Investment Banking: Counting John's Money

In the next two articles I’ll look into the investment banking industry – a certain ‘due diligence’ on my side as a Bocconi graduate. Today, I’ll discuss salaries of investment bankers, and a few days later I will present to you my view on the challenges the industry faces. We shall have some fun.

Let us get back to John. He’s now an analyst at some European investment bank. A nice promotion for John since last time I mentioned him, huh? He earns around 50,000 euros per year, which is around 4,200 a month. John then pays a horrendously high European income tax that nearly halves his monthly earning. He thus ends up with 2,200-2,500  euros/month net of all tax.

Dear reader, do you want to be in John’s shoes? Let’s see. As an investment banker, he rarely works less than 60 hours per week. In fact, if he worked this little, he’d be considered that guy in the corner who plays his solitaire when no one is looking. John is actually a good worker, and works 70 hours a week, which is an average for the industry. In February, year’s shortest month, he will work 280 hours. His effective salary (net of tax; who cares about the before-tax salary when no one ever really receives it on hands?) is thus 9 euros (roughly $12) at most.

This is not even double of what a McDonald’s cashier Bob receives for his ordinary job working a 40-hour week and daily receiving his meal from the hands of Ronald McDonald. The only one left to speak to John is the vending machine down the hallway. Finally, and it may be important for many of us, an investment banker hardly manages to have a social life of his own.

John is clearly better off when he receives his bonus. John’s bonus will typically amount to 10-50% of his yearly income. But don’t forget, we’re in Europe. Probably the guy’s name isn’t actually John, more like Johannes or Giovanni, but that’s not the point; another thing is that the European taxation system will kick in and take half of his money again. If distributed evenly over the entire year, the bonus amounts to around +1050 euros/month. This translates to roughly +3.7 euros to his hourly salary. In total it is at best 13 euros/hour ($18/hour).

Let’s round it up. Over at least 4-6 years, John paid thousands for his education, did one or a couple of internships and only stepped into the job market at the age of 23-26. He received the most low-paying job in an investment bank. He works inhumanly long hours, has barely any social life by the age of 25-28 and, if the bank does exceptionally well, earns just 2-3 times as much as a McDonald’s cashier does on an hourly basis. I’ll throw in some personal touch on this and ask, Is it something to live for? I’m sure some are getting excited at this. A popular vision is that it’s good as a starting point. My only open question is, why do you think you’re at a starting point when you’re already 25-28? Life can’t observe inflation forever.

The topic is absolutely interesting as most of us weigh picking up their careers in investment banks. As I said, I’ll return to the industry shortly after I publish this. I promise I’ll be less nonconformist in my next article, as I will speak of the challenges for the industry, since there’s evidence the industry has changed in the last 1-3 years. Let’s speak about that one of these days.

On Europe and Its Banking Industry

First of all, I’d like to use these first lines to thank everyone. Your recent words of support and encouraging evaluations have inspired me on continuing with the blog.

Special credit goes to the love of my life, who’s shown passionate interest and given me the strongest support in what I’m doing here. Additionally, I thank my family, friends, classmates, professors, and other ‘fellaz’ for their sincere words of encouragement. I also thank all the ‘silent’ readers, because I can still see all your names in my pageviews statistics... Just kidding, I only see your country and the browser you used. And your home address with a picture of you.

Without all of you, guys, the time I’m spending here would be, putting it mildly, a bit less worthwhile. So thank you!

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Plunging into the fascinating and incredibly exciting world of finance now. Yeah.

I recently had an honor to meet Josef Ackermann, CEO of Deutsche Bank. He was visiting Bocconi earlier this week with a speech on the state of Europe’s banking industry today. If someone is to listen up to, he is the one. Head of one of the 5 largest banks in the world, Ackermann is also a member of the supervisory board of Siemens, a member of the boards of Royal Dutch Shell and Zurich Financial Services, as well as an honorary professor of several European universities and a welcomed speaker at large international conferences like the World Economic Forum.

