their results eight hours later than expected, by which time their nails had all but disappeared.

This year, the hope is that the results will be posted in a more timely fashion.

In the meantime, however, something weird seems to be going on with the CFA Institute’s website. Fraught exam takers who are waiting for their results and posting on Reddit’s CFA forum, say that when they login to the “my enrollment” section of the CFA site they see messages there saying that they either are, or are not, registered for forthcoming CFA exams. In the febrile pre-results atmosphere, the message they see is being taken as an indication of whether they passed or failed the exams in June.

For example, a candidate who sees the message below is deemed by people on the Reddit forum to have passed because they’re no longer enrolled for any exams. Candidates who see messages saying, “You are currently registered for the Level X exam,” are deemed to have failed because they’re still registered and expected to take the exams again.

The bad news for anyone using this method as a proxy for their pass or fail, is that it doesn’t work. The CFA Institute informs us that the messages appearing on the my enrollment page are, “not indicative of a pass/fail.” Unfortunately, fraught CFA exam takers will have to wait for the actual results email. There is a countdown to the results release here (presuming it happens on time). Good luck.

Not registered CFA

[Update: The CFA results are now out. 45% of candidates passed Level II, down from 47% last year. 43% passed Level I, the same as last year. The CFA Institute is presenting individual results in a whole new way. The most impressive passing score we’ve seen so far is in the chart below.]

CFA exam pass 2018

Point72 Asset Management made headlines in 2015 when it launched its own school of sorts – a nearly year-long paid training program aimed at molding college graduates into investment professionals with the hope of bringing them on full-time, if they impress. The first program of its kind, Point72 Academy was met with some initial skepticism. Traditionally, hedge funds fill their analyst classes with former sell-side bankers that come pre-trained, usually with at least two years of experience under their belt. “At the time, even we didn’t know if it was going to work,” said Jaimi Goodfriend, director of Point72 Academy.

Fast-forward three years and Point72 is increasing its position in the academy – adding more classes, more seats and expanding the program internationally. Goodfriend attributed the planned expansion of the academy and the summer internship program that has become its main feeder for talent to the success of recent graduates. She said that 33 of the 35 people who have been hired from the academy since 2015 remain at the firm, representing a much higher retention rate than non-academy hires.

Beginning in 2019, Point72 Academy will run three different classes for its 10-month program, with anticipated starting dates of April 29, July 15 and October 7. The move will increase the number of available seats to around 45, up from 10 in 2015 when it only ran one class, with seven graduating to full-time positions. Goodfriend expects more than half of the firm’s roughly 60 annual analyst hires to come from the academy moving forward.

Point72 Academy is also looking to increase the diversity of experience within its classes. In 2017, the program began accepting a small number of candidates who had some professional experience. This “young professionals group” was trained separately from the undergrad students. Come 2019, the two groups will be mixed together with the idea of creating additional learning opportunities, according to Goodfriend, a former hedge fund analyst and professor.

Back to school

In the very beginning, the academy is much more a school than an internship. The first few months are literally spent in a classroom learning all the fundamentals necessary for a career on the buy-side: accounting, financial modeling, business operations and data analysis, among others. During the second part of the program, students are taught how to leverage those skills to research companies and stocks. In addition to learning from Goodfriend and her staff, students will hear from current Point72 investment pros as well as subject matter experts from business schools like Wharton and Harvard. The final third of the program is more hands-on, with students rotating across desks of portfolio managers with the hope of finding a match.

The top 1%

If you want to attend the academy, you’re likely to face some stiff competition. In 2015, Point72 received around 400 applications for the program. That number increased to roughly 12k this year, meaning well less than 1% make the final cut.

The hedge fund formerly known as SAC Capital is also keen on bringing people into the academy through its 10-week summer internship program, which is expanding across the firm’s Asian office locations in 2019. Excluding the young professionals group, the academy “almost exclusively” hires undergrads from its internship program, according to Goodfriend, who said the firm has never been turned down by an intern in the four-year history of the program.

One item of note for those who are interested: brush up on your accounting skills. “For some reason, some really smart, intellectually-curious people look at accounting and can’t get over it,” said Goodfriend. “It tends to separate the wheat from the chaff.”

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A former Goldman Sachs engineer who left in 2015 as a VP has returned as a managing director. Koby Rosenschein started at Goldman earlier this month in New York.

Rosenschein spent the first 15 years of his career at Goldman Sachs, culminating with him being named the head of developer resources and the technical operations risk manager for the firm’s enterprise platform business unit, according to LinkedIn. He left in 2015 to join hedge fund Two Sigma as its head of engineering education.

