Lunchtime Links: Compliance professionals are still a subspecies

Banks are hiring compliance staff. Compliance professionals are hot. They are paid more, respected more, talked about more. But they still don't have a clue what's going on.

Fabrice Tourre worked for Goldman Sachs in London. In September 2009, the SEC told Goldman Sachs that it was planning enforcement action against Tourre. This was a huge issue: when it became public Goldman's share price tanked.

Evidently aware of the implications of the SEC case, Goldman senior staff in the US told 'a number of senior managers and other personnel' in the UK what was going on. But they didn't tell compliance, who (we assume) only found out seven months later when the affair became public. Throughout that time, Tourre remained working in the UK.

Clearly, compliance should have known, and the FSA should have known - hence Goldman's fine. Equally clearly, it looks very much as if Goldman thought its compliance staff couldn't be trusted with such sensitive information. Given Goldman's stock lost $12bn on the day the news became public and the FSA has just fined the bank $20m for not telling its compliance professionals sooner, withholding that information still looks entirely rational. When big money is at stake, compliance simply doesn't count.

That takes the fines levied by the City regulator to almost 84m, up from 35m in 2009 and a pitiful 22m in 2008. (Alphaville)

Goldman have poached a top UBS corporate broker. (Financial Times)

There is an internal freak out going on at Goldman. (FinAlternatives)

Simon Dingemans is quitting Goldman Sachs to become the new finance director of GlaxoSmithKline. (Telegraph)

The rehabilitation of John Thornton. (Daily Mail)

Everyone wants to hire John Varley. (The Times)

The 2008 bail-outs have perversely reinforced the power of investment bankers by making their divisions of universal banks hugely profitable. (Financial Times)

One third of Swiss hedge funds have gone out of business over the past two years. (Bloomberg)

Bad July for hedge funds. (Reuters)

I wonder if GlaxoSmithKline is moving into the desert. Is that why the firm needs Mr Dingemans? (Moneyistheway)