Morning Coffee: HSBC is cutting jobs that should have been safe. Has Deutsche Bank got a hiring problem?

When HSBC sent a memo saying that it was closing its equity capital markets and M&A businesses outside Asia and the Middle East last month, some people there could have been forgiven for feeling fine. People working Asia. People working in debt capital markets. Unfortunately, those fine feelings are being swept away in the tide of chief executive Georges Elhedery’s $1.5bn of cost cuts. 

Get Morning Coffee ☕ in your inbox. Sign up here.

IFR reported yesterday that people in the maximal sweet spot of Elhedery's strategic vision are also being let go. They include people like Venkat Rao, managing director for debt syndicate and head of local currency and private placements for APAC, or Luying Gan, head of sustainable debt capital markets for Asia Pacific. Both work in Asia and in DCM and should surely have been untouchable.

Elhedery's exterminators are also coming for Asian M&A jobs, even though they didn't seem to be in the parameters of danger. Viet Phan, head of chemicals for APAC and Heidi Chan, head of consumer retail for APAC are going. So are a range of others. Many are HSBC lifers, making them expensive and some might say complacent. 

HSBC managing directors (MDs) disagree with their exits. A group in London last week told us they find the new strategy "crazy." - "We have good people and have been doing some good things for clients."  

Separately, the Financial Times has noticed that Deutsche Bank has done a lot of hiring.

Not in the front office, where Deutsche Bank has added so many managing directors and directors to investment banking that it might be deemed top-heavy. The FT has noticed all Deutsche's Bank's hiring for non-revenue generating jobs in the back office. 

Since 2021, the FT notes that Deutsche Bank has added 7,000 people to its back office, taking the total employment there to around 90,000. This is, unfortunately, only 2,000 below the level that DB started at before CEO Christian Sewing set about cutting costs. Across the bank as a whole, the FT notes that back office staff have doubled under Sewing's tenure while front office staff have, in fact, halved. However, Deutsche Bank also reclassified some of its back office staff as front office, so the numbers aren't comparable over time.

Given that Sewing keeps missing cost targets, the FT posits that all this back office hiring might be a problem. Fortunately, Deutsche Bank also has a strategy of cutting back office headcount, so it might all be fine.

Meanwhile...

Hedge funds are paying their elite interns $25k a month. “These interns aren’t just doing coffee runs — they are supporting senior portfolio managers with data analysis, building massive datasets and models, researching and backtesting strategies." (Financial News) 

The 20 most successful North American M&A bankers of 2024 include a lot of people who've done the job for 30 years. (Business Insider) 

Private markets platform AirFund wants to expand beyond Continental Europe. (Bloomberg) 

Veterans of the Singapore Stock Exchange are leaving, but the company wants it to be known that it's “continuously strengthening” its talent bench. (Bloomberg) 

Companies are falling behind on loan repayments at the highest rate in nearly eight years. “We’re the largest lender to small businesses,” said Bank of America’s chief executive Brian Moynihan on the bank’s earnings call with analysts last month. “Those customers tell us they are optimistic.” (Financial Times) 

Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Citi are watering down their DEI language. (WSJ) 

Tech workers are willing to accept a pay cut of 25% in return for fully or partly remote jobs. (Economist) 

Junior developers now can’t code. And that’s a problem. (nmn) 

182250 (SMS, WhatsApp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.

Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libellous (in which case it won’t.)