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I started working in banking technology 20 years ago this year. My career started around the time the internet got going, when Python was still just a snake and Cobol and Unix were commonplace. I’ve designed and implemented systems from scratch and I’ve worked across fixed income and equities. My career spans four major international banks and I have proven achievements at each. But no one will give me a permanent job.

I’m fairly sure it’s my age. Until I hit 51, I worked full time in a permanent role at senior vice president level. Since then, nothing. I’ve applied and I’ve applied, but it’s been impossible to find a permanent role at a comparable level. Permanent jobs for senior banking technologists don’t seem to exist any more.

It’s a different matter in the contract market. I can get contract work no problem at all. But I don’t want to be a contractor: I want to be invested in the business I’m working for; I want to make an impact strategically and I can’t do that when I’m not on the payroll. Contractors are also being squeezed as banks try saving money. Rates are being compressed and contractors are increasingly asked to take involuntary holidays – in my case, my contract is up at the end of November and I’m being asked to take the entirety of December off and to start again in January. The rest will be welcome. The lack of pay will not.

Of course, this is why banks are hiring me as a contractor. Because I’m not a permanent employee they don’t need to give me holiday pay. Nor do they need to give me sick pay, nor pension benefits. They benefit from my experience, with none of the cost commitment that comes from actually giving me a job. The advantages, as far as I’m concerned are all on their side.

Even so, I can’t help but feel banks are losing out. I have a huge amount to offer in terms of both passion and knowledge. Banks are overlooking my past experience and are focusing instead on young people who claim to be experts in “data” but who have no understanding of its broader context. Without people like me, these data teams have no strategic guidance. The same applies to so-called “tech firms,” which are even more locked into the cult of youth.

I’m 51. My career in technology should not be over. Unfortunately, banks’ recruiters don’t agree. There’s a lot of talk about sexism in technology, but from my perspective ageism is the bigger problem. When you have a technology team full of permanent employees aged under 28, you’re doing something badly wrong.

David Smith is the pseudonym of a senior banking technologist in London

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It’s day one of the new “salary history rule” on Wall Street. As of today, employers in New York City, can’t ask potential recruits how much they were paid in previous roles. The change is set to cause problems for anyone recruiting for banks, but chaos for anyone recruiting for hedge funds.

At issue is the unpredictability of hedge fund pay. While banks’ pay for front office “producers” typically falls within a range according to an individual’s level in the banking hierarchy and can therefore be estimated, hedge funds’ compensation for salespeople and traders varies widely and is often a percentage of the revenues an individual generates. Under the new rules, recruiters are prohibited from making any form of upfront inquiry that can be used to elicit compensation levels. – They can’t ask about pay. And most importantly, when a hedge fund is known to pay percentage deals, they can’t ask about revenues either.

In an industry, where revenues are the measure of performance, this is a disaster.

“You can’t back into someone’s compensation under these rules,” says one New York trading headhunter, speaking off the record. “This means that I can’t actually ask traders about the revenues they brought in last year, and that if I elicit this accidentally I can’t use that information without risking a fine. The whole thing is a nightmare.”

Law firm David Polk confirms the conundrum. In a note out today, it points out that the rule prevents recruiters from making any inquiries that might directly lead them to an individual’s salary. Infringements are punishable with fines of between $125k and $250k.

As we noted previously, the new rule makes it possible that recruiters will simply make incrementally low salary offers until they hit a level potential hires will accept. However, one recruiter says it could have the opposite effect: “If a bank or hedge fund mentions that it’s willing to pay between $450k and $700k and the individual doesn’t volunteer his or her previous pay level, the recruiter has an incentive simply to offer the candidate the higher level so as to bring in a bigger fee.”

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Isabelle Ealet probably wishes she never said it now. When asked by French magazine L’Expansion why she liked working for Goldman Sachs several years ago, Ealet said something about Goldman being a meritocracy. “What I appreciate most is the culture of results,” she told her interviewer. “At Goldman Sachs, you are judged on your performance.”

This may be so. But the commodities division, which Ealet ran until 2012 and which now falls under her purview as global co-head of securities, has been blighted by terrible performance for many quarters now, and yet Ealet herself has seemingly been spared the kind of harsh judgment you might expect from a firm which has made a habit of clearing out its under-performers.

Others don’t appear to have been so lucky. In September it was revealed that Greg Agran, the former global co-head of commodities at Goldman will be retiring next month. Various traders have left, voluntarily or not, but Ealet’s crown seems to remain untouched.

This might be because she’s been several steps removed from the commodity unit’s travails (which were allegedly down to a bad energy bet and then problems with “inventory”). It might also be because when she did run the commodity business directly between 2007 and 2012, it regularly earned revenues in excess of $3bn, and if anyone can turn things around it’s thought to be her. In this sense, Ealet is a lesson in Goldman survival.

Either way, following Ealet’s review of the commodity unit’s entire existence earlier this year, Goldman now seems to be doubling down. During his presentation in September, Goldman COO Harvey Schwartz cited commodities hedging as an opportunity for revenue growth. Accordingly, Bloomberg now suggests that Goldman has embarked upon a commodities hiring spree. It’s recruited a partner-level trader from Morgan Stanley to lead its American natural gas and power trading unit, plus a handful of other senior level traders from elsewhere.

For the moment, therefore, Ealet is being given free rein despite the poor performance of a key business in her stable. Business Insider says she’s “working closely” with Goldman’s new commodities co-heads, appointed in September. Ealet needs to hope things start improving. Otherwise that comment to L’Expansion might come back to bite.

Separately, you need to learn about quantum computing. The Financial Times says hedge funds like Renaissance Technologies, DE Shaw and Two Sigma are all looking into the use of computers which use “qubits” instead of ones and zeroes and that a new breed of “quantum quant” may be coming along next.

Meanwhile:

Deutsche Bank is looking for a Frankfurt office to house up to 1,600 people. (Bloomberg)

Deutsche Bank found the addresses of German customers stored in London don’t always say which German state the customer is in – a detail required in the German IT system. (Handelsblatt)

The Bank of England say the City of London could lose 10,000 jobs on the very first day after Brexit. (Guardian)

Softbank, the world’s largest tech fund, based in London, is hiring operational professionals. They include UBS veteran Neil Hadley, who joined as chief of staff, Catherine Lenson (also from UBS) as head of HR, and three directors from PwC. (Financial News)

Moelis & Co just hired Marco Acaia, a former banker from J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley. (Financial News)

Troels Oerting, Barclays’ chief information security officer, has taken a leave of absence after CEO Jes Staley was tricked by an email prankster. (Financial News)

U.S. banks are about to find it much harder to recruit Indians into tech roles. (Bloomberg)

Universities losing their best AI scientists to tech firms not banks. (Guardian)

Unattractive people are more likely to be chosen for undesirable jobs. (Quartz)

Ex-Merrill Lynch banker brings book about acorns to school children. (Richmond and Twickenham Times)

It is mathematically impossible to live forever. (Inverse)

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Citadel has continued its London hiring spree by bringing in a former partner at SAC Capital Advisors in the UK who has been running his own hedge fund for the past four years.

Sam Elsokari, a senior portfolio manager who decided to go it alone after Steven Cohen closed SAC’s London office following the insider trading scandal in 2013, has joined Citadel’s London hedge fund as a portfolio manager.

Elsokari, a former financials-focused equity long-short portfolio manager at SAC in London, joined Citadel as a portfolio manager in late September. Before this, he was running HSE Capital Management, a hedge fund he set up in February 2014.

Since launching his own firm, Elsokari has nurtured an impressive beard, and feels so strongly about his facial hair that he wrote a blog for The Beard Mag last year, where he said it’s “time to reclaim the beard”.

“My beard has evoked strong reactions from those I know and don’t know,” he wrote. “People are afraid of it, my wife initially hated it but now loves it. My sister still hates it saying it fits the mould. I’ve been called names in Heathrow airport, I’ve been stopped and questioned suspiciously by immigration officers in the US and in Egypt – where in both countries it’s seen as a symbol of extremism.”

He started as a European bank strategist at Lehman Brothers in 2001, before moving to UBS O’Connor in September 2005 as a portfolio manager on a long short equities financials portfolio. He joined SAC in January 2009.

Cohen shuttered SAC Capital Advisor’s London office in late-2013, following an insider trading claim that led to the firm paying $1.8bn in civil and criminal penalties. Cohen wasn’t charged with insider trading, but changed SAC’s name to Point72 Asset Management in 2014, and transformed into a family office, managing his estimated personal fortune of $11.2bn.

