Morning Coffee: Investment bankers seek $48k Brexit safety net. The only 10 universities for getting into Wall Street

Call it a bizarre form of insider trading, but in spite of investment banks’ efforts to reassure employees that jobs are not leaving London any time soon after the Brexit vote, an increasing number of high-earning finance professionals are seeking insurance against lay-offs.

There’s been a sharp spike in finance professionals earning over £150k ($200k) seeking insurance policies against redundancy. Enquiries on price comparison websites from this group have increased by 78% since Brexit, while queries from finance professionals earning more than £75k ($100k) rose by 49%.

“I am positive this is because bankers, who mostly did not expect that Britain would vote to leave Europe, became suddenly very worried about their jobs,” said Richard Theo, the CEO of ActiveQuote which compiled the research, told the Financial Times.

High-earning bankers, particularly those with large mortgages face a problem after Brexit. If, as anticipated, London property prices start to tumble, bankers at the prime end of the market will be stuck in the UK with a big debt on a shrinking asset. Add in school fees for older finance professionals with children together with a lack of new opportunities and this insurance makes a lot of sense.

Except…insurers are likely to monitor which companies these ‘bankers’ are a emerging from. A high concentration of people from one firm and premiums will shoot up. Still, it might be worth the expense – a 40-year-old banker seeking £3,000 a month for up to 12 months on one of these schemes would pay “in the tens of pounds every month”, according to one financial adviser. Not a huge amount for a safety net, but the payout still equates to just £36k ($48k) a year.

Separately, if you want to work on Wall Street, you’ll probably have graduated from one of 10 U.S. universities. In line with our own ranking of 2016 analysts, New York University/Stern comes out on top with around 7.5% of 2,800 investment bankers surveyed for a new ranking from salary benchmarking website Emolument (featured on Business Insider).

University of Michigan/Ross School of Business and Rutgers University bring up the rear, with 1.6%-1.7% of the total, suggesting it’s very tough indeed to get on to Wall Street from any other college. This is based on both back and front office employees, however. If you want to get into a front office role in the U.S., the Ivy League rules.

Meanwhile:

Most fund managers think that the City of London will lose business because of Brexit (Telegraph)

“Don’t provoke. Don’t pick on public targets unnecessarily. Be constructive. And empty threats in any directions are never good. We are where we are, we need to make the best of it,” how the City needs to handle Brexit talks (Financial News)

Ex-Brevan Howard star Chris Rokos’ hedge fund has been promoting partners (Financial News)

The shame: Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank have slipped off the Stoxx Index (WSJ)

Blythe Masters has assembled a formidable line up of former bankers for her blockchain start-up (Business Insider)

There’s only one bank selling U.S. treasurys after J.P. Morgan’s exit. This is a concern (WSJ)

Paul Quinsee is now heading up the equities business at J.P. Morgan Asset Management (Financial News)

Hong Kong markets are battling a typhoon. No, an actual typhoon (Bloomberg)

“Tell them that discriminating against team members on the basis of how they voted might be understandable, but is also illegal, undesirable, and will drive your company into the ground,” how to cope with Brexit tensions in the office. (Financial Times)

Glass-Steagall would help none of the big banks (WSJ)

The State of Massachusetts now requires employers to state the salary upfront. It’s a bid to stop the gender wage gap (New York Times)

People in the U.S feel very strongly about cargo shorts. The comments section is blazing (WSJ)

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