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As we reported last week, Goldman Sachs’ applications for summer analyst programs and full time analyst programs are open. As of Saturday, it’s been possible for students to put themselves forward to work at Goldman Sachs in 2018.

In theory, you have plenty of time to get your Goldman application sorted out: deadlines for the firms’ analyst programs vary from October 29th (the EMEA full time analyst program) to December 3rd (the EMEA summer analyst program), with U.S deadlines interspersed between (click here for the full list).

In reality, you need to get a serious move on.

This is because, as Goldman points out on its graduate site, it accepts applicants on a first come first served basis. In other words, if you apply now and Goldman likes you, it will make you an offer and give you a place. But if you apply in November and Goldman likes you, it might want to make you an offer and give you a place, but there could be that there are no places left.

This matters, because Goldman Sachs receives a lot of applications. In 2016, Goldman told the Financial Times it received 223,849 applications for analyst and summer analyst positions combined. 130,000 of these applications were for 5,000 internships – an acceptance rate of just 4%.

If you delay in applying to Goldman, it’s therefore likely that tens of thousands of people will beat you to it, and be accepted before you even get a look-in. This applies particularly to “hot” divisions like investment banking (M&A and capital markets) and sales and trading. Rushing might be less imperative in divisions like technology, where Goldman hires a lot of people and struggles to attract them.

Of course, applying to GS isn’t easy. The firm famously uses a 300 word personal statement to differentiate between candidates and crafting this carefully has traditionally been considered crucial to success.

Goldman recruiters say the firm is deluged in applications from identikit candidates and that “creativity and effort” in the personal statement stand out. “There were some crazy submissions – poems and things,” one ex-GS recruiter recalls. “Someone who’d studied English Literature at Cambridge wrote a really brilliant and off-the-wall description of why they wanted to work for us and we invited them for interview because we thought they might have some brilliant and innovative ideas.”

If you make it through the personal statement, you can expect to be invited to a Hirevue interview. Unlike many other banks, Goldman doesn’t run assessment centres: if you make it through Hirevue, you’ll be asked to a series of individual interviews instead.

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Photo credit: Stampede! by Dennis van Zuijlekom is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

It’s a day for disappearances. First, came Chris Innes, U.S. head of equities at BNP Paribas. Now it looks like Raj Nagella, one of Citi’s most senior quantitative equities traders has gone too.

There is no one with Nagella’s name on Citi’s internal directory and insiders say he’s left. Citi confirmed Nagella’s disappearance.

The exit comes after Citi’s equities sales and trading revenues declined nearly 11% year-on-year in the second quarter. At J.P. Morgan equities revenuens were down just 1% over the same period.

Nagella joined Citi in 2008 after leaving Bank of America. He held various positions at the U.S. bank, including head of U.S. algorithmic trading products and head of the Americas execution platform. His LinkedIn profile says he was made global head of cash products in 2014, but Citi insiders say he was a mere “quantitative analyst”. Nagella began his banking career at Goldman Sachs in 2001, where he helped popularize the use of algorithms in the trading business.

Observers suggest Nagella’s exit is symptomatic of Murray Roos’s growing influence. Roos joined Citi from Deutsche in 2015 and is global co-head of equities with Dan Keegan. Nagella isn’t the only change at the top of Citi’s equities business this year. Ryan Gould, a former equities MD left to manage the central risk book at UBS in May and Tom Chippas joined as global head of quantitative execution from blockchain start-up Axoni in June (Chippas was formerly CEO of Citadel Technology LLC).

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Photo credit: citi by Tamas Neltz is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Investment banks have to work harder to keep hold of their analysts and associates. Yes, they may be swamped with applications, but top graduates are turning away for tech companies and consulting firms, while those who accept the job often have one eye on their next career move.

Banks are trying to appeal to 20-somethings, and at Goldman Sachs that doesn’t just mean letting technology and engineering staff dress down in the office – it means making them feel that they’re giving back.

Philanthropic activities are all the rage on Wall Street, but Goldman is putting its money where its mouth is by giving teams of analysts the chance to beat their peers, impress the firm’s most senior partners and donate money to charity. The Analyst Impact Fund competition pits teams of three-to-five analysts against one another – the prize being $350k split between the six nonprofit organizations deemed to be the most worthy.

It’s proven popular, with 75 teams totalling 300 analysts from 17 offices around the world competing. Goldman’s Partnership Committee – 30 of its most senior partners – judged it and CEO Lloyd Blankfein announced the winners. Bronx Freedom Fund took third place (earning their nonprofit a $50k donation), Educate Girls finished in second place ($75k donation) and the winner was Kiron Open Higher Education ($150k)

The Bronx Freedom Fund team was made up of five senior analysts based in Goldman’s New York headquarters: Liz Fennell, Zack Newick, Taylor Dickinson, Lauren Foster and Sheema Golbaba. Their strategy was to tell stories of that would be impacted by the Bronx Freedom Fund, such as Kalief Browder, an African-American man who was arrested at the age of 16 for allegedly stealing a backpack. The judge set his bail at a level he couldn’t afford, and he was imprisoned for three years on Rikers Island without trial, spending most of this time in solitary confinement before eventually committing suicide.

“We made the human element clear, demonstrating that not only is this a great organization interested in achieving criminal justice reform, it has a model that is well suited for what the Analyst Impact Fund was asking us to do,” Dickinson says. “It’s part of Goldman’s culture of service, making sure it’s felt uniformly at every level, not just the senior people serving on boards who able to donate a lot of money, but also allowing junior people to have an impact, give back and contribute to society,” she says.

Advice for summer analysts

Last week, Johann Shudlick, the global head of diversity at Goldman Sachs, offered some pearls of wisdom to summer analysts, which recommended a combination of hard work, networking, subservience and absorbing Goldman’s corporate identity. The winning analysts also advise interns to meet as many people as possible.

“Mentorship is encouraged here – you can basically email anyone and say ‘I want to learn more about what you and your team do,’ and most people are willing to take 15 or 20 minutes to have a coffee,” Foster says. “I’ve never felt shy about asking senior bankers, ‘Tell me how you’ve excelled in your career’ – if you want advice from senior people at the firm, form a bond common and keep in touch, their doors are usually open.

“Summer analysts should network and embrace every opportunity, follow up and ask people to get coffee,” she says. “Senior people are willing to share their perspective and they want junior people to succeed. Be sure to jump on projects and networking events to get the most out of it.”

Dickinson says that the firm’s culture is a bit of a flat organization that encourages mentorship.

The key skill that people who succeed have is to be able to make connections beyond the people they interact with in their day-to-day responsibilities.

“I’d encourage interns to think expansively and demonstrate a desire to want to help beyond their assigned tasks or projects,” Dickinson says.

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55 year-old David Solomon is co-president of Goldman Sachs. One day, Solomon might even replace Lloyd Blankfein as CEO. Until then, he also doubles up as a D.J.: Solomon’s alter ego is D.J. D-Sol. And D.J. D-Sol plays “commercial” dance music at monthly gigs at venues in the Bahamas and New York before chilling his his the day job helping to run Goldman Sachs.

Andy Purnell can empathize. He too worked in banking whilst D.J-ing on the side. But he wasn’t nearly as senior Solomon (he was just an analyst in Barclays’ securitized products division) and unlike Solomon, he didn’t stick with finance. Since 2015, Purnell has been a D.J. full time.

Purnell says it’s not easy working in banking and playing music professionally. “I didn’t sleep much,” he reflects. “I would work long hours in the bank, but I would also DJ every day on the weekend typically – I almost never had a day off.”

Leaving banking to become a professional D.J. isn’t exactly a cake walk either though. Bankers think they have it hard, but professional D.J.s possibly have it harder. Bankers travel, but Purnell says D.J.s travel more. They also work all night and are typically self-employed so don’t have paid holiday. “I’ve just got home for the first time since June,” Purnell says, adding that he now gets even less sleep than previously and spends his time flying around the world. “I just flew back from Bulgaria this morning where I played a festival for MTV – I was there for less than 24 hours. That’s not at all uncommon,” he adds.

