A $250 million day for Barclays; Snowflake's data exchange; flex-space meltdown
Welcome to Wall Street Insider, where we take you behind the scenes of the finance team's biggest scoops and deep dives from the past week.
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Deals, IPOs, and fund launches may be slowing to a near-standstill, but work is just as busy as ever for some on Wall Street.
Restructuring bankers are suddenly a hot commodity, and they're swamped with calls as companies look to navigate the coronavirus pandemic. Lawyers on the restructuring side told how us a sudden collapse of revenues in areas like retail and energy is accelerating work, as one put it: "all hands on deck would be an understatement."
In a firm-wide voice message, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon explained how important it is to avoid burnout, especially when WFH blurs the lines between work and home. (Solomon said he went for a two-hour ride on his road bike last weekend to unplug.)
And as Dakin Campbell reported on Monday, extreme market volatility has been good for trading desks. At Barclays, the bank's global-markets business took in about $250 million in revenue in just one day earlier this month. And JPMorgan has been racking up record daily volumes in forex, rates, futures, and algorithmic execution.
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Barclays made $250 million in one day of trading as banks raked in money on market volatility
Wishing everyone a healthy and safe weekend. As always, my line is open at mmazzilli@businessinsider.com.
-Meredith
Early adopters are looking for a data solution
As Wall Street's obsession with data continues to grow, firms are eager to make digesting information as easy as possible. Dan DeFrancesco and Bradley Saacks explain how Snowflake, a startup most recently valued at $12.4 billion, has launched a data exchange that already counts hedge funds like Philippe Laffont's Coatue and data vendors like FactSet as users.
Read the full story here:
Coatue and Fidelity are early adopters of $12.4 billion startup Snowflake's new data exchange - here's why they think it can transform Wall Street
Bad tidings for bonus season
Bonus pay on Wall Street could fall by as much as 40%, according to compensation consulting firm Johnson Associates. As Shannen Balogh reports, firms may take steps including getting creative with non-cash bonuses and limiting executive pay to help boost morale and keep top talent.
Read the full story here:
Here are 5 ways Wall Street firms can get creative on compensation as bonuses are expected to plunge this year
What a 'protracted slump' looks like for commercial real estate
Alex Nicoll highlighted the must-know takeaways from a recent Moody's Analytics report that forecasts the effects of a coronavirus-fueled, Great Recession-sized hit to commercial real estate. Unsurprisingly, retail and hospitality assets will likely see the worst of it, but some niche parts of the multifamily segment, like student and senior housing, could also be at risk.
Read the full story here:
7 charts show how the coronavirus could clobber real estate, from retail vacancies of nearly 15% to plunging office rents in Texas cities
Hedge fund closures have been outnumbering launches the last couple of years, and the novel coronavirus will likely only speed up that trend. As Bradley Saacks reports, with allocators' portfolios hit hard and markets going haywire, both hedge-fund investors and money managers looking to start their own fund are slow to dive into something new.
Read the full story here:
'Ground to a halt': Insiders detail the struggles of trying to launch a hedge fund during a global pandemic
On the move
- Citigroup just poached the mastermind behind JPMorgan Chase's Sapphire Reserve to run its credit-card division
- Goldman Sachs is now hiring high-school graduates for roles in Salt Lake City
- AMC Entertainment is furloughing hundreds of corporate employees
- Major law firms are weighing pay cuts for partners against unseemly staff layoffs as billings plunge
- The coronavirus is disrupting law students' path to $200,000 full-time gigs
- SoftBank-backed real estate brokerage Compass just slashed 15% of staff and is pausing marketing
- Airbnb-backed Zeus Living just laid off 30% of staff
- Days after laying off 20% of its workforce, Brookfield-backed Convene furloughed half of remaining employees
Other must-reads from the finance team
- RBC has emerged as enemy No. 1 in a new battle between mortgage funds and the banks that give them financing.
- Leaked memo reveals Knotel CEO's playbook for burying news about jobs cuts at the flex-office startup
- Grubhub and JPMorgan have teamed up to let delivery drivers instantly access earnings, and cash-outs are surging
- How a new Barclays data-science team is fast-tracking research to measure the economic impact of the coronavirus
- Firms like Zillow and SoftBank-backed Opendoor are halting their capital-intensive home-flipping businesses
- A UBS exec lays out the benefits and pain points of all-electronic trading
- Private equity firms and their portfolio companies need to adapt fast to the coronavirus. Here's the new playbook.