While many London-based former SAC employees have returned to Point72 since it launched a new UK office in January last year, some partners started their own ventures. As well as Elsokari, Tony Eccles, a partner focused on energy investment at SAC, started Ayora Capital Management in early 2014.

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Firstly, some praise where praise is due. When Credit Suisse used last year’s investor day to explain its intention of simultaneously cutting costs and increasing revenues in its global markets division, we were skeptical. Everyone knows the story about the gold at the end of the rainbow, but that doesn’t mean you have to go looking for it. In Credit Suisse’s case, something shiny has transpired: the Swiss bank said today that it’s on track to meet its target of cutting costs to CHF4.8bn in its global markets business next year, whilst simultaneously hiking revenues to CHF6bn. Bravo! Except…

For all its revenue rebound and cost culling, Credit Suisse’s global markets business still seems to have a headcount problem.

In the year to October 2017, global markets increased staff by 80 people to 11,670. This year follows a “major restructuring” last year and a big loss on illiquid trades, which decimated profits in the global markets unit in 2016.

In theory, things should now be bouncing back to new and headier heights. In productivity and profit per head terms, they’re not.

As the charts below show, profits per head at Credit Suisse’s global markets business are better than 2016 but remain significantly below 2015 for the first nine months of this year, and revenues per head aren’t doing that well either. The restructuring of Credit Suisse’s global markets division might be going to plan in terms of revenues and cost cutting, but it’s been pretty disastrous for the effectiveness of individual employees. The average global markets employee was a bit more productive and a lot more profitable in 2015 before the restructuring began.

The same applies to Credit Suisse’s Asia Pacific businesses as a whole. While the Asian wealth management business intended to bring in assets and disseminate revenues across the bank, Thiam added 750 people in the region between October 2015 and October 2016. In the year to October 2017, Asian headcount was then trimmed back by 90 people, but as the charts below show, profits per head in APAC have fallen and are now substantially lower than before Thiam’s hiring drive began in 2015. Revenues per head in APAC have yet to recover too.

By comparison, Credit Suisse’s investment bankers look a lot more impressive. Credit Suisse added 350 people to its banking and capital markets division in 2017, a massive increase of 12%. Nonetheless, profits per head surged and revenues per head remained stable.

If you’re looking for a job at Credit Suisse now, therefore, investment banking and capital markets looks like the division to go for. The only downside is that pay per head is being squeezed here along with elsewhere.

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Goldman Sachs is undergoing a retail banking revolution, so much so that CEO Lloyd Blankfein is getting in touch with consumer banking customers personally. Like any retail bank, technology is key to Goldman’s success in this area, but the bank has just lost the man in charge of tech for its U.S. retail bank.

Howard Sloan, a managing director and chief information officer of Goldman Sachs Bank USA since 2016, when the firm acquired GE Capital Bank, has gone to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. He led the integration of acquired and acquirer and the launch of Goldman’s online retail deposit platform, GS Bank, and was responsible for the technology infrastructure for deposits, lending and other asset-related lines of business, including Marcus, which offers fixed-rate personal loans.

Sloan is now an MD of wealth management back-office technology, a leader in the group that provides brokerage technology platforms and services for the Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, U.S. Trust and global markets businesses.

After co-founding a risk management fintech startup, Sloan joined Goldman in 1999 and worked his way up to MD and the global head of prime brokerage and hedge fund administration services technology, a group that provided trade processing, risk analytics, performance measurement and custodial reporting.

In 2012, Sloan moved from New York to Hong Kong to become the Goldman’s head of investment management and banking technology for Asia, a position he held for two years before moving back to Wall Street as the global head of private wealth management client and sales technology. He spearheaded the design of the bank’s www.goldman.com private wealth management site.

Goldman has been forced to adapt as banking has changed, shedding its glamorous Wall Street image as it becomes more like rival J.P. Morgan Chase, accepting the fact that U.S. retail banking has become not only more reliable profitable than investment banking. Sloan’s career trajectory at Goldman is emblematic of that evolution.
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£If anyone has a giant mortgage in London now, it’s the person six years or more into a career in banking. While other professions were forced to rent, vice president (VP) level bankers could still afford to buy into London’s crazily expensive housing market at the top. Many are now highly indebted as a result. Do they mind, then, that the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee has voted to raise rates for the first time in over a decade? Not really.

“My mortgage is £400k, but I’m not really bothered about the rate rise,” says one VP in Deutsche Bank’s markets business, “- 25 bps doesn’t change anything. It’s only £80 a month once it kicks in and I’m on a fixed rate for two years anyway. “A credit trader at J.P. Morgan says he has a £400k mortgage and is also, “not bothered”. A VP-level technologist at J.P. Morgan is similarly sanguine. “My mortgage is £450k,” he tells us. “I’m not that apprehensive about rising rates – I don’t think they’ll go up much more given the state of the economy and the dangers of Brexit, although I’ll probably struggle if they go up more than 2%.”

The potential curse of massive mortgages and minimal housing equity mostly afflicts bankers in their late 20s and early 30s. Below this, most young bankers rent. Above this, most people in banking bought houses long enough ago to have amassed an equity cushion thanks to price rises, although some have mortgages on more than one property. “Loads of older technologists are landlords,” says the J.P. Morgan VP. “People start with a one or two bed flat in zone two or three. Then they move to a house further out. Then they buy some rental properties too.”

In theory, finance professionals should be well placed to manage themselves in the housing market. In reality, this isn’t always so. The unpredictability of bonuses means there was a historic tendency for people in finance to take out interest only mortgages. Pre-2008 many bankers levered-up as much as possible. Mortgage lenders remain hesitant to lend on the basis of total compensation (rather than salary alone), with the result that employees say J.P. Morgan runs monthly “mortgage surgeries” to help its junior employees find lenders sympathetic to their needs.

The more sensible 20-something bankers were prepared for today’s hike in rates. “I have a mortgage, but I’ve been quite prudent and over-equitized over the last couple of years,” says a VP in Deutsche’s investment banking division. “My loan to value is now below 60% and I have a fixed rate for another two years,” he adds, saying that most of his colleagues in finance have mortgages in excess of £400k and will, “clearly pay a bit more if they need to refinance today”.

While some bankers could suffer from rising rates, however, plenty won’t. A surprising number of the VP-level bankers we spoke to are renting. Although their rents may yet rise as landlords refinance, they also remain on the sidelines ready to buy if house prices fall. “It’s the middle and upper middle class people here who bought houses,” says one J.P. Morgan employee. “Most of them relied upon the bank of mum and dad for their deposits. Other people couldn’t afford it.”

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Billionaire Robert Mercer, a huge financial backer of many conservative causes and a patron of the former White House adviser Steve Bannon and Breitbart News, sent a letter to investors and pension advisers revealing that he is stepping down from the board and his role as co-CEO after 25 years at $50bn quantitative hedge fund giant Renaissance Technologies, a.k.a. RenTech.

Mercer, whose involvement in conservative politics became a lightning rod for criticism during and after the presidential election, will remain active on the research side of the fund, which makes trades using complex trading algorithms, according to the New York Times.

In addition to donating to right-wing political campaigns, Mercer was a large financial backer of Cambridge Analytica, a voter-data firm that helped to propel Donald Trump to victory.

His valedictory letter reads a bit like an Ayn Rand encomium: “I believe that individuals are happiest and most fulfilled when they form their own opinions, assume responsibility for their own actions, and spend the fruits of their own labor as they see fit. I believe that a collection of individuals making their own decisions within the confines of a clear and concise set of laws that they have determined for themselves will advance society much more effectively than will a collection of experts who are confident in their knowledge of what is best for everyone else. This is why I support conservatives, who favor a smaller, less powerful government.”

Mercer tried to distance himself from polarizing figures, including white supremacist Milo Yiannopoulos and Bannon, who he supported financially, putting him in the cross-hairs of a group that has been pressuring university endowments and pension funds to pull their money from RenTech, according to Bloomberg. Mercer said that he was selling his stake in Breitbart to his daughters “for personal reasons.”

Ben Shapiro, the former editor-at-large at Breitbart who broke with the site in 2016, told Vanity Fair, “The only person who’s really damaged here is Yiannopoulos…. It’s just a P.R. maneuver to [take] pressure off his hedge-fund investors.”

