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As anyone who's been following HSBC's new strategy will know, it's all about Asia. Senior staff in global banking and markets are being moved to Asia, potentially at considerable cost, as the bank shifts resources to Hong Kong. And yet, in the first quarter of 2021 the Asian investment bank faltered and the UK investment bank thrived. 

Across Asia as a whole, pre-tax profits at HSBC's global banking and markets business were down 11% year-on-year in the first quarter; in Hong specifically they were down 23%. By comparison, in the global banking and markets (GB&M) business of the non-ringfenced UK bank, a $325m loss in the first quarter of 2020 became a $351m profit in the first quarter of this year. 

What went wrong at the investment bank in Asia? HSBC isn't saying exactly, but globally the FX business - which last year accounted for 35% of GB&M revenues in Q1, shrunk by 29% year-on-year in the first quarter, due to what HSBC...

When outsiders look at the pay earned by people on Wall Street or in the City of London, they probably think people in the banking industry are wealthy because of their day jobs. It's true, some are. But in my experience, the most wealthy senior bankers are almost always rich for another reason.

There's plenty of family money in finance, but this isn't what makes the difference. The difference after a long career in the industry comes from investments. The wiser bankers invest the money they earn, and the wisest get the best returns. In my experience, bankers spend a lot of time optimizing their own finances. 

"As the activity levels went along, we became a little lax in making sure that we kept that exception going," Waldron said of the so-called 'Saturday rule' introduced eight years ago to give Goldman's junior bankers time off between 9pm on Friday and 9am on Sunday. At the same time, Goldman was "candidly under-resourced" in areas like investment banking, said Waldron. This was especially the case in areas like equity capital markets where, "activity took off almost parabolically." 

The upshot was that Goldman was caught in the headlights of an exceptional combination of first quarter circumstances, and is now doing its best to react. Saturdays' off are now being enforced more 'proactively' said Waldron. Junior mentoring is being stepped up after busy executives let it drop. New juniors are being hired - although it's not clear how many or where from. More tasks are being automated. When Goldman juniors' complaints first emerged, Goldman even said it would...

Archegos has struck again. UBS revealed this morning that it lost $774m in relation to the failed family office and that this loss has been entirely set against its investment bank.

"Our investment bank fully absorbed this loss, yet still delivered a 13% return on attributed equity, which would have been in excess of 30% had it not been for this incident," said UBS CEO Ralph Hamers in a note accompanying today's results. Were it not for Archegos, it would have been a truly great quarter. As it was, it was just an ok one.

As anyone who's been following HSBC's new strategy will know, it's all about Asia. Senior staff in global banking and markets are being moved to Asia, potentially at considerable cost, as the bank shifts resources to Hong Kong. And yet, in the first quarter of 2021 the Asian investment bank faltered and the UK investment bank thrived. 

Across Asia as a whole, pre-tax profits at HSBC's global banking and markets business were down 11% year-on-year in the first quarter; in Hong specifically they were down 23%. By comparison, in the global banking and markets (GB&M) business of the non-ringfenced UK bank, a $325m loss in the first quarter of 2020 became a $351m profit in the first quarter of this year. 

What went wrong at the investment bank in Asia? HSBC isn't saying exactly, but globally the FX business - which last year accounted for 35% of GB&M revenues in Q1, shrunk by 29% year-on-year in the first quarter, due to what HSBC...

JPMorgan is letting its clients invest in an actively managed bitcoin fund for the first time. For all those who've been waiting for the ultimate indication that bitcoin is an enduring phenomenon and that working with bitcoin might be a good idea, this is it. Failing that, there's always the Twitter account of an ex-Goldman partner turned crypto-enthusiast to inspire you. 

As institutional investors espouse crypto, a wave of exchanges, crypto asset managers and payment and trading platforms is hiring. - And in many cases they're interested in precisely the types of technologists and market making professionals currently working for banks and funds.

While I don't doubt that it's not as easy to train young employees or to build culture when you're sitting in different places, what really works senior people up is control and supervision. If juniors aren't on Zoom calls, immediately responding to emails, or immediately picking up the phone, then what are they doing? The people at the top want constant visibility on how juniors are spending their time.

This is why some of the most notable incidents of the past year have involved analysts or associates being out of reach, either in reality or in perception. There was the 3am email from a vice president at PJT Partners demanding that comments be turned around as fast as possible irrespective of the time. And there was the unfortunate incident where a group of Goldman Sachs associates encountered Solomon at a Hamptons restaurant in the middle of the day, leaving the CEO seemingly spitting with rage at the fact that they weren't at their desks. This was...

