Morning Coffee: Happy news on banker hiring for next year. The Citi trader who was bad, but not bad enough
If you’re in the office this morning, you’re probably in the mood for some cheerful news. And the phrase that brings a song to the heart of any investment banker is “ hiring spree ”. As the big financial services headhunting firms do their end-of-year temperature checks , it’s becoming clearer and clearer that some of the big banks are getting ready to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to the predictions of a private-equity-fueled deals boom in 2025.
John Weinberg, CEO of Evercore, for example, is “speaking with and recruiting… nearly every day”, even in November and December when hardly any activity usually happens. Some specialist recruiters estimate that their workload is as much as 70% higher than at a normal year end. This sort of comment has to be interpreted carefully – we don’t know how much of this represents the unusual seasonal pattern we saw in 2024, or whether hiring is being pulled forward from next year – but the pattern seems quite consistent across firms.
It's consistent across geographies too. JPMorgan’s EMEA CEO and global banking co-head Filipo Gori says that he has “a long list of people that we want to hire”. Even firms like Jefferies and Deutsche, which have spent the last two years picking up people as the bulge bracket right-sized, are talking about becoming more “surgical” rather than slowing down hiring altogether. About the only firm that is happy to be quoted as pausing for breath is UBS, and this is mainly because they are still digesting the Credit Suisse acquisition, which grew some teams by a factor of more than 50%.
Most of the people quoted seem to be focused on hiring rainmakers – the market is “putting a premium on bankers with strong relationships and sector
Read more on efinancialcareers.com
