• The art of earning big money for doing nothing, without breaking the law. Link
    eFinancialCareers Thu 16 Sep 2021 07:20

    Although six figure bonuses are commonplace in the investment banking industry, and seven figures are earned by hundreds of people at every major firm, by the time you get up to eight, you’re really talking about a small and select crew of rainmakers.  Someone who ever saw a payday running to nine figures would be one of the genuine legends of the industry, in most cases.  But there is one way in which ordinary bankers can get themselves paid at that level, regardless of seniority.  All you have to do is be in the right place at the right time.

    “The right place” in this context would be a firm that is doing something illegal, and “the right time” would be before anyone else has snitched.  Yesterday, the SEC announced the latest round of awards under its whistleblower program, and there is one absolute whale in there.  An anonymous tipster got $110m, taking the total paid out by the SEC alone over the billion mark.  In...

  • CFA or MBA? They're completely different Link
    eFinancialCareers Wed 15 Sep 2021 17:00

    As someone who has gone down the CFA and MBA paths, I wish that people would stop comparing the two. They are fundamentally different, but are both popular and helpful personal and career development steps.

  • The worst part about getting a job in a hedge fund. Link
    eFinancialCareers Wed 15 Sep 2021 14:55

    It's that time of year again. Under-performing teams get blown out and disappointing analysts get let go to make room for new additions. Buy-side hiring season has begun!

    But interviewing on the buy-side is not easy: sell-side interviews are a walk in the park by comparison.

  • When promotion isn't enough to make you stay. Link
    eFinancialCareers Wed 15 Sep 2021 14:15

    As banks push for more female faces on trading floors, top female traders are in demand. Ranjani Ramachandra has the advantage of being an experienced trader, a woman, and of working in one of this year's most in-demand hiring areas.

    Ramachandra spent the past decade working in equity derivatives trading for Barclays in New York City after graduating in financial engineering from the University of Michigan and joining UBS. 

  • RT @Tradeli3: Ex-Goldman Dogecoin MD resurfaces in COVID-cure company - eFinancialCareers Link #cryptonews
    eFinancialCareers Wed 15 Sep 2021 12:14

    Aziz McMahon, the ex-Goldman Sachs managing director (MD) and head of emerging market sales who retired in May after apparently making a fortune on Dogecoin is back. However, he seems to have gone a little off-piste.

    When he left Goldman, McMahon was rumored to be setting up a hedge fund. In fact, he's joined a pre-IPO pharma company that he's invested in.

  • What Aziz did next. Link
    eFinancialCareers Wed 15 Sep 2021 12:04

    Aziz McMahon, the ex-Goldman Sachs managing director (MD) and head of emerging market sales who retired in May after apparently making a fortune on Dogecoin is back. However, he seems to have gone a little off-piste.

    When he left Goldman, McMahon was rumored to be setting up a hedge fund. In fact, he's joined a pre-IPO pharma company that he's invested in.

  • The diversity panel is full of hypocrites. Link
    eFinancialCareers Wed 15 Sep 2021 10:34

    I work for the UK office of a European bank, outside London. The bank I work for talks a lot about diversity, but its words don't match its actions.

    It's a common occurrence here for black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) to be replaced by white staff. We see it happening all the time. Those on the receiving end never say anything as it could be catastrophic for their future careers. Instead, they leave without saying a word, hoping that others will have more courage than they did.

  • The MD left banking this month. Link
    eFinancialCareers Wed 15 Sep 2021 09:29

    In a Venn diagram of how people working in banking spent their youth, there's will always be a significant proportion who were members of finance societies and ran their own small portfolios. But, it seems there's also a not insignificant minority who had green hair and nose piercings.

    Guy Hands, CEO of private equity fund Terra Firma, is a self-confessed former punk/lover of punk music. So is ex-Lazard banker Matthieu Pigasse. So too is former Lloyds Bank financial institutions group (FIG) MD and ex-head of FIG banking for EMEA at Sumitomo, Richard Bowser. And Bowser is reverting to type.

  • Decision time is coming. Link
    eFinancialCareers Wed 15 Sep 2021 08:29

    Is it all over? Not exactly, but it's not nearly as good as it was before. 

    This, broadly, seems to be the message at this week's Barclays 19th annual global financial services conference. Among the predominantly U.S. banks that have presented so far, the message seems to be similar: 2021 is slowly going off the boil - in fixed income sales and trading, at least.

  • Sometimes it makes sense to start your career outside a big bank. Link
    eFinancialCareers Wed 15 Sep 2021 06:54

    The advantage of working in sales and trading at a large bank is that your career progression and training are fairly defined for the first few years, giving you good visibility on where you’re going to be by the end of the analyst program.  At a smaller specialist trading firm, things are generally much more open; on the one hand you don’t necessarily have that structure.  But on the other hand, if you’re in the right place at the right time and you’re good enough, like Kanav Kariya at Jump Trading, you can go through the ranks quickly.  He interned at Jump as an undergraduate in 2017, and four years later, Kariya has been named the President of Jump Crypto.