A former I.B.M. coder, Mercer is at odds politically with RenTech founder Jim Simons, a prominent supporter of Democratic causes and candidates, including Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, whose net worth is approximately $18.5bn.

Separately, while all the focus has been on Goldman Sachs’ M&A advisory business, which has been going gangbusters, and its bond trading business, which has not been going well, the bank has plans to continue growing a less-heralded business that it believes could. That business is debt capital markets (DCM).

Business Insider.points out that Goldman has quietly doubled its DCM revenue since 2010. Goldman Sachs’ debt-underwriting business has produced revenue of $2.03bn, the highest for the first three quarters of the year. The bank ranks second for financial sponsor-related loans in the U.S. for the first nine months, according to Dealogic, up from eighth. Goldman ranks fourth in U.S.-marketed DCM volumes for the first nine months, up from sixth. Not bad for a bank that was a mere bit player in primary debt issuance before the financial crisis.

Meanwhile:

Jerome Powell will come to the chairman’s job at the Federal Reserve with a wide-ranging résumé – after working in investment banking, starting at Dillon, Read & Co. in New York, he became a partner at the PE firm Carlyle Group, where he built a fortune of at least $55m but probably more than double that. (New York Times)

Allianz chief economic adviser Mohamed El-Erian is a fan of Trump’s selection. (Bloomberg)

What happens to Gary Cohn’s dream of running the Fed deferred? (Politico)

Ex-J.P. Morgan Chase wealth manager Jennifer Sharkey, the who claims she was fired in 2009 for raising red flags of fraud and money laundering about a bank client, was let go for a much simpler reason, her former boss testified. (Bloomberg)

RBC Capital Markets’ head of research differentiates his recruitment strategy from that of competitors “where every third year they go through a massive hiring streak, pay peak of market for all of their talent on one- or two-year contracts, then drop like a stone, and they have to start all over again.” (Business Insider)

Citi says synthetic CDOs may reach $100bn as the comeback in complex credit derivatives blamed for exacerbating the global financial crisis gathers momentum. (Bloomberg)

Agreeing with rival Jamie Dimon, Credit Suisse Group CEO Tidjane Thiam says that bitcoin is the “very definition of a bubble.” (Bloomberg)

As cryptocurrencies explode in popularity, employers are clamoring for workers with expertise in the emerging field. (Bloomberg)

Among IT priorities listed by banking and financial services chief information officers in a recent Gartner survey, blockchain didn’t even crack the top 10 – Wall Street CIOs are far more concerned with beefing up existing systems with analytics, cloud services and other applications. (WSJ)

A Preqin survey, which collected data from 173 firms globally across the private equity, private debt, real estate and infrastructure sectors, found that 78% of firms increased their base salaries last year, with nearly a fifth hiking wages by over 10%, and 68% of fund managers expect to hike wages further next year. (Financial News)

Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square has hemorrhaged $1.6bn of assets in five months. (Business Insider)

The income fund managed by star PM Dan Ivascyn, a.k.a. the bond prince, has attracted $62bn in new cash so far this year, driving Pimco’s renaissance. (FT)

Investment strategist and conservative Republican John Maudlin argues for universal basic employment, rather than universal basic income. (MarketWatch)
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Maybe now is not the time to work in high frequency trading (HFT). Low market volatility has crippled some larger players, while larger rivals have swooped in for their struggling competitors. Virtu’s $1.4bn takeover of HFT giant KCG Holdings in April is indicative of the problems facing the sector, DRW Holdings, one of the world’s largest HFTs, agreed in August to buy RGM Advisors, while prop trading firm Sun Trading has also put itself up for sale this year. Many HFTs are expanding into new territory – including cryptocurrencies – in a bid to revive their fortunes.

HFT firms remain something of an enigma, however, despite the spotlight shone on the sector by Michael Lewis’ book Flashboys. Even big firms fly under the radar and while rumours abound about traders being scooped up from investment banks and hedge funds – and large pay packets – little data is really available. Through conversations with specialist recruiters, looking at the careers centres of major HFT firms and analysing the available financial data, we’re able to give you an idea of the jobs and pay on offer currently. Please note, this is not a ranking…

1. Virtu/KCG

Who? In April, Virtu Financial completed its takeover of $1.4bn takeover of rival HFT KCG Holdings. KCG was a relative giant in HFT firms – with close to 1,000 employees globally – and former employees have already been flooding out of the combined unit since the deal in April. Virtu had 148 employees at the end of last year, according to its 2016 annual report released in March.

Hiring? Much of the focus at Virtu since the merger has been on working out where the overlaps are, which has inevitably resulted in some senior exits. As we’ve reported variously since April, senior KCG staff have been departing and many have found new positions. Hedge fund Two Sigma has taken on Ilya Ustilovsky, its head of ETF quant research, Mike Blum, KCG’s chief technology officer, has been hired by Goldman Sachs as a partner and CTO for its electronic trading unit. Robert Crane, its head of electronic execution, has joined HSBC as global head of cash execution, and Graham Wayne, KCG’s head of EU electronic trading, has signed up to Barclays. But the cuts have been deep – at least 60 people have gone in London since April, and insiders suggest that up to 70% of headcount is likely to go in the UK. Right now, Virtu has 19 open jobs globally (including internships) and the bulk (eight) are in technology.

Pay? Virtu spent $85.3m on compensation costs in 2016, or an average payment of $575.6k. The only available figures for KCG Holdings were for its European operation, which paid an average of $251k in 2016, down from $391k a year earlier.

2. Sun Trading

Who? Tech-focused prop trading firm that includes HFT among its trading strategies, which is also reportedly on the market for sale having struggled in the low volatility environment. It has around 100 employees in the US across New York and Chicago and 26 people in London.

Hiring? No. It has two open roles globally – a junior quant trader in New York and a market data engineer in London.

Pay? Compensation has been sliding at Sun Trading’s UK operation (the only available figures) and was an average of $241k (£189k) per head in 2016, down 8% on one year earlier and from a $380k average in 2014.

4. Jump Trading

Who? It has around 350 employees across its offices in Chicago (HQ), New York, London and Singapore. Likes to keep a low profile and rarely (if ever) ventures out into public, but was established 15 years ago and has been gradually becoming one of the biggest HFT players and top firms on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Hiring? Jump has been expanding fairly rapidly over the past few years and at this point last year was hiring 60 additional people. In the UK last year, headcount increased by 45%, according to its latest accounts. Right now, it’s more subdued, but still appears to be recruiting. It has 28 open roles across all of its offices, with Chicago boasting the bulk of the roles. It’s hiring graduates, but also data scientists, quant traders and a whole host of software engineering roles.

Pay? This is only available for its European operation, where profits fell from $39.6m in 2015 to $27.2m last year. It has 68 employees in London (up from 49 in 2015). Jump said that it made “significant investment in personnel” last year, and this has resulted in some big staff costs. It spent $75.7m on its employees last year – or an average pay packet of $1.1m.

4. Tower Research Capital

Who? Founded in 1998 by former Credit Suisse prop trader Mark Gorton, Tower Research Capital is a HFT firm comprised of engineers, physicists and computer science graduates. It has around 300 employees worldwide, including within its European subsidiary Spire (Europe).

Hiring? Yes. It has 51 open roles currently, although a large proportion (22) are based out of its Indian office in Gurgaon. However, there are a healthy number of quant trading, software development roles and graduate opportunities across London, Chicago and Singapore. It’s European arm increased headcount by 24% last year, and now has 102 employees.

Pay? The only available figures are for its European arm, where pay averaged out at $660k in 2016, down from $783.9k in 2015.

5. Tradebot Systems

Who? Based in Kansas City and predominantly focused on US and Canadian stock markets, Tradebot was thrust into the headlines for being the only HFT named in the Barclays’ ‘dark pool’ saga in 2014. It accounts for 5% of total trading volumes in the US stock market and trades 5,000 companies each month, according to its website. There are only around 60 staff.

Hiring? Tradebot has ten openings, primarily in software development, but also for equity traders and quants.

Pay? It only pays traders $50k-100k as a base salary, depending on experience, but points out that the ‘big money’ is made through its annual bonus scheme. This is, of course, connected to personal performance.

6. XR Trading

Who? A Chicago-based HFT that has trading teams focused on seven asset classes including agricultural products, equities, FX and metals. Has offices in London, Chicago and Sydney.

Hiring? Yes, relative to its size XR is expanding. Its latest results suggest that it had 12 employees in London last year – four more than in 2015 – but it currently has just one job in the City, for an experienced traders. It has the 10 roles in its Chicago office, but these are primary software development.