Even so, he doesn’t miss banking – much. “I miss working with one of my very good friends and I miss having the resources to be so up to date with the world economy – but otherwise I am much happier doing what I do now.”

Purnell says banking’s great if you’re a student with a genuine interest in finance and a great work ethic. However, he says he found the finance industry lacking in positivity and bereft of a true team atmosphere. “Look at what I did yesterday,” he says (referring to the photo above). “I didn’t get that kind of buzz when closing a deal or making money – it’s good to see smiles and energy!”

Maybe Solomon could spread some vibes at Goldman by playing his tunes at the start of the next town hall? It might be just what the bank needs after what’s expected to be another weak quarter.

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Banks may be opening up innovation labs, pouring millions into IT projects and even relaxing their dress codes to attract more developers, but technology companies are still becoming increasingly attractive destinations for financial services professionals.

The 10 employers in the table below secured more votes than any other technology firms in the eFinancialCareers 2017 Ideal Employer survey, which asked almost 6,500 finance professionals which companies they would prefer to work for.

Moreover, the five most popular tech giants – Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon – also feature in the top-30 of our overall ranking, which pits them against major financial institutions. In a sign that people currently working in financial services are willing to move to the technology sector, Google came in third place as an ideal employer, beating all the big banks with the exception of J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

Worryingly for banks’ ability to recruit and retain staff, the attractiveness of tech companies is increasing. Compared with last year’s Ideal Employer survey, Facebook jumped three spots to 15th in the general ranking, while Microsoft moved up seven places to 24th, and Amazon rose 17 positions to 26th.

But why, exactly, do any tech firms appear on a ranking which polled financial professionals? It’s partly because people think they offer a working environment and company culture that banks struggle to match, according to our survey, which also asked respondents to name the perceived strengths of their ideal employer.

Of the people who voted for Google as their ideal employer, for example, 80% believe that its office environment is a strength.

Some of this positive sentiment could be explained by the perpetual buzz surrounding hip workplaces in the tech sector. Google is expanding in major finance centres, not just in Silicon Valley. Construction begins on its new London headquarters next year, which features a swimming pool, indoor sports pitch and rooftop garden. In Singapore, Google moved to a new campus-style headquarters last November, where staff can enjoy hipster cafes, massage rooms and Lego-playing desks.

Finance professionals also believe that tech companies offer great company perks – 72% of Facebook voters gave its perks the thumbs up, for example. They may have heard of the free meals on offer at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters or its onsite bankers and barbers. Flexible working and organisational culture are also perceived as strengths of the tech companies, according to our survey.

Do finance professionals unrealistically view tech firms as providers of fantasy workplaces and refuges from the straitjacket world of banking?

Perhaps, but the likes of Google scored well across a range of less frivolous categories, too. Three quarters of Facebook votes think it provides challenging and interesting work, while Apple voters ranked their ideal employer highly as an industry innovator (76%) and established industry leader (78%).

Meanwhile, as investment banking CEOs continue to cut headcount and restructure their global operations, finance professionals appear to have more faith in the business strategies of the tech firms.

Google (68%), Facebook (76%) and Apple (73%), are all seen as companies boasting strong financial performance. Their voters also rate them highly for company leadership.

While front-office employees are sometimes hired into corporate development jobs at tech firms, banks are more concerned about losing people from the technology teams. Tech is one of the few functions that banks are expanding in large numbers as they try to reinvent themselves as technology companies in their own right. About a quarter of Goldman Sach’s 33,000 employees now work in the tech.

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Image credit: SpVVK, Google

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If you’re endowed with a good memory, you may recall the last Credit Suisse strategic plan. That was the plan which said the bank would cut 30% of its jobs in London over the next two years. That was two years ago (pre-even-the-whiff-of -Brexit) and has now been achieved. It’s therefore time for something new.

Yesterday, CEO Tidjane Thiam sent a memo about the nascent plan, which will cover the years 2018 to 2020 and is to be presented this August after being delayed from June. Like John Cryan at Deutsche Bank, Thiam wants to bring “the fun” back to CS: in the new plan there will reportedly be less cost cutting and more emphasis on “value creation opportunities.” If you work in the investment bank or global markets division, however, the fun might be hard to find. Bloomberg suggests only one area here will feel the heat of Thiam’s enthusiasm between now and 2020: M&A.

This is because the plan will be all about emphasizing businesses which generate higher returns and are more capital efficient, and the M&A advisory business, along with wealth management and the Swiss private bank has already been identified by Thiam as fitting this description. Come 2020, the implication is that Credit Suisse will be lavishing love on its M&A bankers and their big returns.

It’s not all bad news for the global markets division though. Here, Thiam is reportedly resisting pressure to make further swingeing cuts. Costs in global markets consumed 99% of revenues in 2016, but the division is due another $400m of cost cuts before the new plan kicks in in 2018. The global markets division at Credit Suisse is already very efficient at turning risk weighted assets (RWAs) into revenues: in 2016 it generated more than double the revenues of traders at Deutsche Bank and Bank and more than triple the revenues of traders at Bank of America for each dollar of RWAs. This was partly thanks to the low-key systematic market making group, which Thiam has also lauded for its capital efficiency.

If efficient use of capital is the strategic priority, then come 2020, Credit Suisse’s investment bank might be a giant algorithmic trading operation with some M&A bankers on the side. Welcome to the investment bank of the future.

Separately, remember Matthew Westerman, the thrusting former Goldman Sachs banker who was causing upset at HSBC with his demanding working practices? He might become the overall boss. The Telegraph reports that Westerman is “in the frame” to replace Stuart Gulliver at CEO. Westerman’s overhaul of the investment bank, with its redundancies, harsh year end reviews, and monitoring of what M&A bankers are up to exactly, has seemingly gone down well. HSBC employees can expect a lot more of the same.

Meanwhile:

Gaël de Boissard, ex-head of fixed income trading at Citi, has invested in a start-up that uses artificial intelligence to address credit risk. (Finextra)

Citi is starting a major new post-Brexit trading operation in Frankfurt. Only 125 jobs will be affected initially. (Sky)

Leave Nomura, join Millennium. (HFM)

KKR avoided naming anyone to succeed its 73 year-old founders because it feared offending all the staff who didn’t make the succession. Now that it’s chosen successors, various people are resigning. (Reuters)

I’ve been programming in C and C++ for 25 years and I cannot consistently write safe code. (Robert O’Callahan)

Questions you may be asking yourself and others about CFA results day. (300 Hours)

The secret to the stressful job interview: “Ah, let me think about that for a moment” (HBR)

If you like to stay up late, you’re probably bad at science. (British Psychological Society Digest)

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The investment banking fixed income party may well be over, but there’s one place where they continue to hire – emerging markets credit trading.

Yes, this is a bit niche, but investment banks across the City are willing to invest in big hires. The latest is BNP Paribas, which is set to bring in Shokat Khan, a senior emerging markets trader who has spent the last nine months working at Cantor Fitzgerald.

Khan has upgraded, taking a role as a senior emerging markets credit trader focused on the Middle East and North Africa region at BNP Paribas in London. He has previously worked as a managing director in emerging markets trading focused on either MENA or CEEMEA (Central & Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa), leading a team of traders at both Jefferies and Royal Bank of Scotland.

He’s set to join BNP Paribas later this year, according to sources close to the situation.

BNP is the latest investment bank to start building its emerging markets team. In March, it hired Iftikhar Ali, who left his role as chief investment officer at hedge fund Rhodium Capital Management after four years. Before this, he was head of EMEA proprietary trading at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

BNP Paribas’ emerging markets team has been growing under the leadership of Ali over the past few months and is still hiring. It currently has five traders supported by one graduate recruit and is looking to add at least one other trader in the coming months, sources suggest.

Emerging markets trading is a sector that investment banks continue to hire for. Jefferies is building its EM credit trading team, hiring in Aaron Fernandes from Barclays in New York and Kevin Kelly from Goldman Sachs in London to head up the team.

