"I left a US bank to work in M&A for a European bank. It's a nightmare"

efinancialcareers.com:

If you're working for a bulge bracket US investment bank, and you're thinking of moving to a European bank for lifestyle reasons, because yourworking hours are terrible, then I have one thing to say: don't. 

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I'm a vice president at a major European investment bank. I left the major US bank I was working for a few years ago. My life has been significantly worse since.

US investment banks are light years ahead of European banks when it comes to automating tasks and shifting work offshore. By comparison, the major European houses are wallowing in tech debt and incapable of automating at the same pace. This means European banks rely on juniors to do the heavy lifting instead.

The major European bank I work for now doesn't even have a system for monitoring employee hours. At the American bank I worked for, hours were watched carefully and if you worked more than 18 hours in a row, the system would alert HR. There's nothing like that here. You could work for days on end, and they wouldn't notice. 

Holidays are symptomatic of my lifestyle deterioration. At the US bank, I regularly had proper time off. Here, I always have to work through my vacation. I haven't had a proper break since I joined.  

The underlying reason for this is that European banks are less successful than the Americans. They win less business and they have less money. The people are lower quality. The systems are lower quality. They have to work a lot harder to win deals. When you work for a European bank, this all shows. Beware.

Anita Bonasera is a pseudonym

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