Pay? The only available figures are for its London operation, which has just eight listed employees. It paid them an average of $289.7k last year, down from $383.9k in 2015.

7. DRW Trading

Who? Big player in the HFT with around 500 employees globally. It’s based in Chicago, but has offices in London, Montreal, New York, San Francisco and Singapore. Profits at its London arm surged from £4.5m in 2015 to £11.3m for the year to March 2016, according to accounts released this month.

Hiring? Yes. It has 29 open roles globally – 21 of which are in technology and one of which is in trading. However, it had 32 employees in London last year, according to accounts released in October, which is down from 37 people in 2015.

Pay? New accounts for 2016 suggest that its 32 London employees received an average payout of $301.8k.

8. GSA Capital Partners

Who? Straddles the divide between quant hedge fund and HFT firm, GSA has a trendy office overlooking London’s Green Park. It manages money for clients, and profits in 2016 (the latest available accounts) were £130.8m ($170.9m).

Hiring? It has 19 partners in London, according to its latest accounts. It has an open call for interested parties on its careers page, but no advertised vacancies. It’s not easy to get in – just 25 people have been hired out of 10,000 applicants since 2010. It’s headcount across the group is 102, up from 99 in 2015.

Pay? Its 19 partners earned an average of £6.9m ($8.8m) in 2016, but across the group its employees were paid an average of £198k ($258k).

9. Two Sigma International

Who? A tech-driven HFT firm that claims to have been using Big Data in its trading strategies before it became fashionable. Founded in 2001 and currently headquartered in New York with offices in London, Houston and Hong Kong. It has over 1,100 employees globally and its offices are Uber-trendy – it even has its own music recording studio for its employees and throws parties that it calls fiestas.

Hiring? Very much so. It currently has 82 roles globally across portfolio management, trading, tech and support. In the UK, it has 21 employees, but this is a 50% increase on the previous year.

Pay? Again, the only figures are for its London operation, where pay averaged £309.1k ($406k) per head, up slightly from an average of £306.7k in 2015. Reports suggest that ‘math nerds’ in the U.S. start on $550k at Two Sigma, however.

10. Allston Trading

Who? Boasts its casual office attire and “weekly shoulder massages” as benefits on its website. Allston was founded in 2002 by a trio of CME futures traders. It has ceased trading on US stock markets to focus purely on more profitable derivatives markets. Has around 125 employees.

Hiring? Not really. Has a four open roles – two for traders, one DevOps engineer and a “general application”.

Pay? No data

11. IMC

Who? Headquartered in the Netherlands and surely one of the oldest HFTs, having been founded in 1989. It has 500 employees across Amsterdam, Chicago, Sydney, New York and Hong Kong and Zug.

Hiring? To an extent. It has 27 roles across Amsterdam, Chicago and Sydney, primarily trading and a range of engineering and development positions. There are also intern and graduate opportunities. IMC says in its latest annual that it hired an additional 100 people last year, and increased headcount in its technology team by 20%.

Pay? No official figures, but Glassdoor suggests that junior traders bring in $80k and options traders earn $95k. Trading interns earn $6.2k a month. Software engineers supposedly earn $107k. Perhaps it’s all in the bonus. IMC’s annual report said that it paid its employees €89.3m ($104.3m) in bonuses last year and that 17 people earned variable compensation of more than €1m.

12. Hudson River Trading

Who? Another firm that claims to account for 5% of all stocks traded in the US. It has around 100 employees worldwide across offices in Austin, London, New York and Singapore, 25 of which are algorithmic traders. The rest work on writing software and other middle and back office roles. Hudson River is reportedly in talks to buy Sun Trading.

Hiring? Somewhat. It has around 15 jobs globally, including graduate roles.

Pay? Its London operation paid out an average of £470.9k ($615k) its 12 employees last year, which is broadly in line with 2015.

13. Spot Trading

Who? Has around 100 employees across technology, equity research, quant and trading functions within its Chicago HQ. Claims to operate a meritocracy where all employees are rewarded for the performance of the firm, rather than compensated on individual performance.

Hiring? No. Currently no job openings.

Pay? No data

14. Chicago Trading Company

Who? Founded in 1995, Chicago Trading Company (CTC) evolved from an open outcry firm into one staffed by quants and traders supported by a technologists. It primarily focuses on the derivatives market.

Hiring? Not much – it currently has seven roles, all of which are in technology.

Pay? Glassdoor suggests that it pays its traders salaries of $119k, although the bonus is likely to be substantially more, and that software developers earn $110.2k.

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Are charismatic salespeople really immune to the algorithmic apocalypse? While some people claim the endurance of individuals with strong client relationships at banks in the future, one ex-very senior trader at Goldman Sachs with a ringside seat on the machine learning “revolution” begs to differ. He suggests salespeople are stuffed, irrespective of clients’ partiality to them.

David Ha spent eight years at Goldman Sachs, latterly as the Tokyo-based co-head of Japanese rates trading. He left Goldman in June 2016 to take up an elite residency at Google Brain, Google’s California-based programme for people interested in machine learning. These days, he’s busy pursuing a career in artificial intelligence, but he still has opinions about the structure of the trading floor.

The trouble with sales, says Ha, is that no one wants to pay for them. “You can’t have it both ways,” he says, “The process of automating trade execution lowers margins across the business. Low margins means banks cannot afford to hire high-powered, senior MD-level fixed-income salespeople to “cover” [important] clients.”

Ha suggests the sales squeeze is therefore an inherent part of trading automation. Equally importantly, he says that algorithmic trading disassociates the actual execution of the trade from the decision-making process leading up to the trade, making it difficult for salespeople to extract a fee if clients only pay for actual trade execution: “The execution desk at the client who controls trade execution is not in the same team as the decision-maker, and the execution desk is incentivised to obtain the best price. They are not incentivised to do any favours for a senior fixed-income salesperson at a bank.”

Under algorithmic trading systems, Ha says banks’ trading platforms share a common application programming interface (API) with the result that platforms automatically compete between themselves to achieve the best price. Salespeople are out of the loop.

Ha doesn’t say so, but there’s a danger of this dynamic increasing visible under MiFID II. Although banks like Barclays have been busy hiring senior salespeople this year, the new regulations shift the focus further towards best execution by demanding that brokers ensure “all reasonable” steps are taken to ensure a trade takes place in the most efficient way possible. While salespeople and sales traders with deep relationships may be needed to talk clients through the changes to market structure when the new rules are first introduced, they’re therefore likely to prove superfluous once the new regime is properly underway. Unless clients pay for relationships and trade advice rather than simply execution, salespeople look exposed.

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You won’t hear this said very often, but when you work in finance it’s not just about you. This is such a demanding career, that it’s partly about having a spouse who’s committed to you working in finance and is tolerant of your long hours. And finance is an industry that’s so difficult to get into, that your more presence in this sector is often a testimony to the effort your parents put into your upbringing. Once you make it to the top, therefore, you have a chance to give them something back.

I’ve tried to give back as much as I can.

My own father was a driver. He spent 40 years at the wheel, taking people from point A to point B and after those 40 years, he had less money saved up than I had accumulated in six years in banking.

He moved people. I move money. Guess which pays better?

The way I see it, though, this money isn’t entirely mine. My parents invested heavily in me, and it’s my responsibility to give them something in return.

When I was a junior, it was just small things. I made sure I stopped being a burden to them: I didn’t live with them and I always had a spare bedroom in my own place so that they could come and visit.

After I’d worked in banking for a few years, I was able to do more. I sent my parents on a holiday. They loved it. So, I sent them on some other, better, holidays. When they came to visit me, I took them out for expensive dinners. They loved that too!

This is what people don’t tell you about finance jobs. The pleasure of giving back. People think “bankers” are selfish materialists, but a lot are among the most generous people I know. In my case, being able to treat my parents felt awesome. It felt good take care and look after the people that made me who I am. No matter who we are, we only got there because we stood on others’ shoulders.

This isn’t to say that generosity always comes easily. Finance is a career with its ups and downs. Last year, I was stressed and between jobs. Nothing was working in my life and my parents wanted to buy a place in California. They didn’t have enough money, and since they were retired a mortgage wasn’t an option either. Being the oldest son from an emerging markets country, I knew it was my duty and responsibility to help. Even so, I was stressed. When I wired them the money I was very conscious that it was a whole year’s bonus.

