Matthew Bowen didn't stay long at BNP Paribas. The former co-head of global prime finance at Deutsche Bank joined the French bank as part of its acquisition of Deutsche's prime broking business in December 2020. He left BNP in late July. 

Bowen isn't responding to messages and is currently on gardening leave, but the talk in the market is that he's planning to join HSBC in New York, presumably in a senior role in the prime broking division. HSBC did not confirm the move. 

It's August, but hedge fund Millennium is still adding talent in the UK.

The fund has just recruited William Johns, a former head of correlation trading at Nomura and head of Asian currency options at Citi. Johns, who declined to comment for this article, is understood to be setting up a new pod to invest in FX using a volatility relative value strategy. 

When analyst bonuses are paid this month, plenty of junior bankers will contemplate their next moves. Many will go into private equity. Some will go into hedge funds. Some will go into corporate development. Others will settle into a life of getting up at 10am and playing the guitar while preparing to launch a start-up.

But if you want to get out of banking and you still need to make good money, one young German banker has generated another alternative. - Working on a project basis, at home, for a healthy hourly rate.

ALL ALPHAMAVEN CONTENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. CONTENT POSTED BY MEMBERS DOES NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE OPINION OR BELIEFS OF ALPHAMAVEN AND HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIED BY ALPHAMAVEN. PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS. THIS IS NOT A SOLICITATION FOR INVESTMENT. THE MATERIAL PROVIDED HEREIN IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. IT DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER TO SELL OR A SOLICITATION OF AN OFFER TO BUY ANY INTERESTS OF ANY FUND OR ANY OTHER SECURITIES. ANY SUCH OFFERINGS CAN BE MADE ONLY IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS SET FORTH IN THE INVESTMENT'S PRIVATE PLACEMENT MEMORANDUM. PRIOR TO INVESTING, INVESTORS ARE STRONGLY URGED TO REVIEW CAREFULLY THE PRIVATE PLACEMENT MEMORANDUM (INCLUDING THE RISK FACTORS DESCRIBED THEREIN), THE LIMITED PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT AND THE SUBSCRIPTION DOCUMENTS, TO ASK SUCH QUESTIONS OF THE INVESTMENT MANAGER AS THEY DEEM APPROPRIATE, AND TO DISCUSS ANY PROSPECTIVE INVESTMENT IN THE FUND...

Do you remember when traders in investment banks were free to take positions on behalf of banks themselves? Steven Behr undoubtedly does. For eight years between June 2000 and December 2008, Behr was global head of principal strategies at RBS - the bank's proprietary credit trading arm in London. 

In this role, Behr was reportedly responsible for a team that invested in structured debt, including securities backed by infrastructure assets and emerging market mortgages.

Being a billionaire 16 times over, aged 29 isn't bad going for an MIT graduate who spent the first three years of his career working for firm Jane Street. Sam Bankman-Fried only sleeps four hours a night and is obsessed with making money, but that's where many of the similarities with archetypal traders and hedge fund managers end. 

Bankman-Fried has amassed his fortune not in the pursuit of intergenerational wealth or a special sort of yacht, but because he wants to give it all away. In a long portrait of the "super quantitative" 29 year-old crypto billionaire who rarely takes vacations and still lives with roommates in Hong Kong, Yahoo says his motivation is "effective altruism", or the belief that - depending upon your skill set - it can make more sense to become rich in finance and donate $1m to Mother Theresa than to become Mother Theresa yourself. 

Goldman Sachs has put in a presence at the collateralized loan obligation (CLO) hiring party happening now in London. 

It's recruited Adam Green, a vice president from NatWest Markets. Green joined this month as an executive director in CLO structuring, according to his LinkedIn profile. In a measure of the popularity of CLO originators and structurers, Green was at NatWest for less than two years after a six and a half year career at JPMorgan in London and New York City. 

Richard Hickling knows a thing or two about what it's like to work in technology in an investment bank. During a 20-year career in financial technology, he worked everywhere from the New York Stock Exchange, to Bloomberg, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Macquarie, BNP Paribas and Bank of America. His specialty was financial software and analytics. But in January 2020 Hickling gave it all up to found a crypto tools provider. 

Contrary to the common perception of technology jobs in investment banks, Hickling says the banking industry is not a bad place to work as a developer. "What I've always liked about working in banks is that you are working with excellent technologists in an area that’s fundamentally important for the world economy," he says. " It has the excitement that comes with the large amounts of money moving around the trading floor."