Goldman Sachs is currently in a recruiting battle with big tech companies and fellow investment banks over engineering talent. Rival J.P. Morgan announced just last week that it is revamping its two-year entry-level engineering program in the hope of winning over more tech talent, including changing its curriculum and giving juniors experience working on more interesting projects, according to Reuters.

This is an area where Rosenschein could lend a hand at Goldman. At Two Sigma, he was responsible for developing the training, materials and processes for continuing education within the engineering department. Big banks like Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan have been forced to step up their recruiting efforts to compete with the likes of Google, Facebook and other large tech companies that are known to offer more perks. Both Goldman and J.P. Morgan have recently relaxed their dress code policy for engineers and are said to have increased salaries to entice more high-level tech talent to work in banking.

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There were a lot of things I disliked about working for an investment bank.

First among them was the pay, or lack thereof (nobody gets into finance for altruistic reasons). But right up there on my very long list of dislikes was the dress code. I worked at one of those stodgy European banks, so I was expected to wear a suit and tie. Every. Single. Day. It didn’t matter that I rarely met with clients. Or saw anybody else other than members of my own team. I was expected to look “professional”. It didn’t matter that I didn’t act professional. What was important was that I looked the part.

The investment banking dress code, had one advantage though. It mean that I was treated much better outside the office. Everywhere I went, it was, “Yes, sir. No
sir. How can I help you, sir?” This makes sense. When you watch movies, the rich, successful people are dressed in suits, while the poor people wear t-shirts and shorts. Movies, however, have got it wrong. In the real world, it works back to front.

In finance, everything is a power play. The guy who takes days to respond to you through email? He’s not that busy. He just wants you to know that’s he’s in control. The guy who shows up to a meeting 15 minutes late? He wants you to know that he’s more powerful than you. He makes more money than you, has a hotter spouse than you, and also has a bigger d***. Note, women do this too and they’re trying to make the same point, except for maybe that last one.

This is why in the world of hedge funds, the worse you dress, the more successful you are. If you see people at a hedge fund dressed in suits, they are at the lowest rung. These people are either interviewing at the firm, or are sellside analysts and salespeople. Next, you have analysts like me, who wear dress shirts and slacks. Banks need us more than we need them, so we can dress more casually to let them know we’re in control.

The same dynamic applies at conferences. The CEO and CFOs of companies almost always wear suits because they want your money. I’ll wear a suit (but no tie) as a sign of respect. But I remember sitting next to a billionaire for one meeting. Of course, he shows up in jeans. Because when you’re that rich, you can do whatever you want.

So if you’re interviewing at a hedge fund and you see somebody in a suit, ignore them because they can’t do anything for you. But if you see a person walking around in shorts or sweat pants, be really nice to them. Because if they can pull off that look at a hedge fund, there’s a good chance he/she owns the place.

Margin of Saving was created by an analyst at a multi-billion dollar hedge fund to help others learn how to invest and save.

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TD Securities is the Wholesale Banking division of TD, the Canadian headquartered Financial Services firm now ranked sixth largest bank in North America. As its operations in Asia grow they continue to recruit new talent.

TD consolidated its trading and risk management operations for Asia in Singapore a number of years ago; while it recently opened a base in Tokyo, it also has established operations in Hong Kong.

Enda Kilcullen, Managing Director of Equity Derivatives Trading for Asia Pacific, explains: “We have been growing solidly year-on-year in terms of both revenue and the people that we have on the ground. We will continue to consider areas into which we can extend our product capability and recruit the trading talent that fits around that.”

The firm has a reputation for embracing technology, and in his Derivatives trading business Kilcullen values candidates with a background in both programming and financial markets. Kilcullen explains: “Asia is becoming an increasingly important market for our clients, and as a result of that it is becoming an increasingly important market for TD. “We have to make sure that we have the products systems and people to meet the growth and demand that are anticipated.”

Kilcullen explains that while technology is a disrupter, it also brings many positives in trading, particularly in terms of enabling scale and automation; TD plans to harness that potential as it develops. “Technology is the key word in the industry these days. We are going through a constant multi-year development platform change through all parts of the business, from our backend operations to our middle office and into our front office to ensure we have sufficient scalable platforms to be able to meet the client demand.”

“I am excited by the changes we will see around automation in terms of how we manage our trading books and trading risk,” he says.

TD recently launched a round-the-clock trading model for its clients. “This offers client access across all of the various jurisdictions that TD operates out of, and it gives us an ability to offer clients North American products in Asian hours in their time zone, and offer more of an all-round service model for clients that meets their needs,” Kilcullen explains.

TD’s global equities derivatives business has been in growth mode since TD came to Singapore, and Kilcullen expects this to continue as the bank considers additional products which can be delivered in the region.

