Morning Coffee: Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan to pluck top young talent from rivals. When a bond king has therapy
If you want to work for Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan, you'll need to hold your horses. As per reports last year, the two banks have decided that they won't be interviewing first year university students (freshmen) for summer internships any more. It's being done in the interest of students, who will earn an extra year in which to wholeheartedly pursue their studies and contemplate what they really want to do, instead of leaping at the first banking internship that crosses their paths.
It's a noble aim, but one the Wall Street Journal says hasn't been taken up by rivals. While JPMorgan and Goldman are going easy on first years, other banks are soliciting them for internships as early as ever. Applications for banking internships that will take place in the summer of the second year need to be submitted almost as soon as students arrive at university; interviews take place the following spring - over a year before the internships actually begin.
The WSJ says the perpetrators of this ongoing rush to recruit include Citi, RBC Capital Markets and Moelis, each of which have already closed their recruiting processes and are ready to make offers to the preferred students in May. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, meanwhile, haven't even begun recruiting interns yet.
It leaves these two banks - and the students who want to work for them - in a difficult situation. The hope had been that other banks would follow JPM and Goldman's lead, but this doesn't seem to be happening (“It’s not easy to reverse a trend, especially in the competitive space of campus recruiting,” says Matt Mitro, JPMorgan’s head of campus recruiting.) If you're a student, therefore, who wants to apply to Goldman or JPM, should you wait and put all your eggs in these two baskets? - What happens if you apply elsewhere and are accepted (and sign a contract) before your two preferred banks have even gone to market?
It's a problem with no easy solution, but it's easy to see what will happen as students take the path of least resistance. -In future, many of the top students will do their internships at banks other than JPM and Goldman Sachs and JPM and Goldman simply poach them after the internships take place...
Separately, this is what it sounds like when you're a billionaire portfolio manager who's probably had some intensive therapy. “I wanted to be famous because I wanted to be loved . . . so I pursued that obsessively... I think that people that want to be famous, I think they’re really looking for love.”
These are the words of Bill Gross, the former Pimco Bond King also known for dousing his ex-wife's house in fart spray during a messy divorce. Over a lunch with the Financial Times Gross divulges that his childhood was sad - his parents “didn’t believe in hugging or kissing,” and didn't visit him in hospital when he had a 'horrific car accident' as a student. Diagnosed with Asperger's, Gross says he gets "relatively loopy" on a single beer, and that Pimco in his day was fuelled by nothing stronger than sugar in the form of M&Ms (“It gave us all the false courage in the world to take on dealers and tell them to go f*** themselves.”). It's an honest portrait of a man who, recently retired, wants to bare all. - Although, even this interview comes with a mote of self-reflection: "Shit, that’s why I’m talking to you today,” says Gross of his urge for fame and love.
Meanwhile:
New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has given Bill Gross a lifetime’s access to the Bloomberg terminal, worth $24k a year. (Gross previously said that he woke up to check Bberg three times a night.) (Financial Times)
One U.S. bank estimates that fewer than 10% of its customers in the EU have signed the new contracts that will enable them to keep trading with it after Brexit. (The Times)
Paris is already, after London, the top financial centre in Europe for capital market activity. We are very close to the capital market culture." (New York Times)
Christian Sewing is open to Deutsche Bank merging with Commerzbank, but a DB ‘insider’ says, “We still prefer our plan A and would love to do our own homework, and look at our strategic options later.” (Financial Times)
75% of new fathers at UBS took shared parental leave in 2018. (Financial News)
When I became accidentally (albeit, at 39, happily) pregnant, I left my dream portfolio management job as a concession to my child’s father… I ultimately quit him too. (Financial Times)
A 40-something banker stood up and said what was putting him off becoming a teacher was losing stature in the eyes of his colleagues. This was a mistake – when you’re a teacher, the people you meet socially seem far more interested in hearing about your new job than they ever were about your old one. (Financial Times)
Vehicle with links to Edward Eisler accused of provoking a 90% drop in the share price of a Spanish supermarket (El Confidencial)
JPMorgan’s stablecoin is a mechanism where JP Morgan will redeem a token, that it issues on its platform only. This is akin to only being able to buy, gamble and cash in your gambling chips at the Venetian casino. (Coindesk)
Facebook has built a 60-person blockchain team and has 20 blockchain jobs open. (Theblockcrypto)
RBC equities trader dates reality TV star. (DailyMail)
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