There’s been a lot of movement in and out of Goldman Sachs’ emerging markets team. Gokhan Buyuksarac, a highly-rated EM trader who left for Nomura in February, Damien McCaughley, who left for Susquehanna International Group and Andy Skraba, who quit for SocGen. Goldman also hired from Cantor Fitzgerald, bringing in its head of emerging markets trading for CEEMEA, Thomas Blondin, as an executive director in May.

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Image: Getty Images

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Will Morgan, a managing director in equity research at Goldman Sachs, has just left the U.S. investment bank to join a small investment manager run by star fund manager Terry Smith.

In another sign that senior analysts are ditching big banks for the buy-side as MiFID II regulation prepares to shake-up the way that investment banks price research, Morgan joined Fundsmith, a £6bn investment manager with just 16 employees in London, earlier this month.

Morgan joined Goldman Sachs’ asset management graduate programme after graduating with a first class degree in economics and politics from the University of Bristol in 2000. He switched across to marketing, then sales before finally settling on equity research in its investment bank. Over the past 17 years, he’s held various senior roles including co-head of insurance research and head of European construction & building materials. For the past two years, he has been deputy-head of Goldman’s industrials business unit and focused on autos, aerospace and defence, capital goods, and construction and building materials.

Fundsmith is the investment manager set up by big name fund manager Terry Smith in 2010. Smith sits alongside the likes of Neil Woodford in the ‘star’ fund manager category that’s all important for attracting assets under management when quitting big name firms to go it alone. Fundsmith’s London office is in Cavendish Square in Marylebone, London and it employs around 16 people, according to the Financial Conduct Authority register. However, Smith himself is not there – he quit the City earlier this year to run his flagship Fundsmith Equity fund from the island of Maritius in order to escape the ‘noise’ of London.

Morgan’s departure for the buy-side looks symptomatic of the MiFiD II regulations, which require investment banks to separate research costs from other trading charges and have prompted most banks to scale down their teams of analysts and focus on a few big names supported by a team of juniors. However, Goldman Sachs has been hiring in research – earlier this year it brought in Johnny Vo, a former financial institutions group investment banker at RBC Capital Markets, as a managing director in its insurance research team.

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Image: Getty Images

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Is there much to choose between Big Four accounting firms when it comes to pay? Much like top tier banks, PwC, Deloitte, EY and KPMG are all competing against one another for talent. Also much like top tier banks, their pay can be very similar for similar roles.

If you make to partner level in the Big Four, there’s a clear hierarchy. In 2016, Deloitte’s UK equity partners were paid an average of £837k ($1.1m) each, while partners at PwC, KPMG and EY earned an average of £706k, £582k and £662k respectively. Across firms as a whole though, this doesn’t necessarily hold up: average pay per head for KPMG’s 13,000 staff in the UK is £73k – higher than the £69k average for people at PwC.

However, if you’re a junior auditor with a Big Four firm in London, Tom Stoddart, a director at recruitment firm Eximius Finance, says your pay will be roughly similar wherever you work. “When you leave university, you start on between £24k and £27k depending upon whether you’re in Central London or not, and this rises to between £42k and £46k over the next three years as you pass the ACA exams. – Your salary rises with each exam.”

Nonetheless, figures from Glassdoor, shown in the table below, suggest there are discrepancies. On average, Glassdoor suggests that Deloitte now pays its UK junior auditors the most, while EY pays the least. This is in line with previous figures from pay benchmarking firm Emolument, which suggested that KPMG and Deloitte are the most generous with their junior auditors, and that PwC and EY lagged behind.

In consulting, however, Deloitte and PWC stand out for their generosity. Glassdoor’s figures suggest PwC pays its average junior consultant around 14% more than EY.

Stoddart says consulting pay varies widely across the Big Four and is more dependent upon your actual consulting role than the firm you work for. Stoddart says technical consultants in the quantitative risk space earn the most, with pay for senior managers in technical consulting rising to around £120k as the Big Four try luring quants from banks.

Nonetheless, there does seem to be something to the notion that Deloitte and PWC pay their consultants the most. Managementconsulted, a website which tracks pay for consultants in the U.S. says PwC and Deloitte pay newly hired graduate consultants $93k and $101k respectively, while KPMG and EY pay $75k and $80k.

If you want to get paid in consulting when you leave university, though, the Big Four are not the place to be. The highest junior consulting salaries are reportedly on offer at McKinsey & Co. and Boston Consulting, where juniors start on $112k and $113k respectively.

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Photo credit: 185 by Andreas Wecker is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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Susan Estes, formerly a managing director at Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Countrywide Securities Corp. got her start in the industry as a runner at the New York Board of Trade, a commodity futures exchange. Now the co-founder, president and CEO of OpenDoor Trading, a Jersey City, New Jersey-based fintech startup operating an electronic bond-trading platform, Estes recounts working her way up from sales to trading and eventually senior management at big banks in a male-dominated environment.

“My first jobs were in sales back in the early ’80s, when women were unheard of in fixed income and female traders were nonexistent,” Estes says. “I was clear about what my career aspirations were, though: I wanted to trade, because, as a woman, it’s black and white – no one can argue with the bottom line.

“Your numbers are published and everyone knows where you are,” she said. “I loved sales, but there’s a lot more grey area associated with it.”

Over a decade and a half at Morgan Stanley, Estes worked her way up from junior trader to managing director, running U.S. Treasury trading and eventually global bond trading, as well as the co-head of bond sales.

After leaving banking for a short stint as an entrepreneur in 2001, Estes joined Deutsche Bank as an MD and the head of fixed income, North America, then in 2003, made the move from New York to Los Angles and came on board Countrywide as an MD and the head of non-mortgage rates trading.

“Back then, the Treasury market was more volatile, moving 50 basis points at the time,” Estes said. “Countrywide was the largest mortgage originator [in the U.S.], and they hired me to build a domestic dealership, which was the first new dealer in more than 50 years.”

Soon after, Estes was invited to serve on the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (TBAC), which meets quarterly with the Treasury Department to provide advice on funding requirements and separately with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. She also became a board member at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA).

From banking to fintech

Around the time that Bank of America’s acquisition of Countrywide was announced, Estes broke off to start her own firm, Arch Pacific, followed by a two-year period working at MAP Alternative Asset Co., a hedge fund consulting firm specializing in risk management. She began to sow the seeds that would become OpenDoor Trading, which she launched with managing partner Brian Meehan, a veteran sales-trader previously with Banc of America Securities and Jefferies, in 2013.

“We’ve been in artificially pegged rates for quite some time, and I don’t think OpenDoor would be possible without the restraints placed on the market after the crisis,” Estes says. “The idea spread across the industry that liquidity is going away and they’re not going to be able to trade as profitably as they used to.

“I like puzzles – the way that I used to trade, I wasn’t a day trader – I liked to look for the large, macro trade, and OpenDoor the largest macro trade that I’ve ever put on, as it was originally self-funded,” she says. “It’s exciting – it’s something go from an idea on a piece of paper to now a team of 21 people working with the largest investment banks as dealer sponsors, the largest asset managers, sovereign wealth funds and central banks.”

OpenDoor hosts anonymous auctions of “off-the-run” U.S. Treasury bonds, which are issued before (and traded less frequently than) the most recent offering with the same maturity, and Treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPS).

Including the seed round in 2005 and two private investment rounds, including one that closed at the end of last month, OpenDoor has now raised $22m, part of which will go towards upgrading the platform, building an API and hiring. The firm has been adding people to market support, sales, relationship management and technology project management and plans to continue to do so.

Estes has been able to use her industry connections to bring people on board, including CTO Michael Sacks, the ex-COO of fixed income technology and global head of bond technology at Morgan Stanley and the former head of software production at MarketAxess, an e-trading platform for corporate bonds. She also brought on board Michael Paulus, most recently a J.P. Morgan MD who previously worked at HSBC, Citi, Bank of America and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

“We’re looking to have a global footprint, so we’re going to open a small office in London and considering different locations in Asia, as we want to move to an around-the-clock operating model,” Estes says.

