A kinder, gentler Bankers Trust
Remember the Bankers Trust tapes? And the image of the Bankers Trust employee as a sleazy used-car salesman touting risky derivatives? As the bank has grappled to reshape its image, the firm’s aggressive macho culture has given way. In its place, Bankers Trust has become one of the 100 best places for women to work in the us, according to Working Mother magazine.
As it turns out, while the guys were making trouble, bt women were quietly building the biggest women’s networking group on Wall Street. Started by a handful of women after a training seminar in 1991, it now numbers 600 and has become a model for others at firms such as Smith Barney and cs First Boston. Known somewhat loftily as Bankers Trust’s Global Partnership Network for Women, it held its second annual conference on women on Wall Street last month, with former Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker as the lead speaker.
With one of the group’s founding members, Kathy Site, now head of human resources in London, it’s not surprising the bank has become a Wall Street pioneer in offering flexi-time, telecommuting and emergency child care centres. “One of our senior forex traders had a daughter two years ago, and we had a lactation room right off the trading floor. She could do the milking right there,” boasts Mona Lau, a vice president in human resources.
According to Working Mother’s ranking – in which Bankers Trust and Merrill Lynch became the first Wall Street firms to make the list in its 11-year history – such policies make it possible for women to pursue “high-octane careers”. At Bankers Trust, six out of 100 so-called “partners” are women, for example Jillian Broadbent, who heads corporate finance in Bankers Trust Australia, Serene Peng, who runs the Singapore office and Karen Horn, head of international private banking.
Michelle Celarier
Hungarian hirings
There’s a new recruit at mc Securities – or rather mc-bbl Eastern Holdings as the firm is now known. And it’s another former cs First Boston employee. Peter Kadas, ex-head of investment banking for csfb in Hungary, has decided to renew his relationship with Hans-Joerg Rudloff, who left csfb to start mc Securities in 1994.
But the Hungarian didn’t come direct from csfb. He spent a year as head of equity sales at Moscow-based Renaissance Capital, another firm set up by adventurous former csfb employees, this time Boris Jordan and Stephen Jennings.
So what was the attraction of one csfb offshoot over another? “I enjoyed working in Moscow,” says Kadas, “and it was great to be involved in setting up a new company. But at mc I’ll be working on five or six east European countries, not just Russia – it’s a challenge I’ll enjoy.”
Kadas seems to have spent most of his life courting adventure. As the son of a Hungarian diplomat, he defected on a tourist visa and fled to Canada. His father, whose career suffered as a result, was not impressed. “But he’s forgiven me since, and told me it was the best thing I could have done,” says the 34-year-old.
Antony Currie
McLaren, the sequel
Following last month’s Front End piece on John McLaren, Deutsche Morgan Grenfell’s budding novelist, yet more evidence of his non-banking talent emerges. Not satisfied with one foray into the arts, the dmg corporate finance director has unveiled a new music competition, Masterprize. The prize will promote contemporary composers who McLaren believes are largely ignored, with the first winner scheduled to be announced in 1998. About 200,000 compact discs featuring the six finalists’ work will be distributed around the world and it is hoped a global audience will single out the most popular piece of contemporary classical music with votes expected from Japan, the us and Europe.
The launch was held at London’s Barbican with guest of honour and Masterprize patron, Mstislav Rostropovich turning up, and warmly grabbing shoulders and kissing cheeks in Russian fashion. The cellist and conductor, who has performed 161 debut works this century, shook McLaren’s hand saying, “Who knows who the new Bernstein, Britten or Stravinsky is or will be. I love these people for doing this.” A headline sponsor is sought. Only a financial institution with truly global cultural focus need apply.
Steven Irvine
Even in Frankfurt
Almost the entire German bond sales team at Commerzbank in Frankfurt has been poached by Deutsche Morgan Grenfell. The departure of five salesmen, led by Kurt Ebert, is undoubtedly a blow to Commerzbank, but was apparently not grave enough to warrant complaints to dmg at board level. In fact, the two banks seem to have reached the same conclusion: both argue with passion that it is nothing out of the ordinary for a whole team to switch employer, although others claim it is unprecedented in Germany.