When this man isn’t happy, you know things aren’t right. Ackermann confirmed his worry that the banking environment in Europe has become more troublesome than ever. I developed and further researched some ideas he presented, and came up with the following conclusions on Europe’s economy and the banking sector.

The importance of Europe as a world’s financial center is eroding. Let’s look at some numbers. Back in 1999, 44% of the world’s top-25 banks were European. Europe was less exposed to the dotcom crisis and looked as a safe place for investment, as the leading economies were approaching the creation of a common currency, the euro. As of January 2012, only 16% of the world’s top-25 banks were from Europe, while the others were replaced by the banks from China and Brazil.

The number of European stock exchanges fell to 2 in the list of the world’s top-10 stock exchanges by market cap, while some of those previously on the list were replaced by China, India, and Brazil.

On top of that, European economies have been largely stagnant over the past couple of years. GDP growth in Germany was 3% in 2011, and is forecasted at the level below 1% for 2012. France, UK, Italy, and Spain only grew at 0.01-0.07% in 2011, while the growth contracted in Eastern European economies which are traditionally faster-growing ones.

Politics is sending conflicting signals to economy. It all started with the credit agencies (but hang in there – they’re not the ones to blame). They gave the legislators worrying signals that some economies, if not reformed, may have troubles meeting their obligations. In practice it means two things. One is that debt levels have to be reduced. The other is that yields on the existing sovereign debt will need to be increased, thereby increasing taxation and/or decreasing quality of public services.

What would you do as a European politician? That’s right, you’d go to banks and take their money. One completely… odd idea was the transactions tax proposed recently. Not only would it dramatically decrease banks’ earnings; it would also alienate many investors away from an already stagnant Europe.

Another reform, already enacted, is the requirement for banks to increase their Tier 1 capital ratios to 9%. The idea is to increase banks’ reserves and the quality of their portfolios. The outcome is, as evidenced by Ackermann, that banks need to resort to narrower business models and concentrate on core-activities. Additionally, as European sovereign debt is not anymore risk-free, banks are hurrying to de-leverage their portfolios and revise the risk profiles.

Apart from bad signals to economy, there are good ones as well. The problem, however, lies in the poor interaction of these pieces of legislation among themselves. EU politicians should agree on a strategic rather than an opportunistic approach to problem-solving within the Union.

Finally, the banking sector is getting less profitable. This is caused entirely by the above-said. As a result of de-leveraging and retraction from non-core activities, banks’ profit margins are shrinking. In the recent years, the industry has seen rapid shifts of individual market shares. Since many parts of legislation have yet to be enacted, we are probably going to see some more of these shifts in the industry very soon. For this reason, let me postpone discussion of this third point until sometime in the future, when the trends become evident.

Stick around until then. And I’m off for a cup of good Italian coffee.

Driving Forces of Business Consulting Today

What do you call someone who, when mentioned a 7 o’clock meeting, will ask, “AM or PM?” Or someone who can spell the word ‘paradigm’ and actually know what it means? That’s right, a business consultant.

Drawing on my experience of working at a consultancy, I find the picture below so true (sorry to some of you who saw it already, it just perfectly fits in the subject). Additionally, here you can find some other witty ‘observations’ made on consultants I found on the web.

Management consulting firms started appearing in the previous century and were initially focused on general management and technology advisory services. Glass-Steagall Act and subsequent banking sophistications of the mid-20^th century triggered a new wave in the development of the consulting industry. This gave rise to industry-specific consultancies, such as tax-, HR-, operations- and other specific ones. Later it went even deeper, as the rise of industries (such as aviation and IT) brought forth those respective consultancy firms.

The business environment of consultancies today seems to be quite saturated. Some major companies like GE, Toyota, and Lufthansa have their own consultancies providing services within their respective groups as well as to other firms in the industry.

The 21^st-century business consulting is now a whole industry which increasingly has to face new paradigms (no, I just can’t escape using this word in this context). From the conception of the industry until today, the paradigms (or driving forces shaping the industry) for consulting businesses around the world have shifted. Therefore, let me discuss some of the new driving forces I came up with which form the consulting reality today.