Pick fintech over trading

Having worked at big Wall Street banks and in fintech, Estes says she’d recommend the latter for students considering (and professionals reconsidering) their career options.

“Today, fintech is a better option than trading at a big bank,” Estes says. “I was always on the sell side, and I rode the large balance sheets and banks’ ability to take a lot of risk, but those trading jobs have pretty much gone away today.

“People have gone or are going fully electronic, so the most interesting places to be are AI and big data, learning to use the data available out there to better forecast the market, would make for an incredibly fascinating career,” she says.

Susan Estes of OpenDoor Trading

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Photo credit: tomap49/GettyImages
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Goldman Sachs likes to win. When the firm had a terrible first quarter in fixed income trading, co-head of securities Pablo Salame told staff he was fed up with losing and that they should please clients with little added extras (“Just add butter!”) to keep the clients happy. Unfortunately, today’s Goldman results suggest it might need to add cheese too, or else go and find some new clients – particularly in fixed income sales and trading and maybe also in the investment banking division.

“It was a difficult quarter on all fronts,” said Goldman CFO Marty Chavez in today’s call, speaking of Goldman’s fixed income trading division. “The market backdrop was challenged. Client activity remained light. We didn’t navigate the market as well as we aspired to or as well as we had in the past.”

Bank of America also reported today. It’s results are somewhat overshadowed by the tribulations at Goldman Sachs, but together with Citi and J.P. Morgan’s results last week, they help throw Goldman’s quarter into relief. The upshot is that it’s not all bad at Goldman, but where it is bad, it’s pretty awful.

Yes, Goldman’s fixed income currencies and commodities (FICC) trading business is doing very badly, but its equities business is doing rather well

Goldman’s FICC business had a terrible second quarter (revenues down 40% vs. the second quarter of 2016) and a terrible second half as a whole (revenues down 21%). As the chart below shows, Goldman’s FICC business is losing market share as rival banks have either increased revenues or seen their businesses shrink by a lot less. At Bank of America, for example, fixed income sales and trading revenues were up 6% in the first half, even though they fell 14% in the second quarter.

While Goldman’s FICC business shrivels, however, its equities sales and trading business is surging. As the chart below also shows, equities sales and trading revenues at GS were up 17% in the first half of this year vs. 2016. At Bank of America equities revenues were only up 5%. At Citi, they fell.

Needless to say, the out-performance of Goldman’s equities business hasn’t gone unnoticed internally. Chavez said Goldman has been gaining equities market share and that this is, “the positive result of investing [in equities] over multiple quarters in both execution and capital commitment.” More importantly, Chavez added that Goldman is already rolling out its new and successful approach to equities execution to its fixed income business – the equities approach has already been applied to U.S. corporate credit and is now being “extended” to Europe.

This is a big change to the past: Goldman’s equities traders are on top; Goldman’s fixed income traders are way below.

Blame Goldman’s fixed income fragility on its product and client mix

What’s up with Goldman’s fixed income sales and trading business? Everything.

Firstly, it’s Goldman’s focus on commodities. This year, Chavez said Goldman experienced its worst quarter in commodities since becoming a public company 73 quarters ago. Other banks have pulled out of commodities trading. Goldman hasn’t (but is reportedly thinking of it ). “Commodities is a story of challenges on all fronts,” said Chavez. “- Lower client activity and a difficult market making environment.” He declined to say whether the commodities business actually made a massive loss in the past two quarters, but this seems a possibility.

Secondly, it’s Goldman’s focus on complex derivatives over cash and cash-like products. In rates, for example, Chavez acknowledged there’s been more activity in treasury bills and futures and vanilla products than in the more complex products Goldman’s strongest in. This might be why Goldman’s rates revenues were down “significantly” in the second quarter, while Citi said G10 rates revenues were stable.

Thirdly, it’s Goldman’s strength in macro product (fixed income and rates) trading over credit trading. Goldman’s a top tier player in macro products, but isn’t so hot in credit. By comparison, Bank of America said today that 64% of its fixed income revenues came from credit trading and that only 36% came from macro.

Fourthly, Goldman’s just got the wrong kind of clients. Banks like Citi and J.P. Morgan and Bank of America are popular with corporate clients. There are plenty of these and they use their trading businesses to hedge against things like exchange rate changes in all markets. Goldman Sachs, on the other hand, is popular with hedge funds and asset managers. There are fewer of these (or at least fewer large successful ones which it’s worth dealing with) and they like to trade against volatility (of which there hasn’t been much lately). Goldman was already alert to this issue before today’s miserable results – co-president (and D.J.) David Solomon said in June that Goldman needed to adjust its client base away from hedge funds and towards long only asset managers and corporates. Chavez said today that Goldman wants to have a great corporate client franchise and a great asset manager/hedge fund franchise and is setting about creating this. He omitted to say that wooing corporates might tough in the absence of a strong corporate lending arm…

Chavez also said that Goldman’s feeble fixed income performance wasn’t down to restrained risk taking. – Yes, Value at Risk fell at GS relative to peers, but this was just because Goldman’s clients traded less (“We don’t have VaR targets… there was less client demand for the VaR capacity.”) Nor can Goldman’s weakness really be attributed to calm markets – other banks operated in similar markets and performed far better.

Despite Chavez’ ultra-chill delivery, the state of Goldman’s fixed income trading business seems to be a source of anxiety internally. “I can tell you that everyone in our FICC business is focused on this topic and is working on it at a granular level,” said Chavez. “We are looking to see where there are potentially gaps in our client coverage and [whether we can] onboard new clients and serve them.”

Bank of America is killing Goldman in investment banking. So is Citi

While everyone focuses on Goldman’s fixed income misery, it’s easy to overlook the equally mediocre performance of the investment banking division. As the chart below shows, Goldman has lost market share to its U.S. rivals this year.

What’s going wrong? Chavez said the bank had been “conflicted out” in equity capital markets deals and blamed fewer “follow-on” offerings and lower issuance of convertible bonds.

Either way, M&A at Bank of America looks like a far happier place than M&A at Goldman Sachs.

But Goldman increased profits plenty more than Bank of America, so who cares about revenues anyway?

As Goldman’s top line shrinks, its bottom line has been growing. Chavez said in April that the bank wasn’t really focusing on revenue share and was more about returns and, “strong RoE across the cycle.” So, perhaps this year’s shrinking fixed income and M&A revenues aren’t a big deal.

Maybe so. Except, as the chart below shows, most banks (BofA’s global markets division excepted) increased profits substantially in their investment banking divisions in the first half of this year. Goldman’s strong profit performance was therefore nothing special.

More importantly, if Goldman’s targeting its return on equity (RoE) over revenues, it’s not exactly doing great. Yes, Goldman achieved a Return on Equity of 10.1% in the first half of this year. Yes, this was better than last year, but Goldman’s RoE was 11.5% in the first half of 2013. – It’s hard to make an argument for consistent improvement.

And Goldman still says it’s done with headcount cuts and has hiked pay

Lastly, despite its trials, Goldman didn’t cut headcount in the second quarter. Instead, employees were weirdly flat at 34,100 – exactly the same as the end of March 2017. Chavez reiterated that the firm has finished making its $900m of cost savings, implying that there aren’t any more layoffs to come.

Best of all, it looks like GS is paying more per head. In the first half of 2017, it set aside $191k to pay each employee – up 11% on last year.

No other U.S. bank breaks out compensation in a meaningful way, so it’s hard to say what’s happening to pay at rivals. – But whatever’s wrong with Goldman right now, getting paid doesn’t seem to be part of the issue.

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Photo credit: Gladiators by Eric Langley is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Don’t go into an investment banking interview if you’re not expecting to be thrown some curve balls. Back in the day, it was a combination of the standard ‘motivation’ questions (Why our bank? Why this department? Why banking?), competency-based questions and then finally some brain-teasers to test mental agility.

Now that Google deemed brain-teaser questions uncool, investment banks have started phasing them out. Chances are you won’t be asked how many tennis balls you can fit into a subway station – but prepare yourself just in case.

