Lunchtime Links: Ironic 29 year old about to make 4bn
In a sign that it is not necessarily the orthodox who excel, 29 year-old Andrew Mason is about to make more money than all but the most successful hedge fund managers by selling Groupon, his discount voucher company to Google.
Mason was not conventional career fodder. At university he purportedly wanted to be a rock star and attempted to initiate a fake tradition of stacking up mattresses under an arch. Following that, he started a tongue-in-cheek company to cover Chicago in a dome to mitigate against the cold winters.
Rather than broadcasting his own brilliance, Mason does his best to appear lame. He has been known to make spurious claims about owning 200 cats, for example.
By comparison, conventional would-be bankers are becoming increasingly supercilious. Dealbreaker has unearthed an entire 11 page presentation titled "I'm Always Awake With Citi: 9 Reasons Why You SHOULD Hire Me As Your Investment Banking Analyst."
The uninspiring reasons cited are: persistence, passion, analysis, intelligence, responsibility, communicativeness, multi-taking, detail orientation and teamwork. The page preceding detail orientation, which states that all work is double checked to avoid mistakes, includes a mistake. There is a lesson in this somewhere.
The bonus pact WON'T affect overseas bankers. (The Times)
Bonus pact banks want recognition from ministers that they'll be left alone. (BBC)
UBS wants to hire Eric Daniels. (Pestowire)
State Street's making redundancies. (Bloomberg)
"We are unaware of any new claims by WikiLeaks that pertain specifically to Bank of America. (NYPost)
In death,BAML would be worth 91% more than it is worth in life. (ZeroHedge)
UBS is prioritising agriculture in its new division. (Financial Times)
Germany is the next Goldman Sachs. (Fund Strategy)
