In the feverish atmosphere surrounding junior bankers’ working hours, according to the unofficial Goldman Sachs analyst survey, a demographic fault line is emerging. While older, older bankers likely live in large and airy houses and spend evenings with their families, younger, younger bankers complain that they are asked to work from children’s rooms or individual apartments until the wee hours of the morning. – “At night, when all the doctors are signing out and spending time with their families, the materials move forward as people bring forward the memos and presentations and all of the things that support the calls for the next day. “A Credit Suisse analyst told Business Insider in a complaint that was representative of the genre.
However, the assumption that senior bankers find it easy can be oversimplified. At the top of the tree, some have piled far too many responsibilities.
Christian Sewing, the 50-year-old CEO of Deutsche Bank, also belongs to this group. After Sewing abolished the Germans’ stock sales and trading division in 2019 and fired former head of the investment bank, Garth Ritchie, he added personal control of the investment bank to his list of other responsibilities. Almost two years later, there are concerns that he is doing too much.
Under pressure from regulators who allegedly believe he is “overworked,” Bloomberg reports that Sewing is preparing to quit his side job. A successor to head the investment bank is likely to be named in the next few months, and that successor will most likely be Fabrizio Campelli, currently Deutsche Bank’s transformation officer and previously an investment banker, strategy officer and head of the private bank.
The sale of some of his jobs will probably give the still young sewing a little more time in the evenings and on weekends. The regulator wasn’t the only one who believed he was doing too much – investors were also complained in November 2019. The complaints were almost certainly justified: sewing isn’t the kind of boss who makes a few vague bids before retiring to his vacation home ‘; Sewing once requested that he personally sign off any new hires.
The fact that it took Sewing so long to appoint a separate head of the investment bank suggests he was in no rush to work less. Given the recent success of the German investment bank and its importance to the general health of Germans, this is probably a good thing. – Sewing can be good. However, given his seniority, this is not enough. Junior bankers may want the directors to step in and order them to get some sleep, but when you’re the CEO of an entire bank, your potential for fatigue-induced catastrophic mistakes is more closely monitored. If a logo is misaligned at 3 a.m., the stock price is unlikely to suffer …
With hedge funds quickly turning into family offices, we now have a real-time example of what can happen if something goes wrong. After tens of billions of mysterious block trade sales carried out Friday by Goldman Sachs and others (leading to comments like “I’ve never seen anything on this scale in my 25-year career”) It became clear yesterday that the seller was indeed Archegos Capital, a private investment firm founded by Richard Kang, a former analyst at Tiger Asia Management. The Archegos website went offline on Sunday. The FT tried to call their chief dealer, who hung up.
The ramifications of unwinding the Archegos – dubbed “one of the greatest margin calls of all time” by Bloomberg – and seemingly canceled by Goldman Sachs – are only just beginning to emerge. Credit Suisse and Nomura have already warned of “substantial losses” from their exposure to the fund, with Nomura reportedly losing USD 2 billion and Credit Suisse up to USD 4 billion. The fear is that other prime brokers will be asked to make their own margin calls and that the situation could snowball …
Meanwhile …
“Some of our executives – these people are 55, 60 years old – have never tried Microsoft Excel in their lives. They have no idea how long it takes. “(Business Insider)
The whole point of working 24 hours a day, for days and canceling weekday appointments with Kate Upton, stag and hen parties in Las Vegas with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, and last minute Christmas holidays with the Pope of all Christianity is that The entire investment bank works to the whim of customers who pay us a small fortune for it. (Epicurean Dealmaker)
A vice president of a private equity firm in New York, who was an analyst at JPMorgan a few years ago, recalls being assigned work based on spontaneous comments from a client at a meeting. “You would go to the meeting and someone would say, ‘I didn’t know I asked about it. And you had just spent 80 hours on it it. “(New York Times)
“Every time I leave my screen to go for a walk or take a break, I have to tell my vice president, ”said an analyst at a boutique investment bank. “Everyone is constantly afraid of being monitored. . . It is a major invasion of our privacy. ” (Financial Times)
The advantage of crazy hours as a junior banker: ‘Despite stress and insomnia, I was able to complete tasks with a skill for which I had trained for years. In addition, I have proven to myself that in this fast-paced, high-stress environment I can function and even perform excellently. Let’s call it a boot camp, but the experience would open doors for me later, and I was well paid for my efforts. ‘(Financial Times)
Jane Street hired Barclays’ MD Aaron Katzman to trade individual stock options. (Business insider)
Citi hired Goldman Sachs’s Erika Irish Brown as the new head of diversity. (Financial news)
The internship at HSBC begins online, but can be moved to the office. (Financial news)
Goldman Sachs urged staff at its Bengalaru office to go home if COVID cases increase. (Business standard)
In the “lush bank conservatory” of Citi in Singapore with hydroponically grown rainforest plants. (Dezeen)
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