Morning Coffee: UBS gave the man with its hardest job a $12m loan last year. No one wants to be a junior banker

Mike Dargan is a man with a difficult mission, and this is the year he must undertake the meat of it.

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Dargan, who is based in Zurich but is a Brit who graduated from Oxford University and who went to school in Newcastle, is UBS's group chief operations and technology officer. He joined UBS in 2016, long before the Credit Suisse acquisition, but his role has become all about integrating the two banks.

Speaking in October last year, Dargan revealed what the integration involves. 1.3 million Credit Suisse customers must be transferred to the UBS platform. 110 petabytes of data are involved; one petabyte is sufficient to fill 20 million filing cabinets in the old world. 3,000 Credit Suisse applications are being shut down; so are 40,000 Credit Suisse servers. UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti has described the data transfer in particular as the most risky bit of Credit Suisse's integration; if it goes wrong, so does everything else.

Last year, Ermotti was paid $17m to grit his teeth and hope everything goes to plan. But how much was Dargan paid for being in the pits on the great data journey? UBS's annual report doesn't say. It does, however, say that Dargan received a large personal loan to help see him through. - Dargan took receipt of a $12m loan from UBS in 2024, the largest the bank offered to any of its employees. 

Short of buying a ranch outside Zurich, it's not clear what Dargan is doing with this loan. It is, however, clear why UBS might have wanted to give it to him. - The Wall Street Journal notes that 2025 is the year that the "most complex phase" of the Credit Suisse integration will take place. Swiss customers' accounts are being migrated across. It's happening in Q2. 2024's big loan looks a bit like a down payment to encourage Dargan to get it right. 

Separately, Financial News says the flow of people who want to be a junior investment is running dry. “We have had departures and are trying to hire, but it’s an increasingly slow process," says one 'midranking dealmaker.' "It’s become harder to hire. At any other time, we would have had people fighting to get in the bank, but the teams are very stretched.”

Contemporary juniors are discouraged by the banking lifestyle. “Juniors these days are more vocal and want boundaries," said the VP. "They don’t want to be hanging about in the office until midnight just for the sake of it. They want some semblance of a personal life.” It doesn't help that as deals don't come through and banks cut costs, some juniors are working harder than ever.

Meanwhile...

Bank of America did away with the staffer role and instead of relying on VPs on rotation has made it a permanent position for senior people. It says this will be better for analysts and associates. “We want all of our junior bankers to have the best experience possible, learning from the teammates they work with and further benefiting from the career growth and development this role brings.” (WSJ)  

The FCA banned Crispin Odey. This is how he spoke to the regulator: "You will not get away with this — I have an agreement then you little guys, trying to do your work in the shadows. You are about to create a crisis . . . I will walk and leave you to clean up the mess.” (Financial Times) 

US banks are increasingly dominating equities sales and trading and it doesn't look good for HSBC. In 2010, the top five investment banks held 40% of equities revenue, according to Morningstar’s estimates. This figure now hovers at around 70%. Rivals are saying "it's only a matter of time" before HSBC cuts its equities business. (Financial News) 

Changing jobs doesn't make sense any more. The salary difference between those who stay in their roles and those who change jobs has collapsed to its lowest level in 10 years. (WSJ) 

UBS hired JPMorgan MD Jens Becker to cover M&A within energy, power, renewables and metals and mining sector. (Bloomberg) 

JPMorgan hired Francisco Abularach from Citi as head of infrastructure for Europe. (Financial News) 

Citi's great survivor Michael Lavelle was appointed vice chairman of lending after 30 years. (Bloomberg) 

It's not just Steve Schwarzman and Jon Gray. Blackstone also made billionaires of Joseph Baratta and Michael Chae. (Bloomberg) 

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