As a result, it is looking to recruit someone to work on its Global Equities Derivatives team who has a good blend of business and IT programming skills. “We are in the market looking to fill that hire with someone with a strong quantitative technical background coupled with the right aptitude, and with some markets experience to bring to the platform. They will get the opportunity to be instrumental in helping with the next build-out phase of our business,” Kilcullen says.

TD is also looking to recruit a similar skills blend for its Markets intern programme. It is looking for candidates with programming capabilities but also a strong aptitude for financial markets. Culture is also hugely important at TD, so it wants people with the right attitude and a positive outlook to fit in at the organisation.

Kilcullen says: “TD’s intern programme has been hugely successful. The depth of talent that we have been able to tap into from the universities here in Singapore has exceeded my expectations. The enthusiasm, technical knowledge, and understanding of the candidates is fantastic.”

Successful candidates are invited to work in the business for six months, where they become an integral part of TD. “We bring them up to speed on all the trade management. They undertake big projects to help build that understanding and we then look to the future to see if they are potential candidates that we can consider for full time roles once they complete their studies,” Kilcullen says.

“In terms of opportunities, the business is growing here in Asia and we are constantly looking for talent to join the platform. We have had multiple successful additions to the team at all levels over the past five to six years”.

Kilcullen has spent the majority of his career with TD, and he thinks it is a great place to work.

“It is a fantastic organisation. It is a well-run, well-orchestrated machine, and it provides great opportunities for people who come in who can embrace the culture, who have a strong work ethic and who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get involved,” he says.

“People tend to stay with the platform for some time and that is a testament to what TD is and its culture and what it brings to the market.”

For financial people of a certain age, there is only one guest on this series of Celebrity Big Brother to be interested in. Nick Leeson, the rogue trader who brought down Barings Bank and who was played by Ewan McGregor in the film based on his autobiography, will be entering the video-surveillance house for the next few weeks. Being unable to leave and having none-too-friendly observers monitor his every move for the online popularity contest will not be a wholly unfamiliar experience after the prison sentence he served in Singapore for accounting fraud. But is this the start of a trend – will we see other financial celebrities trying to rehabilitate their reputation by appearing on reality TV?

Kweku Adoboli, for example, formerly of UBS’ Delta One desk before an unauthorised loss of nearly $5bn, would be a natural for Love Island. Not only does he have the looks for it, he’s great at the kind of earnest speeches almost-but-not-quite-admitting-fault which contestants on that show need to make in order to retain public sympathy after they’ve been caught smooching someone they shouldn’t have been. As his website says, “I will always reject the Rogue Trader label that I live with because every decision I made at UBS was in an effort to achieve the bank’s goals”. Take out the word “trader” and substitute UBS for the name of a starlet in a bikini and you’re well on the way to becoming the nation’s favourite.

The secret is to match the financial personality to the format. Take former RBS chief executive Fred Goodwin. Proud of his Scottish roots, notoriously hard worker, bit of a temper, known for presiding over extremely high pressure working environments – who wouldn’t want to see him on “Hell’s Kitchen”, giving Gordon Ramsay a taste of his own cooking? The spinoff series “Fred Goodwin’s Banking Nightmares” could be an even bigger ratings draw than the original.

Bernard Madoff would be a perfect host for a reboot of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”. He could justly claim to have made millionaires out of dozens of people. Admittedly most of them were multi millionaires before he met them, but even so. The format could even be combined with that of “Deal Or No Deal”, because few people are better suited than Bernie to a game based on a box that might contain a lot of money but might be empty, and where you have to persuade people not to look inside.

There are even whole banks that could be identified with a reality show format. In I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, contestants who have achieved fame and success in their previous careers are dropped into an hostile environment and forced to perform increasingly humiliating tasks in order to survive before eventually being put on a plane home. Several recent Deutsche Bank chief executives would recognise the experience. Or the Goldman Sachs partnership process, where people are taken away from their families for a period of months and forced to demonstrate their willingness to make sacrifices for a chance at the big time, before being arbitrarily told that they just don’t have the X Factor.

But the finance / reality crossover that we’d really like to see is one for which, in retrospect, one of the most famous quotes of the financial crisis could be seen as an audition. As Chuck Prince of Citigroup said, “as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance”. Why should this only be regarded as a metaphor? We want to see Bruno Tonioli giving a top score and saying “sensational darling!” as the TARP is forgotten and Chuck jives across the floor to the sound of David Solomon’s dance remix of “Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac.