But guess what? A year has gone by now and I’ve got a new job. It feels great to see my parents settled and it feels great to that I was able to do something for them. The older I get, the more I realize that only 5-10% of what I’ve achieved is because of me: 90% was due to my parents, mentors, teachers. I want to give them something back.

Of course, my parent don’t really understand what I do for a living, but that’s not the point. When I’m 70, I figure I won’t really know the jobs my kids are doing either. The important thing is I helped my parents when they needed me and that they are they are proud.

What else matters?

What I Learnt on Wall Street is an education focused business founded by an ex-Goldman MD and Family Office allocator. His firm has just launched: The 5 keys to unlocking a successful career in Finance, with the 1st class being held on November 23rd.

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HSBC has hired the man in charge of employee conduct risk at Deutsche Bank at a time when closer scrutiny is being paid to the behaviour of the UK bank’s traders.

Toby Billington, who has spent the past three years as a managing director and head of wholesale conduct and risk culture for Deutsche Bank’s investment bank, has just joined HSBC as chief controls officer for its global banking business.

Billington is a specialist in conduct risk on the trading floor – how the behaviour of investment banks’ employees could expose them to potentially huge fines or regulatory trouble – and joins HSBC at a time when the bank’s traders have landed in hot water. Before joining Deutsche Bank, he was programme director of conduct risk at Barclays.

He joined Deutsche Bank shortly after this video about employee conduct at the bank went viral:

In the past few weeks, HSBC FX trader Mark Johnson was found guilty of defrauding a client in a $3.5bn currency deal, while the bank’s former head of currency trading, Stuart Scott, faces extradition to the U.S. to face fraud charges. Both cases date back to 2011, but employee conduct – particularly on the trading floor – remains a big priority for large investment banks.

HSBC is also recruiting for a chief controls officer in the Asia-Pacific to act as the “first line of defence” for its global markets business in the region.

In a report released in October, consultancy Quinlan & Associates estimated that employee misconduct has cost investment banks $850bn since the 2008 financial crisis, thanks to “widespread unethical behaviour” in the industry.

Large investment banks created the chief controls officer role around 10 years ago, and the position has become increasingly important. It deals with operational and conduct risk across the investment bank, and often involves creating guidelines for behaviour among the firm’s employees.

One former investment banking COO, who now runs a consultancy, tells us that investment banks are increasingly training their supervisory staff to look beyond PnL when assessing the behaviour of their markets employees. Investment banks are increasingly turning to technology solutions to look for potential collusion or bad behaviour on the trading floor. But employee misconduct goes beyond high profile cases of rogue trading or rate fixing and often involves tackling more mundane day to day concerns.

The consultant gives an example of a trader who was reprimanded for smoking in a non-smoking part of the office, and was abrasive to the person when called him up on it. His behaviour was overlooked, however, because the individual was a top performer.

“It’s amazing that you need a code of conduct for fully grown adults,” says the consultant. “But banking culture change still has a long way to go.”

Quinlan’s report also said that banks still have yet to really fix their culture: “Cultures cannot be regulated into existence: a bank’s cultural identify must be created from within and reflect its individual DNA,” said the report. “And we believe it is here that many organisations still have much to do.”

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Rokos Capital Management, the $6.8bn hedge fund set up by former Brevan Howard star trader Chris Rokos, has continued its recent hiring spree by taking on another former Goldman Sachs trader.

Michael Waresh, a former Goldman Sachs prop trader who has also worked for Royal Bank of Scotland in London, joined Rokos Capital Management on the 30 October, according to filings on Companies House today. Waresh is a veteran trader, who has extensive experience trading a variety of macro products. He left RBS in 2007, his last role in the UK according to the Financial Conduct Authority, and his LinkedIn profile suggests that he’s spent the past five years as a senior vice president and lead portfolio manager for FX alpha strategy at $100bn Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC.

Rokos Global Macro Master Fund had a rough first half of 2017, with performance reportedly down by -5.1%, However, it is said to have gained +3.3% in September, according to Bloomberg and had narrowed the loss to just -1.2% by the end of last month.

He is the latest senior recruit at Rokos, which has steadily been building its UK operation with selective hires, predominantly former traders from large investment banks.

In May, it hired Ramnek Matharu, a former Goldman Sachs managing director who retired from the firm three years ago, aged 40. It then brought in Omar Gzouli, a former managing director at Barclays in New York who was previously head of U.S. exotics trading at the bank. In June, Robin Wilson, the former head of emerging markets trading for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Credit Suisse, also joined as an emerging markets portfolio manager.

Rokos Capital Management was launched in 2015 by Chris Rokos, an ex-Brevan Howard star trader, after a long non-compete dispute with his former employer. The fund opened to new money in February 2017, and assets under management swelled to $6.8bn as a result. Rokos was reportedly set to double the size of its investment team this year from five to 10 people. Now, that five senior investment staff have been unveiled in 2017, that build out appears to be over.

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You have a job interview with J.P. Morgan. Congratulations – or not. Needless to say, having a job interview is not the same as having a job, and J.P. Morgan’s interviews are far from easy.

Before you venture into an interview with the bank you therefore need to familiarize yourself with what you might be asked. To facilitate this, we have listed every single publicly recorded J.P. Morgan interview question from recent history below. If you don’t know exactly why you’re applying for that job, can’t value a company with your eyes shut (if you’re applying to IBD) and don’t know what happened in the market yesterday (if you’re applying in S&T), don’t bother. Similarly, if you’re applying for a junior tech job, questions about OOO programming languages always seem to come up and you’d be foolish not to be prepared.

Brainteaser questions from J.P. Morgan interviews

How many windows are in this building?

If you had a Rubik’s cube with 10 little squares on each side, and peeled off the outer layer, how many little cubes would you end up with?

How many trees are there in Central Park?

How many planes land at Gatwick every day?

How many people enter London every day for work?

How many houses higher than 20m are there in NYC?

How many people set foot in the Roman Colosseum on an average day in August?

How many times does a ball get hit in the average game of tennis?

What’s the probability that a pregnant woman has a baby boy?

How many matches take place during the Wimbledon tennis championship?

How many people set foot in the Vatican during an average day in July?

You’re about to give a PowerPoint presentation in a meeting and you notice it has a mistake in it. What do you do?

What’s the square root of two?

If one mile is 1.6km, how many kilometres are in eight miles?

How many skis are sold in Sweden each year?

Demand for skis declines sharply. What should the company selling skis do?

How much money would a buffet car on a train travelling from Edinburgh to London make, on average?

What’s 16 multiplied by 243?

You look at the clock. It’s 3.15pm. What’s the angle between the clock hands?

What is the sum of the numbers from one to 100?

What’s the square root of 0.1?

What’s one divided by 16?

What is the expected value of a roll of a dice?

I flip a coin. If it’s heads you pay me £100. What should I pay you to play this game? What about if I only have to get 1 heads in two tosses, what is the new price?

Add up all the numbers between 0-100.

Can you make a market based upon the expected value of a roll of a dice?

You have a 3 liter and a 5 liter bottle. How do you measure 4 liters of water exactly?

Fit questions from J.P. Morgan interviews

Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?

What’s the story behind your resume?

Tell me about yourself without mentioning your resume.

Describe a time you took a risk.

Someone didn’t take your idea into account. How did you react?

Tell me about a class you did poorly in.

Give an example of a time you encountered a difficult question whilst working in a group.

Give me an example of a time you motivated others to achieve a particular result?

Have you ever had to compromise to make an achievement? How?

What’s your greatest achievement?

What is the biggest risk you have ever taken in your life?

Sell me something that you think I would need.

What do you see yourself contributing to this organization, in both the short and long term?

Describe a time you led a team and dealt with a difficult individual in that team.

Have you ever had to change your working style to deal with a difficult team member?

How would colleagues describe you?

What are your three main strengths and weaknesses?

What would you do if you knew your boss to completely wrong about a work issue?

Which books do you like reading?

What’s been your biggest failure at work?

Your boss assigns you a project and then goes on holiday. What do you do?

You’re in the middle of an urgent task and someone more senior demands some instant information. What do you do?

Questions about J.P. Morgan and the job

Why banking?

Why J.P. Morgan?

Why do you want this job in this division?

What do you think this job will entail exactly?

Bankers can work hard. How would you handle that?

Why has J.P. Morgan been in the news recently?

What’s J.P. Morgan’s share price today?

What are the biggest regulatory threats faced by J.P. Morgan?

What was J.P. Morgan’s price/earnings ratio in the past quarter?

