It is not a good day for Guy Saidenberg at Goldman Sachs. Guy is the global head of FX trading at the bank and according to various sources it may have been Guy’s business that destroyed Goldman’s fixed income currencies and commodities (FICC) revenues in the third quarter.
As a reminder, Goldman’s third quarter FICC revenues fell 44%, making it one of the worst performers of the lot year-on-year. Within FICC, Reuters says every area made money except FX, which must have done rather badly.
The precise source of Goldman’s failings is unclear, but Reuters suggests that the problem was linked to an emerging market currency trade based upon a misapprehension that the Federal Reserve would wind down quantitative easing. When Bernanke announced that QE would instead continue in a ‘tapered’ fashion, Goldman was reportedly “annihilated”, according to Reuters. The Wall Street Journal is more specific: it says ‘a bet on the value of the dollar versus the Japanese yen went wrong.’
If this is the case, Guy Saidenberg and his team may be feeling understandably chastened. They also seem very unlikely to receive much in the way of a bonus for all their hard work in 2013.
Separately, thousands of people have voted via their online dating preferences, and they have voted for bankers at JPMorgan. The New York Post (via Dealbreaker) says that Hinge, a dating app, checked its 18,000 users to see which men were most frequently favourited or declared hot. It found that the hottest men worked at Facebook, but that men at JPMorgan ranked fourth and that men at McKinsey ranked 10th. Goldman Sachs bankers did not make the top ten.
Meanwhile:
Goldman’s head FX strategist Tom Stolper came out with an FX trade in which Goldman “recommend going short $/JPY at current levels of about 97.30 for a tactical target of 94.00, with a stop on a close above 98.80. Was this to help Goldman offload its position? (ZeroHedge)
Goldman Sachs valued the Royal Mail at £3.3 bn. JPMorgan valued it at £6.8bn to £8.5 bn. Deutsche Bank valued it at £5.5bn to £6bn. Goldman (and UBS) got the job because they were offering to do it for a lower fee. (The Times)
Antonio Horsario is now due a £2.3 million stock-based bonus. (Telegraph)
EY is moving 4,000 people to Canary Wharf. (Telegraph)
As assets under management shrink at Man Group, employees are being shunted into a smaller floor space. (Financial Times)
Ex-Barclays chairman Marcus Agius instated as non-exec chairman at PA Consulting. (Financial News)
Hiring for financial services is expected to shrink by 40% across all degree programs (in the US). ore employers are expressing an interest in hiring PhDs with expertise in computer science, engineering and data analytics. (WSJ)
Today’s big problem: the overproduction of elites. (Bloomberg)