Morning Coffee: Mystery of the 22-something Wall Street Christmas party animal. Deutsche Bank’s bonus annihilation

Raucous banking Christmas parties may be consigned to the past, but this doesn’t mean it’s not possible to create your own Wall Street legend if you try hard enough.

Right now, there’s quest to find out the identity of a young trader who partied a little too hard on Thursday during his work Christmas party. By 7pm, he was completely hammered, according to Business Insider, and had managed to throw up on the founder of his company by 8.15pm. It didn’t end there.

The party started at sleek Manhattan venue Club 21, but by morning, he had woken up in the Bronx with no phone, no wallet and no recollection of how he got there. At this point, you might maybe think of going home to tidy up a little – shower, change your clothes…

Instead, he somehow retrieved his phone and called his office at 9.15am to see if he should come in. He did so in a suit now covered in holes. And gets sent home.

This anecdote might pale in comparison to, say, the 2004 Goldman Sachs Christmas party, which allegedly involved a fight between a banker dressed as a chav and a banker dressed as a Dalmatian. But, it’s captured the imagination of Wall Street and many have been trawling their Bloomberg terminals trying to uncover his identity.

Initially, he was thought to work at Weeden & Co, but this has since been denied. The mystery continues.

Separately, Deutsche Bank has been toying with ways to cut back on bonus payments for a while. At one point there was talk of paying staff with toxic assets from its non-core unit after being slapped with the massive $14bn U.S. Department of Justice fine for mis-selling mortgages. Instead, it seems it’s going for a straightforward cuts. Senior staff at Deutsche Bank are likely to receive “retention cheques” instead of any sort of bonus, according to the Sunday Times, while juniors will still get a bonus, but a decidedly more diminutive one.

This is hardly a big shock in truth, as Deutsche Bank was always set to slash bonuses after a difficult year. But CEO John Cryan has never been a fan of bonuses anyway, and early this year pointed to a “new compensation framework” that would see lower bonuses and “higher fixed pay from 2016 onwards”.

Meanwhile:

EU Brexit negotiators will get to the UK to agree to a ‘divorce’, which will ensure banks move people to the Eurozone (Financial Times)

20% of UK hedge fund employees come from the EU. Not surprisingly, it’s top of the list of demands (Financial Times)

Lloyd Blankfein is the real winner from Goldman’s management shake-up (WSJ)

The average partner pay at KPMG is £582k ($727k) – a 7% drop on last year as it redirects funds to hiring for technology expertise (The Times)

UBS is cutting about 20 jobs – largely in the mid-ranks – in Asia as it scales back (like most international banks) in the region (Straits Times)

How bonuses influence active managers’ investment style (Financial Times)

HSBC has promoted Paul-Henry Bacher, who it hired from Credit Suisse, to global head of fixed income e-trading (Financial News)

Deutsche Bank is paying $37m – about half that of Barclays and Credit Suisse – for misleading clients over its dark pools (Bloomberg)

The EU stands to lose from a hard Brexit – financial services will become more expensive (Financial Times)

Citigroup is investing in a fintech firm which aims to stop flash crashes in the FX market (Bloomberg)

Never mind capital, banks aren’t making enough money (Bloomberg)

Some foreign investment banks are paying just 6% tax in the UK, as opposed to the 20% corporate tax rate (Reuters)

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