Morning Coffee: The job every 24-year-old banker should have. Traders at war

Barclays, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, UBS and now Credit Suisse – fast-tracking analysts to associates after two (rather than three) years has become the thing to do.

Associate is fast becoming the new ‘assistant vice president’ – an important sounding title to polish your resume and appear more experienced than you actually are.

What, exactly, is Credit Suisse doing? It’s rolling out a programme already in place in the U.S to its EMEA investment banking juniors, which allows top-performing analysts to move up to associates after two years, and therefore potentially attain VP level in 5 ½ rather than 6 ½ years.

This is a direct copy of what Goldman Sachs rolled out in September. Barclays also promoted its 2013 analyst class to associates in December – six months earlier than usual – and Deutsche Bank did the same during the summer. Citi has been promoting second year analysts straight into associate role since 2014 and also bumping up first year analysts to analyst 2 after just six months. UBS has had a similar process in place for years.

Add in the fact that HSBC’s salary freeze doesn’t apply to juniors and it seems that analysts and associates are still hot property in banking. Strange, then, that some banks have started laying them off.

Separately, bond desks have some unwanted guests – equities traders. New heads of various banks’ markets desks – including Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank – have an equities background, and fixed income traders are none-too-happy.

On a bond blog run by former Goldman Sachs executive Chris White called Friday Newsletter, veteran bond traders have been questioning the wisdom of installing equity guys at the top.

"Don't know if anyone has been paying attention, but the track record of FX and equity leadership in [non-Treasury] fixed income markets has been nothing short of laughable," one wrote.

Meanwhile:

A bank-by-bank guide to how long it takes to make it to MD (Financial News)

Fidelity has hired 3,000 people…in technology and client services (Financial Times)

Citadel, which was one of the only firms to say it was expanding in fixed income, is actually cutting staff (WSJ)

“More than 17,000 people work at J.P. Morgan in the U.K. and our firm operates from London across the EU single market. So we strongly support the Prime Minister’s efforts with the EU right now.” (WSJ)

Mike Corbat was handed a 27% pay rise this year (Bloomberg)

Tom King is quitting Barclays in two weeks (Financial Times)

The man drafted into improve relations between Credit Suisse’s wealth management division and investment bank has left (Bloomberg)

Bitcoin helps pay for pot (Extract)

Haitong Securities, which is building its City operations, continues to hire (Financial News)

Goldman Sachs employees have already lost $500m in stock options this year (WSJ)

Expensive ‘power’ suits actually boost performance (Bloomberg)

Photo: Fuse/Thinkstock