Finance executives, on earnings calls and public appearances, have been clear when comparing the current pandemic to the financial crisis more than a decade ago that they are fundamentally different.

One example that that's the case is the enthusiasm from investors for private equity, an industry with tens of billions of unused capital before the pandemic hit. Dealmaking has slowed, but funds looking to raise capital are optimistic about the industry's outlook.

A new report from recruiting firm Heidrick & Struggles states that while hiring isn't at its 2019 levels, " we are still seeing an active market, notably more active than what we saw during the global financial crisis almost a decade ago." 

"First, the PE industry is much larger now than it was during the financial crisis, and because that crisis was financial in nature, there was an overall paralysis in financial services," the report reads.

"Now, while there is most definitely uncertainty in the industry, it is not frozen."

See more: We talked to top private equity recruiters about the future of recruiting in 2021. Here are their predictions.

And compensation for these roles are still ticking up. The report found that a majority of the 785 respondents — 57% — got a raise in their base salary from their 2019 pay. The increases were on the modest side though, with the majority reporting raises of less than 10%.

Not that the industry didn't pay well before the raises. Including bonus and base salary, even associates at the smallest funds made nearly $200,000 on average last year; at funds with more than $2 billion in assets, employees with the title of principal and above pulled in more than half a million, at least, on average last year. 

The higher up the individual, the greater proportion of their compensation comes from their bonus. Associates, senior associates, and even vice presidents at some smaller funds get most of their pay from their base salary, while roles above them are dependent on big bonuses — which averaged more than $1 million in 2019 for partners at bigger funds.

The biggest funds naturally produced the biggest paychecks. Vice president compensation at funds with more $6 billion in assets were often more than what partners and managing directors at sub-billion-dollar funds were making, on average, last year.

The top of the top — founders and managing partners of the biggest funds — did not participate in the survey, according to the authors of the report, except for one managing partner at a firm with assets between $20 billion and $39.9 billion. Business Insider decided not to include the single compensation figure in the above graphic, given the other figures were averages, but this individual made $21 million in compensation last year.

Read more:Blackstone president Jon Gray reveals how to stand out to land a job at the ultra-competitive firm, which hired just o.5% of applicants for 2020 analyst jobs

While bonuses might be leaner this year — Heidrick's report states that dealmaking is the first half of the year was roughly 20% than the same stretch in 2019 — the industry isn't expected to be down for long.

A survey from law firm EisnerAmper found that nearly three out of every four private equity executives believe the deal environment will return to pre-pandemic levels by the end of next year at the latest, with 40% expecting the comeback to happen by the summer of 2021. 

More than half of managers surveyed by EisnerAmper said they planned to add to their investment teams over the next 12 months to meet this demand, and an even higher proportion of managers said they were going to beef up operations staff.

"Plans to resume hiring in 2021 is a strong indication that the private-equity industry is recovering from the disruption that the pandemic caused in the first half of the year," said Peter Cogan, managing partner of EisnerAmper's Financial Services Industry, in a release on the survey.

SEE ALSO: We built the first-ever searchable database of the top Wall Street recruiters for banking, hedge funds, and private equity

SEE ALSO: Blackstone president Jon Gray reveals how to stand out to land a job at the ultra-competitive firm, which hired just o.5% of applicants for 2020 analyst jobs

SEE ALSO: We talked to top private equity recruiters about the future of recruiting in 2021. Here are their predictions.

Join the conversation about this story »

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This story was originally published on Oct. 3. 

Large private-equity firms are feeling pressure to sell assets before year-end to take advantage of a business-friendly tax regime they fear could change in 2021, attorneys and PE executives tell Business Insider.

The thinking is that if Joe Biden is elected president and there is a Democratic majority in Congress, it will unleash a wave of larger taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals who manage them.

Under Biden's plan, he intends to increase the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, as well as nearly double the long-term capital gains maximum tax, from 21% to 39.6% for individual taxpayers earning more than $1 million.

But even if Trump remains in office, experts said that taxes may very well increase so that the government could fund COVID relief efforts. 

"The fiscal relief that was passed as part of the CARES Act was substantial. And then there is discussion on more relief packages, which are very large in size," said Rebecca Lester, an accounting professor at Stanford business school.

