Late Lunchtime Links: Boris Johnson wants banks to take on apprentices

Now that it's about to cost a lot of money to get a university education, London Mayor Boris Johnson has come up with a cunning plan: investment banks should hire apprentices instead.

According to the Evening Standard, Boris has written to Morgan Stanley and Deutsche, among others, urging them to create 20,000 apprenticeships. Banks may yet see the light - not long ago, non-graduates were common in the City. More to the point, the minimum wage for an apprentice is 95 a week, considerably less than the 43k pro-rated salary banks were paying interns this summer.

Vince Cable says he's examining whether to force listed UK companies to reveal the pay of high earners. (Bloomberg)

Swiss voters will decide this weekend whether to increase taxes for the nation's top earners. (Bloomberg)

The EU might allow UK bankers to receive more upfront cash in 2011 so that they don't run out of money. (Financial News)

Crispin Odey is now overweight the financial services sector. (Financial News)

French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, has called for a ban on electronic trading. (Financial Times)

UBS has plans to hire a few more M&A bankers in Europe, but has fallen from 1st to 6th in European rankings. (Bloomberg)

Bank of America has hired Samuel Losada to run its European corporate equity derivatives business. (Bloomberg)

Algorithms are appearing in research. (SecuritiesTechnologyMonitor)

Dutch people are the tallest in the world. (EnglishAlJazeera)