Morning Coffee: Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley bankers on H1B visas are being outsourced. European traders beg for bigger bonuses

They say that “a principle isn’t a principle until it’s cost you money”.  And contrariwise, when top executives discover that the price of H-1B visas is going up, they seem to suddenly discover that teamwork, mentorship and serendipity aren’t quite as important as they previously believed them to be.  Which means that a job which previously required everyone to be in the office together five days a week can now be done remotely from Bengaluru.

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Bloomberg reports that the top six US banks have a collective 150,000 employees in their Indian GCCs (Global Capacity Centers). GCCs aren't home to the stereotypically low-paying back office roles (those are being outsourced to the Philippines); they hire quants, engineers and investment staff. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley reportedly have more employees in India than any other office outside the US. 

Their numbers are likely to grow. JPMorgan, for example, wants to shift half of its junior investment bankers to lower-cost locations like India and Argentina.

Keeping Indian staff in India rather than bringing them over on H-1B visas is obviously a slightly difficult and risky move on the part of the employers.  The system is meant to be for jobs that require unique global talent to come to the USA.  So if you start outsourcing some of them because it’s less expensive to do so, it might undermine your other H-1B sponsorships, for jobs where you really do need to bring overseas bankers into the office.  A White House spokesperson has said that “The fact that these banks are moving their operations to markets where labor is cheaper now that they cannot abuse the H-1B system is evidence that they were using foreign workers to undercut Americans’ wage”, and although this isn’t really right, it is kind of embarrassing.

But the fact that this is now a viable choice underlines the extent to which Indian bankers are now viable alternatives for jobs all the way up the ranks, from junior techies to Heads of Investment Banking.  Whatever the tariff situation, the competition for your next job might be sitting in Bengaluru.

Elsewhere, it is getting near the end of the year, the time at which compensation committees meet and try to decide who’s getting how much.  The 2025 negotiations will be particularly difficult to negotiate, as there are plenty of business lines which have had good results and many which have a great outlook, but not necessarily a huge overlap between the two.

It’s likely to be a period during which maintaining one’s dignity is not necessarily the highest priority, and when you can expect every possible card to be paid. But some bankers will be listening to their Swiss colleagues, who are apparently asking to be paid more to reflect the fact that dollar bonuses don’t go quite as far when converted into francs, and saying … really?

They might be considered to have a little bit of a point.  Most of the time, non-US employees of US banks are expected to put up with the fact that the compensation is determined in dollars, exposing them to FX volatility.  Some years you win and some you lose, and it all evens out in the end.  But it’s been a long time since anything appreciated against the Swiss franc, and they’ve lost 13% in the last twelve months, before taking into account the rising cost of living in the Alps.

But really.  It’s never edifying to see bankers pleading poverty, and when it’s Swiss bankers doing so, it becomes actively hilarious. The ironic thing is that the Zurich and Geneva offices of many global banks actually have a pretty good claim to be paid up.  There have been plenty of M&A deals, financial sponsors have been at least as active as anywhere else, and the whole reason that the currency has appreciated reflects strong business in rates and bond trading.  So it might be counterproductive to start talking about the currency – weak reasons for wanting to be paid often undermine strong ones rather than supporting them.

Meanwhile…

What promises to be a somewhat awkward evening at the White House, as David Solomon and Jamie Dimon join Larry Fink and Bill Ackman for dinner and light conversation with the President.  Jane Fraser had a prior engagement in Asia and Brian Moynihan has not been invited for reasons that aren’t quite clear.  Let’s hope nobody makes an ill-advised joke about compliance problems with historic emails.  (FT)

Compliance professionals have always operated in a global market, but increasingly, so do the regulators they work with.  The Financial Conduct Authority has recruited senior financial cops from Canada and the USA, as some of its own top staff have gone to tick boxes in Hong Kong and Dubai. (Financial News)

Cringe or cool?  Some bankers think that it’s kind of basic to carry your gym kit or evening outfit around in the holdall they gave you on the graduate program; others argue that they’re actually pretty good bags and they don’t crease your clothes.  Obviously, the answer is to get one with the logo of a defunct bank like Lehman Brothers or Credit Suisse, to indicate that you’ve been around a while. (Business Insider)

With AI emerging as the hottest hiring sector of them all, and the troubles at Man Group as it tries to compete for talent with the big multistrats, something like this was always likely to happen.  Tim Mace, Man’s head of data and machine learning, has gone to Brevan Howard. (Financial News)

Quadrature Capital seems to offer its employees a pretty sweet set of perks, including “15 nights of a night nanny”.  And apparently its founder is a trustee of the British Ice Hockey Foundation. (Times)

It almost feels like cheating to skip all the anguish, drama and politics by simply moving to another law firm and becoming a “day one partner” rather than going through the selection mill.  But increasing numbers of well-regarded senior associates are doing it, and then enjoying the anguish, drama and politics of trying to get business from their old clients. (Financial News)

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