Why so coy? dmg is apparently afraid that its decision to hire Ebert’s team will be interpreted as a green light to the market. It is not clear, though, whether the fears are of a flood of unsuitable applicants or of excessive pay demands from existing staff – or perhaps both.
Other bond houses are happy to help dmg play down the affair. As Commerzbank trawls Frankfurt for a new salesforce, competitors may have to raise salaries again to retain their best salespeople. One head of capital markets at a big German bank says that salaries for traders and sales people (at least those he wants to retain) have already risen to London levels.
Meanwhile, the injured party is determined to have the last word. Executives at Commerzbank point out that dmg has in no sense achieved a German first by recruiting an entire team from a competitor. That honour was claimed two years ago by Commerzbank’s head of treasury Rudolf Duttweiler, when he lifted a team of five derivatives experts from Société Générale to form the backbone of Commerz Financial Products. Actually, Frankfurt isn’t that different from London these days, they add.
Laura Covill
Faithless star leaves
“I don’t think he realized how far it could go when he bought a piano all those years ago,” says Mark Bates, until recently a member of the settlements team at Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, and now a pop star.
He is talking of the decision of his father, dmg debt syndicate head Roger Bates, to have him learn the piano as a child. Mark Bates, 23, is now the keyboard player in a 10-strong music band, Faithless, which has enjoyed the bulk of its success in, where else, but Germany.
Its debut single, Insomnia, has been number one in the German charts for 10 weeks, while its second track, Salva Mae, is currently at number seven. Roger Bates describes his son’s successful single as “techno”,which is a pumping, high energy form of dance music very popular in Germany. Insomnia is also number two in Austria, Norway and Switzerland.
Bates had played in bands for six years. But then Faithless took off and, with a three week tour in Germany planned and insufficient holiday from the bank, he decided to leave and go professional. “Working in an office wasn’t for me,” laughs the younger Bates who used to tell dealers when they had exceeded their limits.
He describes the forthcoming album as a “musical journey” that includes reggae and blues styles as well as house and techno. Bates is one of the more recent recruits to the group which is fronted by Maxi Jazz, a rapper, and Sister Bliss, a dj, and who are on Cheeky Records.
Steven Irvine
Offshore offsite
A round-the-world record-holding yachtsman is urging London City firms to send their high-fliers onto the high seas. Sir Robin Knox-Johnson recommends 50-day stints as a crew member on one of his 60-foot yachts starting from Plymouth on October 12 on a round-world race. The first law of the sea is look after your people, says Knox-Johnson, something that City firms might learn from. “You don’t put morale on your balance-sheet,” he says. “It’s a pity. There’s too much steely-eyed accounting these days.”
The eight boats are racing westward in the Clipper 96 competition, stopping at such interesting emerging markets as Havana, Panama, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Seychelles, Durban and Cape Town. Firms can sponsor a boat for a mere £200,000 or selected employees for far less. Each boat has an experienced skipper but the 14-strong crew is made up of amateurs paying £9,000 for a 50-day leg of the voyage, excluding air fares. Surely this is the perfect offsite for upwardly mobile investment bankers – out of the range of the cell-phone and the Reuters bleeper. The only communication is via short sound-bites on Satcom-c.
David Shirreff
Hype department
America’s Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is being sponsored by Westlb’s West Merchant Bank.
Orpheus, which features “revolving seating positions”, will “enhance cultural relations between the uk and Germany”.
The sponsorship is to “celebrate West Merchant’s fifth successful year as the only London-based international investment bank with a full branch in Berlin”. (It doesn’t have a branch in Frankfurt.)
A free revolving seating position goes to any reader who can find a more spurious use of the word “only” in a bank’s promotional literature.
Felix Salmon
