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We’re slightly behind with this, given that it was published in the Wall Street Journal on March 16th, but as part of today’s high frequency trading ‘series,’ we’re leading with it anyway. The WSJ’s article suggests both what it’s like to work for one of the world’s leading quant funds, and the kind of people who work there. It reveals, for example, that Ren Tech employs 90 PhDs and that the... Read more

Could it be that RBS has finally succumbed to commercial reality and increased salaries along with the rest of the industry? Maybe so. An article in yesterday’s Scotsman suggests salaries for some people in the investment bank have been hiked by 100%. This coincides with news of a new executive bonus plan at RBS, in which senior staff will henceforth be able to receive four times their salary in shares. It... Read more

If you want to work in trading and don’t want to do so at a hedge fund, Goldman Sachs is still the place to be. As yesterday’s report from Morgan Stanley and Oliver Wyman made clear, Goldman is the clear market leader in both equities trading (18% global share) and FICC trading (16% global share), and has increased its portion of both markets since 2007. However, what with the threat of... Read more

The FSA’s decision to ban former Merrill Lynch rates trader Alexis Stenfors from the City for five years for mismarking the value of his trades, won’t come as particularly good news for the 39 year old. Aged 44 he’s frankly unlikely to get back into trading again. It also seems probable that he’ll be asked to pay back the alleged $1m bonus he received for apparently claiming he made a... Read more

The Financial Times has two interesting articles on BarCap today – one on the bank’s alleged intention of developing a partnership model in the style of Goldman Sachs, and another which copiously quotes Martin Taylor, Bob Diamond’s ex-boss. We’ll deal with the partnership issue later because the Taylor article warrants comment all of its own. It suggests Martin, who resigned in 1998 after the Russian crisis and became a part time... Read more

JP Morgan is joining RBC Wealth Management on the European wealth management expansion wagon. Pablo Garnica, the head of its private bank in Europe, told Reuters that the bank’s, ‘targeting a 15 percent increase in headcount among senior, client-facing bankers through recruitment and may look to poach entire teams of experts or regional specialists.’ Garnica also spoke of, “aggressive organic growth.” The best performing region of EMEA in 2009 was apparently the... Read more

Good news for anyone who wants to work for Bob Diamond, but had feared he was restricting recruitment to Asia Pac: things are afoot in Switzerland too. The Wall Street Journal has picked up on a Handelsblatt story from Wednesday, which said BarCap’s looking for ‘dozens’ of Swiss currency traders as part of an attempt to take on UBS and Credit Suisse, who currently dominate Swiss currency trading. Less promisingly, the Journal... Read more

Elsewhere in the world, big moves are all the rage. Yesterday, a senior US banker left Citigroup for Morgan Stanley. Today, it emerged that Deutsche is adding a new US MD in securitization and MBS, Citigroup has hired a senior distressed debt trading in Asia, and that Swiss private bank BSI has been poaching vast swathes of people from RBS in Singapore. In London, meanwhile, all is comparatively quiet. Morgan Stanley's... Read more

The answer is, probably not, but it’s certainly doing some hiring. As we noted last week, SocGen has recruited 12 M&A bankers in recent months. Today it added another one, in the form of a head of M&A for Italy. And it reportedly wants to bring on at least six ECM bankers by this summer. It’s also planning to increase its Asian fixed income team by 10%. Unfortunately, this doesn’t quite... Read more

As we noted yesterday, BofA Merrill is busy building up its FICC presence in London. However, the really dramatic hiring may well be taking place in Sydney. The bank isn’t giving any hiring targets, nor does it purport to have a blank cheque (unfortunately), but it is planning to hire everyone from equity researchers and M&A bankers, to capital markets bankers for its Australian business. The enthusiasm for Aus hiring follows... Read more

Sadly, even though banks did rather well last year, it seems they’re not rushing back to top business schools to satisfy an insatiable urge for MBA students. The Wall Street Journal has been talking to the senior director of the career development office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, who says that although hiring is recovering in financial services, it’s “still down,” and that asset managers’... Read more

SocGen is well on the way to fulfilling its aim of recruiting 15-20 M&A bankers in 2010. Fresh from hiring six senior bankers last month, it’s brought on another two senior coverage bankers (one of whom is joining from Deutsche, which is also keen on ramping up in M&A.). Combined with the addition of Fiona Paulus from RBS in January, that makes 12 hires so far. Only another three to go. Separately, it... Read more

There are upsides to being married to someone who works in investment banking, (assuming they’re very successful). You will probably not, for example, have to fold your own clothes, or cook your own dinner. On the other hand, however, you probably will have to put up with long periods of neglect by your spouse, and to tolerate the company of ultra-competitive rival WAGs. An excerpt from a new book on Lehman,... Read more

If you’ve ever fancied becoming a private banker, but have no experience at all of private banking, then fear not – Barclays Wealth may be the place for you. Back in 2006, Barclays launched ’Embark’, a programme for training many hundreds of non-private bankers in the private banking way. Although the company’s website indicates that opportunities for ‘new private bankers’ are currently zero, a push to train up additional private... Read more

Yesterday was JPMorgan’s 2010 Investor Day. Jes Staley crept out of the shadows to make a little presentation about what happens next for the investment bank. What he said was great news for technologists, but rather less good news for anyone hoping for an uptick in hiring – particularly in London or on Wall Street. Although Staley said nice things about the ‘war for talent’ and the wonders of diversity, the... Read more

It may never come to pass, but it’s worth noting the noises being made about the need for a cap on the absolute level of banking pay. The loudest are emanating from John Mack, who as we noted recently is suffering from post-banking-pay-hypocrisy syndrome, but appears to have gauged the public mood correctly. In an interview with Reuters, Mack said banks still don’t ‘get it’, when it comes to pay,... Read more

Someone at Credit Suisse deserves hefty congratulations. While Goldman struggles through the PR mire, the Swiss bank is managing to both pay its staff well, lock them in, and to come out looking virtuous. The Wall Street Journal reports today that the $5bn pool of toxic assets which constituted the bonus pool for around 2,000 Credit Suisse bankers last year, has increased in value by 72% over the past 12 months.... Read more

One year on, and Commerzbank is still suffering for its acquisition of Dresdner at the peak of the market. Today it reported a €4.5bn loss for the full year, including €137m of trading losses in the corporates and markets division in the fourth quarter. As the Wall Street Journal points out, it didn’t help that Commerz spent €1.9bn for the pleasure of integrating Dresdner over the past year, and will... Read more

If you want to work in hedge funds, you may want to tout your abilities in Asia. Reuters reports today that no fewer than Moore Capital, Maverick Capital, Viking Global Investors and Stark Investments are planning to open Asian outposts over the next few months. These funds are following in the footsteps of Soros Fund Management (opening an office in Hong Kong by the end of March), GLG partners (opening... Read more

After showing thousands of bankers the door, UBS and Bank of America were always going to have to offer something special to attract top talent back again. And, in a brave new world of base salary increases, these two firms are offering the biggest honey pot. Bloomberg reports that UBS has doubled MD pay to £300k, while BofA has hiked base salaries to £230k – up from £150k in 2009. “Some of... Read more