In television terms, it’s currently all going a bit “season finale” at Deutsche, as a major decision approaches regarding the direction of their investment banking franchise. Garth Ritchie, CEO of the investment bank, comes up on the rolling calendar of Deutsche board contract renewals in October. Ritchie was considering leaving Deutsche in April, shortly before the management restructuring that brought Christian Sewing to the top job. Instead, Markus Schenk left and he became sole rather than co-head of the Corporate & Investment Banking division. Normally, you would think that that would have been the “back me or sack me” moment and the October renewal would be largely a formality. But given current conditions at Deutsche, and high overall turnover of senior staff, nothing can be taken for granted.

Mr Ritchie is a 22 year veteran of Deutsche’s trading businesses, and Sewing has made public statements of commitment to the investment banking strategy. All logic suggests that he will be reappointed. But uncertainty undermines managers and contributes to speculation about possible successors or replacements. This sort of uncertainty at the top is often really bad for business, as time and energy goes into speculating about who might be in or out rather than doing the job. There are only so many “until then, business as usual” speeches that you can give; touch up might be better advised to resolve things one way or the other without waiting two months.

Meanwhile…

It appears that Goldman Sachs have bragging rights (if that’s the right word) for the advisory mandate on Elon Musk’s deal to take Tesla private, with private equity firm Silver Lake Partners also mentioned by the CEO. Neither firm appears to be talking about terms of engagement, although Silver Lake said to Reuters that they were assisting without compensation and were not officially financial advisors. (Financial News)

Credit Suisse’s “Project Momentum” appears to be taking their Wealth Management business in a different organisational direction from that of UBS – not merging geographical units to save costs, but splitting them up (from 4 key geographies to 7) to speed up decision making. Wealth Management businesses are usually in either a cost cutting cycle or a customer service improvement cycle, so it’s not so out of the ordinary for two big players to be out of phase. (Bloomberg)

Given how their market cap has progressed, it’s almost inevitable that Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank will be leaving some major equity indices in the near future. What might have been less predictable is that one of them will most likely be replaced by Wirecard, a fintech payments start up that now has a larger market capitalisation than either of the two German household names. (Bloomberg)

Lloyd Blankfein has been giving advice on how to build a career on Wall Street to interns at Goldman Sachs via a video Q&A (“Lessons From Lloyd”). Don’t be too narrow and take lessons from history were the most important tips. He also said that he looks forward to “unconstrained tweeting” but this was more a retirement hobby than career advice (Quartz)

The FT rounds up its coverage of the “Welcome Week” fuss at INSEAD, noting that the whole thing has now had so much media coverage that the pranks and hoaxes will be impossible to pull off. (FT)

Three staff on the electronic trading team have left Bloomberg in London after a whistleblower report and an internal enquiry into handling of third party data (Financial News)

Some detail from one of the CFTC’s “spoofing” cases (this one to do with COMEX), where the accused appear to be unwilling to roll over and take a plea bargain. At present the case is stuck in complicated legal arguments over discovery, as the defendants want to be able to take depositions from witnesses at the regulator and exchange, while asserting their own Fifth Amendment rights. It all looks slightly more combative then most cases involving regulators vs traders. (FinanceFeeds)

There’s no evidence (yet) that they invented financial services, but research on the Neanderthals continues to prove that they were surprisingly sophisticated and intelligent. As well as eating cooked food and using penicillin and pain killing plants for medicine, they had complex social arrangements and family groups. (New Scientist)

“”

Maybe you should have gone into industry instead of hanging about hoping to work your way up to managing director in an investment bank? After all, today’s report from the UK’s High Pay Centre and the CIPD suggests that the highest paid people in industry are very well paid indeed.

The number to focus on is £5.66m ($7.19m). This was the mean average pay for CEOs of UK FTSE 100 companies in 2017. The median was £3.93m ($5m), but many of the FTSE 100 CEOs got far more. None of the ten highest paid FTSE CEOs in 2017 worked for finance companies.

The chart above details the 10 higher earners in the FTSE. The £47m ($58m) package of Jeff Fairburn, CEO of housebuilder Persimmon, far outweighs the $29.5m paid to Jamie Dimon at J.P. Morgan last year. The £3.9m Jes Staley received as CEO of Barclays was a pinprick by comparison.

Needless to say, there’s only one CEO per company. And just because 100 CEOs are making an average of £6m each, there’s no reason to presume that other senior roles in industry are equally well paid. In London banks, meanwhile, there are over 4,000 “material risk takers” earning $1m+, as per the chart below. – Even if banking CEOs aren’t paid as much as CEOs industry, banking lieutenants are well rewarded several rungs further down.

The High Pay Centre focuses only on compensation at the very top and doesn’t provide information for senior industry professionals beyond the CEO. However, last year’s pay figures for new MBAs going into banking and industry from the London Business School suggest that – for MBAs at least – pay in industry is far more similar to pay in banking than might be expected. – The mean package for an LBS MBA going into an investment bank last year was £80k. And the similar package for an LBS MBA going into industry was £81k. Ever thought of going to work for a listed housebuilding company instead of finance? It might be worthwhile.

