In a reminder that today's favourite person in an investment bank may not be tomorrow's, it seems that Barclays may be saying goodbye to Naz Al-Khudairi.

Multiple sources say Al-Khudairi left Barclays yesterday. Neither he nor Barclays responded to a request to comment.

Thomas Batt, Nomura’s of capital markets and solutions for Asia ex-Japan, has left to become CFO of Paceline in London. Paceline which has just completed a Series A fundraising, describes itself as the “first ever fitness rewards platform that adds financial benefit to your physical activity.”

It’s not known what the financial benefits are to Batt’s own physical move, but he joins an increasing number of senior bankers who are quitting banking for a more entrepreneurial challenge and the prospect of more upside than they can earn in banking. “Banking compensation will never come back to pre-global financial crisis levels. There's greater risk’/reward at a start-up and there will be more departures like this from across the street” said one source in Hong Kong

Batt’s former colleague Anshul Trivedi, has also opted for a career change. Trivedi has switched to the buyside, resigning as Nomura’s head of ECM syndicate for Asia to join Balyasny asset...

In a reminder that today's favourite person in an investment bank may not be tomorrow's, it seems that Barclays may be saying goodbye to Naz Al-Khudairi.

Multiple sources say Al-Khudairi left Barclays yesterday. Neither he nor Barclays responded to a request to comment.

James Folger used to be an associate at Rothschild & Co. in London. These days, he works in Stem, and not in the standard sense of the word: Folger is founder and CEO of The Stem UK, a London indoor plant delivery company. 

"We're an online garden centre based in London," says Folger. "We've been going in earnest for around 18 months and we have around 12,000 customers, most of them young people living in small spaces in London. We're able to make a small but measurable difference to people's lives."

BNP Paribas has lost Michael Spencer, a senior member of its London FX sales team.

Insiders at the French bank say Spencer has already left, and is thought to be returning to HSBC.

JPMorgan has succumbed. According to a post on the Litquidity Instagram account yesterday, the bank has increased salaries for its investment banking analysts by $15k.

First year analysts at the bank on Wall Street are now on salaries of $100k as a result. Second years are on salaries of $105k. The increases mean that JPM's first year analysts are now paid on a par with analysts at the likes of Guggenheim Securities, who also received a pay rise this summer. JPMorgan's second years, however, are paid slightly less.

It’s not easy to get an internship in an investment bank. Based on figures divulged by banks in the past, acceptance rates can be as low as 1-2%. However, if you’re a student in the UK, there’s an internship out there that offers an unusually good chance of success -if you're black.

“We had 2,165 eligible applications for our internships this year,” says Esther Odejimi-Uzokwe, programme director at 10,000 Black Interns. “Over 400 of them have got internships in the investment management industry.”

It’s not easy to get an internship in an investment bank. Based on figures divulged by banks in the past, acceptance rates can be as low as 1-2%. However, if you’re a student in the UK, there’s an internship out there that offers an unusually good chance of success -if you're black.

“We had 2,165 eligible applications for our internships this year,” says Esther Odejimi-Uzokwe, programme director at 10,000 Black Interns. “Over 400 of them have got internships in the investment management industry.”

When 2021 is remembered in the annals of banking employee relations, it will go down in history as the year that overworked banking juniors fought back. Admittedly, there's been no closing of laptops or waving of placards, but there has been a lot of complaining and juniors at both Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo have resorted to PowerPoint to get their points across.  

Will this seditious atmosphere last? The Financial Times has been interviewing graduates, some of whom are in this year's class of incoming banking analysts, arriving in August/September. Their responses suggest that the next class of banking juniors will simply accept their crazy working hours as a given: they'll be too timorous for anything else.

If you work in banking, don't get too comfortable with your pay. It will be your undoing.

I spent nearly four years working in the structuring team of a major bank. I quit. Today I work for a successful technology start-up. It was a risk, and it paid off.

As JPMorgan prepares to open its new office in Paris, a salary and bonus study from recruitment firm Dartmouth Partners suggests that it makes good sense for junior investment bankers to work in the French capital: they can earn more there than in London.

As per the chart below, Dartmouth says pay for analysts in investment banks in Paris goes from €103k to €147k, that associates can earn from €202k (for first year associates) up to €289k on average, and that average pay for VPs is up to €410k. By comparison. Dartmouth's most recent London pay survey says analyst total compensation starts at around £85k (€99) and that pay for first year associates is typically around £150k (€175k).

If you work for James Gorman, or Jamie Dimon, or David Solomon, all CEOs of illustrious U.S. investment banks, you're probably either back in the office already or making preparations for your imminent return for fear of stunting your career if you stay away. Dimon, in particular, has predicted that pandemic working styles will be replaced by a return to normal in September and woe betide anyone who fights against it.

