Sector: Equities

A convenient witch hunt is what’s needed to clear out the equities business at UBS

Things are moving at UBS. An internal audit team has been put on a ‘day and night rota’ in an effort to find out what went wrong. Francois Gouws and Yassine Bouhara, co-heads of global equities, have handed in their resignations. A further 8 front office staff are also said to have left. The internal [...]

Feelers are coming out of UBS’s equities team, but NO ONE is hiring

Things have progressed since we last looked at whether anyone is trying to find an alternative employer to UBS. Last week, no one was. This week, some people are. Equities headhunters say persons from the Swiss bank’s highly ranked equity research team are indeed getting in touch. “I’m meeting a UBS analyst this afternoon,” the [...]

YOUR KILLER EQUITIES INTERVIEW QUESTIONS: How does the delta and gamma evolve through time on a variance swap…

Here’s the latest question sent in by site visitors who have attended equities interviews at investment banks. This question has allegedly been asked in equity derivatives sales interviews at BNP Paribas. The answer has been suggested by the person who submitted the question (and is not being advocated by us). If you disagree with the [...]

Lunchtime Links: First photo of the man the FT says was behind the UBS trade; the bank that’s making 30% of its EMEA equities staff redundant

The Financial Times claims to have a name for the man who was apparently arrested at 2.30am in London last night for purportedly causing havoc at UBS: allegedly it’s Kweku Adoboli, a former Nottingham University student working in Delta One trading in London. According to The FSA he’s been at UBS since 2006. There is [...]

Alleged redundancies at Berenberg suggest the speed with which the equities hiring market has turned necrotic

One minute Berenberg was hiring. Now, we hear, it has been firing. In July 2010, it declared its intention of hiring 25 people to its equity research team in London. In the event, equities recruiters say it hired something more like 65 people across its London business. Now, after bringing all those people on board, [...]

WHERE THERE IS DEFINITELY STILL HIRING CURRENTLY: Delta One

We touched upon the relative hotness of investment banks’ Delta One desks a few months ago, but in a world where front office hiring has drastically retracted, it remains an area of recruitment. More cash equity traders and sales traders are eyeing a switch across. Recruitment sources suggest that the likes of Citigroup, BoA Merrill [...]

YOUR KILLER EQUITIES INTERVIEW QUESTIONS: What is the degree of a company’s operating leverage when there are no fixed costs?

Here’s the latest question sent in by site visitors who have attended equities interviews at investment banks. This question has allegedly been asked in equity sales interviews at Deutsche. The answer has been suggested by the person who submitted the question (and is not being advocated by us). If you disagree with the answer, or [...]

The bad and less bad elements of McKinsey’s gloomy projections for investment banking

Recent reports into the future of the investment banking industry haven’t been particularly positive. There was the Morgan Stanley and Oliver Wyman report predicting the need for 20,000 back and middle office job cuts, and now McKinsey has suggested further redundancies may be necessary as investment banks grapple with new regulations. In a wide-ranging report [...]

YOUR KILLER EQUITIES INTERVIEW QUESTIONS: What is the effect on a company’s liquidity and leverage ratios if it pays a stock dividend?

Here’s the latest question sent in by site visitors who have attended equities interviews at investment banks. This question has allegedly been asked at equity research interviews at BNP Paribas. The answer has been suggested by the person who submitted the question (and is not being advocated by us). If you disagree with the answer, [...]

YOUR KILLER EQUITIES INTERVIEW QUESTIONS: Name three of your favourite stock picks, tell me their P/Es, 2 year forwards…

Here’s the latest question sent in by site visitors who have attended equities interviews at investment banks. If you disagree with the proposed answer at any point, please express your opinion in the comments box below. THE QUESTION: Name three of your favourite stock picks, tell me their P/Es, 2 year forwards, index % weighting [...]