Morning Coffee: Deutsche Bank's top female trader wanted a bigger bonus, but $25k was fine. PWC's interesting lever for exerting back to office pressure

Shikha Gupta seems to have been something pretty special at Deutsche Bank, and she remains so now. 

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When she worked at Deutsche in London between 2008 and 2017, Gupta managed a "very large credit book" comprised of synthetic and cash ABS securities, portfolios of US and European CLOs, CMBS, Non-Agency RMBS, ABS CDOs and Trups CDOs. She managed most of the risk for the bank's ABS CDS trades. In doing so, she worked for Winchester Capital, Deutsche's then-named principal finance unit in London. And when Winchester Capital was wound down from 2016, Gupta was given responsibility for that too. 

Initially, at least, Deutsche Bank doesn't seem to have paid Gupta badly for her efforts. In 2016, she was paid £485k ($640k) and Gupta says Deutsche Bank promised that it would be worth her while winding the portfolio down. She claimed that Deutsche told her she'd get "more than ever" in 2017 and that even though this avowal wasn't written down, Deutsche would honour its promise. 

In fact, Gupta got £21.5k (about $24.5k at the time) and was then let go once the portfolio was fully dispensed with. This freed her to become a portfolio manager at Astra Asset Management, but it also inspired her to pursue a case against Deutsche Bank, from which she wanted £2.6m instead of £21.5k.

Yesterday, Gupta was sadly told that this wouldn't be happening. A judge decided that Deutsche was within its rights when it paid her a diminutive bonus and despatched her. She shouldn't have based any expectations on Deutsche's alleged assurances, the judge added. 

It probably didn't help that 2017 was the year in which Deutsche Bank didn't pay anyone much a bonus in London or anywhere else. In those circumstances, Gupta's $25k might even have been generous. The story looks like (another) warning to get things in writing. It's also a reminder that pursuing a former employer in the courts need not damage your career: in 2022 Gupta was voted a top woman in hedge funds and she's been happily working for Astra ever since. 

Separately, PWC has decided it wants UK people back in the office for a hard three days instead of the "two to three days" it had been communicating previously, and it plans to use career coaches to help enforce this. 

The Financial Times says the newly rigorous PWC policy will come into play from January and that when it does, UK staff will have their locations monitored and that the data will be sent to their career coaches for presumable discussion. 

While it's notable that a lot of people at PWC seem to have career coaches, it's also notable that PWC thinks it's worth paying the coaches to coax people back into the office. Intransigence and burnout are no longer the big issues. Getting people to commute is. 

Meanwhile... 

A managing director who left Evercore and joined Lazard says he was emphatically not having an affair with a younger co-worker on his team. (New York Post) 

Hedge funds are realising that it's fine just to be an analyst. "You may be a great analyst, but not necessarily a capital committer. There's a different skillset to being the PM." (Bloomberg) 

Warren Buffett made $7bn selling Bank of America stock since July. (Bloomberg) 

AIG Financial Products guys think they're owed $500m in pay from circa 2008. (Puck) 

Now that Klarna has AI doing the work of 700 people, the cost income ratio in the banking subsidiary has fallen to 80% versus 100% in 2022. (Bloomberg) 

Neil Smaldon, the head of discretionary commodities at Marshall Wace, has left despite only joining in 2023. (Twitter) 

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