    For someone who wants to make a career in crypto trading, this looks like it might be the best job possible.  Jump Trading seems to be in a sweet spot; it’s an established Chicago trading house, so nobody’s going to mistake it for the kind of fly-by-night operation...

  • RT @MadameButcher: Bankers want to work for Stripe. Average pay in London is nearly £200k, and then there's the stock. https://t.co/daLGQi6…
    eFinancialCareers Wed 15 Sep 2021 06:49
  • Stripe is doing some big hiring, but some staff are not sure about all the ex-bank employees joining. Link
    eFinancialCareers Tue 14 Sep 2021 16:54

    Carney isn't the only ex-Goldmanite in situ at Stripe. In July, the fintech firm poached Jack Carney, a senior engineer who'd spent 14 years at GS, for its London office. In April, it hired Sujatha Srinivasan, Goldman's ex-co-head of markets risk in New York. Other Goldman escapees include Jeff Gowen, an ex-Goldman MD who joined in July as head of partnerships, M&A and finance strategy, and Grant McGovern, a software engineer who joined in May from Goldman's Marquee team. 

    As Stripe expands its headcount exponentially, Goldman isn't alone in furnishing it with new staff. And its hires aren't purely technology focused. Hyunah Lee joined in London in May 2021 as a senior associate from JPMorgan's FX options electronic trading team, for example. Former Citi eFX solutions salesman Dan Wilson joined last July to manage banking and financial partnerships in EMEA.

    As with any fast-growing company, however, Stripe seems to be having some cultural...

  • This is hopefully the nadir. Link
    eFinancialCareers Tue 14 Sep 2021 14:58

    A 22% pass rate is the lowest ever recorded in CFA Institute's history. In the past ten years, the pass rate for CFA I has averaged 41%. "I put in more than 300 hours, scored mid-70’s on the mocks, and find out I failed when I would have easily passed any other year," says one candidate on Reddit. "Calling us “GameStop” investors or “trash” is outrageous to say the least. I’m a professional with other responsibilities to my life than just being a professional student and have to plan accordingly.

    "CFA needs to be transparent and mot move the goal post," he adds. "It’s an unnecessary variable and does not add more value to the material I learned."

    In a comment posted on CFA Institute's website, Peg Jobst, managing director and head of credentialing, said that in future he expects the pass rate, "to approach pre-COVID historical levels in time -- so long as pandemic conditions subside.

    " As we have said before, the exams and the...

  • Goldman juniors will do whatever's expected of them. Link
    eFinancialCareers Tue 14 Sep 2021 14:08

    Goldman Sachs doesn't comment on compensation, but some junior bankers are observing off the record that the increased bonuses at the U.S. bank make it almost impossible for juniors there to resist pressure to return to the office. 

    In London, Richard Gnodde, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs International sent a memo last week saying that he expected the building to "return to full occupancy" this Monday. Insiders at the bank say that this doesn't mean that Goldman's expecting everyone to be back five days a week, and that individual bankers can discuss their work from home requirements with their managers. However, others point out that when you've just had a 36% pay rise and your manager intimates that he/she would like to see you in the office most days, it's very difficult to refuse.

    Photo by Jose Losada on Unsplash

    Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

    Bear...

  • RT @MadameButcher: The new head of German M&A at Barclays spent some of his summer sleeping rough and was attacked by wild boar. https://t.…
    eFinancialCareers Tue 14 Sep 2021 13:38
  • This year has seen a complete turnaround. Link
    eFinancialCareers Thu 26 Aug 2021 11:26

    Two years ago, I lost my job at a major Wall Street bank. It was a shock at the time, but I presumed I'd find something else easily. I'm a quant; I can code; I'm the sort of person banks want to hire. 

    Except, it seemed, I wasn't. One year turned into two and then the pandemic swept across everything and my chances of finding a new were dissipated along with any semblance of normality. In 2020, I hunkered down, worked on my own projects for a few months, and tried applying again when the early lockdowns ended.

  • Junior bankers at Citi may struggle to take time off. Link
    eFinancialCareers Thu 26 Aug 2021 08:41

    Good news and bad news for Citigroup’s investment banking juniors. The good news is that, as well as higher salaries, back in July they were given two weeks’ uninterrupted holiday, with a promise that this would be “fully disconnected”. The bad news is that the bank expects them to take this holiday by the end of September, and time is running out.

    The problem is that presumably the decision was made, and welcomed, at the start of the summer when everyone presumed that the deals calendar would display something like its normal seasonality: July is the wrap-up month, nothing happens in August, then September gradually ramps up as people work out what really needs to happen before the year end. But this year, there seems to have been no slow down at all – with international travel restricted and more normalisation of remote working, the summer holidays haven’t put up their usual block to progress on getting deals done.