The original business focus has become harder to maintain over time. One reason for this is increased competition. From 5 consulting firms with over 1000 employees in 1980, the industry grew to well more than 150 such firms today. As to the industry consultants which are typically smaller firms, the aviation industry alone has over 15 well-defined consultancies just in Europe.

Another reason is that project types have changed and grown in scope. That said, clients search for consultants who are able to present comprehensive project treatment. Instead of providing one service per project (say, a growth plan), a consulting company is expected to spill the service over to other branches of a client’s firm (say, advisory on operations optimization and implementation thereof). The former ‘big 8’ merged into the ‘big 4’ to expand their services and strengthen the existing arms (audit, tax). For this same reason, the cohort of smaller industry-specific consultants eyes widening the offered services.  One example is a German construction consultancy, which extended their services from construction advising to airport master planning.

Industry standards are getting increasingly scalable. Although typically business consulting is thought to be hardly scalable, in the recent years competition forced many consultants to implement result-based fee structures. In order to succeed in having their proposals accepted, consultants need to pledge to achievement of pre-specified results in order to qualify for payment. This paradigm drives to the third one, which is:

Traditional business structures may need to undergo changes. Under the new industry standards and client expectations, consultancies not only need analysts and consultants, but also ‘executors’. This can mean a shift from a traditional ‘matrix’-structure consultancies to ad hoc teams and project-specific working groups, as already practiced by some industry consultants. This can also imply the necessity for consultancies to team up with a common goal of project risk sharing.

These and other driving forces are important for a consultant to bear in mind. The industry is quite vibrant and is almost destined to evolve. Therefore, if you ask me several years from now What the driving forces of business consulting are, I’ll probably give you a different answer.

The Law Humanity Defies

John had a great day and was paid a large bonus at work. He took the money, brought it to the bank, and deposited it on his account. The bankers cheered. They knew exactly each dollar deposited means to the bank 5-10 dollars in extended credit. The bank kept some small part of John’s deposit, and lent out the rest to another institution. That next institution deposited the money in yet another bank, and the latter did the lending again. At the end of the day, everyone was happy; John and the bankers all drank beer that night.

They all enjoyed the blissful ignorance until the news came that, all else being equal, the house prices all over the country fell simultaneously, and it became extremely beneficial for everyone to buy houses. John and all the non-financial institutions immediately rushed to the bank where they deposited their money. The bankers didn’t see that coming and apparently didn’t have enough reserves to cover the immediate demand. But since they’re bankers and they know life tends to treat them well, they didn’t worry much, and called another bank to borrow federal funds. However, the bankers soon recognized that all banks in the country were experiencing the same problem and didn’t have enough cash on hands. The banks called the Fed, the lender of last resort. Suddenly, an asteroid came out of nowhere and hit the Fed’s building so that the printing press was destroyed. That really gave the bankers heebie jeebies.

They called London to borrow money from there. But the British bankers said they were indeed gobsmacked, as their national bank’s printing press was attacked by evil clowns and went out of order. In fact, for some absolutely random reason, no printing press functioned in the world that day. Then people started trading their commodities in order to get the worth they were entitled to. In very economic terms, the aggregate world demanded access to what is called M3 money supply (in very human terms, it’s ALL the money one can think of). Too bad only M0 was available, that is, printed currency plus coins, and there were just not as many commodities as their assigned value.

(http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1231778551.php)

It wasn’t too long until our friend John realized that everyone was entitled to more than his or her assets were actually worth. The world’s aggregate net worth  just didn’t cost that much! John very soon discovered that paper greenbacks were worth just the paper they were printed on. One way to drive at everything’s fair value would be to go back to barter trade, that is, trading goods for other goods. Or one could trade for gold, since everyone throughout the world could have a relatively easy access to it. But even if all the gold in the world were to circulate as our currency today, there STILL wouldn’t be just enough gold to match our net worth, since the world’s net worth increased 30+ times from what all the gold cost when the US abolished the gold standard in 1971.

