It’s become a truism to say that bankers work long hours. But while the idea of an 80 hour week, a 100 hour week or a 110 hour week is easy to frame numerically, it’s less easy to grasp the effect it has on your life. A contributor at Wall Street Oasis, the banking forum, has tried to elaborate.
A 70 hour week means 9am to 11pm every weekday, he says. “You’re up by 8am, you get home by 11:30pm. Sleep, rinse repeat.”
An 80 hour week means you adhere to the 70 hour schedule and add ten hours of work on a Sunday. A 90 hour week and, “you’re pulling an added 2 hours on weekdays, so you get home at 1:30am.” A 100 hour week and, “you’re in the office at 7am for a deal going live, getting home at 1:30am, including 10 hours on Sunday.”
And when you work a 110 week, you do the 100 week plus 10 hours on Saturday – even though you only got off at 1:30am on a Friday night…
The hours aren’t nearly so long in the bureaucratic apparatus of the European super-state. This might be one reason why the European Central Bank has received lots applications for its 1,000 new banking supervisory jobs. Daniele Nouy, chair of the European Central Bank Supervisory Board said yesterday that 14,000 people have applied for the 1,000 roles. “We are looking for the best possible candidates,” Nouy said. Burned out M&A bankers probably need not apply.
Meanwhile:
ICAP is cutting around 100 jobs. (Reuters)
HSBC has just hired Alison Hewitt from Lloyds as head of regulatory compliance. Hewitt previously worked for the FSA. (Bloomberg)
Neil Barofsky, the man who previously oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP) is about to become a monitor in Credit Suisse. (Dealbook)
A Greenpeace employee has left after losing €3.8m (£3m) of donations last year through speculation on currency markets. (Guardian)
Goldman Sachs’ case against Russian programmer Sergey Aleynikov seems to be falling to pieces. (Bloomberg)
Goldman Sachs’ return on equity was 11% in 2013, while KKR, which is the only private equity firm to calculate return on equity, had a 27.4% return on equity. This doesn’t mean you want to work in private equity, however. (Financial Times)
The top earner at UBS got 229 times more than the lowest earner in 2013. This was up from 177 times more in 2012. (Bloomberg)
Jitesh Gadhia – a senior adviser to Blackstone Advisory Partners, who was previously a mergers and acquisitions banker at Barclays Capital – will join the board of UK Financial Investments next month. (Financial Times)
Barclays has hired another U.S. M&A banker for its depleted team – retail specialist Greg Smith joins from Credit Suisse. (Bloomberg)
Fred Goodwin has had his ‘Edinburgh Mansion’ removed from Google Street View. (DailyMail)
Related articles:
Beware hedge funds dangling unattainable pay packages. Last man standing promoted at Citi
Ex-trader who couldn’t stand his commute makes £450m. The hypocrisy of former-JPM favourite