Giants Still Walk the Earth at Banks

Oops!

Working at an investment bank is a sort of anonymous business. You go into the office every day, you work hard, you meet with clients, you chase the money, you do what you can to contribute to the bank's bottom line. But that bottom line is massive, and there are a lot of people who contribute, and when the bank reports earnings every quarter it's not like they can give a shout-out to everyone who did their part. "Steve in equity derivatives has been working on improving his ability to make small talk with clients, and you can really see the difference in our revenue numbers, so good job Steve," is something that Jamie Dimon does not say on earnings calls. If you want that sort of personal recognition, investment banking is not the industry for you. You have to do something really special to get called out individually in an earnings release. So congratulations to -- well, they don't name him or her, but whoever printed the Steinhoff margin loan for JPMorgan Chase & Co. got a nice mention in the earnings release: