Morning Coffee: Fiery, intimidating Barclays trader may bond with you over lasagne. Most desirable job at JPMorgan

If Adeel Khan likes you at Barclays, it sounds like a good thing. Not only will he help you get a hedge fund job during hard times, but he might serve you lasagne in Monaco every summer. With wine.

💥Follow us on WhatsApp for news alerts.💥

Following (or during) the unexpected departure of Stephen Dainton, the former co-head of the investment bank with Khan, Bloomberg spoke to 40 people 'familiar with' Khan. They reportedly said that he can be intimidating, tough and fiery, but also charismatic, generous, and generous with lasagne.

Khan hasn't actually dispensed any lasagne (as far as the people Bloomberg spoke to can recall) for a decade or so, but it clearly made an impression. Being fiery also appears to be a feature of Khan's early career. More recently, he appears to be better known for his rigorous meetings at which he dissects how individual traders are performing and questions assumptions underlying trades. He is not tolerant of underperformers. Some people tell Bloomberg they are intimidated. Others think Khan is great. 

Khan does not have an easy job. Barclays' strategy of 2024 is about cutting costs, particularly from the investment bank, and driving returns on a smaller capital allocation. Within these parameters, an additional £500m of revenue (vs. 2023) is targeted from a combination of European rates, equity derivatives and securitisation. But both European rates and equity derivatives have lost a lot of people and the securitisation business is being crimped after big losses on loans originated by bankers. 

Despite this, Bloomberg notes that revenues in Barclays' markets division have grown at an annualized rate of 6.2% per year since 2023 and that the bank is now a top five markets firm with 65 of its top clients, versus a target of 70. 

Khan is an undeniably talented trader. During the eurozone debt crisis, he reportedly made Barclays $100m some years by taking positions on credit default swaps. He has gathered other talented traders about him (Hossein Zaimi, Ronnie Wexler, Scott McDavid in equities, Chetan Vohra, Jean-Francois Mastrangelo, Tunc Buyuksolak). He appears to have married well, given that his mother in law owned the Monaco apartment where he served lasagne. One day he might be CEO of all of Barclays. Either way, it helps to be in his good books.

Separately, it's not easy to get a job at JPMorgan. The bank has an acceptance rate on its graduate programmes of 0.7%. It's also hard to become an apprentice at JPMorgan: the bank's apprenticeship programme has an acceptance rate of 0.11%.

So says the Financial Times, which reports today that 9,000 people applied for 100 of JPMorgan's degree apprenticeships this year and that the programme is therefore very difficult to get into. It is not difficult to see why. Successful candidates don't pay tuition fees and gain banking experience. One informs the FT that he studies in Exeter and attends JPMorgan meetings in London. He also has already learned to speak like someone in employment: “The trajectory of my future changed in the space of a one-minute call,” he declares. 

Meanwhile...

Commodities trading house Vitol employs 600 people. Last year, its senior staff shared $5.9bn even though its profits halved to $4.2bn. (Bloomberg) 

More than 70,000 students applied for this year's Millennium internship program, the most on record, and just 0.4% were accepted. Applicants distinguished themselves by talking about specific projects they've built with AI, how they use AI in their everyday lives, and problems they've solved with AI.  (Business Insider) 

Point72 hired Alex Alifimoff from Citadel as head of AI weather amid growing demand for alternative data. (Financial News) 

JPMorgan moved 30 quants from China to Singapore. It's creating regional hubs. (Bloomberg) 

Jefferies is building a muni trading desk with hires from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. (Bloomberg) 

Equity partners at Linklaters and Clifford Chance took home an average of £2.5mn and £2.3mn respectively for the year to the end of April. (FT) 

Hong Kong is going to be naming and shaming law firms, auditors and other advisers involved in poorly prepared listing applications. (Bloomberg) 

Jonathan Bock, the co-head of Blackstone's big private credit fund resigned. "His departure was not the result of any disagreement relating to Blackstone or the Fund’s operations, policies or practices," says Blackstone. (Bloomberg) 

ESG is dead. Long live impact-focused infrastructure funds investing in renewable energy, raised $24bn last year. (FT)

Lazard says things are looking up for its underperforming M&A business. "“Our weighted backlog for next year is over twice the level it was as of July last year.” (Financial News)

Using AI costs a fortune because "1 in 100 employees knows how to give AI context," and in the absence of these people agents get stuck "looping" - calling themselves over and over to self-correct for bad instruction. (A.16z) 

It's a costly nightmare trying to keep your children entertained in London this summer. (FT) 

"Me, almost thirty years later, banking career completed, trying to find fulfillment through extreme walks,  It isn’t enough to walk ten miles in the suffering heat with a backpack of books, you have to keep adding more and more books each walk." (Walking the World) 

Follow me on X. Follow me on LinkedIn. 

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, Whatsapp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Signal: sarahbutcher.22  Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. 

Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: comments are moderated intermittently by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You must take sole responsibility for comments you post on this site. We will take reasonable steps to weed out anything that we consider to be offensive or inappropriate.