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There aren’t many personnel moves that are as fun to speculate on as a “Big Name is Back In The Game” story. Do you still have it? Are they going to feel like they have to prove something? Which of your former lieutenants will they try to hire? Will they keep an eye on their boss’s work? What does this say about the ambition of the new company? With Christian Meissner now appearing on Credit Suisse (and moving to Zurich to do so), the potential for gossip is immense.
Mr. Meissner left Bank of America two years ago, to the surprise of many people: He appears to have been a victim in part of domestic politics and in part of the curse of favorable trade magazine profiles. He was immediately talked about as one of the leading candidates for the UBS succession plan. Now he appears on the other side of Paradeplatz, as vice president of the investment bank, in charge of “an advisory group that will carry out mergers and capital market agreements with clients of the international wealth business.”
At first glance, this seems like a rung on the ladder for Mr. Meissner: at BoA he was a director of the investment bank and now works as a co-director alongside Babak Dastmaltschi, with double-line reporting for Brian Chin and Philip Wehle. (the heads of Investment Banking and International Wealth Management respectively). The news suggests that he will be assigned “some high-level external hires” and some internal hires, but will lead “a small team overall.” This is clearly a few rungs down the ladder from the C-Suite. Except …
Except the position you’ve been recruited for has a bit of a Credit Suisse history. Cross-selling investment banking services to ultra-high net worth client base has been a key tenet of corporate strategy for over a decade – if you look back at some of Tidjane Thiam’s business plans, you’ll see that the “Collaborative income” is up to 20% of the top line of the entire bank. If someone had some sort of bent toward empire building on that bank, there couldn’t be a better place to start than to sit at the nexus between its two key franchises.
In many ways, it is surprising to read that, according to “a person with knowledge of the plans,” the logic of the new position is “to better serve wealthy entrepreneurs who are falling through the cracks of the investment bank, where companies and private equity is prioritized, and the wealth management unit, where there is no experience to effectively cross-sell products. ”If this is true, or more importantly, if this is what CEO Thomas Gottstein believes that to be true, so that would suggest that Mr. Meissner’s position is quite crucial to the future of the bank’s strategy and indeed to the entire logic of combining Global Advisory and Market Franchising with a wealth management business. It could be very helpful for ambitious CS bankers, and former colleagues of Meissner, assuming they are still on good terms, to consider joining the “little team” he is creating.
Elsewhere, fans of the classic rock comedy Spinal Tap will remember the joke that the band never seems to be able to sustain a drummer for long. The equivalent position in banking appears to be “Head of Innovation” for a major established bank. This week, for example, HSBC lost Diana Biggs from its global private banking operations and Josh Bottomley, the “director of digital” at its retail bank. Not long ago, Elly Hardwick left UBS, having joined them from Deutsche just under a year earlier. ING’s Director of Innovation, Benoît Legrand, is apparently still at the bank, but has been assigned a different role. There are many other examples; It really seems that posts like these have a high turnover.
It is not difficult to see why. For one thing, fintech folks generally want to do fintech, not necessarily to spend their time on endless projects trying to integrate with a legacy system. On the other hand, the big banks are aware that the “legacy system” is their business, and if something disturbs it too much, people will be angry. And lastly, it’s still one of the hottest hiring areas out there: Jobs are always offered to people with innovative banking tech, and a little experience with a top-of-the-line name makes them even more attractive. We can probably expect this trend to continue, as the big banks continue to find that it is much easier to hire the kind of person who wants to build the future for you than to let them get on with the job once you hire them.
In the meantime …
Ben Lorello, director of investment banking and capital markets at Jefferies, will retire; He will be replaced “on an interim basis” by co-head of investment banking Chris Kanoff. (Financial news)
Be wary of the long-term effect of a bad name on your resume – the LGT compliance chief is gone, no one seems to want to talk about it, but it all happened very suddenly after one of his previous employers was involved in a scandal related to money. from Venezuela. There is no suggestion that Johannes Pfister was involved, but it seems his current bank just didn’t like any level of partnership. (Fine)
From the “I wonder what message they’re trying to get across” department: HSBC has been left out of the syndicate for the $ 6 billion China bond deal. (Bloomberg)
The London offices of Goldman, Citi and Morgan Stanley have signed up with a new charity called “Urban Synergy,” which aims to mentor 18-year-old black youth who want to work in banking. (Financial news)
A quick guide to ‘equivalence’, the dark spot in Brexit negotiations that could mean the difference between a few thousand jobs that stay in London or go to the financial centers of the EU. (Bloomberg)
Swiss company Avaloq is launching a “compliance-friendly” messaging app that allows bankers to communicate via versions of WhatsApp and Wechat without the occasionally helpful but ultimately suspect encryption and deletion protections. (Fine)
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