JPMorgan is letting its clients invest in an actively managed bitcoin fund for the first time. For all those who've been waiting for the ultimate indication that bitcoin is an enduring phenomenon and that working with bitcoin might be a good idea, this is it. Failing that, there's always the Twitter account of an ex-Goldman partner turned crypto-enthusiast to inspire you. 

As institutional investors espouse crypto, a wave of exchanges, crypto asset managers and payment and trading platforms is hiring. - And in many cases they're interested in precisely the types of technologists and market making professionals currently working for banks and funds.

Grzegorz Jakacki, founder and chief scientist at Codility, a coding challenge provider used by American Express, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, PayPal, among others, says Codility's research indicates that around 10-11% of test takers cheat across all industries. In sectors like media and entertainment it's much lower at around 3%, says Jakacki. In societies where wealth and incomes are highly polarized, the proportion of cheaters is far higher. 

Cheating on coding tests comes in various forms. Students applying for entry-level technology jobs at investment banks tell us it's not uncommon for everyone taking a test to sit together in a room and share their solutions. Jakacki says the most common cheat involves bringing a friend along. "You bring someone with you, and they solve the task." In the less sophisticated version of this cheat, Jakacki says the person sitting next to you solves the problem; in the more sophisticated...

It's not just junior bankers who are getting burned out working long hours in the current frenetic dealmaking environment. Senior bankers are overworked too - and as one executive director pointed out to us earlier this month, they don't benefit from any of the protections offered to juniors. 

Senior bankers hoping for a respite from the relentlessness, will be pleased to know that there is an alternative. They could leave and work for client firms. Counterparts who've done this recently appear to be thriving.

Adrian Wright knows what it’s like to work in banking: between 2000 and 2008, he worked in equity capital markets for Rothschild’s joint venture with ABN AMRO in London and Sydney. He also knows what it feels like to walk away from a lucrative career: when the financial crisis happened he quit banking and spent a year travelling through Africa and the Himalayas.

Wright knows, too, what it feels like to make a comeback – but in a slightly different way.

If you want an opinion on the future of Python in finance, or Python generally, it helps to talk to the Python Steering Council tasked with 'Python governance' and maintaining the language's integrity. The Council only has five members and this year, one of them works for Bloomberg.

He is Pablo Galindo Salgado, a physicist and software engineer, who joined Bloomberg's London office in 2018. At Bloomberg, Pablo says he's responsible for supporting all the company's Python developers with infrastructure and libraries and ensuring they have a great experience coding in Python. Before he joined Bloomberg, he was a theoretical physicist researching general relativity and in particular, black hole physics.

And BofA’s M&A unit didn’t just outgun Citi. Its advisory revenues also grew faster than Goldman’s and JP Morgan’s, which both reported results yesterday.

Bank of America’s equity capital markets division was the group’s star performer, with underwriting soaring by 218%, but that was less than peers in a bumper quarter for ECM revenues, which were turbo-charged by the boom in business with special purpose acquisition companies (SPACS).

Bank of America’s fixed income traders can also claim bragging rights after a strong performance in credit saw overall FICC revenues jump by 22% against a poor first quarter of 2020. Equities revenues climbed a more modest 10%, fuelled by cash equities.

The jump in advisory revenues helped push overall investment banking fees at Bank of America up 62% to $2.2bn. That meant it outpaced Citigroup, which posted a 46% rise in investment banking fees to $2bn.

But while BofA’s advisory...

The old Chinese proverb has it that “the mountains are high, and the Emperor is far away”. Or in the case of HSBC’s new setup, the ocean is wide and the global head of division is in Hong Kong. As trailed earlier in the year, Greg Guyett (co-head of global banking and markets), Nuno Matos (chief executive of wealth and personal banking) and Barry O’Byrne (chief executive of global commercial banking) will be relocating from the UK to HK next year, along with Nicolas Moreau (head of asset management).

The announcement is surrounded with slightly mixed messages, as you’d expect given that it’s directed toward two different audiences. On the one hand, HSBC is keen to emphasise that the moves mean that divisions accounting for nearly all the revenue will now be managed out of Hong Kong. On the other hand, after having considered a complete relocation, it’s also making it clear that CEO Noel Quinn, the board and the legal domicile remain “fully committed...

