Morning Coffee: The male bank VP whose female boss increased his pay 70% to $880k. French banker isn't big on empathy
In his mid-50s, Ken Mason had spent his entire career at Royal Bank of Canada, working in the treasury team. After nearly two and a half decades at the bank, he was well paid but not one of the highest earners: in 2021, Ken was on $518k.
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Ken thought he was underpaid for his role. Bloomberg reports that he'd been asking for more money, and had been doing so "multiple times a year." However, his asks came to nothing until - allegedly - his close friend Nadine Ahn was promoted to CFO and facilitated Ken's requests. His pay then rose 70% to $880k in two years.
As we've reported previously, RBC thinks there was something fishy about this. It says Ken and Nadine were having an affair and that Ken's pay rise came as a result of "Project Ken", whereby Ahn worked to get him preferential treatment. RBC has fired them both and is attempting to clawback Ken's excess pay. However, Ken and Nadine say they were merely colleagues and are themselves suing RBC for $20m and $49m respectively on the grounds of wrongful dismissal.
Unless there's a settlement, a court will decide whether Ken's pay rise was valid. A 70% increase in two years is a big leap, but might be justified in reference to higher PnL. Ken was promoted to VP concurrent with his pay rise. He says this was all based on "merit." RBC claims he and Ahn were exchanging love poetry and seen exiting a hotel together; it maintains that partiality was afoot. A more modest pay rise might have been better all round.
Separately, bankers and traders at SocGen in France who are hoping for a bit of sympathy as the bank cuts 900 jobs, will seemingly not get it from CEO Slawomir Krupa.
The Financial Times reports that Krupa, who has long been accused of having an Anglo Saxon approach to staff matters, has a mantra of "facts over feelings" and can be quite American in his outlook.
Krupa, who rose up through the investment bank, is trying to change the culture there, says the FT. Bonuses at SocGen are now skewed towards the origination of new mandates, with the result that the pot shrunk last year, which was not very popular.
At the same time, the FT says SocGen people are feeling destabilized. Once, they had jobs for life. Now, Krupa's focus on efficiently allocating the bank's capital means that "everything could be on the table" and that nothing is certain.
Sympathetic insiders say it's not actually the CEO's fault. “Slawomir is in a difficult situation — not by his own making, but he has very few alternatives apart from very gradually transforming the bank,” one former senior SocGen executive told the FT. “There is no excess capital. He has to cut costs and probably unwind some of the bad deals he has inherited.”
Meanwhile...
London traders want to work shorter hours. “We continue to see lower levels of intraday liquidity, particularly between 10am and 2pm GMT, post the morning rush and before the US open.” (Financial News)
Stephen Westgate, head of FIG, at Deutsche-Numis, resigned. (Global Capital)
Barclays put £675m towards its bonus pool in the first six months of 2024, versus £665m in 2023. (Guardian)
Citi says it fired Kathleen Martin, the ex-MD who says she was asked to conceal data issues, because she didn't respond to feedback. (Reuters)
At least 16 law firms have shut down in Hong Kong and young lawyers can't find jobs there any more. (Bloomberg)
Lu Tian, deputy general manager of Goldman Sachs in China, is going to HSBC. (Bloomberg)
Rothschild is closing its office in Chicago and moving people to New York. (Bloomberg)
Female HR professionals from Essex and going to Broadgate Circle in search of bankers as boyfriends but they might be better off with recruiters who don't work so hard. “I just broke up with a crypto bro. I don’t want to hear about any of that shit anymore.” (Politico)
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