““

While the job market on Wall Street is generally improving, there are still many more heads than there are seats, particularly when you’re talking about experienced professionals in New York. Applying for newly-listed positions makes sense but it has one main drawback: you’re likely to face plenty of competition. An alternative strategy could be to focus on older roles – ones that banks can’t seem to fill for whatever reason. Though you admittedly may end up applying to a position that isn’t a top priority, you’re also bound to run into more niche vacancies that have frustrated hiring managers dying for fresh resumes.

After scouring career sites of big banks, we’ve compiled a list of 10 active postings based in New York that have remained open for at least three months, though a few have been vacant for five. Some are rather obscure; others likely remain open because the bank needs more than one body to fill the gap.

Citi eyeing startup-minded fintech managers

Faced with stiff competition from tech startups, several big banks like Citi and J.P. Morgan have launched in-house fintech incubators where engineers work on building disruptive new products. Launched in 2015 with the help of employees poached from PayPal and Amazon, Citi Fintech has more of a startup feel – foosball table included. The fintech group has been looking for an engineering manager and a principal software engineer since March 13th.

Morgan Stanley is searching for a FICC quant

Morgan Stanley’s fixed income trading unit has done that well this year. The absence of a fixed income currencies and commodities (FICC) quant is unlikely to have been a deciding factor, but still. The division’s corporate credit group is looking for a VP-level “desk strategist” to build models and generate trading ideas. You’ll likely need a focused master’s degree and experience coding with Python, HTML5 and Q/KDB. They’ve been looking to fill the role since February 16th.

J.P. Morgan needs machine learning engineers

JPM is looking for several machine learning engineers to develop new products involving speech recognition, natural language processing and time series predictions. You’ll need extensive experience with machine learning APIs and at least a master’s degree in a quantitative discipline. They’re looking for an associate, a VP and an executive director – which may account for the holdup. That niche managerial role was posted on March 19.

Credit Suisse looking for a market liquidity researcher

Credit Suisse is seemingly struggling to fill an associate-level position within one of its quant funds. They’re in need of a researcher that can help develop new market liquidity signals focused on shorter-term equity and equity index futures strategies. Finding “new sources of alpha” would be helpful, as if it was that easy.

Deutsche Bank requires help with its corporate governance

Deutsche Bank has just begun its latest revamp that has resulted in thousands of job cuts, with a particular focus on the U.S. That said, anyone whose work touches risk and controls is likely safe – the bank failed its June stress test and has been taking heat from U.S. regulators ever since. Deutsche Bank is looking for someone to perform quant modeling and data analysis of market and liquidity risk and macro-economic variables for stress testing, according to a posting listed on May 21.

Bank of America eyeing credit officers

The three oldest job postings at Bank of America in New York share some similarities. BAML is looking for a senior credit products officer within its real estate banking division; a structured credit salesman with a Series 7 and 63 credential; and a senior leasing credit officer with experience in energy financing.

UBS wants a GIG banker

With a larger pool of candidates, traditional investment banking roles tend not to sit on the shelf as long as more specialized positions. However, UBS seems to be struggling to find an investment banker to work within its Global Industrials Group in New York. The posting doesn’t mention the level of seniority, but the responsibilities include managing junior bankers so they’re likely looking for a VP or possibly an MD.

Morgan Stanley searching for a VP in risk management

Morgan Stanley has been looking to hire a senior complex risk officer since the end of April. You’ll need an active Series 3, 7, 8 (or 9 and 10), and 63, 65 (or 66) to go along with several years of experience working in risk, compliance or legal.

BAML needs mortgage bankers

The financial crisis wiped out thousands of mortgage brokers, yet Bank of America is still searching for some new blood. In late March, the bank posted several roles for residential mortgage lending officers that remain vacant.

UBS needs help catering to big-wigs

Some of the longest-standing job postings at UBS in New York are for client service roles within the firm’s huge wealth management unit. The main responsibilities include providing operational and administrative support for financial advisors, though it seems they’re looking for more than administrative assistants. Series 7 and 66 licenses are preferred. The most-dated posting is rather niche: a client service advisor fluent in spoken and written Cantonese and Mandarin. Morgan Stanley is also looking to fill similar positions they refer to as regional administrators.

Follow @BeecherTuttle

““

Jobs in banking and jobs in consulting have long been different sides of the same coin. Both attract highly driven people from elite universities. Both pay well and expect hard work in return – even if banking bonuses are bigger over time. Anecdotally, though, consultancy firms have begun gaining the upper hand: after a few years in finance, more and more junior bankers are peering across to consulting firms and deciding that they like what they think they see there.