  • Is a director at one bank the same as a VP at another? Link
    eFinancialCareers Wed 25 Aug 2021 10:00

    As finance professionals bank their bonuses (or not), this is the time of year when bankers who missed out face the choice of knuckling down in the hope of promotion next time around or seeking advancement by jumping ship to a rival.

    Certainly, banks talk a good game when it comes to promotion – they often refer to their deep bench of junior talent and try to ‘grow their own’ than hire external heavy-hitters. That said, banks like Citi also see hiring M&A rainmakers as the key to grabbing market share and giving the likes of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs a run for their money. 

  • Goldman demands proof of vaccination. Link
    eFinancialCareers Wed 25 Aug 2021 08:50

    Derivatives types with a sense of irony might think it’s quite amusing that “delta”, as well as being the name of the latest Covid variant, is also the option hedging parameter that describes a position where you’re reasonably safe for a short period of time, but vulnerable to sudden changes. For this pretty much describes the impact of the new variant on banks’ reopening strategies. Having planned on the basis that things were reasonably under control, suddenly they weren’t. As a result, some quick changes have needed to be made.

    Goldman Sachs is now planning to require that, starting on September 7, anyone going into their offices in the USA – staff or client – has proof of vaccination, and masks will need to be worn in communal areas. Morgan Stanley is requiring vaccinations, but not masks, while JP Morgan is currently going for masks but not vaccinations (employees are “strongly urged” and unvaccinated staff aren’t allowed in meetings of more...

  • Why are recruiters ignoring you? Link
    eFinancialCareers Tue 24 Aug 2021 10:04

    Why don't financial services recruiters respond when you apply for jobs? The populist response to this common question usually involves some recruiter bashing, but I’d like to provide a different and more balanced perspective (if not a full-blooded case for the defence). To understand the reasons why recruiters appear to ignore you, it’s best to consider the different types of recruiter as well as the different reasons why you might be waiting on a response.

  • Pay just keeps on rising. Link
    eFinancialCareers Tue 24 Aug 2021 08:29

    The difficult thing about an investment bank’s compensation structure is that it is exactly what the name suggests – a structure. Different points have to bear some sort of reasonably stable relationship to one another; you can’t have completely different pay scales for sales and trading compared to capital markets and advisory, and the salary increments between ranks have to be significant enough to make it worth people’s while to chase promotion. So when the analysts are getting big pay rises, it’s pretty certain that associates are also going to see an increment.

    JP Morgan is the latest big bank to recognise this inevitability, with an announcement going out that first year associates joining via the MBA programme will be paid $175k, up from $150k last year. No announcement has yet been made about the rest of the associate program, but it’s hardly likely that second year associates will be paid much less than first-years, or that internally...

  • Your health as a 22-year-old in banking. Link
    eFinancialCareers Mon 23 Aug 2021 09:33

    Now that the truth is out and the fact that junior bankers work crippling hours is common knowledge, it's no longer about how much you earn in finance (unless of course you work for Apollo), but how truly terrible your banking anecdotes are.

    In this context, the Guardian's piece on Goldman juniors being too tired to cater even for their personal hygiene and consume calories, is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Former Credit Suisse analyst Connie Nam's revelation that managers in banking are not very nice, is extremely tame. And former Greenhill analyst Tushar Agarwal's Tweetstorm is more outré.

  • It's not just the juniors who are in demand these days. Link
    eFinancialCareers Mon 23 Aug 2021 08:33

    As Michael Corleone said in the second Godfather movie, “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in”. That must be how Vince Powell currently feels. According to his LinkedIn profile, he had spent three years as founder and managing director of Whetstone Research, a bespoke data analytics consultancy, after leaving a series of corporate jobs to set out on his own. Now he’s back at PwC, advising private equity firms on takeovers.

    This scene is being played out across the industry, as the unprecedented levels of deal flow appear to be continuing into the second half, without even a pause for the August holidays. Personnel shortages are becoming acute. And although this is most noticeable at the lower levels of the investment banking industry itself, where analysts and associates generate the spreadsheets and models which form the raw material of deals, it’s a problem at all levels of the value chain.

  • If you haven't had a chance to take our survey yet, it's running on the site now. You'll learn what salaries and bonuses are being offered in the finance industry. It's completely anonymous and should only take about five minutes of your time. ? Link
    eFinancialCareers Thu 19 Aug 2021 14:56
  • Will getting a CFA Charter make a difference to your life? Link
    eFinancialCareers Thu 19 Aug 2021 10:01

    It's harder than ever to pass the CFA exams. As one candidate pointed out a few weeks ago, now that the pass rates for the three exams are 25%, 40% and 42%, the implication is that only one in 24 people will pass all three first time (25% * 40% * 42% = 4.2%). 

    Given that passing takes around three years of your life and 900 hours of your spare time, is it really worth it? 

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