Boutique banks are eating up market share from larger investment banks, and young analysts are queuing up to get in. As we reported earlier this week, interviews at boutiques are now considered the toughest of any investment banks among junior and mi-ranking investment bankers, and Centerview Partners is supposedly the trickiest of all. One anonymous poster on the Wall Street Oasis has shed some light into why this might be the case – interview questions involving Rihanna. The response below came after the “the dumbest question I ever received”, says the banker.

“What song best describes your work style?”
“Work by Rihanna”
“And why is that?”
“Because of its consistent lyricism. I feel that it represents my work ethic and perseverance.”

Maybe questions asking how many quarters it takes to reach the ceiling of an interview room aren’t that bad after all.

Separately, Financial News has uncovered a problem among the financial services industry – everyone’s attractive. Our own analysis suggests that equity capital markets bankers are most likely to be beautiful, but Financial News’ own assessment of its 40 under 40 list suggests that, while everyone is by no means a model, they’re certainly more attractive than the population at large. Lookism, as its termed, could seriously harm your career. Financial services organisations have various programmes to tackle sexism, discrimination against disability or racism, but they’re not shy when it comes to hiring, say, a tall, attractive rower.

Ugly people are at a big disadvantage. Aside from the obvious social skills that develop from being deemed beautiful and popular, one study suggests that less attractive people earned 10-15% less than more attractive ones. The solution? Cultural change within the organisation and “a concerted campaign to treat lookism with the same contempt as racism or sexism could also help,” FN suggests.

Meanwhile:

“London’s role will not be easily replicated, and the alternative to London not being Europe’s global financial centre is that the EU does not have a global financial centre.” (Financial Times)

A lack of clarity over the UK’s Brexit plans is forcing banks and other financial services firms to start shifting jobs to the continent early (Reuters)

Citi considered Paris for its Brexit base, but Frankfurt won because it already has 300 people there (Financial News)

Mini-Brexit boost: Handelsbanken is opening branches in the UK regardless (Bloomberg)

Northern Trust has a new asset management chief (Fund Intelligence)

Credit Suisse is hiring private bankers in Saudi Arabia (Bloomberg)

China is the promised land for AI (Economist)

When extreme exercise is bad for you (NY Times)

Life as a male escort (Vice)

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Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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The good news is that if you’ve received an invitation to a Goldman Sachs superday, then you’ve made it a significant amount of the way through the process, as it’s the final stage of recruitment for the investment banking division’s summer analyst program.

On the other hand, you’ll really need to put your best foot forward at the superday, as typically only about 25% to 35% of candidates who participate in one receive an offer.

Here is everything you need to know to make the most of your opportunity at a Goldman Sachs superday and get hired as a fall intern or summer analyst, which often leads to a full-time offer after you graduate.

Goldman’s recruitment funnel

While Goldman Sachs used to interview students over the phone or in person on campus at select universities for first-round interviews, now applicants who are selected for first-round interviews for the bank’s summer analyst program are asked to participate in a prerecorded video interview via HireVue.

The summer analyst candidates who Goldman selects based on their prerecorded interviews to continue the process are invited to come into one of the bank’s offices for a series of in-person interviews known as a superday.

“The recruiting team partners with our investment bankers to hire our summer analyst class, which ultimately becomes our full-time investment banking analyst class,” said Annie Yearwood, vice president and head of Americas investment banking campus recruiting at Goldman Sachs. “We initially start speaking to students [at target universities] during their freshman and sophomore years to introduce them to opportunities at the firm. The interview process, including the superday, is primarily for college sophomores or juniors applying to our summer analyst program.

“For investment banking, we do hire for full-time graduate roles as well, but it’s quite small, only if there are still openings after we’ve made offers to our [summer analyst] interns, who make up most of our sourcing for each full-time analyst class,” she said.

Goldman Sachs superday schedule

Goldman hosts superdays from August to December, typically every other week.

Superdays range in size, usually 24 to 32 candidates in New York, where the majority of summer analyst candidates are interviewing for either the Americas financing group or the classic coverage group.

There are also internship opportunities at regional offices, which host superdays with somewhere between eight and 16 candidates. These include San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Houston and Irving, Texas, as well as Toronto and Calgary in Canada.

Goldman pays for superday participants’ airfare and hotel room. Those who arrive early have an opportunity to contact employees they’ve been in contact with, typically those who share the same alma mater. There is a candidate lounge at each office where candidates have the opportunity to relax and prepare for the interview. There’s complimentary WiFi, in case you’re wondering, and recruiters are on hand to answer any questions they may have.

Each candidate will have three 30-minute interviews with two investment banking executives conducing each one, meaning they will ultimately meet with a total of six bankers, primarily vice presidents and managing directors, over the course of the superday.

The interviews consist of structured questions designed to gauge candidates’ core competencies and technical questions geared toward test knowledge of investment banking and the markets.

Superday participants typically hear back from Goldman, one way or the other, within 24-48 hours. On average, candidates who receive offers get back to the bank with an answer within a week or two.

Goldman invites many of those who accept an offer to come into the office in February or March.

“It’s an opportunity for candidates to come in once they’ve accepted their offers and meet with bankers in different groups prior to their summer analyst program,” Yearwood said.

After the 10-week summer analyst program, Goldman typically extends full-time offers the following week.

Keys to superday success

Summer analyst candidates can and should prepare prior to the day-long series of interviews.

“Preparation is incredibly important here – I don’t think a candidate can ever over-prepare for a superday,” Yearwood said. “They can take advantage of various sources: leverage the internet, reach out to their alumni network and upper classmen who interned in investment banks and have them speak to the opportunities and coach them.

When it comes to the actual superday interviews, it is important for candidates to be able to share their story and describe their resume in a concise yet compelling way without embellishing, Yearwood said.

“We want to hire candidates from all different backgrounds, and it’s important for us to understand why investment banking appeals to them, so they can talk about a particular M&A deal in the marketplace that interests them, or share something that demonstrates their understanding of various basic valuation methodologies,” she said.

Yearwood said that Goldman is not just looking for candidates with finance majors or previous finance internships. The bank is looking for qualitative characteristics such as leadership and communication skills, hard work, self-motivation and a passion for learning finance.

“As college students, they can demonstrate those skills through extracurricular activities, course work and work, from an internship to a job on campus,” Yearwood said. “They need to understand what the investment banking role entails and why their skill set is transferable and makes them a good fit for the role.”

Those excellent students with a first in economics and ten internships? They’re referred to as “plug and play” and not the ideal, according to a former Goldman recruiter. He says the firm really wants people with unusual profiles – it’s all about trying to attract a diverse group of applicants who’ve studied history, English literature or another fascinating subject instead of just finance.

Goldman Sachs superday pitfalls to avoid

There are various pitfalls that unsuccessful superday candidates have fallen into, effectively taking themselves out of the running. Here are four of the most common, according to Yearwood:

Focusing on “I” not “we.” Teamwork is incredibly important for summer analysts, so not having specific examples of how you’ve approached team dynamics can hurt your candidacy.
Lacking sufficient preparation. Expect a mix of technical, cultural-fit and behavioral questions. Candidates need to be able to articulate why they want to work in investment banking specifically at Goldman. If you can’t do so convincingly and demonstrate knowledge of the firm, recruiters will question whether you’re really interested in the job. If you’re interested, we have a full list of every conceivable question you could be asked at a Goldman Sachs interview here. That said, there is such a thing as over-preparing, especially if it means that you come into the superday exhausted.
Speaking to an article or interview but only knowing the headline. The investment bankers who conduct superday interviews are trained to ask follow-up questions, so making a surface-level observation or reference without the ability to back it up or go deeper could backfire.
Lacking presence. Not being able to build a rapport with the people conducting an interview is a death knell for your chances of landing a summer analyst position.

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Photo credit: Tony Tremblay/GettyImages
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Brexit or not, low volatility or not, Trumpian uncertainty or not, 2017 has been a time of hiring. The first half of this year has witnessed a ripple of front office recruitment everywhere from Barclays to Credit Suisse and HSBC.

