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Will just repost my thoughts on Operations from the other thread here. If anyone wants info about Ops specifically please let me know, otherwise it seems like others are better qualified to answer questions about buyside/S&T/IBD/the more glamorous stuff. I posted:If investment banking were a (American) football game, front-office people are the players on the field and back-office people are the ones running out giving them water between plays. It's a necessary function, sure, but definitely not the exciting part of the game. No trophies, $$$ signing bonuses, post-game interviews. \/\/ haha, do I know you? zmcnulty fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Jan 27, 2011 |
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Jan 27, 2011 08:51
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My business title was "Head Bartender" until someone in regional mgmt flagged it and whined to our country head. What a party pooper. However my away message on chat is still "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the trades of our lives."
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May 17, 2011 05:51
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I work pretty closely with our Legal folks for our credit stuff, and they are usually all gone by 6:30PM. YMMV.
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Jun 1, 2011 03:38
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8% Pay $100 for my e-book and I'll tell you how.
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Jun 23, 2011 09:12
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Have you actually worked 100 hours a week before? Rang a bell?
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Aug 16, 2011 01:19
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Swingline posted:Looks like I'm going to do a lot of pregaming. A pitcher of bud light where I go to school is $6. Thanks for the advice on looking into CFA scholarships because that would save so much money. A pitcher of beer is like $50 here 
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Feb 13, 2012 01:25
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Nam Taf posted:I really wish I could see actual examples of what you kids do in Excel. I want to know what sort of complexity your stuff gets to and how much you have to do. What kind of stuff are you interested in seeing? I work in exotic derivatives middle office. Something like Monte Carlo simulation isn't done in Excel alone; it's just the frontend. edit just to give some more depth from an operations/middle office perspective. Bank-wide we assume any process managed using only Excel is a lovely process, prone to operational risk. But it's definitely the most versatile piece of software we have on our machines. It's fantastic at managing tabular data, and basically all the data we have is tabular. In my last role I built an entire sales conf creation tool for MBS repos using Excel. Was pretty gnarly because it would auto-import BBG sales tickets and with 1 click would auto pair-off and generate the confs. But the "proper" solution these days is not making Excel macros yourself but raising a request to IT, have them build a tool for that purpose. So at least on my desk it's mostly just as a front-end. Even our trade blotters aren't Excel anymore. zmcnulty fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Jun 29, 2012 |
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Jun 29, 2012 01:56
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tolerabletariff posted:What constitutes an exotic derivative? I'd assume options, futures, forwards, and rate/credit swaps aren't considered "exotic" anymore at this point. What wonderful new contraptions have the great minds in S&T engineered to generate returns and/or counterparty risk this time around? We define "exotic" as not vanilla. A standard IRS is vanilla, but throw in some yearly Bermuda options with it? Then it's exotic. Xccy swap? Exotic. If for example one of our MTN issuances involves: 1) variable maturity due to target redemption (i.e. there's an accrual knock-out on the note) and 2) coupon chooser, then it's unquestionably exotic. Even if it had only one of those parameters it would still be exotic and traded by my desk. There isn't a lot of consistency within our own company. Here in TKY we call it the exotics desk but in LDN they call it Structured Rates or Lightly Structured depending on product. There is no Heavily Structured desk, that's called Complex Transaction Management for some reason. Needless to say it's difficult to tell exactly what a desk trades based on its name alone, once you get away from the vanilla stuff. That's just the rates side, credit is a different monster. edit: to answer your other question though, my desk hasn't invented anything new. These days it's just putting things on a structuring continuum, e.g. just how customized do you want your drat cashflows because our structurers will figure it out! zmcnulty fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Jun 29, 2012 |
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Jun 29, 2012 06:45
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Yeah, basically if there's any calculation required beyond LIBOR+spread, we would consider it a "structured coupon" thus go through our structuring desk. So yes exotic. We've trust-held assets for secured loans (rather than MTNs) in the past too out of my desk.
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Jul 3, 2012 03:12
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In this environment I'd question budgeting for anything, especially rent, based on expected bonus numbers.
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Oct 9, 2012 01:49
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Most IBs won't exist in five years so it makes things a lot easier for you
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Nov 21, 2012 01:03
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I can't imagine many back office jobs where M&A experience would be useful, maybe he/she just wanted to get a foot in the door at MS, or in NYC?