What’s our stock price?

Where do you see the banking industry in 50 years time?

Describe a recent news article that interested you.

Markets questions from J.P. Morgan interviews

What’s the connection between interest rates and equity prices?

What are the three top stocks to buy now? Why?

Which bonds would you buy if Greece defaulted?

How would you persuade a German pensioner to save Greece?

Can you describe how swaps work?

Where do you see the interest rate on US 10 year treasury bonds going?

A natural disaster occurs in Manhattan. What impact does this have on markets?

What’s wrong with the UK economy?

Where did the oil price close yesterday?

How would you invest $1m?

What can you tell me about quantitative easing in Europe?

What impact do interest rates have on a country’s exchange rate?

Which are the most important/interesting subjects within FX markets at the moment?

What would be the impact on markets if the US went to war with Iran?

Where’s the S&P trading?

What is the current yield on a 10 yr Treasury bond?

Draw me a call option.

Investment banking division (IBD) and accounting questions from J.P. Morgan interviews

What’s more expensive – debt, or equity?

A company’s depreciation expense goes up by $100. How does this affect its three financial statements?

What happens to enterprise value when you issue or repurchase shares?

Would you use EBIT or EBITDA to value a capital-intensive company?

How can you use EBITDA to calculate the cash-flow from operations?

How would you value the pizza shop on the corner?

Pick an industry, tell me how it’s been doing for the past 5 years and how you think it will do for the next 10.

Walk me through a DCF.

How do you work out the best discount rate to use in a DCF?

How do you calculate the future projected cashflows for a DCF?

Walk me through some of the ways you value a company.

What are the three most common methods of valuing companies? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

What’s the terminal growth rate? How do you calculate it?

You’re the CEO of a company. Would you rather raise debt, or equity? Why?

Can you describe the difference between the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows?

A pharma company is awaiting FDA approval for a new drug. It is their first and their only product. They have nothing else in the pipeline. Can you provide an approximate for the beta of the company during the FDA approval process.

How would you go about valuing Apple?

How would a DCF change for a company in the biotech space?

Within WACC, what is Cost of Equity and how do you calculate it?

What does PIK interest mean? How does it work?

There are two firms. One has 100% equity and the other has 50% equity and 50% debt. Which one will have the lowest WACC? Why?

What are assets on the balance sheet of a financial institution?

Technology questions from J.P. Morgan interviews

What’s the difference between a Linked List and an ArrayList? Can you give me examples of when you’d use each one?

What’s a compression algorithm?

Write a script to find all the odd numbers between 1 and 100.

What would be the advantage of using cloud servers in a J.P. Morgan office?

How would you describe an object oriented programming language?

Tell me everything you know about object oriented programming languages.

Tell me about a piece of technology that would benefit J.P. Morgan.

What’s the difference between Java and C++?

Name me three qualities that differentiate Java as a programming language.

Given an array of numbers, write a function to calculate the largest sum of any two numbers in the array.

What is the difference between multi tasking, multi processing and multi programming operating systems? Can you provide some examples?

You have two threads, one printing even numbers in order and other odd numbers in order. How would you design an algorithm so that it prints numbers in natural order?

What’s the software development cycle?

Write a function to calculate the factorial.

What’s the difference between agile and waterfall?

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Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by actual human beings! Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)

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Do you need to be “one of the lads” to get ahead in financial services? A woman who spent five years working in fund management claims this was what she was told.

Erika Wesson began working at Fidelity’s Pyramis Global Advisors in 2007. She was the only woman on the institutional real estate acquisition team at $2.3 trillion asset management firm Fidelity Investments, scouting for deals across the U.S. and receiving positive reviews that included ratings of “exceeding expectations” and “outstanding,” according to Bloomberg.

The problems began in 2008 when Wesson received an anonymous email sent from a Yahoo account whose address was a crude comment on her anatomy: “Maybe you can go out there and do another deal where you lose millions. Stupid Bitch!” and said she would be fired.

Then, in 2010, Wesson claims that Sujit Sitole, a male employee who was junior to her but acting as her boss, told her she wasn’t getting ahead because she “didn’t drink beer, watch football or eat meat.” He also allegedly advised her to play a stereotypical female role, taking a “back seat” by remaining silent even when she knew the answer to a question asked by a managing director.

Sitole maintains that his words have been misconstrued. He says he told her didn’t need to do any of those things to be part of the group.

Wesson left Fidelity in 2011. The company paid her $500k and promised to provide good job references including the phrase, “I have no reservations recommending Erika for employment” – and make no disparaging comments about her.

However, Wesson claims she has been blackballed in the industry and says Fidelity is to blame. For example, in 2012, after Marc Cardillo, a managing director at investment consulting firm Cambridge Associates, met Wesson, he shot an email to Jeffrey Gandel, another of her former Fidelity bosses: “hubba hubba – how’d you let her go?” Later, presumably after hearing why from Gandel, the consultant got an email from Wesson, which he forwarded to Gandel, adding “Crap!”

In 2014, years into Wesson’s fruitless job search, Enrique Bellido, former director of construction management at Fidelity, sent her an email: “Karma is a bitch, isn’t it Erika?”

After about 60 interviews, the Vanderbilt MBA has not found another job in finance. In 2015, she filed a breach-of-contract suit.

In rare public remarks after taking the helm in 2014, Abigail Johnson, the chairwoman, president and CEO of Fidelity, which was founded by her grandfather Edward C. Johnson II, promised to root out the mistreatment of women, fight sexual harassment and recruit more women.

Separately, while the work/life balance on Wall Street is notoriously bad, especially for new parents, one prestigious firm is courting the favor of new fathers.

Morgan Stanley boosted paid leave to four weeks from one week for non-primary caregivers following the birth, adoption or foster placement of a child, according to Bloomberg.

Primary caregivers are still eligible for 16 weeks of time off, but instead of having to take it in a continuous block, can break the leave into two-week sections after the initial eight weeks.

Technology companies have unveiled more generous benefits for new parents, so banks have had to enhance parental leave in a bid to retain employees and fend off competitors. Last year, Bank of America Merrill Lynch increased parental leave from 12 to 16 weeks, and in late 2015 Credit Suisse extended its maternity leave to 20 weeks.

Meanwhile:

Lloyd Blankfein and his former right-hand man at Goldman, White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, are butting heads over the Republican tax plan. (Bloomberg)

The arrest of Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed is likely to reverberate across dozens of publicly listed companies, and he has worked closely with some of Wall Street’s biggest and best-known investors and banks, including Citi. (WSJ)

Societe Generale’s traditional strength, equities trading, turned in a surprisingly poor performance last quarter as demand plunged for the derivative products the French bank pioneered. (Bloomberg)

Boss Frédéric Oudéa steadied SocGen’s course following the 2008 crisis, but nearly a decade into his tenure as CEO, the bank is stuck in a rut. (BreakingViews)

An economist says the IMF was wrong to label Deutsche the world’s riskiest bank. (Risk.net)

Credit Suisse hired Paul Galietto as the head of Americas equities trading, who most recently was the chief of equities Americas at UBS and before worked more than 20 years at Merrill Lynch. (Fortune)

Why is Morgan Stanley breaking the Protocol for Broker Recruiting, which allows advisers to change companies and woo former clients without legal blowback? (Bloomberg)

Former Bear Stearns trader Howie Rubin, 62, is accused of raping and beating three women in the basement of a Midtown Manhattan apartment that he rigged with BDSM equipment. (Daily Mail)

The performance of billionaire Steve Cohen’s family office Point72 – don’t call it a hedge fund – is surging in just ahead of his potentially huge return to managing outside money. (Business Insider)

An elderly woman attempted a citizen’s arrest of Allied Irish Banks directors at a shareholder meeting in Dublin Friday, the latest sign of how much anger toward the nation’s financial sector remains a decade after the economy crashed. (Bloomberg)

Your “me vs. them” mind-set isn’t just a lonely one — it could be another product of your privileged background. Research has found that people with more money are less empathetic, more likely to act on their individual interests and not as adept at reading facial expressions. (The Cut)

Lost your job to automation? Become a caregiver. (Wired)
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Georgi Mechkarov is a man on a mission. That mission has been going on for two years and nine months and is due to culminate this time next week in an East London employment tribunal, where Mechkarov will accuse Citi of persistently discriminating against him on the grounds of his race.

