Morning Coffee: UBS allegedly mandating Saturday work, cancelling holidays for some. Junior bankers on recruiting hair trigger
While most banks now forbid Saturday working for their junior investment bankers, it seems that one particular group of people might still be toiling on Saturdays: engineers.
Get Morning Coffee ☕ in your inbox. Sign up here.
Technology professionals and software engineers work an average of 53 hours a week according to our recent survey. At UBS, however, that might be bumped up to 60 hours in some cases. As the Swiss bank labours to transfer 110 petabytes of data from Credit Suisse (enough to fill 20 million large filing cabinets), it's reportedly asked some of its engineers and back office staff to work Saturdays and to avoid taking holidays.
Swiss website Inside Paradeplatz claims that UBS issued the edict to staff involved in the data transfer project last week, and says that an unnamed insider said holidays will also be put on hold after the summer. The command, which is said to apply to everyone working on the migration and its follow-up, was not confirmed by UBS, which didn't respond when Inside Paradeplatz asked for comment. It was not confirmed by UBS when we asked for a comment either.
Inside Paradeplatz has long been a thorn in the side of Swiss banks. In December 2022, Credit Suisse launched a lawsuit against the site asking for parts of articles about the bank to be removed.
UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti has described the giant data transfer as one of the riskiest elements of the Credit Suisse integration. The Wall Street Journal reported previously that this is the year when the "most complex phase" of the integration, involving the transfer of Swiss clients' data, will take place. Inside Paradeplatz says Credit Suisse had one million customers in Switzerland with complex relationships covering everything from credit cards and mortgages to securities accounts. Elsewhere in the world, the data was less complex and the transfer went smoothly. It could be a sweaty summer.
Separately, it could also be a time of perspiration for US junior bankers with aspirations to work in private equity.
The Financial Times notes that the private equity recruitment "frenzy" could start at any moment. Last year, it started unexpectedly on June 23rd, when, in a 48-hour period top private equity funds suddenly rushed to recruit junior bankers for jobs they'll only start in two years' time.
Once one fund starts interviewing the banking juniors, others feel obliged to do the same. The FT notes that THL Partners already began interviewing last week...
The potential for the wild recruitment to begin at any time means that junior bankers may also be unable to take holidays for the moment. Last year, the FT says that some had to spend $1k on urgent flights back from the beach to New York to make sure they were in situ.
Meanwhile...
Toronto Dominion is cutting 2% of its staff. (Bloomberg)
Investec is planning a fresh push into the UK and wants to more than double its number of wealth management clients and expand its corporate and investment bank further into the mid-market. (Financial News)
Deutsche Bank has got a program called "Craft" which is about reducing its risk weighted assets by €25-30bn by the end of the year. It's just sold a $240m significant risk transfer linked to $3bn of corporate loans. (Bloomberg)
The European Union is delaying the application of tougher capital requirements to banks' trading business. (Bloomberg)
Former Credit Suisse bankers who thought they would get their bonuses restored may be disappointed. The Swiss Federal Administrative Court published a ‘pilot judgement’ on 13 May that sided with 12 former Credit Suisse bankers who contested a move to shrink their bonuses. Now The Federal Department of Finance is contesting that. (Financial News)
Why private equity funds' claims about their internal rates of return must be viewed askance.If KKR’s first $31mn fund from 1976 had really compounded at 26% a year it would be worth $2.6tn today. Add in its second $350mn fund and you get $13tn — more than the global PE market. (Alphaville)
Jonathan Finney Citadel Securities’ Managing Director of Asia-Pacific Business Development Jonathan Finney has left the firm. He worked there for seven years. (Bloomberg)
This is what JPMorgan wants you to read this summer. (JPMorgan reading list)
You could also read Hedged Out, a "high-finance ethnography by Megan Tobias Neely, explain the new financial order by dissecting the people who run the investment firms." (WSJ)
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, Whatsapp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libellous (in which case it won’t.)
