Morning Coffee: A bank doubling headcount in London! Bigger bonuses for investment bankers!

Merry Christmas – to cheer you up after a series of gloomy predictions for investment bankers’ prospects in 2014, here are a couple of good news stories to send you on your way for the festive season.

BTG Pactual, the Brazilian investment bank, will be hiring 100 people next year as it looks to beef up its London operation, according to the FT. Even better, the primary motivation for this is to build its commodities operation, at least offering some new opportunities to the many commodities traders set to be out of work in 2014.

If you work in the FICC divisions of investment banks, which have seen revenues decline by 21% this year according to projections from JPMorgan analysts, you shouldn’t be expecting a bigger bonus this year. However, elsewhere in the business, pay looks set to go up.

Equities is the place to be, with bonuses expected to increase by 12% this year, but even those in advisory functions, particularly equity capital markets, should see a rise of 6%. FICC bonuses will, however, shrink by a comparatively modest 5%.

Goldman Sachs is unlikely to change its bonus pool much this year, says the Wall Street Journal, but JPMorgan will be increasing its payouts by 6-10% and Morgan Stanley is likely to bump up the amount it pays its employees in cash.

Meanwhile:

Former head of urban development for Goldman Sachs takes deputy NY mayor role (Bloomberg)

There will be no major cutting of investment banking headcount in Asia and some firms are likely to increase headcount (Finance Asia)

Want a job on Wall St? Join a fraternity, learn the secret handshake (Bloomberg)

Banks knew about the London fix in 2009 (Telegraph)

Quiz of 2013 (Independent)

How to enjoy Christmas all alone (Metro)

This is the last Morning Coffee of 2013 – normal service will be resumed on 2 January. We wish our readers a very Merry Christmas and prosperous new year.