Mechkarov is from Bulgaria. He says discrimination against Eastern Europeans is endemic in the UK, and that this is the first time a UK employee of East European origin has stood up to it. Most Eastern Europeans don’t know they have a right to non-discrimination on the grounds of their race, says Mechkarov: “Polish, Bulgarian, Romanian and other Eastern European nationals, who experience brutal acts of discrimination and hate crimes on a daily basis…choose to remain silent, in part because they are not aware of the available legal protections.”

Mechkarov clearly is aware, and despite now working full-time as a vice president in Morgan Stanley’s credit risk management team, he plans to represent himself against Citi in court.

His claim dates back to the years between 2010 and 2013, when he worked as a vice president on Citi’s London bond transaction execution team after transferring across from Citi’s Sofia office in Bulgaria.

An over-worked star performer

Mechkarov claims he was a star performer at Citi. “I was consistently rated as an outstanding performer,” says Mechkarov in court documents printed on his own website, adding that he, “rated 1 (top 5%) in 2007 to 2009 and rated 2 (top 25%) in 2010 and 2012.” He also says he was rated the joint top performer in his class in banking in Citi’s ,”West European cluster.” Even so, and despite regularly working 16-hour days, Mechkarov earned a salary of £100k plus a bonus of more then 50% of his salary by the time he left.

Mechkarov’s court documents from earlier hearings relating to his case suggest things started going wrong for the moment he arrived in London.

As a 28-year-old with a wife and child, he was unusual among other juniors and was housed by Citi in a “very small 1 bedroomed apartment” unsuited to his family. When he raised the issue with his then-manager, Mathieu Gelis, Mechkarov says he was told that, “In Western Europe, analysts and associates rarely have children, therefore Citi cannot pay for a bigger apartment for you even though having a child at the age of 28 may be considered normal in Bulgaria.”

In the year that followed, Mechkarov says he was staffed on a disproportionate number of capital management transactions rather than more interesting bond transactions. When he raised this, he claims that Gelis told him, “You are not working on bond transactions because of the nature of your background – coming from a small office like the one in Bulgaria does not mean that you are sufficiently qualified to represent the bank with external law firms and bond issuers.” This was despite Gelis working on deals with multinationals like Shell and Lukoil whilst in Sofia.

However, things really went downhill for Mechkarov in January 2012 when he was demoted from his role as staffer on his team and replaced by a Russian speaker, whom he claims the bank said had experience beyond, “the kind of credits to grocery stores that are approved in E. Europe.” Thereafter, Mechkarov says his life at Citi became an “utter nightmare” as the new staffer, who had been appointed by Gelis and senior colleague Catherine Pierre, made his life hell by assigning him a disproportionate amount of the work. He claims that his team had to work particularly hard because Citi combined bond issuance with capital management, functions that are separate in other banks.

“I was under a great deal of stress and had to work on average 15 hours a day and sometimes had to stay in the office without going home for the night,” Mechkarov claims, adding that his weight went from 90kg to 60kg during his time in London as a result of the stress. “On one of these mornings, Catherine Pierre made a remark passing by my desk, saying: ‘Aren’t people taking showers in Bulgaria?,‘ which was met with giggles and laughter by the wider team.” On another occasion, he says Gelis told him, “The Bulgarian is getting ahead of himself.”

Subsequently, when a round of redundancies was made at Citi in 2012, Mechkarov alleges that Pierre said loudly, “It is time to get rid of the Gypsies in the office.” He took this to be directed at him, given the large Roma population in Bulgaria.

Voluntary redundancy after a physical breakdown

Eventually, Mechkarov took voluntary redundancy from Citi in 2013 following ,”severe abdominal pains”. Initially, he thought they were related to food poisoning, but the hospital suggest they were the result of stress at work.

Mechkarov claims that he only took voluntary redundancy because he struck a confidential deal with Pierre and Gelis, who said they would help him find a new job if he did. Pierre denies this, along with Mechkarov’s additional accusations that she threatened him when they met several times at a cafe near Citi to discuss his predicament (she claims in turn that he was threatening towards her and presented her with a list of headhunters, whom she says he asked her to call on his behalf.)

Ultimately, Mechkarov alleges that Gelis and Pierre, both of whom are French, discriminated against him both on the grounds of his Bulgarian nationality and because they felt threatened by his strong performance. “Despite their efforts in crushing me down in 2012, I still managed to keep up my performance at an excellent level (top 25% in 2012). This is when they started losing their temper and often times attacked me directly and publicly on the basis of my Bulgarian origin and nationality,” he claims.

Bosses said to give no credit for a new loan charge idea

Mechkarov claims credit for a ‘Loan Transfer Charge’’ methodology which Citi rolled out in 2011. He says he presented this idea to Gelis, whom he says declared the idea was “good” and promised to discuss it with fellow MDs. Two months later, he says the charge was rolled out 90% in accordance with his plan, but that he was entirely excluded from its implementation: “My name had never been mentioned internally in relation to the Loan Transfer Charge methodology, which is used to-date by Citi in over 100 countries world-wide.”

Mechkarov alleges that innovations like the Loan Transfer Charge, compared with his strong performance and his popularity with other Citi MDs and clients means he was a political threat to his bosses at the bank. “They were ready to do anything to achieve their goals and they knew that they had to stop me as early as possible in my career, so that they remove me as a potential threat to their ambitions,” he claims. If he hadn’t left Citi in 2013, Mechkarov says he would have likely been promoted to director in 2016 and then possibly MD a few years after that, putting him in direct competition with Pierre for, “the limited number of high-paid roles of senior managers with direct business development or functional responsibilities.”

Citi denies everything, offers small out of court settlement

Citi denies all Mechkarov’s accusations. A spokeswoman for the bank told us, “Citi is vigorously defending itself and its employees against Mr Mechkarov’s allegations, which are entirely without merit.”

The case is due to begin on November 13th. Mechkarov says Citi offered him £8.3k to settle out of court in July, which he turned down. He’s demanding £2.75m in damages and wants Citi to institute anti-discrimination training to prevent other East Europeans from being treated similarly.

Eastern Europeans in the UK are unfairly blamed for everything from problems with the NHS to unemployment, says Mechkarov. “It is always the Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian and other Eastern European immigrants, who are the silent scapegoats of a poisonous and ever-escalating rhetoric. The result is discrimination and hate crimes that spread across all layers of British society at an unprecedented scale.

“In this environment, it is very important that Eastern Europeans living and working in the UK become aware that we are protected by UK and EU law which allows us to fight against those who perpetrate hate crimes and discriminate against us.”

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Photo credit: Citigroup London by Håkan Dahlström is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Steve Cohen’s family office Point72 Asset Management is on the hunt for “rogue nerds” and has stepped up the search for talent by scouring the junior ranks of investment banks and top hedge funds as it expands its academy programme.

Jaimi Goodfriend, head of Point72’s training Academy, says the firm started ‘Academy 2.0’ earlier this year. Its purpose is to target people after two or three years in the industry. The initial intake, in the spring, was around five people, who were offered the chance to do an “accelerated Masters degree” while working at Point72.

“We had people apply from Goldman Sachs’ equity capital markets team, an economist from Washington DC, and the more traditional investment banking background,” says Goodfriend.

Point72 also launched an online trading game with fintech start-up Tiingo. It’s essentially a way of uncovering people around the world without “putting boots on the ground”, says Goodfriend, and finding trading talent based on their ability relative to their peers, rather than what’s on their resume. The winners are invited to interview at Point72.

“We want to look beyond the traditional finance majors. There might be a rogue nerd studying computer science, or music, history or geography students who have a passion for investing,” she says.

Point72 is not a hedge fund. Officially, it’s a family office overseeing the estimated $11bn fortune of its founder Steve Cohen. But the firm is still staffed by traders and portfolio managers who worked for Cohen’s former $14bn hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors. He was banned from managing outside capital after an insider trading scandal at the firm, but is reportedly seeking to raise $20bn for a new hedge fund set to launch early next year.

Point72 has been expanding; it now has 1,150 employees after relaunching its London office in 2015 and embarking on a massive hiring spree in Asia. But Cohen has publicly bemoaned the lack of decent talent on the market, and the Academy – essentially its graduate training programme – was launched in response to this.

Competition is tough. In total, Goodfriend says the Academy received a total of 12,000 applications this year for 18 places globally. Of these, 5,000 were for its ‘international’ programme, which is in London and Hong Kong. Goodfriend says that the assessment process is “highly rigorous” and typically involves 6-7 rounds of interviews, and testing on everything from investment prowess to ethics. She said that Point72 is looking for a “diversity of talent” and does not have any formal GPA target for the people it takes on, although she acknowledges that they are “not looking for C students”.