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Jan 30, 2013 02:14
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Of the total performance awards paid to any employee, the maximum amount of immediate cash received is capped at CHF 1 million. Any amount above this cap that would have been paid in cash will be fully deferred into EOP. This cash cap was reduced from its previous level of CHF 2 million. Cash bonus capped at only CHF 1mio this year, I put that tiny violin somewhere... edit: \/\/ oh don't worry, I've had zero expectations since the day I joined zmcnulty fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Feb 6, 2013 |
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Feb 5, 2013 08:13
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I thought the same thing, then figured a lot of people don't differentiate between internal policy and compliance. My guess is the former!
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Jul 8, 2013 09:18
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Step 7 isn't even necessary, unless you suck at securitization
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Jul 31, 2013 02:45
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Operations dude here, I started in BO and currently work in MO. Specifically Derivs MO. I don't think you'll hear any debate about whether or not there's a distinction between the two from anyone actually working in Operations. Some FO people have no idea what happens after a trade is executed, so from their perspective MO/BO are the same -- that's why you may see some debate. You're correct in that MO works more closely with FO. At my company most MO teams are assigned to certain desks and the associated traders, supporting whatever products they are trading. Right now I mostly support the JPY Vanilla Rates desk, so whatever they choose to trade, my team will have to support it. Mostly IRS, basis, xccy, FX, ETD, blah blah blah. The trading mandate for vanilla rates is pretty narrow, but if for whatever reason they ended up trading CDS next month, we'd have to support that. "Support" defined later. One thing we're absolutely not allowed to do in MO is settle trades. The ability to book trades and the ability to settle trades must remain completely separate, i.e. no trader is allowed to look after settlements of their own trades. Likewise, nobody in BO is allowed to amend/book new trades. We call this segregation of duty and everyone takes it VERY seriously. As a result, in MO we're mostly doing trade support, this means a) assuring the trades that are executed are accurately reflected in the risk management system ("trade capture/affirmation"), b) making sure traders aren't doing anything they shouldn't be doing, and c) meeting regulatory requirements (SEFs just went live yesterday for example). Of course there's a lot else: our job is basically everything from the time the trader says "done" to the time we are 100% sure what's in our system is correct. Our BO teams consist of settlements, client onboarding (KYC and such), custody/asset servicing. Then there are some other Operations teams which are neither BO nor MO such as Change, but we'll ignore them since they're not really involved in trade flow and definitely not entry-level. They're more project-based. We don't consider Legal & Compliance, Market Risk, Credit Risk, Finance, Technology, or Accounting to be MO or BO. Yes we're all "support functions" but MO/BO/Operations specifically supports trade flow, while those other departments don't. I personally enjoy MO a crapload more than BO. The work isn't notably more "important" than BO--the modern economy would basically shutdown without Settlements/BO--but it's certainly more interesting. We're more directly exposed to changes in the market and regulatory environment, so things change far more rapidly than they do in BO. If you are eventually looking to go to FO, namely Trading or Sales, MO gives you a far better idea of what to expect vs BO. Hours worked, this is a an extremely difficult question to answer. In my experience the hours you work are influenced by the culture of your company, office location, department, team, and finally your own judgment. Where I am, there's no sitting around waiting for your boss to finish so you can go home. This is true of both BO and MO. When I am done with my job I get out of here. But even within the same team we have different hours because the guy that sits next to me is OCD and has no social life. I work 9am-7pm but he's here until like 10pm daily. Despite the fact that our trading floor is empty by 7pm.
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Oct 3, 2013 06:45
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bearbackbuyback posted:This is awesome, thanks for all the info! It sounds like I should look into MO; it certainly sounds a bit more interesting than standard BO. Basically I'm interested in ops but if possible would like to put myself in a position where I could perhaps improve my chances to move into FO if I decided it was feasible and I like the business well enough. MO usually isn't an entry-level role, most people coming here have at least a couple years experience elsewhere, ordinarily other Operations teams. If you're coming right out of school you'll probably apply to Operations as a department, not a specific team. That said if you know the difference between BO and MO you already know a lot more than most new grad applicants. As for moving to FO, it really just depends. It's happened a lot recently in my particular team, we lost 2 people to Trading and 1 to Sales in the past 3 months. Then again this is Tokyo fixed income, presumably not as competitive as Wall Street equities (as you suspect). At the very least MO will provide you with exposure to curves, risk bucketing, pnl, etc., so there's that. Personally trading doesn't really interest me, at least not as a job in an investment bank. Best case scenario you'll probably need ~4 years total: 2 years BO, 2 years MO, then hope a position opens on the desk you want. Yes, I'm in Tokyo. I started here. The more flexible you are about location the better chances -- we've been telling every new graduate interviewing in Tokyo that a condition of hire is they spend their first few years in Singapore. bearbackbuyback posted:Are these risk people hired from the beginning to do risk, or is this an office in ops? $130K is well above the $65-75K that swingline noted for MO/BO in his post, and I'm wondering if there's that much variation among ops teams. It would certainly be nice to get on the higher end of those numbers if it's ultimately the same workload. tolerabletariff posted:Well, that $130k is base ($70k) and bonus ($60k), much how it works for us. They're hired specifically to do Risk, which has a three-year Analyst program similar to IBD's two-year program. They are from largely the same schools as IBD hires, maybe a few more... Also notable in that its a heavily female department, at least 50% women which is of course a sharp contrast to the rest of banking. We work closely with both Market Risk Control (MRC) and Credit Risk Control (CRC) but they aren't Middle Office or Operations functions at my firm. So I can't really speak to them. People that work in risk-oriented roles in Operations deal with operational risk, regulatory risk, or trading risk. Comp is a shot in the dark, but I'd still expect $60-70k first year. For Ops, getting a bonus really isn't anything you should rely on.