Thanks to notice periods of three to six months, however, many of the big names hired in the first half are only manifesting themselves now, or will appear in the months to come. When they arrive, some are expected to have mandates to build teams and to therefore do some recruitment of their own. Along with team-builders already in their roles, this is expected to feed recruitment in the second half of this year and into 2018.

If you’re looking for a banking job now, then, this is who you should probably know.

1. Filippo Zorzoli, Barclays

Zorzoli’s the man for anyone looking for a new rates sales job in Europe. Formerly head of rates sales at Bank of America in Europe (and before that, a rates man at Goldman for a decade), Zorzoli was poached by Barclays in June. He’s due to arrive in September and is expected (by headhunters) to strengthen Barclays’ team in London.

2. Fred Jallot, Nomura

Jallot is one of the biggest moves of 2017. Hired by Nomura from Citi in May, he’s due to turn up “this summer” as head of the Japanese bank’s global markets division in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Jallot’s arrival comes as Nomura’s international investment banking business is finally profitable and back in growth mode. Jallot is widely expected to hire, if not this year then next.

3. Mike Stewart, Credit Suisse

We’ve written a lot of about Mike Stewart already. Hired by Credit Suisse from UBS in December 2016 to be global head of equities based in New York, Stewart came with a massive notice period and only landed last month. Even before his arrival, however, Stewart orchestrated a wave of equities recruitment at Credit Suisse on both sides of the Atlantic. Headhunters say more hiring is expected: the bank wants to be within the top five globally in equities. It already ranks fifth in the U.S and Europe according to Greenwich Associates.

4. Stuart McGuire, Credit Suisse

McQuire is one of Stewart’s hires. Recruited from Deutsche Bank in May to run cash equities sales and trading in Europe, he’s expected to arrive sometime early in the third quarter. Expect hiring – possibly from Deutsche – in 2018.

5. Thalia Chryssikou, Goldman Sachs

Chryssikou isn’t new to Goldman Sachs, but she is new to her role. As we reported earlier this year, she was made head of global sales strats for the fixed income division in March. Goldman’s enthusiasm for using strats (quants) to help it leverage data to service clients plus the problems in Goldman’s fixed income division are likely to make Chryssikou an important player in Goldman’s fixed income recovery. Expect hiring of quantitative PhDs.

6. Patrice Maffre, Nomura

2017 has been a big year for leveraged finance hiring, with Goldman, HSBC and Citi all strengthening their teams. Given its current hiring mien, Nomura is also expected to pick up some leveraged financiers in the second half and into 2018. The man orchestrating this is likely to be Matrice Maffre, the Japanese bank’s London-based head of leveraged and acquisition finance.

Another Nomura man to know is likely to be Charles Pitts-Tucker, the Japanese bank’s head of investment banking in EMEA, who’s expected to add to the bank’s M&A and coverage team

7. Ray Doody, HSBC

Headhunters say Ray Doody is not done with hiring leveraged financiers into HSBC. Doody was hired from J.P. Morgan in January as global head of leveraged and acquisition finance. After a long notice period, he only arrived in May.

8. Alasdair Warren. Deutsche Bank

Alasdair Warren, Deutsche’s head of corporate and investment banking for EMEA is also thought to be in the market for some big-name coverage hires. Warren is nothing new to Deutsche – he joined from Goldman in November 2015, but headhunters say he has a mandate to recruit as the German bank tries recovering lost market share. Last October, Warren told Reuters he was particularly eager to regain Deutsche’s place in the equity capital markets league tables. Headhunters suggest Warren has struggled to land big name hires after Deutsche failed to pay performance bonuses last year.

9. Kevin Kelly, Jefferies

Jefferies is one of many big names to swap places in emerging markets this year. Hired from Goldman Sachs in London in March, he Jefferies as co-head of EM as the mid-sized investment bank proclaimed its intention of being “thought of…in the same league as Citi or J.P. Morgan.”

10. Zafar Khan, ABN AMRO

Dutch bank ABN AMRO is back in growth mode. In April, it hired Zafar Khan, a Citigroup veteran as head of UK country coverage. Khan is expected to hire between seven and 15 bankers in London over the next few years.

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Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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Ernesto Magnani is passionate about the potential of solar power to transform the energy sector. Working from his hometown of Parma, Italy, he runs Stern Energy, a thriving business which develops, constructs, manages and invests in solar parks across the country.

But to compete in such a cutting-edge and competitive sector, Magnani says he needs to ensure his own skills remain relevant and dynamic.

“I’m proud of what I’ve achieved as an entrepreneur, but in business it’s important to believe that the sky’s the limit,” says Magnani. “So I think education should never end – I’m always trying to add new areas of expertise that I couldn’t get on the job.”

In 2012, for example, Magnani decided that as his company expanded, he needed to improve his knowledge of finance.

Not having the time in his busy work schedule for a Master’s degree, Magnani looked for shorter courses in finance that he could comfortably fit around his business and family commitments.

And after researching courses locally and globally, he enrolled on an Executive Education programme – Financing the Entrepreneurial Business – at London Business School (LBS).

Since that point, Magnani has travelled from Parma to London annually. He has completed two week-long LBS finance programmes (Valuation and Mergers and Acquisitions), and supplemented his finance knowledge with leadership and strategy skills by taking the Essentials of Leadership and Developing Strategy for Value Creation programmes.

Why does Magnani keep coming back to LBS?

“Because LBS offers so many finance courses for business leaders like me, I’ve been able to build up the type of skills I’d get from a Master’s degree, while studying at my own pace and tailoring my learning to meet my needs as an entrepreneur,” he says.

Magnani also chose LBS because of the school’s international reputation.

“I’ve done courses in Italy and the US, but my classmates at LBS are much more international in comparison. I’m studying at the heart of the world’s leading financial centre and working closely with people from Japan, the Middle East, South Africa – all over the world,” says Magnani.

Another “big differentiator” for LBS Executive Education programmes is the “amazing calibre” of the participants, many of whom are C-level leaders, he adds.

“We did a lot of group work, and the brainstorming sessions opened my mind and got me thinking about new ways to approach challenges in my business. I was receiving high quality ideas from senior people who I wouldn’t otherwise have access to,” says Magnani.

LBS Executive Education classes are made up of participants from around the globe, representing a wide variety of sectors. This allows peer-to-peer learning from an exceptional group of diverse professionals and encourages a new way of thinking.

“Entrepreneurs shouldn’t only spend their time with people from their own sector. At LBS I had to explain my business in clear language to people who weren’t familiar with it, which is a good exercise in pitching and presenting,” says Magnani.

Magnani says the Executive Education programmes all gave him new skills that are now benefiting him on the job.

“I took the financing the entrepreneurial business course when my company was just starting to grow and I wanted to get in-depth insights into the best ways to finance it. For example, I now understand the logic behind what venture capital funds do – the timing of their investments and their expectations,” says Magnani.

“I’m using the skills I learnt from the valuation course when I’m purchasing assets for my company, while the leadership course has improved the way I communicate, motivate people, and speak in public,” he adds. “And because they’re intensive programmes, I’ve been able to see the benefits at work straight away.”

All the Executive Education programmes Magnani has taken are led by world-class LBS professors some of whom are consultants to large organisations globally. They bring both their latest academic research and their consultancy expertise into the classroom, he says.

“They have experience of various industries, so they’re up to date with the latest trends in their area. They encourage interaction and they’re very approachable, so you can discuss issues with them one-on-one,” he says.

“Guest speakers – from senior bankers to the CEO of a VC fund – also came to my courses. This gave us additional perspectives on the topics we were studying and the chance to put questions to and debate ideas with very senior people, who we wouldn’t otherwise have access to,” adds Magnani.

After completing three Executive Education programmes, Magnani became part of the 16,000-strong LBS alumni network, which is spread across more than 150 countries.

“The networking opportunities at LBS are fantastic, both during the courses – with the faculty, guest speakers and participants – and when you’ve finished,” he says. “I got to know my classmates socially over lunch and dinner, and we still exchange emails. If I need to get a fresh perspective on an issue affecting my business I can always ask them or reach out to the wider LBS network.”

