Morning Coffee: Goldman Sachs partners keep disappearing post bonuses. How to get paid well but perform not so well at HSBC

It's a partner year at Goldman Sachs. This means that before new partners appear, old partners leave to make space for them. Some of Goldman's most gnarly old partners have gone this week, but it's not clear whether the firm would have wished their departures.

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The first exit was that of Nikhil Choraria, who ran an inflation trading desk that made $450m in 2021 and who has vanished into the ether. Now, the Financial Times reports that Erdit Hoxha, Goldman's equities co-head is also leaving the firm for hedge fund Millennium. Goldman only promoted Hoxha as its equities co-head in 2025, so his departure does not seem felicitous.

Both men had been at Goldman for 22 years, having joined in the same 2004 analyst class. Choraria was promoted to MD in 2012 and then to partner in 2018. Hoxha made MD in 2013 and partner in 2016. 

Both men have enough money to never work again. Goldman Sachs partners receive salaries of $950k, plus bonuses, plus profit shares, plus opportunities to coinvest in Goldman's own funds. Choraria also presumably received a particularly large bonus for his good work in 2021. 

Hoxha, at least, would like a bit more. Millennium is known for its large packages. Given that Hoxha is joining Millennium's office of the chief investment officer, his package there may be larger than most. 

43-year-old Hoxha has come a long way in life. Born in Tirana, the capital of Albania, he completed a finance degree at Bocconi, known for populating London with suave Italian financiers. Hoxha, who shares a surname with Albania's former communist dictator, has long been a proponent of meritocracy and of Albanians in finance. Another Hoxha, who may or may not be his wife, is a top fixed income fund manager. 

The good news for Goldman is that it now has two empty partner spots to fill and that the potential candidates will work hard all year in the hope of being promoted in November. The bad news is that Millennium has yet another senior Goldman Sachs trader on its team. Other Goldman partners with itchy feet know exactly who will hire them.

Separately, as we reported yesterday recipients of HSBC's bonuses in New York seem pleased with their lot and are expressing surprise at the bank's generosity. 

The Financial Times reports that HSBC's non-executive directors have also been handsomely remunerated, despite flailing around trying to find a new chairman and eventually promoting a stop-gap internal chair before Christmas. 

Independent director Ann Godbehere did particularly well from HSBC's pay-pot. The FT notes that she had her fees doubled £737k last year, despite leading the failed chairman search and leaving shortly after the stop-gap candidate was appointed. Godbehere was paid partly for sitting on some new committees, including the remuneration committee which decides remuneration.

Meanwhile...

Beatriz Martin, head of the central technology division at UBS, is upsetting people by cutting technology jobs. (Inside Paradeplatz) 

Block is cutting 40% of its workforce. Jack Dorsey says: "Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes. I’d rather get there honestly and on our own terms than be forced into it reactively.” (Bloomberg) 

There are ego issues at Blue Owl. Michael Rees, the founder of Dyal Capital (one of three entities that formed Blue Owl in 2021) fell out with the firm's other co-founders after its creation and was then sidelined in 2023 when two others were named as co-chief executives and he stayed as co-president. (FT) 

Dispersion trades are all the rage. They involve buying single-stock volatility while selling index volatility to profit from the gap between the S&P 500 low volatility and large price swings for individual companies. This works well, unless stocks fall in unison, at which point investors who have bet on dispersion might be forced to buy index-level volatility protection, which would worsen a market sell-off. (FT)

Portfolio manager Chiara Chabanne and her husband and analyst Antoine Chabanne moved together to work for Hudson Capital Management in Dubai. Now they're moving togeher again, to work for Dymon Asia Capital. (Bloomberg) 

It's been a great quarter for Canadian banks that report before the rest. CIBC had “record revenue across all of our business units and higher return on equity.” (Bloomberg)

ECB employees in Frankfurt are unhappy. Only 40% say they're satisified with promotion opportunities. More than 33% say they can't express their views without fear of negative consequences. No one is being hired; no one is leaving. (Bloomberg) 

Howard Lutnick has a habit of jumping into complex projects and claiming the win and this is creating resentment among other officials. (Politico)  

Investors have been buying rights to tariff refunds from companies that can't be bothered to pursue them.“The question is, do you sell at 40% or 45% now, or a little more if the market changes, or do you hold out for the 100% down the road?" (WSJ) 

42 year-old fund manager Andrew Axelrod owns the biggest electronic dance music club in New York. It's been complicated. (WSJ) 

AI executives are advising their children to work in nuclear energy. (WSJ) 

Do not say bandwidth, circle back, deep dive, or growth mindset. (WSJ) 

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