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Oct 8, 2013 06:29
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Teddles posted:How did you come to start work in Tokyo? I can understand moving there later in your career, but it must be tough to start out there. Maybe better answered in the Japan megathread but basically I did study abroad/studied Japanese, so I had 2 years experience living here and spoke business-level before coming. Applied at a crapload of companies, Japanese and foreign, finance and non-finance (majored in Supply Chain Management @ SCarolina), and ended up with 3 offers. This seemed like the best of the 3, especially compensation; Japanese companies start new grads at $30k per year tops. This disparity was actually highlighted a few years back when the ex-Lehman grads joined Nomura. zmcnulty fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Oct 9, 2013 |
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Oct 9, 2013 05:53
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Operations goon here. I did 2 years in the back office and never want to go back. It can be interesting at times but for the most part you'll be spending your entire day in front of Excel and Outlook, not necessarily counting beans but making sure all the beans end up in the right places. If they don't, you send more emails and make phone calls to try and fix it. At the entry-level you won't be doing much more than this, maybe if you're lucky you can join a project team within half a year. Then you get the privilege of sitting on global calls at 9AM everyday, yay! That said people that actually know their poo poo in the BO are literally indispensable. Provided the global financial system remains somewhat stable, you will have a job until you retire. Even if your firm lays off all of S&T, you'll still have a job. Like, even in the event Cthulhu obliterates our office we still have to make sure our drat trades settle because if they don't, the economy rapidly goes to poo poo too. So you'll definitely have a job. Try and learn as much about the trade lifecycle as possible, and exactly where your team fits in. This will make your job easier and you will be 50x more useful to your company. Anything involving settlements and SSI setup is typically classed as BO. MO is typically trade support, so we sit closer to S&T and mostly just support them. The reason there's a line (and in my firm, several city blocks) between the two is because nobody with write access to the risk management system is allowed write access to the settlements systems. Otherwise someone could just book some trade facing the Nigerian Royal Family and settle it themselves, poof money gone. So MO supports trading by having write access in the risk management system, but doing only Operationsy-stuff. For comp, yeah, obviously Ops is less because we are just a cost center, i.e. we don't make the bank any money (there are a few exceptions but whatever). As a result there's a lot less glamour, no stupid big bonuses. I would guess that even our global head of Ops is around $250K. However you'll probably start around $60K? So you won't be struggling either. Rotation is a crapshoot, yes. I would say MO is an easier jumping point to FO because we work more directly with S&T and in some cases sit on the desk. And indeed some MO coworkers have taken roles in S&T once those seats open up. So not impossible but I wouldn't join Ops under the impression you'll definitely move to FO after a year or whatever. zmcnulty fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 13:40
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Walh Hara posted:Ha, that's funny because in my bank there only one rotation that is never ever allowed and it's rotating from Middle Office to Front Office. Apparantly some rogue trader in France (Jerome Kerviel) abused his background from middle office to know how to evade the risk checking systems and trading limitations of the bank and ended up with an estimated loss of almost 5$ billion. Not my bank, but ever since you have to rotate from MO to some other part of the bank first (and stay a few years) before you can go to FO. Actually it's funny you mention that because I originally had a line in that paragraph about how post-Kweku Adoboli the MO->FO move got a lot more difficult at UBS. He is former MO as well, and I worked in UBS MO when he was arrested. But even a year after that we had MO people moving to TA roles in FO, so again, not impossible. Granted the global head of trading or something had to sign off on that move but hey.
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Mar 10, 2015 01:04
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