Morning Coffee: Citi's 'highest paid traders' made money on Wednesday, will be happy to pay tax. The alternate life of Goldman's female partner

Gary Stevenson likes to claim that he was "the best f*cking trader in the world" while he was at Citi, and that he made a lot of money there. Now, the traders remaining on the desk that Stevenson worked for in London have seemingly made a lot of money again.

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Bloomberg notes that Akshay Singal, the man promoted to run Citi's London short term interest rate trading (STIRT) desk earlier this year, boldly predicted this week's 50bps Fed cut in August. “This Fed does not take baby steps – they showed no hesitation on the way up in 2022 and won’t show any on the way down either,” he declared a few weeks ago.

Singal and his clients were presumably positioned in line with this prophecy and both he and his colleagues - who include Charan Dhinsa, a STIRT trader who's worked at Citi since 2008 and who is genuinely one of the biggest earners on the desk -should therefore be paid well.

If they are, Singal should be fine with any increases in personal taxation that arrive in the UK's October budget, which either reduce his take home pay or tax the wealth he's amassed so far. As we noted in March, Singal is a member of the group "Millionaires for Humanity" alongside Stevenson, and is calling for a wealth tax globally. 

There's still the potential for Singal and his team to have a less auspicious end to the year. His August prophecy was actually for two 50bps points in September and November and then a 25bps move in December. Speaking to Bloomberg yesterday, Singal said cuts in the coming months have become increasingly difficult to predict and are now "a coin flip" based on data and the next two jobs reports. 

Our compensation survey suggested that macro traders everywhere are the best paid. With Fed moves increasingly difficult to call, they may feel like they've earned it this year. As the rates cycle unwinds, it's also clear why banks have been so keen to add senior talent to their macro desks, despite weak revenues in the area this year (until now).

Separately, Ann Kaplan, a female partner at Goldman Sachs who died this week aged 78, could easily not have worked in banking. Bloomberg notes that Kaplan's father was a "leftist intellectual" and that she was planning to go into social work until she left the notes for her PhD dissertation in a taxi. 

After that, Kaplan did an MBA at Columbia instead and went to work for Goldman Sachs, where she specialized in municipal finance and in hospital funding in particular. Margaret Anadu, the Goldman partner who left in 2022 also described an early life motivated by wanting to give back to communities; Anadu worked in sustainable financing in Goldman's asset management arm until she left to work for a real estate fund investing in health and housing instead. 

Meanwhile...

The German government isn't pleased with Andrea Orcel's techniques for acquiring Commerzbank. Unnamed sources say it's an "assault", is "nonsensical" and an "unfriendly act." (Financial Times) 

“Let’s be honest about it, at least for buy-side asset managers, we’ve become merely algo DJs at this point. About 85% of trading processes could be successfully automated using technology we currently have at our firm.” (Bloomberg) 

James Ellery, CEO of Goldman Sachs' Singapore office is moving to London. Rob Drake-Brockman, the former head of EMEA prime brokerage, who moved to Singapore two years ago, is taking over from him. (FiNews) 

Lazard set up an office in Saudi Arabia after hiring some bankers there. (Bloomberg) 

PJT Partners is buying Middle East boutique deNovo Partners as dealmaking in the region steps up. (Financial Times)  

Two Sigma is likely to pay as much as $100m to settle an SEC investigation into what it says was misconduct by an ex-employee who changed trading models to improve his bonuses. (WSJ) 

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