Morning Coffee: The punk quants making £14m each a year. Only artists can declare themselves "desperate" for work

It's not unusual for quants to be different. At Renaissance Technologies there's a unicycle and nicotine. Jane Street has tales of sockless, anarchic communality. XTX has its London office with a space pod.

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But at XTX there is more. In a new profile of the electronic trading firm which makes $250bn of trades a day, the Financial Times says FTX has an anti-establishment ethos in its fabric. Its ex-Deutsche Bank founders have set about challenging the old boy network and channelling Rick & Morty. Founder Alex Gerko likes Cypress Hill and making provocative statements on social media, from which he has now withdrawn. Rival Citadel Securities says Gerko's social media posts have been "appalling."

Gerko, who was born in Russia but became an English citizen in 2022, can afford to appall if he wants to. He's the UK's highest taxpayer. In 2023 he earned £413m ($539m) while 25 of his top people shared £334m in profit, £14m each. 

Gerko mostly employs quants and technologists. But he is sparing of them. The FT says XTX uses AI to scan data, build models and price assets. It has 25,000 Nvidia chips which cost £150m. The EU's supercomputer only has 14,000 GPUs. XTX can potentially make 310m calculations a second. People aren't that necessary, and XTX only employs 250 of them.

Getting a job there isn't easy. Some XTX people like Gerko, are from Deutsche Bank. Others, like Hans Buehler, are from Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan. Most are exceptional mathematicians. Once they've joined, few leave. Gerko's troupe of anti-establishment quants is too lucrative to walk away from.

Separately, if you're thinking of declaring yourself "desperate" to work, think again, even if you are. The Wall Street Journal notes that proclaiming desperation has become a thing on LinkedIn, but that all those doing so are either writers or artists or illustrators. 

The self-described desperate jobseekers say their neediness is nothing to be ashamed of and displays a kind of realism. It doesn't seem to work, though: while there are plenty of messages of support, those bearing the desperate logo haven't had offers of full-time jobs. 

Meanwhile...

Things aren't getting any easier in consulting. EY has pushed back start dates for new graduates hired for its elite strategy adviser Parthenon. (Financial Times) 

Andrew McNaught, who led BNP Paribas’s UK advisory business until 2022 is leaving. (Financial News) 

Senior central bank and supervision officials say it would probably be fine for Unicredit to acquire Commerzbank. (Bloomberg) 

UK prime minister Keir Starmer says capital gains tax won't rise to 39%. “A lot of speculation is getting pretty wide of the mark." (Bloomberg) 

Amanda Stavely is selling a business before capital gains tax rises. (Bloomberg) 

Keir Starmer says UK listings will face scrutiny on workforce rights. (Bloomberg) 

"Our generation worked extremely long hours, but we didn’t have any awareness that we were doing that. We routinely worked weekends. We worked extremely hard. But that was the standard. What was the provision for mental health issues? I don’t think we’d ever heard of it… I assumed it must be some kind of heart attack.” (Financial News) 

Solomon Partners hired James Butcher from Moelis for its tech group. (Bloomberg) 

JPMorgan hired Trey Hanlan from Deutsche Bank for healthcare. (Bloomberg) 

Bank of America folded its 50-person fintech banking team into its 200-person tech banking team as fintech and software become the same thing. (Bloomberg) 

You're only rich if you've got $30m. "It’s increasingly viewed as just the starting point.” (Financial Times) 

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