Morgan Stanley: now hiring
Wanted: investment bankers. No banking experience necessary.
Morgan Stanley has launched a free-for-all recruitment drive aimed at adding diversity to its London corporate finance, merger advisory and capital markets teams. The MS Experienced Professionals Program is open to anyone with three or more years of postgraduate work experience, irrespective of whether it is in finance. Successful candidates will join at associate level on a permanent basis having been given six to eight weeks of training.
A similar scheme on Morgan Stanley’s sales and trading side late last year resulted in 14 hires from more than 1,100 applications. New recruits, who started work this week, switched careers from sectors including the armed forces, education, software services and charity. Almost 80 per cent of the London sales and trading hires self-identify as black and 40 per cent are women, a spokesman said.
“Recruiting talented people can be a tough business,” said Tosin Akinluyi, Morgan Stanley’s head of Emea Macro Research and chair of its Race to Action equality group. “This novel initiative takes the view that there’s a huge pool of diverse talent working in other professions which, given the right opportunity, would switch to a career path in banking.”
JPMorgan: plastic perks
Still not sold on a career change? Perhaps you could be swayed by a USB stick.
A perk of working for JPMorgan Chase is that every five years, employees receive “a digital memory book filled with good wishes from co-workers and other colleagues at the firm.” According to company bumf, the global reward scheme “provides managers and employees with an opportunity to recognise the hard work and dedication of their colleagues by sending congratulatory messages and presenting them with special milestone awards.”
Milestone markers begin for those lasting 10 years and, at the 20 year mark, arrive with an additional gift. Jan Loeys, JPMorgan’s senior adviser on long-term strategy, recently posted on LinkedIn to show off his reward for 35 years of service: a blue number 35 encased in plastic.
The award of trophies marking years served was “not automatic given environmental considerations”, said an insider. JPMorgan declined to say whether Jamie Dimon, chief executive and chair, would be receiving a memory stick and Lucite brick on the occasion of his 20th anniversary in 2024.
THG: taxing questions
“£1bn invested in 2021 in tech, infrastructure and M&A,” says a video posted to Matthew Moulding’s Instagram account on February 9. Shares in his company, THG, have fallen every day since, reducing its market value to slightly over £1bn. For the many private equity funds said to be running the numbers on THG, return on investment might not be the most flattering metric.
What exactly has been eating THG? A cumulative loss of nearly 35 per cent over the past 11 sessions compares with a 5 per cent slide for the FTSE All-Share, yet the only statement from the ecommerce conglomerate was to deny a Sunday press story about a supplier dispute.
It seemed insignificant against a backdrop of persistent bid speculation and talk of corporate upheaval, as hinted at by a slew of regulatory filings from THG subsidiaries in recent days. Buyout groups including Advent and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice have been linked with an interest in THG but under the market’s usual rules of engagement, continued silence from all sides would indicate either that the evaluatory work is very early stage or paused.