Goldman Sachs declined to comment. Forman, who was made managing director in 2017, was thought to be a potential candidate for a partnership promotion last year, but unexpectedly wasn't on the 2020 partner list. Forman had a child in July 2020 and told CNBC she was running a team of seven equity index derivative traders from home in May.  Her team is thought to have had a particularly strong year.

In Forman's parting email, seen by eFinancialCareers, she briefly announced that she was leaving Goldman Sachs after nine years and asked her colleagues to keep in touch. However, the subject line to the email was 'a fork stuck in the road.' It's been suggested that this refers to the Green Day song, 'Good Riddance,' which includes this as the opening lyric. The song goes on to say, "For what it's worth it was worth all the while," and, "It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right. I hope you had the time of your life."

There have been...

Instead, Goldman CEO David Solomon used today's results call to emphasize that he's "always been passionate about the experience of junior people," and that he fully appreciates all the hard work that has gone on this year. Solomon said he's in "awe" of the bank's performance thanks to employees' dedication to clients and teamwork. Junior bankers have been working "tirelessly" to support clients, said Solomon, acknowledging that juniors have "at times been overburdened" as revenues in the banks' equity capital markets and M&A divisions rose by 315% and 43% respectively. 

Goldman is seeking to improve juniors' wellbeing, said Solomon: the firm is "taking action" on hiring and the allocation of resources. It's also "imposing stricter enforcement" of work boundaries. 

For Solomon, as for Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan, it's important to get people back into the office. He said that working in the office is better for "forging close bonds with...

The chart below shows the two banks' comparative revenues in fixed income sales and trading, equities sales and trading, M&A advisory, equity capital markets and debt capital markets in the first quarter. Revenues rose faster at Goldman Sachs across the board. 

Spending on compensation and benefits at the firm rose by 86% year-on-year, while headcount rose just 5%. As a result, average pay per head at the firm went from $84k to $150k, implying annualized compensation of $600k – the highest it’s been for years.

Much of this increase should go to Goldman’s investment bankers. Net earnings in the investment banking business, which includes advisory (M&A), equity capital markets (ECM) and debt capital markets (DCM) rose by 380% year-on-year in the three months to March. Global markets profits rose by 52%. Profits in the consumer and wealth management division beloved of Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon were up 104%.

In the notes accompanying today's earnings, Goldman said revenues were lower in its FX trading business, but "significantly higher" in mortgages and rates trading, and to lesser extent in commodities and credit.  Equity derivatives and cash equities revenues increased significantly and revenues...

Much has been written about Andrea Orcel's enthusiasm for hard work. He is a man who likes to get up at 5am, to bark commands at his team at 6am and to work late into the night. For exercise, he has been known to run up hills in Zurich for maximum impact. In meetings, he is accused of exploding with anger if people contradict him. He wants to be the best, and he's not entirely tolerant of mediocrity.

Now aged 57, it might be hoped that Orcel has mellowed a bit. Even if he's not at the stage of sitting in slippers by a fire, he might surely get up at 7am and potter about for a bit before sending a few politely worded emails?

As banks work hard to keep their analysts and associates happy with perks and pay rises, some of those higher up the hierarchy are raising eyebrows. They too are working flat out during the SPAC boom, but they have yet to receive the same sort of love. 

"I think all executive directors and managing directors are pushing 80+ hours a week now and working weekends," says an executive director in M&A at one U.S. bank in London. "And we're not protected by any of the work-life balance initiatives." 

As banks work hard to keep their analysts and associates happy with perks and pay rises, some of those higher up the hierarchy are raising eyebrows. They too are working flat out during the SPAC boom, but they have yet to receive the same sort of love. 

"I think all executive directors and managing directors are pushing 80+ hours a week now and working weekends," says an executive director in M&A at one U.S. bank in London. "And we're not protected by any of the work-life balance initiatives." 

If you want to your code to run as efficiently as possible, with minimal latency, you might need to know a little more than how to code in C++ or low latency Java. Engineers at Citadel are also looking at how to achieve 'bare metal peak performance' by working closely with computer hardware. 

In a presentation for this week's Nvidia GTC GPU technology conference, Citadel research engineer Zhe Jia and Citadel system software engineer Peter Van Sandt, explained how they've been using their detailed knowledge of NVIDIA's Ampere A100 GPU to partition the cache and substantially improve performance.

Sebastien Rosset, the former head of European government bond (EGB) trading at Barclays, has had an interesting pandemic.

After taking a sabbatical from Barclays in summer 2019 according to colleagues, Rosset was among the macro traders leaving the British bank's London office last year.