Humanity thereby went against the nature and the laws of physics. Any physicist will admit what the bankers do is nonsense, since, according to the law of conservation of energy, NO energy can appear out of nowhere. ‘Nowhere’ is exactly where our money and assets come from. Put it this way, nothing in the world can physically cost more than the world itself; otherwise, how can one pay back?

I told my fiancée about this, and she actually called me out on it. She asked, Why is it bad? This is a truly interesting issue to discuss, so I must thank her for the contribution. In fact, I’ll let you leave your opinion.

Is it good or bad that the value of things is inflated? Is it good or bad to have a never-ending business cycle and inflationary tendencies? It’s highly unlikely for this story to unfold in reality, and it’s more likely that John will get his money anyway. But how are we so comfortable to live in the world where the value is created out of thin air and continues to grow in volume at a rapid velocity? My view is that this system is unsustainable in the long run. The physicists will agree. Apparently, the bankers are driven by other laws we’re not aware of. 

Country History Outlook: Belarus

I love Belarus, my home country. I thought it would be fair if I started out writing to the blog with an article that was publlished in 'Trans-national Voice': a magazine of Central European University Business School. I fine-tuned it a bit, so please welcome its 2012 edition.

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History of Belarus in 900 Words

Belarus? Yeah, I heard a little about it… it’s part of Russia, isn’t it? I’ve encountered this question quite often when making friends with people abroad. Folks barely ever knew it was a single country; nor did they know the country’s location. In fact, Belarus is located in the geographical center of Europe and is greater in area than Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland put together. Home to Mark Chagall and Thaddeus Kosciusko, Belarus has always been at the crossroads of two worlds, European and Russian, which dramatically affected lives of all Belarusian generations.

Starting from the tenth century, the conquerors from the East furiously attacked the Principality of Polatsk, the first known state to establish here. Consequently, the Principality was subordinated to Kievan Rus, a stronghold of Moscow’s future speculations that the peoples of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine descended from one nationality. However, most scientists agree that Belarusians, unlike Russian and Ukrainian Slavs, came from the merge of Slavs and Balts, a Scandinavian people. This fact made the culture of the people inhabiting my country somewhat different from the bordering ones.

That couldn’t but arouse people’s interest in creating an independent state in the Belarusian land. Small principalities of Central and North-Western Belarus consolidated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL). The name 'Lithuania' belonged to the whole territory of modern Belarus, south Lithuania, some parts of south Latvia and north-east Poland; one shouldn't confuse the name with the current Republic of Lithuania. Grand Duchy of Lithuania had by the middle of the sixteenth century grown into one of the biggest states in Europe. As it later grew into the area between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, it drew all the wars in the region. But then again, Tsars in Moscow continuously claimed the land belonged to Russia and by all means, including wars and assimilation through religion, tried to seize the land. GDL, as a pro-Western catholic state, didn’t accept the ideas implemented by orthodox Moscow and sought for closer cooperation with Poland on the West.

GDL and Poland eventually amalgamated, creating an even bigger country, named the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. By the end of the 17th century, its political center gradually shifted from Lithuania to the Polish side. Lithuanian unique culture started experiencing a decline as it was oppressed by Warsaw. Subsequently, Belarusian language was prohibited everywhere; instead, Polish was recognized as the only language of the state. Moscow, in turn, applied its politics of “religious intervention,” that is, convinced Belarusians to adopt Orthodoxy.

Many Lithuanians indeed switched to the Orthodoxy, patronated by Moscow. Coming from a slightly different origin than that of Russians’, those who took up Orthodoxy still drew in a great deal of Russian culture into Belarus. However, there also remained Catholics – chiefly the rich class, who lived up to the Polish way of life; in addition, the whole population of Western Belarus professed Catholicism. All that, together with the originality brought about by those who still maintained the culture of Eastern Slavs and Balts, archetypal for Belarus, mixed together to create something new. It was a society of tolerance and hospitality, bearing cultural particularities of all bordering countries. The wealthy had a rather progressive mind-set, and in 1791, together with the Polish, accepted the first Constitution in the continent, second in the world after the USA and first in Europe. The commons, on the other hand, preferred to stay calm and obedient as it came to politics.

