Morning Coffee: Deutsche Bank man earns $11m in two years, resigns. M&A bankers can earn more outside M&A
Was it Olivier Vigneron's intention to walk away from Deutsche Bank? The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times both suggest that it was. He has decided not to "seek an extension of his contract" goes the wording. He will be leaving on May 19th 2025.
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It was good while it lasted. Vigneron, who is a clever French former structured products traders with a degree in mathematics from France's École Polytechnique and a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago, joined at Deutsche Bank as chief risk officer in November 2021. During his first two years with the bank, he earned €10m ($10.5m). It seems fair to presume that this might have risen to $15m in year three.
Why leave? Vigneron has been toiling for nearly two and a half decades, so it's conceivable that he wanted a break. Before he became chief risk officer at Deutsche Bank, he was chief risk officer at Natixis. Before he was chief risk officer at Natixis, he worked in market risk for JPMorgan during the era of the London Whale and its $6.5bn loss. Before he worked in market risk for JPMorgan, he was global head of structured credit trading for residential mortgages for BNP Paribas during the financial crisis. None of this can have been easy.
What will Vigneron do next? He didn't respond to a request to comment, but his name means winemaker in France, so maybe he will return to type. Deutsche Bank will be replacing him with Marcus Chromik, who has a PhD in nuclear physics and who made €100k for his own account, shorting the Dax at the start of COVID, before giving some of it to charity when the German media found out. While Vigneron ventures on, it will fall to Chromik to manage Deutsche's risks, including its bad loans - which the FT notes have risen from €1.5bn to €1.8bn in two years. Presumably he will be as well remunerated as his predecessor.
Separately, M&A bankers need to diversify. The Financial Times notes that Ken Moelis of Moelis & Co. has been speaking about how there are better things for M&A bankers than just M&A.
These days, you can make very good money sourcing private capital for private debt companies, says Ken. Moelis & Co recently sourced $1.5bn in private debt for a direct lender and achieved $30m in fees in the process. Ken says capital markets coverage bankers need to get into this field, which is "going to explode" and lacks talent. Instead of waiting for the proverbial financial sponsors to get back into the M&A market, forget working with private equity funds and funnel money into private credit instead.
Meanwhile...
An ex-Barclays VP who says HSBC didn't hire her when it found out about her previous discrimination claim has been allowed to continue with her case. (Reuters)
Blackstone expects to sell and exit more than twice the number of private equity investments in 2025. (Reuters)
Deutsche Bank hired Luba Kotzeva as head of power, utilities and energy transition in Europe. (Financial News)
Citigroup has cut about five analyst jobs inside a small team dedicated to producing ESG and climate reports. (Bloomberg)
Net commodities trading revenues at Wall Street banks are expected to be $10.6bn this year, down 20% on 2023. (Bloomberg)
Walmart has got a fintech called One, and it's been offering products targeting Walmart's customers. It's already valued at $2.5bn and just raised $300m. (Bloomberg)
Ramzi Issa, a former Credit Suisse banker, left UBS after pioneering debt for nature swaps, and now the bank has been left out of a $300m deal. (Bloomberg)
The number of remote jobs paying $250k or more is rising. (WSJ)
BlackRock is hiring an executive protection specialist on $175k. (Financial News)
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