Morning Coffee: JPMorgan technology analyst claims peculiar experience after work from home query. Santander's small bonus increase
If Nicholas Welch, a technology operations analyst at JPMorgan in the US, remains employed by the firm at the end of 2025, it will be surprising. Welch, who 'loves' his job and who's worked at JPMorgan for eight years, appears to have committed a cardinal sin. He claims he's already been fired for it once.
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Various news reports claim that Welch sat in the front row of a JPMorgan town hall in Ohio last week and spoke out against JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon's great dislike of work from home and insistence that everyone return to the office five days a week. When he left the town hall, Welch says he was fired. Then he was reinstated again.
Welch, who described himself as "an old hillbilly" reportedly pointed out to Dimon that his team comprises people in four different timezones and seven different geographies, and that working in the office or at home doesn't make much difference to the way they interact. It would make more sense for individual managers to assess whether working from home makes sense, Welch added.
Dimon disagreed and said not only that the "abuse that took place was extraordinary" when managers decided whether team members could work from home, but that JPMorgan headcount had ballooned by 50,000 in the past five years because people weren't doing their jobs properly.
Following this encounter with the CEO, Welch says he returned to his desk in the office and received a text message from a VP (which Fortune claims to have seen) stating: “I don’t know what the f*ck you just did, but come to my desk immediately when that town hall ends. Please.” He then claims to have been told to clear his desk and to leave the office in similar terms.
Either before or after (it's not clear), he related his experiences to Fortune, though, Welch was reinstated in his job. A few hours later, a JPM executive director called him to say she'd smoothed things over and sent a Welch text message (which Fortune also claims to have seen) saying she was "proud" of how he'd dealt with a "pretty unfair circumstance." The VP who strenuously told him to leave the office texted to say he owed Welch a beer. A spokesperson for the company told Fortune, Welch was never fired and is in good standing with the company.
It all sounds very confusing for Welch, who is going through a divorce and wants the flexibility to work from home due to childcare issues. For the moment, Welch is reportedly a hero among his coworkers. However, JPMorgan is planning multiple small rounds of job cuts this year and once the dust has died down, there's surely a danger that he could find himself at home permanently.
Separately, Santander bankers who were hoping that the bank would maintain its recently bullish and expansionary stance by increasing bonuses in the style of a US investment bank are due to be disappointed.
Santander is a Spanish bank and Bloomberg reports that it is increasing bonuses by 5% even though profits in the unit rose by 12%.
Santander is far from the only bank to increase bonuses by less than the increase in profits. It is also increasing bonuses in line with BNP Paribas, which is a French bank.
Meanwhile...
JPMorgan's new $3 billion Park Avenue headquarters includes a signature scent, an Irish pub, on-site physical therapy, in-house yoga, a lighting system that reflects circadian rhythms and an art collection that reacts and moves as people pass by. (New York Post)
A hedge fund that doesn't employ analysts, but that has an LLM that can read 5,000 news articles daily and churn out a 2,000-word report on stocks, has beaten the market. (Bloomberg)
Pity the Chinese bankers and traders. UBS's headcount has halved since 2019. (Bloomberg)
John Curtice the macro trader who joined Millennium on a $50m package and then left again, is going to Brevan Howard. (X)
Wharton and Columbia are the top schools for MBAs. Wharton graduates earn $241k. Columbia graduates earn $243k. (Financial Times)
If you want to do well at a Goldman Sachs super day, it helps to have a "hook." . "It doesn't necessarily have to be a finance thing. If you are an incredible ballet dancer or you make the best dehydrated fruit; people that are super intellectually curious, they're detail oriented, and they perfect processes — this is ultimately what our clients want." (Business Insider)
Some UK staff who previously worked for Credit Suisse can take up to three months of paid sabbatical. People who've always worked for UBS cannot. (Financial Times)
This is not a good time to join a mid-ranking private equity with returns that are good but not great. Funds in this category like American Securities, Onex, Huron Capital and Vestar Capital Partners are struggling to raise money. (Wall Street Journal)
Blockchain hired Justin Evans, the former head of crypto investment banking at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., to serve as the company’s new chief financial officer. (Bloomberg)
HSBC job cuts are beginning today. (Bloomberg)
I have had so many formal & informal conversations that go like this:
PM: “I have a Sharpe Ratio [2+] and want a drawdown limit of [1+] annual $vol”
Me: “Wait with that Sharpe you don’t need such a wide limit.”
PM: “Well, I don’t have *that* Sharpe *all the time*.”
Me:…— Gappy (Giuseppe Paleologo) (@__paleologo) February 14, 2025
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