Morning Coffee: The best months to land a new banking job. Strange allegations at Morgan Stanley

If you're looking for a new job in banking, you might think February's the time to find one. After all, bonuses at U.S. banks have been paid and hiring budgets have been refreshed for a new year. In fact, you may have missed your chance. By February, the best months to find a new banking job have passed.

So suggest figures from London finance recruitment firm Morgan McKinley. Extrapolating from its own new jobs and own new job-seekers, Morgan McKinley produces a monthly snapshot of the health of the London finance job market. The latest one suggests talent is hardest to come by in December and January, when there are just 1.3 new finance job-seekers chasing each new finance job. Once bonuses have been paid and hiring gets going, candidates flood onto the market: in February 2016, there were more than 2.1 people chasing each job in London.

Of course London's not New York City, and this year Brexit is throwing its own curve balls into the mix. Morgan McKinley suggests the recent demise in candidate numbers might have more to do with EU bankers leaving than any particular seasonality. Even so, there's a certain logic to the pattern. If you want to get hired, buck the trend - put yourself out there when everyone else is dormant. The next best time may be deep summer.

Separately, Morgan Stanley's U.S. wealth management team has fallen foul of some bizarre allegations. A former employee claims that senior employees in the unit made satirical mock-ups of famous movies, including a version of the Hunger Games in which employees were, “fighting to the death to keep their job.” The Hunger Games mock-up was reportedly made to be played at a company meeting and was leaked and widely played on the internet in 2015. Morgan Stanley said it's unable to locate the film now.

Meanwhile:

Goldman banker who has also served as a professor of corporate strategy at the University of Virginia law school ready to join the Trump administration. (Politico) 

Senior Citi FX banker is retiring to pursue "academic interests" after 34 years. (Finance Magnates)

Jazz pianist develops and sells AI trading firm: "Using coding skills he’d been teaching himself since high school, he created a program that allowed traders to backtest positions systematically before they put money at risk. Then, by adding a branch of machine learning called predictive modeling, he made the models more sophisticated." (Bloomberg) 

Lament of the European equities analyst: "If I haven’t been snapped up by an asset manager sometime soon, then don’t be surprised if the next time you hail a black cab I’m driving it.” (Financial Times) 

Hedge funds need to become more like Silicon Valley firms, or risk losing all their assets. (Business Insider) 

Forget Brexit, SocGen loves London. (WSJ)

Big American banks love Frankfurt. (eFinancialCareers.de) 

Credit Suisse loves Dublin. (Irish Independent)

MiFID II experts in vogue as Citadel hires Virginie Saade from KCG. (Financial News)

The British Labour party is suggesting a strange scheme which could lead to a kind of London passport. (Independent) 

John Cryan’s wife is part of the Dupont dynasty. (This is Money) 

Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

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