What's it really like to be a woman in banking? A new study* by academics in Ireland suggests female perceptions of the industry are being skewed by media reports suggesting that women either have a negative experience of investment banking jobs, or that they make a superhuman effort to prevail.

Irish academics Corina Sheerin and Thomas Garavan looked at U.K. media reports of women's experiences in banking leadership roles between 2014 and 2016. They found that although a few "superwomen" were lauded for breaking through, articles mostly suggested that women have a bad experience in banking, and that they are partially to blame.

If you’re apprehensive about 2021 bonuses and thinking of leaving Credit Suisse for something entirely different, Matt Frenchman – the Swiss bank’s former head of European equity sales, has a few lessons on how to go about it.

Frenchman left Credit Suisse aged 37 in November 2016. Five years later, he’s the sort of fintech entrepreneur who’s being feted in the Sunday Times and has a company that’s growing exponentially.

So, Goldman Sachs is opening a new technology hub in Birmingham, UK. The bank announced the move today amidst excitement from people locally. "We are delighted that Goldman Sachs has chosen Birmingham as the home of its major new presence," said Neil Rami, Chief Executive of the West Midlands Growth Company. "- We look forward to supporting Goldman Sachs’ long and prosperous journey here in the West Midlands.”

If you're a technologist at Goldman Sachs in London you might not be quite so enthusiastic. In today's announcement, Goldman said it will be building out its engineering presence in Birmingham, "with a mix of hiring and employee transfers" - in other words London technologists will be politely uprooted. It won't only be engineers who will be based in the new Birmingham office - but engineers will populate it first. Over time, Birmingham will house "several hundred" employees from across various GS divisions. 

Coinbase is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices in New York, Portland, Dublin, Tokyo and London. The London office opened three years ago in 2017 and is run by Peter Stilwell, a former senior manager at Bain & Co. and associate at HSBC.

Coinbase made $1.1bn in revenues and $322m in profits in 2020 and is pursuing a direct listing, with suggestions that its valuation could hit as much as $100bn. 

Predictably, compensation at Coinbase is skewed towards stock. CEO Brian Armstrong received a salary of just $1m last year, but stock options worth a huge $57m. Chief product officer Surojit Chatterjee received a salary of $616k and stock options of nearly $16m. Stock-based compensation across the firm as a whole that was expensed in 2020 was $71m last year, up from $31m in 2019. In aggregate, Coinbase has $259.4 million related to unvested stock options paid to employees - suggesting staff could earn just over a quarter of the company. The...

New Credit Suisse chairman António Horta-Osório is starting in May too, and can be expected to work with Meissner on a plan to restructure the business. This gives Credit Suisse people a few weeks to polish their CVs.

Analysis by banking research firm Tricumen suggests there were two broad areas where profitability at Credit Suisse lagged other banks last year, and where jobs could be jettisoned. - The investment banking division (M&A and corporate finance) and fixed income sales and trading. Tricumen's analysis, which is based on its proprietary data, suggests that the profit margin in Credit Suisse's investment banking division was one of the lowest in the industry in 2020; and only SocGen had a more slender margin in fixed income sales and trading. 

By comparison, Tricumen says the profit margin in Credit Suisse's equities sales and trading division was on a par with the likes of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan for 2020 -...

If you’re apprehensive about 2021 bonuses and thinking of leaving Credit Suisse for something entirely different, Matt Frenchman – the Swiss bank’s former head of European equity sales, has a few lessons on how to go about it.

Frenchman left Credit Suisse aged 37 in November 2016. Five years later, he’s the sort of fintech entrepreneur who’s being feted in the Sunday Times and has a company that’s growing exponentially.

While Moelis is offering a $10 pay top-up and $60 weekend meal allowances to help juniors cope with extra work during the pandemic, however, both Lazard and Rothschild are focusing on existing policies to keep hours in check.

A spokesperson for Rothschild says the bank has a protected weekend policy to, "allow colleagues to plan for events with full confidence that there will not be a last-minute breaking of commitments due to work." In France, this policy stipulates now work after 8pm on weekdays and no work at the weekends.

At Lazard, it's understood that there's a hard stop in the evenings (interns, for example, are expected to work no longer than 8pm) and that the French office is strictly closed at weekends (although it's unclear how this prevents working from home). Like Goldman Sachs, Lazard has also been ensuring that juniors have extended weekends like Easter off in their entirety.

So far, there isn't any extra pay on offer at either bank....

There have been a handful of significant exits at Deutsche Bank's wealth management unit.

Yvan Wicht, the Geneva-based head of wealth management advisory for the Middle East and Africa at Deutsche is said to have resigned last week on precisely the day that he was promoted to the board of Deutsche Bank in Switzerand. He's thought to be joining Pictet, although this isn't confirmed.

Barclays' new policies to help juniors

Money: None.

What else? Barclays wants its analysts and associates to stop working between 9pm Friday and 9am Saturday (unless they're on live deals). Works with a Monday deadline shouldn't be assigned after noon on Friday; client meetings shouldn't take place on Mondays if possible. Senior bankers are being asked to provide clear and specific outlines for materials they need for client meetings to avoid a “kitchen sink” approach to pitchbooks. Juniors are being asked to completely disconnect from work for two lots of five days each year. There will also be "regional champions" to help ensure new guidelines are followed, so presumably Barclays juniors who are unhappy can get in touch with Lindsay McMenamin and Courtney Rosica in the Americas, Kenny Furudera in the Asia-Pacific region and Donna Cory for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Bank of America's new policies to help...