Goodfriend spent nine years as an equity analyst, both on the sell-side and at hedge funds including Citadel and Balyasny Asset Management, before moving into academia as a lecturer at DePaul University and as director of the investment banking academy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She spent years guiding students into financial services roles, and says that her background seeing talented individuals miss out on banking and hedge fund jobs because they didn’t have the right background has influenced a less rigid recruitment approach at Point72.

While Point72 may be looking for liberal arts students and qualities that match its culture and outlook, it’s also trying to cast a wider net for its new hires. “The best talent is no longer going directly to Wall Street,” says Goodfriend. “It’s going to Silicon Valley, or to start-ups. We therefore have to change the way we source talent.”

Point72 has traditionally been a discretionary fund manager, and two third of its investments are managed this way. It also has its own systematic fund called Cubist. Point72 is already moving slowly towards automation – it’s reportedly testing models that mimic the trades of its top portfolio managers. As more hedge funds move towards a quantitative approach, and also rely on huge quantities of third party data, Point72 is changing the way it trains its new recruits.

Now, all new academy recruits will undergo 100 hours of “structured curriculum” on data science, says Goodfriend. “The next generation of money managers will have to understand big data,” she says. “It’s not widely taught on Wall Street. We view it as a way of staying ahead.”

Overall, the Academy runs 2,500 hours of study across 10 months, during which students get to grips with the fundamentals of finance and covers everything from accounting, statistics and economics to coding and data science.

The programme runs for a total of 15 months, and towards the end, the students spend time rotating across all of Point72’s investment teams. Goodfriend says that almost everyone has accepted a full-time offer at the end of the programme. Those that didn’t, decided to pursue a career outside of finance. “We had one guy who decided he didn’t like spreadsheets. Clearly, that was not going to work,” she said.

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While most banks have made an effort to impose a “hard stop” on junior employees’ working hours, especially at weekends, Morgan Stanley hasn’t. At Morgan Stanley, employees are expected to negotiate their own working hours – and to work weekends as required. This could explain why one junior from Morgan Stanley’s investment banking division just jumped to a tech firm where staff have a reputation for working 12 to 13 hour days, and weekends.

George Robson left Morgan Stanley for fintech start-up Revolut last month. He spent 16 months at Morgan Stanley, working on the UK and Ireland coverage team, and joined Revolut’s premium product team. Started by former Credit Suisse and Lehman trader Nikolay Storonsky in 2015, Revolut began as a pre-paid FX card that allows people to link to an app where they can buy and hold currencies. It’s since expanded into business accounts, loans, mobile phone insurance, loyalty points and a subscription “premium” feature.

Revolut is credited with being one of the fastest growing fintech firms around (whilst burning through millions in investors’ money). However, the firm is also known for its heavy grind. While banks (Morgan Stanley excepted) try attracting juniors with gentler working schedules, Revolut is unapologetic about its expectations of its employees.

“We are not about long hours — we are about getting sh*t done,” Storonsky told Business Insider last month. “If people have this mentality, they work long hours because they want it.” In the same way that ex-Goldman associate Alexandra Michel conducted research revealing that junior bankers damage their health through overwork entirely voluntarily, so Storonsky said Revolut employees embrace the hard work culture. “They’re really motivated, really sharing the vision of where we want to go and as a result, they work long hours — they work at least 12, 13 hours a day. All the key people, all the core team. A lot of people also work on weekends.”

Revolut’s reputation doesn’t seem to have dissuaded Robson from joining. Nor does it appear to have been a turn off for the other 183 staff listed as working for Revolut on LinkedIn, many of whom have been hired in the past six months and whose numbers include former IBD juniors at banks like J.P. Morgan or RBC Capital Markets. Eight reviewers have given the firm an average five stars as an employer on Glassdoor and one claims the long hours are, “worth it.”

Storonsky’s sell for Revolut is reminiscent of a bootcamp. “We are trying to attract people who want to grow themselves,” he told Business Insider, “Growing is always through pain. It’s the same as going to the gym. You need to train and you need to hit your limit — and then you grow.” Maybe banks need to pitch themselves differently to young people now?

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This my sound like I’m boasting, but within my area I’m one of the top contractors in the City of London. I’ve worked in contract roles at most major banks for well over a decade. Banks know me. I know their technology, I know their processes, I know the regulatory environment. I’m one of the SAS (the Special Forces if you’re in the U.S.). I’m brought in to do a specific job. I do it well, and then I move on. I’m well respected for this.

Except at Credit Suisse. At Credit Suisse, under CEO Tidjane Thiam, me – and contractors like me – have been treated like easily disposable juniors. And it’s time someone spoke out.

Credit Suisse has been cutting contractors instead of full time staff. The bank has cut over 3,000 contractors in the past year. This is 12% of its total, but the damage to individual teams has been far greater – I’ve seen teams working on regulatory initiatives cut from 50 to 3 people. Ok, this is partly the nature of regulatory work, but some of these cuts have been to teams where regulations have yet to be implemented.

If you’re a CEO and you’re trying to take out costs, contractors might seem like a soft target. You can get rid of us without paying severance. You can squeeze our day rate. You can force us to take a furlough over December so that we lose an entire month’s pay. You can’t do this stuff with employees.

So why not squeeze your contract staff? Because you need us.

It’s my opinion that Thiam doesn’t understand how investment banks really work. He doesn’t get that the roles done by contractors are often related to complex regulation and can’t easily be taken on by full-time staff. Nor does he get that it actually makes sense to hire contractors: we can go from zero to sixty overnight and leave when the work is done. By comparison, it takes months to train-up full time staff, and you’re stuck with them afterwards. Personally, I’ve seen experienced contractors who know my area inside out struggling to train up juniors from the pool of Credit Suisse project managers – juniors who are way out of their depth and who will make mistakes. Balls are being dropped and processes are falling apart as a result.

This isn’t all though. Thiam doesn’t seem to appreciate that contractors talk to each other, and that we remember. People who are being burned at Credit Suisse won’t want to work here again. There are better banks out there that treat contractors decently – banks like Barclays, which recognize what we have to offer and aren’t out to squeeze us at every opportunity. Contracting is a two way street: if you’re a great place to work, great contractors will come to you for a lower rate. If you’re not, contractors will either charge a higher rate or will avoid you like the plague – and your ability to respond adequately to regulatory demands will be reduced because of it. There will always be people with big mortgages to pay, but this isn’t everyone – a lot of experienced contractors have made their money and can pick and choose where to go.

There are plenty of monkeys working on banks’ internal project teams. If you offer peanuts, they’ll come running. But if you want someone who can actually do the job, who can make sure you meet your regulatory deadlines and who really understands what’s required, you may need temporary help from outside. You need to be pragmatic. Thiam isn’t, and in my opinion Credit Suisse is suffering as a result.

Suzie Wang is the pseudonym of a contractor at Credit Suisse. This subjective piece reflects her opinion and is not a representation of the opinion of eFinancialCareers.

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Photo credit: Credit Suisse Gebäude by Btina Widmer is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Balyasny Asset Management is at it again. The expansionary hedge fund, which has doubled its UK headcount over the past 12 months, just hired another portfolio manager from Citadel.

Sebastiaan De Boe, who spent the past four years as an analyst on Citadel’s equities team in London, just joined Balyasny as a portfolio manager. De Boe joined Citadel in 2013 from Blackstone, where he was an associate. He joined Blackstone following the completion of a Masters in Management at London Business School.

Citadel has been a happy hunting ground for Balyasny over the past 12 months, both in the UK and US. Amol Pai, a fixed income trader at Citadel in New York, joined in July, Brian Ruddick, an equities analyst, started in January. Meanwhile, late last year, Balyasny hired Mark Shalhoub, an industrials portfolio manager at Citadel in New York and Ismet Yashar, who joined as a portfolio manager in London last October.

While a number of hedge funds in London have been hiring selectively in particular strategies, Balyasny’s hiring has been both more aggressive and less predictable. It’s setting itself up as a kind of hedge fund supermarket – or the Amazon of the buy-side – and is hiring people across a variety of investment areas.

Balyasny, the $12.1bn hedge fund founded in 2001 by Dmitry Balyasny, has not only been expanding its UK operation, but has also emerged as one of the highest paying hedge funds in London. It paid an average of $824.8k last year, up from $670k in 2015.

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