“The number of CVs that I’m seeing from junior bankers has suddenly shot up in 2018,” says a senior consultant at one of the big three ‘MBB’ (McKinsey & Co, Bain & Co, Boston Consulting Group) consulting firms in London. “The CVs we got from bankers were relatively steady in 2016 and 2017, but this year the increase in banking CVs is very noticeable. It’s almost as if, after years as being seen as a second choice career behind a full-blooded banking job, consulting is now seen as the better option.”

Historically, junior bankers who want to go into consulting have taken a top tier MBA course to help ease the transition. The proportion of MBAs choosing consulting famously rose following the financial crisis. Technology firms now compete for MBAs too, leaving banks further down the queue. Increasingly, though, it seems junior bankers are either going into consulting directly, or after a few years in private equity (PE).

The preferred route into consulting, for example, is either a few years on the Goldman Sachs analyst program followed by a jump across to become a business analyst at McKinsey & Co, or a few years as an analyst in a bank, a few years in PE and then a transition across to a consulting firm at a higher level. Although a move into consulting without an MBA can be tough as junior bankers aren’t always seen as having a well-rounded consulting skillset, it helps that consulting firms are replete with ex-bankers who’ve made similar choices. Sara Hudson, head of McKinsey’s EMEA consumer private equity practice, started out in Goldman Sachs’ North American healthcare group before moving to PE and then McKinsey, for example.

For banking juniors, consulting firms’ appeal comes down to two things: job security and exit options. This applies as much on the trading floor as in investment banking divisions. “A lot of people here are looking around and wondering how screwed they’re going to be in a couple of years’ time,” says a junior equities salesman at a Swiss bank in London. “They worry about the longevity of their job in an investment bank when costs are being cut, and specifically in equities sales they don’t feel they’re developing a skill-set which will be usable later on.

“It’s different when you’re somewhere like Bain & Co.,” he adds. “When you’re at a consulting firm you build optionality into your career – you can always move into industry or into another role in consulting.” He says that moving to consulting feels like an “intuitive” thing to do now: “You can see that people don’t have 20 year careers in banking and that MiFID II is destroying a lot of sales jobs while banks are doing nothing to help mitigate the pain.” Of 12 people who started five years ago in his graduate class, he says 10 have left – mostly for consulting roles.

And yet junior bankers are cautioned against a grass is greener mentality. Consulting jobs have one huge disadvantage: the travel. It can be extreme. Nor are the hours that much less onerous than in banking, particularly now that banks are more alert to the dangers of juniors working themselves to death and have systems in place to stop it happening.

“On average, up to VP-equivalent level we do around 12-15 hours a day, NO weekends,” says the senior MBB consultant who was an associate at a U.S. bank in a previous life. “The pain points for us is travel. For example, I fly weekly from London to New York and there are others here who fly weekly, for months on end, between Sydney and LA.”

The upshot is that while consulting might give you an hour or so to yourself in the evenings, that hour will usually be spent in a faceless hotel miles away from home, friends and family. To the extent that people leave consulting, it is the travel that drives them away: “On Monday morning we’d get up very early and go to Manchester, where we’d stay in a Marriott hotel near the airport until Friday,” says one ex-consultant who now works full-time for a finance company in London. “It was exciting and I built up a big bond with my colleagues, but I was only coming home at the weekends to do my laundry. After eight years, I’d had enough.”

In this sense, then, consulting and banking are also similar. – Both are young person’s industries best embarked upon when you have minimal family ties and maximal ability to commit to work. The danger for junior bankers who jump into consulting is that they’re already that older. Set against the hard slog of relentless travel in consulting jobs, the perpetual uncertainty of banking careers might seem more bearable after all, particularly when you’re thinking of starting a family.

““

Events in Turkey have claimed their first known victim: Bloomberg reports that Tolga Kirbay, a director level credit trader at Barclays in London, lost $19m trading Turkish bonds in recent days. Following a 50% decline in the value of some Turkish corporate bonds in 2018, the loss is indicative of the potential for other big losses elsewhere. It also raises questions about Barclays’ approach to risk as the British bank pursues increased trading revenues.

When Tim Throsby took over as head of Barclays investment bank, he famously instructed traders there to reawaken their “commercial instincts” and increase their risk appetites.

As the chart below shows, Throsby’s words seemed to have an effect in the first six months of this year. Management Value at Risk (VaR) (defined as including all trading positions in corporate and investment bank and Head Office) at Barclays rose by 33% overall in the first half of 2018 compared to the same period a year earlier. The biggest percentage increase in risk taking was in rates, followed by equities. The latter may help explain Barclays’ strong equities performance in the second quarter.

