Building a strong team in a growing market sector might be one of the toughest tasks in investment banking management. But not far behind it in terms of difficulty is the job of holding on to that team, when the sector becomes hot and all the competition want to poach from you.
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That appears to be the situation that Jefferies found itself in. Having built up advisory capability in private equity secondaries over the last few years, it looked like this was going to be the payoff period. In a lacklustre environment for IPOs and trade sales, financial sponsors have been keen to use secondary market sales to manage their portfolios. Jefferies alone has advised on more than $31bn of transactions in this area so far in 2025.
But a market like this always attracts entrants. At the start of the year, Moelis decided that they wanted to increase their secondaries advisory franchise, and started by hiring Matthew Wesley, the Global Head of Private Capital Advisory at Jefferies. And, as the way of these things is, meant that follow-on hires were always likely; in fact, earlier this month Richard Saltzman left to work for his former boss.
Jefferies was always unlikely to take this lying down. Although its growth over the last five years has been strongly driven by hiring Managing Directors from other banks, Jefferies is quite famously aggressive when it comes to traffic heading the other way. It’s famous for the three-year clawback period on its cash bonuses, which tends to be enforced much more consistently than many other banks, and which has to be paid back gross of the tax deducted (leaving the departing banker out of pocket until they can claim a refund). On occasion, it’s even claimed “break fees” from people who say they’re going to move there but don’t.
So the private capital advisory team got new contracts in 2025, shortly after Wesley left. Their non-compete or “gardening leave” periods were extended from six months to a year for MDs and partners, and 30 days even for the most junior analysts. The clawback of incentive compensation has also been emphasised. This hasn’t completely stemmed the tide – Saltzman was apparently on one of the new contracts, and he has just bitten the bullet and agreed to the hardship of spending a whole year being paid to not work.
The new contracts could be seen as something of a status symbol – in an uncertain overall hiring market, it’s nice to be one of the people that management wants so much that they’re prepared to lock them in like this. But bankers are usually pretty suspicious of management attempts to pour sand in the gears of the free labour market. Although there aren’t any more details made public, it’s unlikely that the Jefferies team would have been happy to sign them without (at the very least) a decent expectation for this year’s compensation, particularly since the twelve-month notice period reverts to six months next year, meaning that there isn’t even any guarantee of long term employment.
Elsewhere, as the summer drags on, the new suit starts to need cleaning, the novelty of “interns happy hour” wears off and some of the project deadlines start getting closer, it’s likely that some college students will be wondering whether they made the wrong decision to spend the golden months of their vacation on finance. Wouldn’t it have been more fun to get a job as a summer camp counsellor?
Yes it would, and it might have been a better career move to. Jennifer Roth, for example, is Goldman Sachs’ global cohead of emerging markets and foreign exchange sales. And she got her big break when it turned out that one of the adorable moppets she’d been teaching campfire songs to was the kid of a GS partner. She’s not the only one – famously, Jimmy Levin was talent spotted by the founder of the hedge fund he later became CEO of, for being a particularly impressive waterskiing teacher.
Obviously, these are newsworthy anecdotes because they’re rare. But there is a serious message – lots of the most successful people in finance took unconventional routes into the industry, and personal contacts can lead to off-cycle opportunities. If you didn’t get the internship you wanted this year, it’s not a bad idea to do something fun while keeping an eye out for the main chance. If nothing else, you’ll get a much better sun tan.
Meanwhile…
Even though David Solomon hasn’t actually played dance music in public for quite a while, it’s going to be the one thing that people remember about him. In a diatribe urging him to sack his chief economist for not being bullish enough, Donald Trump has told him to “just focus on being a DJ, and not running a financial institution”. (NY Post)
Rebita George, the former Goldman VP hired to be “talent acquisition manager” for Point72’s new Bengaluru office, has advertised the first nine vacancies. These are back office roles, but they still want top tech talent. (Financial News)
Deutsche Bank continues to grow its emerging markets business in the USA, hiring Joseph Puerner from Goldman Sachs and Chris Pavacic from Bank of America. (Bloomberg)
It’s sometimes difficult to interpret the subsidiary accounts of Goldman Sachs, as different legal entities provide services to each other. But the broad picture of the headcount at its EU subsidiary, Goldman Sachs Bank Europe SE, is pretty clear – it’s up 16% to 1230 employees. (Financial News)
Squarepoint has typically been more concerned with fibre optic cable than copper wire in the past (it’s a quant trading hedge fund). But it’s now hired a team of seven traders from MRI Global to invest in physical metals markets. (Bloomberg)
Now that AI cheating has become ubiquitous, many firms are going back to face-to-face interviews for recruitment. Bankers who had got used to jobhunting on Zoom while working from home might have to start practicing their excuses for fake dental appointments again. (WSJ)
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