Morning Coffee: Work 70 hours a week, earn £230k. Morgan Stanley's hot new fixed income job
If you want to earn £200k+, must you work a stupid number of hours? If you ask a mid-ranking M&A banker on a deal, he will probably say 'yes.' But there are jobs out there where an income of £200k+ is possible and a 70 hour week is considered excessive.
Anthony Marsh, chief executive of the UK's West Midlands Ambulance Service is a case in point. Marsh has been causing outrage ever since it became apparent last month that he's earning £232k a year - roughly equivalent to the compensation of a vice president level M&A banker with around eight years' experience. Marsh has been arguing that he's worth the money on the grounds that he does the jobs of two ambulance service chiefs and works a 70 hour week in the process. If you work in banking, that may seem moderate, but British MPs think five fourteen hour days are excessive. "I don't think this sustainable. No man can work 70 hours a week," said West Bromwich MP Tom Easton during a radio phone-in on Marsh's high diligence and high pay. "I'm working far too many hours to be perfectly honest with you," agreed Marsh, who represents 9,000 ambulance personnel. Junior and mid-ranking M&A bankers who are still working 100 weeks may be inclined to disagree. On the other hand, their responsibilities extend only to spreadsheets and client satisfaction, not 999 calls.
Separately, Morgan Stanley has made a promotion which indicates where you might want to work in fixed income. Bloomberg reports that the U.S. bank has just created a new position titled, 'head of fixed income research.' 52 year-old Vishwanath Tirupattur, formerly global head of securitized products strategy (a role he will continue to hold contiguous with the new one) has been promoted into the position. It all seems to suggest that Morgan Stanley wants to make more of its research prowess, something which makes sense given that research has become a handy way of luring clients in the era of electronic trading platforms. While fixed income traders are being superseded by electronic systems, researchers are receiving a boost.
Meanwhile:
RBS has just issued £3.5m in 'role-based pay' to its most senior executives. The biggest role-based payout is going to the man tasked with working out which businesses to remove and which businesses to keep. (Reuters)
JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs have been designing a new generation of complex derivative products. Beware. (Bloomberg)
73-year old Win Bischoff is every bank's favourite European chairman. It probably helps that regulators know and like him. (Bloomberg)
A quant trading team is spinning out of Barclays. Yes, the team is mostly French. (Bloomberg)
JPMorgan just hired Jacqueline Taylor, an executive director in Goldman Sachs' equities business. At JPMorgan she will be head of middle-market equity sales. (Financial News)
The pass rate for CFA Level III is at its highest level for four years. (Dealbreaker)
These are all the hedge fund people you should follow on Twitter. (Managed Futures)
If you have the words 'data scientist' on your CV, recruiters will send you 'care packages' containing chocolate. (Wall Street Journal)
How to get up in the morning. (Medium)
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