The Belarusian society today in many ways resembles that of the end of the eighteenth century. Having survived through the Russian Empire’s intervention starting in 1795 and then through the hardships of the Soviet Union, Belarusian folk failed to maintain control over their own authenticity. In fact, even the word 'Belarus' was brought to the land by Russians in the 19th century. In order to complicate the rise of patriotic feelings among the former-Lithuanians, the Russian Empire separated GDL's capital (Vilnius) from Belarusian lands and created a small state, the modern Lithuania, while giving a new, more 'slavic' name to the Belarusian lands. Use of Belarusian language was banned until the mid-1920s, the time when communist Moscow searched for support among periphery republics. However, Stalin repressions of the 30s and the World War II, in which Belarus lost every forth man, added up conservatism and reluctance to get involved into politics to the character of a common Belarusian.

Only after the USSR collapse in the 90s, Belarusian identity started reviving. Events of the history left their trace on what Belarus is now. Conservatives and liberals today represent confluence of two different world perceptions, offspring of the ever-lasting struggle of the West and East.

The current political regime, whatever is said about it, attracts a great deal of support among Belarusians. There are many reasons for this, and it will take another long paper like this one to describe them all. In order to sustain the current economic model, the government is poising on the political, financial, and cultural support from Moscow. Hence the average modern Belarusian, who mostly speaks Russian, knows more about WWII than about GDL, is afraid to speak out, ask questions, and face the government, is ready to accept arguments offered by wholly state-owned mass media, and is inclined to silently bear the hardships imposed by the largely ineffective and poorly-managed economic model.

Welcome, вiтаем, willkommen, benvenuto, и добро пожаловать!

Dear Friend!

I'm honored you're here, very genuinely so. I've long prepared for you to come, so let me give you some guidance over what this whole blog is about. I'll tell you a little story.

As I was a student at Central European University Business School, I started writing. I wrote over a range of subjects, and I just want to thank my professors who brought me to thinking and writing about stuff. Writing taught me things I wrote about, to the point when I actually wanted to share what I learned because I thought that stuff was important. Gradually, however, I lost the courage to speak out continuously and became lazy... well, yeah, lazy.

But to tell the truth, the idea to share my thoughts with you guys - and learn as I do it - remained with me throughout this time. With so many events to comment on, with our selective (and never comprehensive) understanding of the world - with all that - my desire to come back and talk became so evident, that I postponed searching for a good wedding suit which I will need so soon until I publish this. Of course, it's not like I come in and the giant idea light bulb will descend on a wisdom cloud to you, no. I will just present my humble view on what I think is important and uncovered the way I see it, and will put every bit of effort to speak to you as thoughtfully and as effectively as I can.

For those of you who rolled their eyes when they saw the name of the blog and said to themselves, 'Ah, Ilya...' : I decided to put my last name on the blog name in order to charactarize the content, so you may treat it as an adjective, like "Ooh, this blog is so Baltinsky I'll follow it," or "Marie, gimme another bottle of that Baltinsky beer." My personal understanding of 'Baltinsky' in this blog's context is:

QUALITY        INFORMATIVE          INTERESTING          SIMPLE

yet hopefully not boring. I will focus on various aspects of finance (hence the word 'Financial'), with a bit more emphasis on corporate finance and news. We all know there's little finance without politics, just like there's little sense in having a diet coke after eating 3 burgers. Therefore, I expect comments on politics, too. Finally, I may introduce you to some other non-financial outlooks of mine which I really want to share with you. You will find it all under the relevant sections above.

I have a million ideas regarding this blog, and I will introduce you to them as we go. One hint though: I'll invite many of you for discussion. For now, I feel like those of you who actually read the whole introduction want to slap me in the face and go read something else. So feel welcome to check out what I have in store for you, my friend!

Sincerely yours,
Baltinsky Financial