However, if you work for Ralph Hamers at UBS, now might be a good time to upgrade your home office as you dig in for a protracted period of hanging out at home.

I've had a long career in banking and have worked on the trading floors of some of the most prestigious investment banks, including at Goldman Sachs, where I worked for nearly a decade. Last year, I was diagnosed with Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Looking back on my time at Goldman, I think plenty of my colleagues there had it too.

People who are unfamiliar with ADHD see it wrongly. The cliché of an ADHD sufferer is a scatterbrained person with an inability to focus. In fact, ADHD need not be a handicap. It is a quirk which has its advantages, including that it can allow periods of hyperfocus focus of the kind that can be beneficial when you're working in a bank, particularly on a trading floor.  

Maybe jobs in crypto firms aren't such a good bet after all? While bankers and traders are lining up to join crypto and DeFi platforms, one of last year's crypto movers has moved back to banking again.

Philippe Vornique left his job as a base and precious metals salesman at SocGen in London last October in order to become head of institutional sales at skew, a crypto data trade execution platform.

It's become a kind of cliché that banks like to say they're more like technology companies than actual technology companies by virtue of the enormous amounts they spend on IT.

Banks do indisputably spend huge amounts on technology. It has become an important competitive differentiator for them. But if having a big budget is the main criteria for self-identifying as tech rather than banking, banks still have a long way to go.

As a managing director in charge of a major front office technology unit at a U.S. investment bank in New York, I get a lot of young people asking me the best coding languages to learn for banking jobs. The answer is, that it depends. However, there's one language I will always advise people to learn: Python.

Python may be slow compared to some other coding languages, but it's the number one language used in finance now. We use it for data analytics and for data investigations and interrogation. Python is also the language of machine learning and AI, and as AI becomes more widely used in finance, so does Python.

As a managing director in charge of a major front office technology unit at a U.S. investment bank in New York, I get a lot of young people asking me the best coding languages to learn for banking jobs. The answer is, that it depends. However, there's one language I will always advise people to learn: Python.

Python may be slow compared to some other coding languages, but it's the number one language used in finance now. We use it for data analytics and for data investigations and interrogation. Python is also the language of machine learning and AI, and as AI becomes more widely used in finance, so does Python.

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2020 and 2021 have proven good years to be working in the investment banking industry. In a giant report released today,  JPMorgan's team of European banking analysts note that 2020 was "stellar" for fixed income currencies and commodities (FICC) revenues, while JPM CEO Jamie Dimon himself said this week that JPMorgan's investment bankers are the midst of what may well be their best quarter ever. 

It's unlikely to last, though. At some point, gravity will reassert itself, and when it does, it's wise to be positioned defensively.

A Swiss banking gossip website suggests Credit Suisse traders' worst fears could come true: after years of major restructuring, the global markets business could be in for another round of big redundancies.

Inside Paradeplatz suggests this morning that incoming chairman Antonio Horta-Osorio is planning to break up the trading division, beginning in a few weeks' time, ahead of the bank's annual summer strategy meeting. It quotes a source, but it's not clear how reliable the source is.

Goldman's London summer interns are due to start on Monday (June 21st). Irrespective of the government ruling, Goldman had always planned for them to spend the first week in virtual training. Thereafter, as per a memo sent in March, interns were expected to be in the office if they could travel to work safely. This year's interns are therefore already likely to have arranged London accommodation; those from red list countries are already quarantining at Goldman's expense in local hotels.

Goldman declined to comment on changes to the London intern programme by virtue of the ongoing COVID provisions. However, it's understood that interns remain welcome to come into the London office if they wish to do so, but are under no obligation to turn up in person if they do not.

In the circumstances, it seems highly likely that most interns will turn up in person on the 28th, and that most Goldman juniors and VPs will also therefore turn up at the office in order to...

A Swiss banking gossip website suggests Credit Suisse traders' worst fears could come true: after years of major restructuring, the global markets business could be in for another round of big redundancies.

Inside Paradeplatz suggests this morning that incoming chairman Antonio Horta-Osorio is planning to break up the trading division, beginning in a few weeks' time, ahead of the bank's annual summer strategy meeting. It quotes a source, but it's not clear how reliable the source is.

Last year, sales and trading departments across the Street put in record-breaking performances, but enjoyed bonuses that were no more than “reasonably good”.  Management rationale for this restraint was that 2020 was a unique set of conditions, and they weren’t going to pay up for results that were likely to be unsustainable.  Agonisingly, it’s beginning to look as if they were right.

Citigroup is now guiding for second quarter trading revenue to be down by “low 30s” per cent, while JP Morgan said earlier in the week that its traders would bring in around $6bn, which would be a 38% drop on Q2 20.  Morgan Stanley haven’t given a number, but James Gorman has said overall revenues will be nowhere near the “gangbusters” level of Q1.  Is it all falling apart?