Barclays didn’t respond to a request to comment for this article, but the bank’s $19m Turkish credit loss is a reminder that risk-taking is a double-edged sword. It comes at a sensitive time, given that Barclays has an activist investor that aspires to slim down or spin off the sales and trading business waiting in the shadows.

However, it’s also worth bearing in mind that far larger trading losses are not uncommon at banks with big trading arms. At J.P. Morgan, where both Throsby and Barclays’ CEO Jes Staley worked before joining Barclays, traders lost $100m on one day in February 2018 and over $50m on four other days in the first half.

None of this is likely to be much consolation to Tolga Kirbay as he squirms under the spotlight suddenly being shone upon his mistake. It doesn’t help that he’s relatively new to Barclays, having joined from BNP Paribas in the last couple of years.

Kirbay’s exposure may, however, hold a lesson for other traders who want to take risk with comparative impunity and with immunity to the downsides when things go wrong: don’t do it at Barclays. These kinds of mistakes are more likely to be downplayed elsewhere.

Value at Risk at Barclays:

Barclays trading loss

““

This is a brief article for anyone who found out yesterday that they failed June’s CFA Level I or Level II exams and is in search of some schadenfreude as rehabilitation, or for anyone who complains that the CFA Institute is unfairly charging them its $275 annual membership fee as a way of profiteering from financial services employees. – The CFA Institute is a not-for-profit organization with a tiny operating margin.

None of this will come as news to anyone familiar with the CFA’s 2017 annual report, published on the internet for all to see (just Google ‘Fiscal Year 2017, CFA Institute’). But it’s worth stressing to anyone who thinks the CFA Institute is printing money on the back of its notoriously difficult exams.

Last year, the institute generated total operating revenues of $313m, mostly from its certification arm, as follows:

CFA revenues

However, these were almost entirely consumed by the Institute’s enormous $304m operating expenses, distributed as per the screenshot below. The resulting operating margin for the CFA Institute last year was around 3%. Nor was this a one-off: in 2016, the CFA Institute’s operating margin was 5%.

It might therefore be said that the charitable Institute is running its exams and membership services out of the goodness of its own heart.

CFA Institute expenses

Of course it’s always possible to be more generous, particularly when it comes to member services. As the Institute’s expense list shows, it’s a very (very) big spender when comes to marketing. It’s clearly a costly business staying at the forefront of candidates’ minds. Marketing and communication spending at the Institute is nearly 40% higher than spending on member and society services, and only 22% below the Institute’s spending on the exams themselves.

““

The way things have gone for Deutsche Bank recently, one would almost have to assume that the German lender was one of the several banks that was on the wrong side bets on Turkish bonds and currency. However, due to the keen foresight of one trading desk, the exact opposite happened.

A fixed income trading group led by Deutsche lifer Aditya Singhal generated more than $35 million in profits in the two weeks following the initial plunge of the Turkish lira, according to Bloomberg. Based in London, Singhal runs a team of credit, rates and FX traders who have reportedly booked a massive $135 million in profits so far this year. Singhal’s recent success is no fluke. When announcing his new role in 2016, Deutsche Bank called Singhal “one of the most profitable traders” within its European credit business.

The news couldn’t come at a better time for new CEO Christian Sewing, who raised many an eyebrow in July when he suggested he would redeploy capital saved from massive job cuts to the bank’s fixed income trading unit, which had just posted its worst second quarter performance since the financial crisis – down 17% year-over-year. Many rival banks saw double-digit gains during Q2. Sewing may owe Singhal a hug – or at least a huge year-end bonus.

Meanwhile, a senior trader a Barclays reportedly lost $17 million in just three days betting the other way on Turkish corporate bonds. Funds run by JPMorgan Asset Management, Barings and Edmond de Rothschild are also said to have been stung by exposure to Turkey.

Elsewhere, the chief executive of a $13 billion asset manager went scorched earth on hedge funds, calling them a “management fee racket.” Magda Wierzycka, CEO of South African money manager Sygnia, said she has fired every hedge fund manager at the firm and has closed all its hedge fund products. Wierzycka noted that current strategies aren’t outpacing the market, nor are they even hedging against risk.

“This should be the ideal time for hedge funds to show they can finally deliver on the promise of preserving capital,” she said. “The sad truth seems to be that they cannot.” Ouch.