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If you’re an experienced banker looking to make a lateral move or take on more responsibility at a new firm, you may have so much experience on your resume that you don’t know where to start cutting to get your resume down to the recommended two pages.

“Your resume ideally should be two, possibly three, pages, but never more than that,” says Amy Adler, executive resume writer, career coach and the founder of Five Strengths Career Transition Experts.

Here are tips for experienced bankers applying for a new job to follow the less-is-more mantra and make your resume more concise and persuasive.

Use a summary bullet-point and prepare a separate deal sheet

Typically an experienced banker has many deals where they served as lead as well as being an active participant. To prevent the resume from becoming too long, overly verbose or inundated with too much information, compose a bullet-point stating the number of total deals you have completed, including those on which you served as the lead, and total combined value, listing some of the diverse industries, says Mary DeLuca, an executive resume writer at Preferred Resume Group and a former adviser at Merrill Lynch.

“The deal sheet should list the deal size, industry, name of the company, type of transaction and role played – again only for those transactions not considered to be confidential or proprietary information,” she says.

For example:

32 transactions valued at $4.7bn, spanning oil and gas/biotech and technology; X have been completed; I served on X as lead or participant, including $450m Systematic Oil Refineries, $375m Genetic Grafting and $1.1bn Dynamic Technology. Detailed deal sheet available.

“If necessary, incorporate an overview of functions you’ve served in at various companies if your roles and functions were the same, which eliminates repetition that takes up a lot of valuable space,” she adds.

Cut irrelevant (or less relevant) deals

Bullet points should reflect a candidate’s ability to identify client relationships to nurture, to spot trends to pursue for successful deals and to persuade decision-makers successfully, according to Lisa Rangel, an executive resume writer at Chameleon Resumes.

“If you are clamoring for space, details to consider omitting would be unrelated to the desired industry or banking function,” she says.

Avoid distractions and stay on message

Avoid long narratives, excessive graphical elements and any potential distractions from your core message.

“Convert your resume into hard-hitting challenge-action-result bulleted statements that explain the outcomes you delivered,” Adler says. “Keep your resume clean visually and use color and visual elements to amplify, not distract from, your core message.

“For the particular opportunity, or set of opportunities all roughly similar, eliminate anything in your resume that doesn’t directly speak to the requirements of the role you’re targeting,” she says. “Your resume doesn’t have to be a laundry list of everything you have ever done.”

Highlight experience over the past decade, trim anything older than 12 years

Also, to maintain a concisely informative two-page resume, be strategic about listing your accomplishments in detail. In most cases, don’t go further back in experience than 12 years – it could be as few as 10, but no more than 15, depending on the seniority of the role you’re applying for, DeLuca says.

“[Instead,] list other places of employment under ‘Additional Experience,’ with only company name, titles and major contributions,” she says.

Adler agrees, saying you should cut details on jobs you held more than 10 years ago.

As another way to create resume space, consider removing college activities entirely or, at the minimum, those not related to banking.

“This will either shorten the resume or create more space to focus on relevant work achievements, which is what most of the experienced banker resume should be highlighting,” Rangel says.

Prioritize either depth or breadth, but don’t try for both

Bankers often wonder, “Is it better to list fewer deals that I’ve worked on, limiting the list to the ones where I played a bigger role and going more in-depth into those, or should I list more deals to show breadth and variety of my experience, but necessarily including fewer details?”

The answer? It depends.

“If the goal of the resume is to show breadth of experience, list more deals than less with truncated results to save space,” Rangel says.

“If the goal of the resume is to highlight an area of specific expertise, list fewer deals with longer specific details, however, still saving space by only focusing on relevant deals,” she says.
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Investment banks have just welcomed a new batch of analysts in the City of London. As ever, those breaking into a front office job will have beaten stiff competition to the role, so what does it really take? We’ve profiled a select group of impressive new analysts who have started out in June. The entire analyst classes arrive in August.

Joseph Roysten-Bailey, investment banking, Centerview Partners

Route to a finance job: Centerview Partners is supposedly the hardest bank to interview at, and boutiques only hire a handful of new analysts. Joseph is therefore in an enviable position. An LSE Economics graduate, with a first class degree, he interned in J.P. Morgan’s TMT UK coverage team last summer and also spent an insight week at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in 2015. Impressively, he was chairman of the LSE’s Alternative Investment conference for the past two years – an annual event that brings together big names from private equity and hedge funds – as well as taking part in the finance and business societies.

Interesting fact: He was in the England rugby under-16 squad while at school.

Grigorii Shchennikov, investment banking, Deutsche Bank

Route to a finance job: Grigorii has a Masters in Finance from Bocconi, which is a target school for investment banks in London despite being in Milan. He’s interned within Goldman Sachs’ TMT and leveraged finance division, but spent last summer at Deutsche Bank within its real estate, gaming and leisure investment banking team.

Interesting fact: While studying for his undergraduate degree in economics from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, he launched a website aimed at “providing the book recommendations of outstanding people”.

Sercan Demirtas, private equity group, Goldman Sachs

Route to a finance job: Sercan studied investment management at McGill University and has single-mindedly pursued an immediate move to the buy-side. He spent a summer in BNP Paribas’ investment bank in 2015, but also joined Polomino Capital in the same year for a six-month off-cycle internship. In 2016, he came to London as a summer analyst in Goldman Sachs’ private equity group and successfully converted into a full-time offer.

Interesting fact: He co-managed a $4m student-run investment firm while studying.

Jack Curran, investment banking analyst, Nomura

Route to a finance job: Jack interned at Nomura as off-cycle analyst within its TMT investment banking team in January – his only banking experience up until this point. He’s also interned at management consulting firm Accipio, private equity firm Foresight Group and law firm Carey Olsen. He has both an economics degree from University College London (UCL) and a Masters in Banking and International Finance from Cass Business School that he completed in 2016. In other words, he managed to secure an investment banking job outside of the regular recruitment cycle.

Interesting fact: He spent a month after graduation as a development manager on a crowd-sharing platform for volunteering opportunities.

William Robinson, investment banking analyst, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Route to a finance job: William graduated from Warwick University with a degree in economics, where he was also president of its economics society. He has two summer internships under his belt – initially at Barclays in 2015, and then at BAML the following year, which he converted into a full-time role.

Interesting fact: He competed in the National Swimming Championship, in the 100m and 200m backstroke.

Marcus Rosengren, investment banking analyst, J.P. Morgan

Route to a finance job: Marcus has a degree in economics, accounting and finance degree from Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), and joined J.P. Morgan’s diversified industries team in June. He interned on this desk last summer, and also spent a summer at Danica Pension in Stockholm. He was also an alpine skiing head coach for three years in Sweden.

Interesting fact: He started a clothing company linking China and Sweden while still at school.

Adrian Ahmadhi, investment banking analyst, Morgan Stanley

Route to a finance job: Adrian also studied in Sweden, both at SSE and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, where he completed a masters in applied and computational mathematics. He interned at Morgan Stanley last summer in London last year and secured a full-time role, but this follows a three-month stint in Credit Suisse’s prime services division and a host of spring internships at Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and Nordea Markets.

Interesting fact: He worked for nearly a year and a half as a part-time analyst at private equity firm Procuritas Partners until December last year.

George Mandres, trading analyst, Goldman Sachs

Route to finance: George has just completed an economics and statistics degree at UCL, and has multiple internships under his belt. He was a securities spring intern at Goldman Sachs in 2015, and spent the summer of that year as a summer analyst at Man GLG, as well as completing the insight programme in September at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. He interned at Goldman Sachs last year, rotating across various trading desks. He settled on sovereign financials, CDS and illiquid credit.

Interesting fact: George came to the attention of Goldman Sachs by winning its EMEA student challenge in 2015, which secured a £9,000 scholarship and a spring internship at the bank.

