Morning Coffee: Goldman Sachs VP who didn't immediately respond to work email on vacation wins $1.5m. Sad death of nicest guy in the bond market
If you work for Goldman Sachs and your boss sends you a cryptic email saying, “Need to talk -are you available,” while you’re holidaying this summer, pick up the phone. If you receive this email while driving to your holiday with your wife and very young baby, pull over and make the call. Do not, on any account, only interrupt your vacation when someone senior at Goldman calls you, and then work over your holiday to remedy the urgent issue which your junior was dealing with anyway. If you do, it may be the beginning of the end of your Goldman Sachs career.
💥Follow us on WhatsApp for news alerts.💥
Jon Reeves, a London-based vice president (VP) in Goldman’s compliance team did all of this during a holiday in Cornwall over the August bank holiday weekend in 2020. Reeves, who was formerly deemed an outstanding performer and eligible to become a managing director (MD) at Goldman Sachs, was subsequently classified as a mediocre performer thanks in part to the long shadow cast by this fateful vacation. Then he was deemed “lazy” and dismissed while he took paternity leave for his second child.
Nearly two years ago, Goldman Sachs was found guilty of both unfairly dismissing Reeves and of sexually discriminating against him to the extent that it would have treated a female employee differently. Yesterday, a court awarded him £1.45m in compensation.
It’s less than Reeves wanted. He’d been asking for £3.8m in damages, but the Financial Times notes that court ruled that there was a 50% chance Reeves would have been fired anyway and applied a deduction accordingly.
Goldman Sachs doesn’t seem happy with the outcome. A spokesperson said: "Goldman Sachs is a market leader in paid parental leave and encourages all working parents regardless of gender to take the full 26 weeks paid leave offered to them. We strongly disagree with this decision.”
Jo Keddie, Reeves’ solicitor noted that his compensation payment partly reflected “stigma damages” for reputational harm caused by proceedings brought in the employment tribunal. Although Reeves- who now has two small children – subsequently gained fixed term contracts at UBS and Millennium, he hasn’t achieved another full-time job since leaving Goldman four years ago. The UK employment tribunal projected that it will take Reeves three years to find a permanent position and eight years to overcome the salary deficit resulting from his case.
Reeves had spent his entire 15-year career at Goldman Sachs before he was unfairly dismissed in 2022. If he’d phoned his boss during his holiday in 2020, maybe none of this would have happened. But if Goldman hadn’t expected him to drop everything during his holiday and then discriminated against him and dismissed him, it would have saved £1.45m. There is a learning in this, although Goldman doesn’t sound wholly penitent.
Separately, John Leaviss, a former fund manager at M&G Investments who has died of cancer aged just 55, doesn’t seem the sort of person who would pull over on the A30 and take a call from his boss enroute to a family holiday.
The FT says Leaviss is fondly remembered for his Bond Vigilantes blog and his “Uncle Jim’s World of Bonds” podcast. He’s also fondly remembered for driving a go-kart around Tokyo and explaining the Japanese economy while dressed as Super Mario. This is how work should be.
Meanwhile…
Millennium has 340 teams deploying $92 billion in assets. Now it wants to raise another $20bn in assets. Maybe it will need another 73 teams as a result. (Bloomberg)
Nomura’s shares fell as much as 7.2% this morning. This was despite the fact that it just posted the highest quarterly profit for decades and its equities revenues rose 83%. There are fears that things have peaked. (Bloomberg)
Barclays’ shares fell as much as 7.1% on Wednesday. It didn’t help that costs at the bank were up by a similar amount. (Bloomberg)
The Bank of England is concerned that the rapid growth in Asian equities financing is exposing London-based prime brokers to risks in the event of a crash. (Financial Times)
An ex-Citi MD in the capital risk analytics team was sentenced to 30 years in prison after drugging and sexually assaulting at least six women over nearly a decade. Citi said his crimes were “heinous” and that it “moved to terminate” Edward Gene Smith immediately upon hearing he was under investigation. (Bloomberg)
JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are among the banks asking hedge funds with exposure to AI stocks to post additional collateral. (Financial Times)
Oualid Lahsini who was once head of Brevan Howard in the Middle East, is joining private equity firm Vitruvian. (Financial News)
Singapore hedge fund Dymon Asia is setting up a pod in Dubai led by ex-Balyasny PM (Financial News)
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.
