Morgan Stanley's WhatsApp woes – How to get hired at Blackstone — Private-equity comp, revealed

Happy Saturday!

It was a busy week for Wall Street news, with fines, exits, pay cuts, and more. Here's what you need to know:

• 2 top Morgan Stanley commodities execs have left after the bank discovered the group was improperly using WhatsApp to communicate. A source familiar with the matter told Business Insider the two had displayed a "failure to supervise use of the communications within the commodities business."
• Goldman Sachs is paying billions in fines over the 1MDB scandal and cutting exec pay. Here's what's been going on inside the bank.
• JPMorgan is considering hiring as many as 4,000 financial advisors in the next five to six years, wealth boss Kristin Lemkau told Business Insider. The firm has already hired large teams of experienced FAs from rivals including Merrill Lynch and UBS in recent months.
• Wells Fargo is exploring a sale of its asset management business, Reuters first reported.

How to ace an interview at Blackstone

Reed Alexander and Casey Sullivan chatted with Blackstone President and COO Jon Gray, industry headhunters, and Blackstone's global head of human resources to learn what it takes to stand out and get hired at the firm. Here are some of the highlights:

• There were 19,000 applications for the firm's 2020 first-year analyst class, and just 94 were hired, according to data Blackstone shared.
• "At a place like this, we have relatively few people. And we really need people who care," Gray said.
• "I look for too many references to 'I' versus 'we,'" Paige Ross, Blackstone's global head of HR, told Business Insider. "Most people do things as part of a team, and I want to see candidates accurately reflect that."
• You can read the full story here: Blackstone insiders reveal how to land a job at the ultra-competitive private-equity giant

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Inside the alumni network of billionaire Israel Englander

Millennium Management, the massive hedge-fund manager founded by the billionaire Israel Englander more than 30 years ago, has a sprawling web of alumni who have gone on to found their own firms.

Bradley Saacks found that more than 70 former employees have launched their own funds across the globe. You can see the full story, database, and graphic here.

Private equity pay, revealed

While raises weren't as common as they were a year ago, a majority of respondents to Heidrick & Struggles latest survey on private-equity compensation say they got a pay bump over their 2019 base salary.

Associates, even at the smallest funds, averaged nearly $200,000 in base salary and bonus last year. You can see all the data here.

Why Goldman Sachs and Blackstone are betting billions on data centers

Demand for data centers has boomed and bluechip investors like Goldman Sachs, KKR, and Blackstone have taken notice, announcing deals and unveiling plans to invest.

On Tuesday, Goldman said it would invest $500 million into data centers around the globe. And as Dan Geiger reports, users continue to take spaces — with ByteDance, the parent of TikTok, signing up for 53 megawatts in Northern Virginia and Bloomberg LP anchoring a huge data-center complex in New Jersey.

You can read our full analysis here.

The code for Goldman Sachs' internal data platform is now open for anyone to use

After a six-month pilot period where banks like Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank put it to the test, Goldman Sachs' internal data platform Legend is being released to whoever wants to use it on coding-collaboration site Github.

The bank's data chief told Bradley Saacks why the firm decided to share something seven years in the making.

How Deloitte and EY struck gold by helping states with their pandemic responses

As Samantha Stokes reports, tax and audit firms Deloitte and EY have found business opportunities by contracting with state governments to provide technical support, staffing for unemployment claims centers, and more.

In 10 contracts with four states, the two firms have netted more than $63 million. The contracts were awarded without a bidding process.

Highlights from this week's Business Insider Global Trends Festival:

• Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski on why digital retail checkouts are a huge buy now, pay later battleground: "There are a lot of buttons in the checkout. I just want to be the most popular."
• Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman on the future of the cloud: "Do I think in 10 years, that many of the markets around the world, including Nasdaq, could and should be able to leverage cloud to operate their actual trading activities? The answer is yes, I do."
• FactSet CFO Helen Shan on how the data giant quantifies innovation: "Speed, reliability, ease of use. People don't necessarily think of that as innovation, but the reality is that is."
• AlixPartners CEO Simon Freakley on what's separated winners from losers in 2020: "One doesn't have to have an online strategy to be successful, but one has to have a defining strategy."

On the move

Opendoor has hired Daniel Morillo to be the iBuyer's chief investment officer. Morillo is currently a managing director and head of equity quantitative research at $34 billion hedge fund firm Citadel.

Opendoor last month announced plans to merge with Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp II, a SPAC led by venture-capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya.

Legal

• Litigation finance is going mainstream. Here's how a US stock listing for top player Burford Capital could transform the landscape for investors placing bets on lawsuits.
• 7 lawyers helping Google fight landmark antitrust charges in a battle that could stretch on for years, from in-house pros to DOJ veterans
• Baker McKenzie just teamed up with an AI platform to help clients make better business decisions. A partner lays out how the tech will help the firm 'make meaning out of the volatility.'
• Here's the 14-page pitch deck that lays out how this contract-editing startup seeks to disrupt a $35 billion industry, which it used to nab $3.2 million from investors including DocuSign

Real estate

• This company is building 3-D printed, small homes on existing residential properties to fight back against California's housing shortage. Look inside a unit that was move-in ready in one week.