Tag: Senior Analyst

One banking analyst’s depressing description of what happens to the European banking system after a disorderly Greek default

This morning, it looks like a deal is on. Overnight, the putative European banking tax has risen. Yesterday it was €30bn; today it’s €50bn This tax will be either accompanied by or substituted for, a bond exchange programme. The bond exchange programme will, ‘encourage,’ private owners of Greek debt to swap what they’ve got for [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 21 July 2011 • 4 comments

GUEST COMMENT: Beware the coming of the flow monsters

“Flow Monster” has become a mantra of trading managements. Only Flow Monsters will survive in the world of Basel III. To become one banks must mercilessly cut staffing costs, replace a “smile and dial” sales force with electronic execution, optimize their balance sheets and invest in straight through trading and operations technology. Managing Director Compensation [...]

By Brad Hintz, 7 July 2011 • 7 comments

Is Deutsche going to be a massive payer for 2010?

Deutsche announces its results this Thursday and is expected to start announcing its bonuses over the next few days. Initial indications are that the overall size of the investment banking compensation pool should be relatively pleasing. Deutsche provided a preliminary update on its fourth quarter performance yesterday. This revealed that whilst costs in the corporate [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 1 February 2011 • 5 comments

A lot of investment banks are using open source software, but techies shouldn’t worry

One of the more interesting revelations to come out from the (imminently decided upon) Sergey Aleynikov trial is that Goldman Sachs’ code may not even have been worth stealing. Benjamin Goldberg, an associate professor in New York University’s computer science department, testified that the code Aleynikov took contained “lots of open source software”. Or, as [...]

By Paul Clarke, 10 December 2010 • 4 comments

Good news for pay: the fourth quarter may NOT be a write-off

Given the Ireland’s ill-fortune and endless uncertainty over the durability of the eurozone, it’s reasonable to think the fourth quarter for banks is going to be a repeat of the third: ie. miserable. In fact, this may not be the case. Dirk Hoffman-Becking, senior analyst at Bernstein Research, says banks weren’t totally submerged by the [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 8 December 2010 • 0 comments

Can redundant prop traders get jobs at BarCap?

It’s a day for articles about prop traders. The Financial Times has got one. So has Financial News. The Wall Street Journal had one over the weekend. The main point of these articles? Banks don’t want their prop traders any more. Hedge funds do, but it’s difficult for them to work out who the good [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 25 October 2010 • 6 comments

The new hot thing: CVA trading

Counterparty valuation adjustment (CVA) desks are nothing new. Most major US banks have had them for a while. However, thanks to Basel III capital rules related to CVA, the area is becoming substantially more popular. For anyone unfamiliar with the concept, CVA desks are an internal function which aggregates counterparty risks across the bank. Having [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 11 October 2010 • 10 comments

The rise of the infrastructure specialist

Capital markets firms are spending rather hefty sums of money on IT trading infrastructures across multiple asset classes this year. Not surprisingly, techies with expertise in this area are finding their services highly in demand. Globally, firms are likely to spend $13.4bn on trading infrastructures, including data servers, servers, storage and networking, according to a [...]

By Paul Clarke, 8 September 2010 • 0 comments

Are BarCap and Deutsche fundamentally the same place?

Dixit Joshi is leaving BarCap for Deutsche Bank. Maybe he shouldn’t have bothered. According to one banking analyst, the two places are really very similar. Both banks have a business model in which 80% of their revenues are derived from investment banking, points out Dirk Hoffman Becking, senior analyst at Bernstein Research. And within investment [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 15 July 2010 • 6 comments

If you work in complex structured derivatives, you are either going to lose your job, or you are going to keep it and earn a lot more

A time of feast or famine may be approaching for OTC derivatives professionals. How you position yourself now could determine whether you starve, or achieve a BMI in excess of 45 at some point in the future. This is because, short term, the outlook for fixed income trading looks ok. Longer term, it doesn’t. From [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 24 June 2010 • 3 comments