Morning Coffee: City bank serves staff food resembling frogspawn. The tiny firms big broker-dealers fear

Step aside Goldman Sachs with its competitive omelet station: There's a new healthy banker foodstuff on the block. It's fine, as long as you don't look at it too closely.

The food in question is a healthy concoction of chia seed, almond milk and granola that bears a strong resemblance to frogspawn. It's to be found in the large sixth-floor canteen known as the Terrace at Nomura's London office. There, you can eat your pot of dubious-looking combination, which helps power your brain, whilst overlooking the Thames River.

Pseudo-frogspawn isn't all that's on offer. Nomura also has a kitchen garden that includes a habitat for bees and other bugs and many different types of vegetables, including Hakurei turnips, which the cooking staff uses as ingredients in the meals. The canteen is full of healthy options, Business Insider reports. In addition to fruits and veggies, there’s sushi, a build-your-own burger station, Cumberland sausages and chicken schnitzel.

Nomura's London employees can allow themselves some dessert on a hot day: There's low-fat frozen yogurt, with toppings if they’re really feeling frisky. Finally, there’s a sweet shop that doubles as a dry cleaner for the messy eaters among them, although candy is reportedly far less popular than the gluten-free, chia seed, almond milk and granola concoction.

Separately, even with the U.S. Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule in limbo due to the Trump administration’s opposition, the main elements of the law went into effect at the beginning of this month.

That, combined with the increasing popularity of low-cost, passive investment vehicles such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs), have helped independent registered investment advisers (RIAs) win business from the wirehouses – Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, UBS and Wells Fargo Advisors – and other big broker-dealers.

Investors’ heightened scrutiny of fees since the financial crisis has benefited RIAs – most of them far from Wall Street – at the expense of big traditional brokerages, The New York Times reported. In fact, independent financial advisers’ market share has increased from 13% to 23% since 2005, according to Cerulli Associates.

One example is the investment advisory firm Creative Planning. Based under a dentist office in a nondescript building in a Kansas City suburb, Creative Planning is riding the wave of the latest wealth management trends, surging from handling just $34m in 2004 to $26.2bn with advisers in more than 30 states today. It is averaging a new hire every single day.

Meanwhile:

Democratic lawmakers are pressuring Deutsche Bank to disclose sensitive information about its loans to President Trump and its alleged involvement in a trading scheme that allowed wealthy Russians to launder more than $10bn. (Bloomberg)

Venture capitalists snubbed Trump. (Bloomberg)

Morgan Stanley managing directors and recruiters responded to questions that the bank’s interns asked. (Business Insider)

There’s one thing that new hires and interns must do to be successful at a Wall Street firm. (Business Insider)

The British bank Barclays is currently leading the pack for investment banking fees on its home turf. (Financial News)

In preparation for Brexit, Japanese banks Nomura and Daiwa Securities Group have both decided on Frankfurt to serve as their E.U. subsidiaries’ HQ. (Financial News)

Paul Walker, former co-head of the technology division at Goldman Sachs, has joined the board of directors for OpenFin. (headoftrading)

Michael Romanowski, previously a director in credit sales at Barclays, is becoming a director on the high-yield sales desk in the global credit products division at Credit Suisse. (Yahoo Finance)

Fintech lingo explained. (Reuters)

A poll of asset managers found 85% are confident that they’ll be compliant with MiFID II’s unbundling rules by the end of this year, while the other 15% are in full-on panic mode. (The Trade)

A Princeton economics professor and author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street is changing his tune on the active vs. passive debate and smart beta. (New York Times)

Billionaire Leon Black, the CEO of buyout firm Apollo Global Management, sold Alberto Giacometti’s elongated sculpture of a female nude for $22.6m. (Bloomberg)

A new study found a correlation between a love of black coffee and sadist or psychopathic tendencies. (indy100)

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