Morning Coffee: Bank offers employees psychological counselling after "disgusting" firing. Andy Sieg says he's not a bully

Australian bank, ANZ, can be a demanding employer. If you don't appear in the office at least half the week (admittedly gentle by JPMorgan standards), ANZ will deduct your pay. But even if you are in the office all week, and it wants to fire you, ANZ will do so, and maybe in the sort of clumsy way that will leave you feeling that your world is precarious.  

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There was one such clumsy firing incident at ANZ this week. An employee representative declared it "disgusting." Reuters reports that the bank is offering employees "psychological counselling" to help them cope with the trauma. They're still being fired, though. 

At issue is the process. The Australian Financial Review reported that 300 senior people at the bank received an automated email informing them how to return their laptops. The email was sent prematurely and was supposed to follow conversations with the 300 employees on Thursday. Instead, it was the first they knew of their removals. 

Worse things have happened. At UBS in 2012, traders in London famously found they were fired only when they arrived at the office and either their key fobs didn't work or their emails bounced back. At the time, those cuts were described as "brutal" and "devastating". Many of those affected convened in a nearby pub.

At ANZ, the recipients of the "return your laptop" email appear to have been working from home and therefore couldn't drown their sorrows in the Railway Tavern. Instead, they seem to have directed their anger to ANZ.  Afflicted individuals reportedly asked senior executives whether there would be support, prompting the bank to provide them with the "direct numbers" of psychologists. Others emailed the head of "talent and culture" to inquire whether they were really being fired. The answer was "yes."

Separately, Citi's Andy Sieg has been accused of upsetting people too, allegedly by shouting, sarcasm and belittlement. Citi hasn't deployed supportive psychologists, but it has thoroughly investigated the allegations and is standing by Sieg, whom it says is a "hard charging leader" with a mandate for changing the wealth management business he runs.

Now Sieg himself is publicly refuting the allegations. In an interview with Fox News, Sieg said the stories about him weren't accurate. “What I’d say overall is change is hard, and we’ve been driving a lot of change across Citi and in our wealth business. That change is working, I’m happy to say,” Sieg declared. 

He added that: “The quality of talent that has risen up inside Citi and joined our part of the business from outside has been phenomenal. So we’re moving ahead full speed.” The implication is that naysayers will not be missed.

Meanwhile...

Stefan Bollinger, the ex-Goldman Sachs partner running Julius Baer, stands accused of firing people who don't agree with him and halving the notice period to three months for people he cuts. (Inside ParadePlatz)      

As deals recover, junior bankers at Chinese brokers like Citic Securities in Hong Kong have had 15-30% pay rises. Some junior associates now earn HK$75,000 to HK$80,000 a month. This is below 2021 levels but on a par with 2022.  (Bloomberg) 

Zev Garell left JPMorgan after 23 years to join Barclays. He was an MD in leveraged finance origination at JPMorgan. At Barclays, he will be head of leveraged finance EMEA. (Bloomberg) 

Banks haven't cut headcount this year, but nor have they grown it. Overall front office employee numbers at the top investment banks stood at 51,000 at the end of the first half of 2025. This is the same as it was in 2023. (Financial News) 

Fixed income trading at RBC was up 35% year-on-year in the third quarter. Equities trading was up 43%. (Financial News) 

Deutsche Bank has been fined $3m in Hong Kong for overcharging clients on management fees, the incorrect assignment of product risk ratings and failure to disclose investment banking relationships in certain research reports. (Reuters) 

Multistrategy "pod shop" hedge funds are the new banks. They're all about basis trades (selling banks treasury futures so that they gain exposure to long term treasury rates without owning the underlying bonds); dispersion trades (selling index options to protect against broader stock market crashes); index rebalance trades (buying and selling the stocks that funds need for indices to continue tracking their assigned underlying realities); and merger arbitrage (buying and selling stock ahead of mergers). This is what banks did 20 years ago. (Bloomberg) 

Pratik Pandey, a 35-year-old Microsoft engineer, was found dead in the office. He frequently worked late at night. (Bloomberg) 

It's becoming common for parents to support their children into their 30s and beyond. One financial adviser described a 40-year-old woman still on her parents’ phone plan. (WSJ) 

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