Friday's Headlines: Developers Launch Their Own Trading Firms

High-Frequency Programmers Revolt Over Pay [Forbes]

The compensation gap between high-frequency program developers and the traders who use their algorithms is leading some developers to bolt trading shops and go into business for themselves. They were paid $80,000 - 150,000 at their former employers, compared with millions earned by the traders they worked under. (Forbes' story tantalizingly mentions Goldman Sachs and Citadel in its lead, but doesn't name any actual former employers of the people it quotes.)

JPMorgan Hires Staff For Trade Finance Push [Reuters]

JPMorgan is about halfway through hiring 100 new trade finance professionals for a global trade unit headed by Daniel Cotti in London. It's part of a stepped up-quest for multinational clients that also includes a global corporate bank JPMorgan started up earlier this year, focusing on fast-growing economies such as China, India and Brazil. The trade finance unit is expanding from about 150 employees to about 250 by year-end.

Goldman Blocks Worker From Leading Financial Crisis Walking Tours [The Guardian]

Here's a career choice you won't often hear about (on eFinancialCareers News, anyway): Tom Comerford chose a tour guide gig over Goldman Sachs. Ordered by his bosses to stop giving public walking tours of sites associated with Wall Street's recent crisis, he quit the bank, where he'd worked the past 10 years as a contract employee in document production.

Goldman Already a Step Ahead of FinReg [Fox Business]

Goldman Sachs is moving proprietary traders into its asset management division to comply with the Volcker Rule ban on banks trading their own capital. The move reportedly aims to avoid large-scale layoffs and preserve some of the same risk taking that Goldman has said accounts for 10 percent of firm-wide revenue.

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