Lunchtime Links: How to achieve an extra 28 days' holiday; and operations hiring recently went through the roof

If you're already starting to ration this year's holiday allocation with a view to ensuring you don't have to work the entirety of the Christmas period, Bloomberg highlights the case of two bankers who achieved an additional 28 days+ out of the office in the form of pointless gardening leave.

Merrill Lynch hired Achintya Mangla and Aloke Gupte, two senior ECM bankers in Asia, from JPMorgan last month. Mangla and Gupte duly spent the past few weeks tending their gardens before being bought back by JPMorgan this week. Both men appeared to have secured promotions, although JPMorgan is apparently adamant that it hasn't matched the package on offer at BofA.

Separately, Robert Walters has produced a belated review of operations hiring in the first quarter. It says there was a "surge" of operations hiring in the first three months as the, 'increase in trading volumes and new business meant clients had no option but to recruit in order to cope with demand.'

How rich are you compared to the rest of the entire world? (Globalrichlist)

RIP all those fees from the Pru? (Pestowire)

AHL is still "some distance away" from being able to collect performance fees. (Wall Street Journal)

Poor investment performance cut performance fee income at Man Group by 73%. (Financial Times)

Asda's M&A olive branch for Lazard (courtesy of Archie Norman?) (Financial Times)

Goldman debt now selling for 280 basis points over equivalent US Treasuries, up from 175bps two months ago. (Alphaville)

Tax the banks, but don't insure them. (Guardian)

Deutsche Bank likes the European levy. (Financial News)

Blankfein - now 48 out of 50 in Wall Street CEO pay rankings. (Bloomberg)

US Treasury has now sold 20% of its stake in Citi. (Wall Street Journal)

1993 reporter's salary at WSJ: $85k. (Observer)

500 points for Icing someone from HR. (Dealbreaker)

Lancaster is now an elite university. (The Times)