Credit Suisse needs to rebuild its senior ranks. Last month's independent report into the issues that led to the $5.5bn Archegos loss found that too many senior Credit Suisse staff in areas like risk management had been fired and that those who remained were incompetent. The bank has responded by rehiring some of those it let go at higher prices, but it's also busy bolstering its senior ranks with a certain type of all-new hire. 

Senior executives at Credit Suisse appear to be strengthening their personal teams. As we reported in July, new chairman António Horta-Osório re-hired Jessica Kaffren from HSBC as chief operating officer for his personal office. Now, both the CEO and the head of the asset management business have added their own new chiefs of staff.

It’s a cliché these days to say that banking careers don’t appeal to the younger generation, and that being the founder of a tech startup is what the kids are all into.  Nonetheless, we can’t help noticing that there’s still some kudos left in the blue chip names of finance – even when announcing the close of a successful funding round, people like Kevin Glynn and David Nolan still like to mention that they worked for Goldman Sachs.

Often, the connection between the startup and the bulge bracket is pretty tenuous – there are plenty of “alumni” claiming to have an “investment banking background” on the strength of a single summer internship.  For “Butternut Box”, however, we’ll allow it – both of the co-founders came through the analyst program at Goldman and spent at least some time there as associates, in high yield debt and sales-trading.

Selby Jennings says the people who get jobs in crypto tend to have a few things in common. 36% of its crypto placements in quant finance have a PhD, and 64% have a Master's Degree. Their main point of commonality, though, is coding: 82% of the candidates going into crypto can code, typically in either C++ or Python. 

If you're a trader who wants to move into the crypto space, Selby Jennings' consultant Matt Healey says it will help to have applied crypto experience, but given the shortage of people fitting this description, it's not a necessity. "We're seeing more and more firms hiring traders with experience trading other liquid products – FX, equities, etc., assuming their strategies are applicable to the crypto space," says Healey. "Many firms are hiring traditional quant traders and helping train them to get started in the crypto space, rather than facing bidding wars for crypto experience."

Selby Jennings says traders in crypto firms are...

We're deep into holiday season, but this isn't stopping some traders leaving investment banks for jobs on the buy-side. Citi has suffered at least two such defections.

In London, Barney Singer left Citi's electronic FX trading desk for Brevan Howard. And in New York, Andrew Logan left for Millennium.

If you're thinking of getting a summer internship in an investment bank, and you're older than 24, you might want to watch yourself.

Morgan Stanley has released the results to a survey of 461 of its summer interns (341 in North America, just 120 in Europe). Most of them are aged 24 or less. 

It's CFA® results day again. After the misery of the 25% CFA Level I pass rate and the misery of the 40% CFA Level II pass rate, we now have the additional trauma of a 42% CFA Level III pass rate. - For Level III, as for Level I, this is the lowest pass rate in the exam's history. 

The 42% who've passed are celebrating. Celebrants include a woman who sat Level III while five months pregnant, someone who'd failed three times and then passed, someone who took nine years to pass all three exams and yet another who achieved the same feat in just 18 months. 

However, the proportion of top passes going to students in the less privileged north-east of England was lower, at 39%. 

John Craven, a former head of structured products for Merrill Lynch and director at SocGen, has created a tool to help students from less privileged backgrounds put their A level grades into context. 

Called Real Rating, you can access it here. It takes 14 different factors into account, says Craven, including whether students were entitled to free school meals, postcode data, the academic performance of the school they went to, and whether they were previously in care. 

"For most students, their contextualized grades are the same," says Craven. "But for disadvantaged students their contextualized grades might be higher. - Someone at Eton has had a lot more support than someone from a low performing comprehensive school." If the latter candidate achieved three Bs at A level, Craven says Real Rating might increase...

When Sergei Perfiliev left Goldman Sachs after four years in May this year, he offered some thoughts on his career on his Twitter account. 

Working as a quant isn't quite as glamorous as you might think, said Perfiliev. Firstly, it's not all about modelling: as a quant your main responsibility is "to help traders calculate prices and risks of their books correctly." If this is done wrong it becomes a point of obsession for the whole team - even at 1am. 