Meanwhile:

Goldman Sachs acknowledged Wednesday that it is in fact working with Elon Musk on potentially taking Telsa private. Goldman has removed its research analysts’ rating on the company. Meanwhile, the SEC has subpoenaed Tesla’s directors to see if Musk actually had the financial commitments necessary to take the company private when he tweeted so last week, sending the stock skyrocketing. (Bloomberg)

The narrative that the Trump administration’s proposed changes to the Volcker Rule has banks and traders jumping for joy may be a false. Lawyers representing more than 10 banks including J.P. Morgan and Bank of America met with the Federal Reserve to complain about Volcker 2.0, noting it could hamper trading in certain asset classes and complicate compliance issues. (WSJ)

Morgan Stanley’s new compensation plan for brokers punishes those who count little fish as customers. For clients with less than $250k in assets, advisors will see a reduced payout of 25% if they can’t move them into low-touch managed accounts. (Investment News)

Thirteen of the 25 highest-paying jobs are in the tech sector. (VentureBeat)

Former employees at a $17 billion bond fund based in California called Post Advisory have complained about the firm’s culture and CIO, who has reportedly punch holes in walls, cursed out colleagues and even allegedly offered to fistfight a co-worker in a conference room. (Bloomberg)

James Nessel, Deutsche Bank’s co-head of U.S. high yield trading, has reportedly left the bank. (Business Insider)

U.S. banks have increased security after the FBI warned them of the potential of a huge cyberthreat known as ATM “jackpotting.” (Bloomberg)

The Royal Bank of Scotland has ranked last among all U.K. banks by small businesses. (Financial News)

Follow @BeecherTuttle

““

Despite working in various analytical roles in the commodities sector, Kian Boon Ng had found it difficult in the early stages to take his career in a new direction when he wanted to make the transition.

“I wanted to pursue more analytical roles in various industries, but I found that the right doors were not opening because my undergraduate degree is in psychology.” says Ng. “I remember an interview where I was informed by the hiring manager that I would never be able to get a job in an analytical position because I had a ‘soft’ background.”

Far from discouraging Ng, however, these words made him even more determined to prove the interviewer wrong. He decided to take up a Master of Science in Quantitative Finance (MQF) offered by Singapore Management University (SMU) as he was attracted by its strong academic reputation and the highly specialised programmes in Finance it offers.

Ng’s investment in himself paid off, and after graduating, he secured a role at ExxonMobil as a pricing analyst. “In my view, the company was looking for someone with quantitative skillsets outside the field of engineering. The SMU MQF programme imbued in me a strong quantitative mindset and skillsets with a strong Asia focus.”

Of the two tracks that the MQF programme offers, Ng took up the international track which required him to spend two terms in Cass Business School in London. “The experience gave me a different perspective, the chance to extend my horizons and understand the nuances of different cultures.” he acknowledged.

Out of all the modules offered by the programme, he found the econometrics the most interesting and useful. “This module doesn’t just prepare you for financial technical roles, but also for roles in other industries.” he explained. “Econometrics is something that can be applied widely because what you learn – like regression models – are utilised in a variety of jobs, from an analyst in finance or M&A, to pricing in an oil & gas firm like what I am doing currently,” says Ng, who is currently a Strategic Pricing Advisor at ExxonMobil.

One of the unique features of the SMU MQF programme is the opportunities it provides for students to design and implement quantitative trading strategies. “SMU has its own quantitative trading lab, giving students access to state-of-the-art trading systems and real-time financial data that enables you to try out your trading ideas.” explains Ng.

Another aspect of the programme that Ng found invaluable was the extensive industry experience of the SMU faculty. “Having a blend of highly qualified academics who also comes with a wealth of industry experience is important, not just from a learning perspective, but also when you go out into the real world, because you have a network you can tap into for their knowledge to help mitigate some of the challenges at work.” he adds.

Designed to cater to a need identified by the Monetary Authority of Singapore for more specialists in quantitative finance, as well as to meet demand in the financial industry, Ng pointed out that among the 35 students in his cohort, more than 70% entered the finance industry and the majority now work in quantitative roles.

Ng advises people thinking about doing the SMU MQF to keep an open mind about the role and industry they want to take on upon graduation. “The SMU MQF programme doesn’t just equip you with the skillset to do well in the finance industry. You graduate with the skillsets to succeed in varied roles across industries.” he concluded.

Image credit: getty

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Meanwhile…

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Bad news for anyone who thinks this is indicative of their 2018 CFA exam result

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Morning Coffee: Should Kweku Adoboli go on Love Island? Reality shows for financial celebrities. Deutsche has a decision to make

Meanwhile…

Pay in industry vs. pay in banking. Who gets the most?

The 10 Wall Street jobs that banks can’t seem to fill

Banking juniors keep leaving for consulting. Are they making a terrible mistake?

If that Barclays trader lost $19m at J.P. Morgan, it would be no big deal

The CFA Institute is not really a super-profitable organization

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