Morning Coffee: Deutsche Bank is firing-up the layoffs again. The woman at Bank of America who stands between us and the robot Armageddon

As the lockdown begins to ease in London and Frankfurt, Deutsche Bank employees currently working from home might find that they’re invited back into the office ahead of the rest.  Not in order to test the new social distancing arrangements, but to collect their possessions and hand in their security passes.  According to Christian Sewing’s prepared remarks for the AGM tomorrow, the talks on layoffs which were paused at the end of March are going to be restarted, in “as socially responsible a manner as possible”.

That means that Deutsche Bank's job cut hiatus (announced March 26th) was really quite short.  We knew this was going to be the case a couple of weeks ago, when Christian Sewing linked the resumption of job cuts to “the lifting of [virus] restrictions”, which had already partially happened in Germany at the time he spoke. But even so, it seems 'soon.'

In fact, Deutsche's seven week pause to layoffs could prove a brief moment of light in a year of otherwise aggressive job cuts. Between January and March 26th 2020, Deutsche Bank already reduced headcount by 4,182 full time equivalents, taking out 21% of the investment bank - almost entirely from the middle and back office.  There also appears to have been a concerted attempt to tackle the notorious top-heaviness problem – although only 72 of the Q1 staff reductions were in the front office, Sewing’s speech promises that Deutsche now has 13% fewer Managing Directors (MDs) than it did two years ago.  [Grimly, we can’t help noticing that Deutsche’s efforts to protect the health of its staff will have cost it dearly in financial terms; a lot of the cost drag in London comes from the defined benefit pension scheme in which a lot of fiftysomething MDs are still enrolled].

If it weren't for the resumed layoffs, Sewing’s AGM speech might sound almost encouraging.  He praises the investment bank for success in debt origination, and notes that “revenues with our 100 most important institutional clients” are up 40%.  Deutsche is back at number one position for corporate finance in Germany, and in the top five in EMEA.  Sewing even calls Deutsche “the global Hausbank”, and says that it needs “a strong presence not only in Germany and Europe, but also in the U.S., the biggest capital market in the world – and in Asia”.

The rationale behind the resumption in cost cutting seems to have been that, both for reasons of good taste and as a sensible response to heightened uncertainty, Deutsche didn’t want to communicate additional layoffs “in the first phase of the crisis”.  Depending on how one defines a “phase”, now might seem the time to start chopping again. A lot of banks rather than just Deutsche could have this idea. Watch for who goes next.

Elsewhere, Diane Daley has moved from Citi to Bank of America to take a role running the attractively science-fictionally named “Enterprise Data Governance Function”, which includes responsibility for setting BoA’s policies with respect to the management and control of artificial intelligence.  According to Cathy Bessant, the COO/CTO, the chief characteristic needed for this job is “courage”, which definitely sounds like it means that if things go really wrong with Bank of America’s AI system, it will be Ms Daley who gets put in the time machine to go back and battle the Terminators.

Until Skynet becomes self-aware, though, the job is likely to involve tackling more real-world questions, like “how do you prove to the regulators that an algorithm isn’t being racist?” or “what sort of kill switch works on a black box that can make a million stock trades in a second?”.  And the courage needed for the role is, apparently, mainly to do with telling Managing Directors that their favourite fintech vendors “were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should”.  It still sounds like a really interesting set of things to think about, and jobs in Enterprise Data Governance come up from time to time.

Meanwhile …

Could you take your “rona rig” to the next level by moving your screens and trading from a tent in the garden?  Almost certainly not, but some tech workers are trying it out. (WSJ)

Bad news for Goldman, Rothschild, Barclays and JP Morgan FIG advisory teams, as the Partner Re / Covea deal is the latest to fall apart (FT)

Not everything’s been cut at Deutsche Bank – the Frieze Art Fair, known to sceptics as “Eurotrash Glastonbury” and one of the biggest sponsorship opportunities for their wealth management business will be going ahead as a curated virtual experience. (Verdict)

UBS has hired Elena Griffin from JPM and promoted Ekaterina Lehmann in order to have another serious push on the Russian and Central European wealth management market. (Reuters)

National statistics data have confirmed that, as a job that can mainly be done from home, financial services is one of the lowest risk occupations in the UK, although there seems to be asterisk indicating that the risk of commuting is not included. (Financial News)

One in five staff at EY Australia have so far said “no thanks” to the idea of returning to the office (AFR)

The fastest growing product category in IT Security seems to be systems that allow companies to spy on their employees to see if they’re engaged in cybercrime (FT)

Another internship program, this time at Goldman Sachs, is definitely going to be online-only. (Financial News)

When you’re the only son of a family of five generations of blacksmiths, duty will eventually call you bank from your banking job to return to the forge (Hurriyet)

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