Warren Buffett has his old car and cheap house, Bill Hwang has his plastic chairs and $7 sandwiches. Not everyone who makes money in trading is spending this summer at the Hamptons or contracting the Delta variant at clubs in Mykonos. 

Of course, it's disputable whether Hwang - who lost $20bn in two days in March 2021 when his family firm Archegos Capital blew up - has any money left for cushions and meals out.  But Bloomberg, which tracked Hwang down to a house worth a few million in a borough of New Jersey, suggests Hwang remains a billionaire thanks to his investments into things like Cathie Woods' exchange traded funds.

Warren Buffett has his old car and cheap house, Bill Hwang has his plastic chairs and $7 sandwiches. Not everyone who makes money in trading is spending this summer at the Hamptons or contracting the Delta variant at clubs in Mykonos. 

Of course, it's disputable whether Hwang - who lost $20bn in two days in March 2021 when his family firm Archegos Capital blew up - has any money left for cushions and meals out.  But Bloomberg, which tracked Hwang down to a house worth a few million in a borough of New Jersey, suggests Hwang remains a billionaire thanks to his investments into things like Cathie Woods' exchange traded funds.

If you work as a quant and you want to make really big money, the best place to do it is - predictably enough - America. And predictably enough again, the best place to make the massive money in North America is a major hedge fund.

The latest quant salary survey from global recruitment firm Selby Jennings doesn't say exactly how much the most senior quants are making at major funds, but given that quant traders can get up to 50% of their P&L as a bonus and that they might be managing $50m+ of funds which could rise in value by 5% a year, $1.25m is highly likely, and many are probably making a lot more.

2021 should be a bumper year for bonuses in investment banks and asset management. Unless, that is, you work in fixed income sales and trading. - If you work in fixed income sales and trading your bonus will be likely be flat at best and will fall at worst.

This is the new forecast from Wall Street compensation experts Johnson Associates.  As per the chart below, Johnson Associates thinks most people in finance are on track for double-digit year-on-year increases in their size of their bonuses in 2021, and that only fixed income salespeople and traders will see their bonuses fall.

It's not just junior bankers who are getting higher salaries: JPMorgan has fired the starting gun on salary hikes for junior traders too.

The U.S. bank has increased salaries for its first year analysts in sales and trading to $100k, thereby bringing them in line with the $100k salaries it's now offering first years in its investment banking division. Second and third years are also understood to have received increases, to $105k and $110k respectively.

Changes are afoot in JPMorgan's technology function, but it may be coincidence rather than any concerted changing of the guard.

In London, Andrea Malagodi, a former chief technology officer (CTO) in JPMorgan's digital office, has left after 15 years. Malagodi, whose family were in Geneva while he was in London, is understood to have moved to Switzerland, where he's becoming CTO at SonarSource, an open source software company.  

A few weeks ago, it was a big deal if banks increased junior salaries to $100k. Now the new norm is 10% higher again: the best paying banks are offering their first year analysts salaries of $110k.

Both Jefferies and Evercore are understood to have joined the $110k club, although neither bank immediately responded to a request to comment on the move. 

Davies has worked at JPMorgan for 14 years. He declined to comment for this article, but it's understood that he will take on the Brentford role in addition to his day job at JPM. 

Before he was a trader, Davies was a semi-professional footballer who used to play for Boreham Wood and Slough Town among others. He's also passionate about social inclusion and is a trustee for the education charity, Future First, and an ambassador for the charity Awaken Genius. Brentford Football Club is equally committed to delivering social impact in the community and was awarded the EFL Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Code of Practice in March. 

As a non-executive director, Davies will likely be driving strategy at the club, as well as attending club events, games and board meetings. That sounds quite impressive alongside getting up at 5am to work at Canary Wharf. 

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Once upon a time, people working for Goldman Sachs' new office in London ate their food in a large room looking a bit like a cross between a school assembly hall and a conference venue, where there was sometimes an aroma of fish and chips. Thanks to the pandemic, they've branched out a bit. 

Most banks have eating areas reserved for clients and managing directors. At Rothschild, for example, there are butlers and a fully stocked pantry for the executive dining rooms. At Goldman Sachs' London office, the landscaped roof garden with its habitat boxes and rainwater collection facilities were once reserved for senior staff and clients who wanted to eat al fresco, but the firm has seemingly democratized their access: nowadays, anyone who wants to eat their food on the roof is free to do so.