Morning Coffee: Why 23-year-old bankers on $150k are socialists. When to accuse an ex-employer of bad things

After the election, the dissection. Zohran Mamdani - a man whose policies include rent freezes, free public transport, city-owned grocery stores, higher taxes and free childcare - is Mayor of New York. The suspicion is that some people in banking voted for him.

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Mamdani voter data is being combed through. It includes people newish to New York City. Young people. People with bachelors and advanced degrees. People who rent. He was particularly popular in areas like Bushwick and Park Slope in Brooklyn, which John Carney, a former editor of Dealbreaker in its heyday, suggests are "enclaves of educated precarity" where people live "paycheck to paycheck despite six-figure incomes." 

Mamdani's financial services constituency isn't managing directors and portfolio managers, but the middle and back office and the most junior bankers who haven't had a salary increase for three years and are renting expensive New York apartments. Even if you're earning $150k a year in NYC, you can still be paying 30% of your income in rent in Brooklyn. "What used to feel like a path toward stability—education, professional work, a modest home—has become a monthly scramble to keep a roof overhead while saving nothing," observes Carney.  

Mamdani's voters might also be the 99% of people who wanted to work for Goldman Sachs, but didn't get in. His constituency is, "the frustrated professional middle, the overeducated and under-rewarded." Wait until AI really takes effect. 

Separately, if you lose your highly paid financial services job, it helps to blow a whistle on any bad things you saw at the place that fired you.

In New York, Igor Abramov says he saw some bad things at hedge fund Capula Investment Management, where he was chief US compliance officer before he was fired. Abramov says his firing was precipitated by him complaining about Capula using its pass-through expenses for art and private jets, even thought it said it wouldn't. Abramov also claims that Capula's portfolio managers would intentionally allocate trades to a fund with a pass-through fee structure so that they could earn more. 

Capula denies all these allegations, which it says have been "concocted" because Abramov's "egregious financial demands" were not met when he was let go.

In London, Adam Wheeler also says he saw some bad things at Barings Asset Management, including serious loan accounting errors, mistakes in calculating and collecting interest and sending cash to the wrong accounts. 

Wheeler is also in a dispute over his employment with Barings, where he ran the private credit team before resigning with 20 other people in 2024 and joining Corinthia Global Management. Barings is suing Wheeler for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty, and denies his claims. It wants £6m in damages from him. 

Like Abramov, Wheeler is now airing allegedly dirty laundry in court. That's never good if you're a big firm with a reputation to protect.

Meanwhile...

KPMG used to allow junior auditors to claim overtime when they worked more than 50 hours a week. Not any more. (FT) 

Ralph Schlosstein, who ran Evercore Inc. and co-founded BlackRock, is pledging to work with Mamdani even though they don’t share the same politics. (Bloomberg) 

Ripple raised $500m from backers that included Citadel Securities. Now it wants to expand into custody, stablecoins and prime brokerage services. (Bloomberg)

Bill Ackman spent a fortune trying to defeat Mamdani but congratulated him on his win and asked if he could help. (New York Post) 

Cliff Asness says Mamdani's rent freeze would be a “hydrogen bomb” for the local real estate market. (New York Post)

Citadel's Ken Griffin said: “For the people of New York, I pray that the policies that Mamdani uses to govern and lead New York are different from talking points he used to win the mayoral race.” (Bloomberg) 

Ken Griffin is building a marina in Miami for his four yachts. It will include a private pool, art gallery, office space, plus a gym and pool for crew members, who live onboard his yachts when they’re docked. (Bloomberg) 

First Brands says its founder Patrick James misappropriated hundreds of millions of dollars and spent them on exotic cars, personal trainers, a New York town house and a personal chef. James denies this. (Bloomberg)  

Bank of America's stock fell nearly 2% after its investor day. (WSJ) 

How to avoid getting sick on a plane: choose window seats in the middle of the aircraft, away from the most-trafficked areas—the front, where everyone enters, and the rear, near the galley and the lavatories. This way, no one will breathe on you. (WSJ) 

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