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Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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Goldman Sachs pays more than Morgan Stanley. We know this because when the two banks release information about compensation for their regulated staff in London, Goldman Sachs pays nearly three times as much per head ($2.8m vs. Morgan Stanley’s $1m). Similarly, pay per head for the average employee at Goldman Sachs in London is high at around £485k ($633k) and Morgan Stanley has historically paid half as much.

Why does Goldman feel the need to be so generous? CFOs like Harvey Schwartz and David Viniar have long held that it’s because everyone wants to hire Goldman talent, and that this talent leaves the firm each evening and needs to be incentivized to return the next day. “We live in a competitive environment,” said Viniar five years ago. “We still have people leaving for multi-year offers away from us, some from our competitors, some from other industry participants.”

In other words, Goldman has no choice but to pay.

There’s some truth in this. Goldman allegedly paid its London-based emerging markets traders badly last year, and many have since left for rivals with big aspirations. However, Goldman’s generosity goes deeper than employee exceptionalism. As a former partnership, Goldman has rewarding employees ingrained in its DNA. As a former partnership led by a former trader, it also particularly values the contribution of senior employees in the front office.

Morgan Stanley has none of this baggage. It’s a publicly listed firm run by a former management consultant. Therefore, while Goldman Sachs preached the need to pay staff and keep them on-side, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman’s opening gambit after becoming CEO in 2012 was that bankers who didn’t like their bonuses could leave. This was subsequently softened when Morgan Stanley bankers did just that, but the underlying sentiment remains: Morgan Stanley’s big names don’t dictate their pay; Goldman’s do.

The discrepancy is clear when it comes to compensation ratios. Under Gorman, Morgan Stanley has slashed the proportion of revenues it allocates to employees in its institutional securities business (investment bank) since 2014. Under Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs has achieved more of a gentle drop. As a result, Goldman allocated 500 basis points more of revenues to employees than Morgan Stanley in the first half of this year. If Goldman employees were to receive a revenue share similar to Morgan Stanley’s, the firm’s wage bill would need to fall by 12%.

Instead of falling, though, pay at Goldman Sachs is rising. As we reported yesterday, compensation per head at the firm rose 11% year-on-year in the first half. It helps that profits were up 34% on the previous year, but with fixed income sales and trading revenues collapsing, Goldman’s pay rise has a faint whiff of desperation: even if it wanted to, it might struggle to cut compensation now. By comparison, Morgan Stanley’s fixed income trading business has the wind behind it. For the first time ever, it’s now bigger than Goldman Sachs’s and is growing at a rate far exceeding U.S. rivals.

If you want to work for the market leader in FICC, it looks like Morgan Stanley. Gorman can get away with paying less. Goldman Sachs needs to pay less, but can’t.

Follow @MadameButcher
Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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Which is the worst bank to work for at this particular moment in time? Could it be Goldman Sachs, with its shrinking fixed income business and waning investment bank? Apparently not. Kian Abouhossein, the head of European banks research J.P. Morgan, and Amit Ranjan, a VP-level equity researcher, say it’s Deutsche Bank. In a new report, the two men say Deutsche Bank is their “least preferred” investment bank at this point in time.

Why? It’s all down to DB’s over-emphasis on fixed income sales and trading. J.P. Morgan’s analysts point out that two thirds of Deutsche’s profits are generated in the corporate and investment bank (CIB) and that fixed income currencies and commodities accounts (FICC) around 60% of all CIB revenues. Deutsche is over-exposed.

In fairness, the German bank is trying to reinvent itself by diversifying away from its reliance on FICC to boost revenue and focusing on building its M&A business in the U.S. Unfortunately, as J.P. Morgan points out, it’s not there yet.

By comparison, Abouhossein and Ranjan say Goldman’s FICC problems are far from terminal: all that’s needed is a change in the client and product mix and a return to the kind of volatility that benefits Goldman’s macro (rates and FX) franchise. The latter is likely to come in September as U.S. quantitative easing is unwound. – Goldman could be granted a reprieve soon.

Separately, the best jobs at Goldman Sachs are not in London. Nor are they (all) in New York. They are India and Poland.

In its quest to become the “Google of Wall Street,” Business Insider reports that Goldman Sachs has posted eight job ads for roles in its Marquee division in New York in the past month or so. Exciting, except that it’s posted a further 12 roles Marquee roles in Bangalore (Bengalaru) and four in Warsaw.

Marquee is a platform that provides clients access to the bank’s analytics, data, content and execution capabilities via a browser or an API. The positions range from associate developer to vice president. The days of Indian developers working on unimportant back office projects are over: one of Goldman’s Bangalore Marquee roles is for a developer with seven years’ experience to create client engagement technologies for the investment banking team in New York.

Meanwhile:

Goldman’s weak performance in FICC trading should result in a decision to downsize. (Bloomberg.)

Ex-Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins says traditional banks could face obsolescence in five-to-15 years at the hands of new financial-technology companies. (Bloomberg)

The Trump administration supports giving national banking licenses to firms in the emerging fintech industry. (WSJ)

Morgan Stanley is the latest global bank to pick Frankfurt for its new E.U. trading headquarters after Brexit. (The Independent)

A U.S. appeals court threw out the convictions of two former traders at the Dutch bank Rabobank in the first American criminal case to arise from investigations into Libor manipulation. (New York Times)

A rogue ex-Merrill Lynch trader has written a book about, er, cooking the books to hide the millions he lost during the financial crisis and the lessons he’s learned. (Knowledge@Wharton)

Nomura found that switching jobs will probably give you a bigger pay bump than sticking with your current employer. (Business Insider)

Here’s what students should do in their first and second years of university to maximize their chances of winning investment banking summer internships. (Mergers & Inquisitions)

Aaron Cowen, previously a portfolio manager at Soros Fund Management and chief investment officer at SAC Capital, founded Suvretta Capital Management’s in 2012, and its master fund is up 12.5% after fees for the first six months of the year. (Business Insider)

Human stock pickers at hedge funds are actually beating their computer competition so far this year. (CNBC)

People still hate bankers. (Bloomberg)

Follow @danbutchrwrites

Photo credit: Flickr, Lake Luise Thin Ice by Owwe is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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Next time you get an email that seems to be from Morgan Stanley offering you a job in the bank’s flying fixed income division, you might want to pause. You might especially want to pause if you’re subsequently invited to an interview with a purported Morgan Stanley recruiter in Google Hangouts. Morgan Stanley does not use video chat rooms like Google Hangouts to conduct its interviews. – You are being scammed.

The U.S. bank has become the latest financial services firm to caution aspiring employees against scammers offering jobs that appear “too good to be true” and extracting upfront payments for things like “starter kits” and preliminary training.

Morgan Stanley’s warning follows similar notices by hedge funds. Both Point72 and BlueBay Asset Management have warned candidates against scammers offering fake jobs and requestings payments for things like work permits and and system access before roles can be secured.

At Morgan Stanley, the scammers have gone one step further. The bank says they have actually been interviewing hapless students in Google Hangouts and sending them fake offer letters alongside their pitches for payment.

Like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley uses Hirevue’s digital interviewing system to screen potential graduate recruits. However, this is very different to a live interview with a human being in an online chat room. – If you’re invited to one of these with Morgan Stanley, the interviewer is a fake.

Morgan Stanley only accepts 2% of applicants to its summer analyst programs. 90,000 people applied two years ago, so the scammers have a rich seam of disappointed candidates to mine.

If you receive an offer, Morgan Stanley suggests various other ways of identifying whether it’s real or not. For example, is the recruiter contacting you from a valid Morgan Stanley email address ending in MorganStanley.com? Are you being asked for your social security number, national insurance number, date of birth, bank account information at the application stage (Morgan Stanley won’t do this)? Morgan Stanley will also never extend an offer without an interview.

If you have any doubts about the validity of your offer, you should email the bank at graduaterecruitmenteurope@morganstanley.com (if you’re in Europe), mscampusrecruiting@morganstanley.com (if you’re in the U.S.) and asia.recruit@morganstanley.com (if you’re in Asia).

Follow @MadameButcher

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Photo credit: Screen Shot 2012-12-19 at 10.54.21by Andrzej Szymański is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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