"At some point there will have to be a revenue raise to pay for those."

Insiders say possible tax hikes on carried interest are a factor when it comes to deal timing

Insiders said in early October that PE shops have been acting on the expectation of tax hikes, including taxes paid on so-called carried interest, or the gains that a fund generates after selling its investment. That means that firms are pushing to close deals already in the works before year-end. 

"It's a very real issue on people's minds," said Kimberly Smith, co-chair of the global mergers and acquisitions and private equity practice at law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman. 

Smith, along with several other attorneys and private-equity execs, said they were not seeing asset sales come to market only because of the prospect of higher taxes in 2021, but that it's "driving a sense of urgency" within executives already looking to sell.

Read more: KKR is making a big push into the $30 trillion insurance industry — here's why private equity is starting to look more and more like Berkshire Hathaway

Smith said she doesn't expect the sales activity to really heat up until closer to the end of the year.

"If you had a seller that maybe was thinking he would or wouldn't go to market in 2020 and then ran the numbers on the Biden plan, he has to pick up the phone and kick off a process. That's still a scramble to get it done by the end of the year."

Still, there have already been large private-equity asset sales capturing the headlines over the past two months. 

That includes this week's announcement that Blackstone would sell its 36% stake in UK insurer Rothesay Life to GIC and MassMutual, along with the investment giant's sale of a 42% stake in Cheniere Energy Partners to Brookfield. 

Another prominent sale that came in August was Intercontinental Exchange's $11 billion acquisition of mortgage software company Ellie Mae from private equity firm Thoma Bravo. The tech investor had bought Ellie Mae in April 2019 for $3.7 billion.

The tax considerations of those transactions couldn't be determined. And bankers and lawyers said that the deal surge is ultimately being driven by other factors outside of taxes, like the fact that private equity deals experienced a lull mid-year because of COVID-19 and are now trying to play catch-up, and that the Fed and central banks have alleviated the financial markets. 

Jared Kelly, a partner with Reed Smith who advises private-equity firms, was another lawyer who said that he's seeing "a committed push" of deal activity from some of the largest PE shops. 

"There are currently multiple large deals in the pipeline that are trying to close before the end of the year," he said, noting that corporate executives are taking potential 2021 tax obligations into consideration.

Private-equity firms such as Blackstone, TPG, Warburg Pincus, and Apollo offered no comment on deal activity that may have been accelerated by tax prospects when contacted by Business Insider in early October. 

What a 'big delta' in taxes could mean for investor returns 

The topic of taxes has long been a sensitive issue for private equity. Critics say that the firms should be paying much more for their carried interest, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren created a plan as part of her presidential run last year to impose stiffer taxes. 

One private-equity insider told us that, in some deals, "it's just time" to sell. But he noted that selling on Dec. 31 versus Jan. 1 "would be a big delta in tax leakage if you believe rates are going up."

The difference between a 20% and 39.6% capital gains tax rate, for instance, could translate to tens or hundreds of millions depending on the size of a sale. And private-equity firms, eager to get good returns for investors — and themselves — are trying to keep those payments as low as possible. 

David Gibbons, a partner with Hogan Lovells, said he wouldn't be surprised to see an active fourth quarter. 

"There are clearly some appreciated assets that capturing gains at current rates could make sense if there is a change of administrations," said Gibbons, via email. 

Read more:We talked to top private equity recruiters about the future of recruiting in 2021. Here are their predictions.

SEE ALSO: Private-equity firms are scrambling to save portfolio companies by calling in money from investors and rewriting worst-case scenarios

SEE ALSO: Private equity is backing off from recruiting young investment bankers in their first few weeks on the job. Here's what triggered the reversal.

SEE ALSO: THE GATEKEEPERS: 12 headhunting firms to know if you want to land a hedge fund or private-equity job

Join the conversation about this story »

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Inspiration for innovation can come in many forms, but perhaps the best is when you have no other option.

That's the perspective Lee Olesky, CEO of Tradeweb, takes when looking at things outside his control.

"There's nothing like an external event to really act as a catalyst for change," said Olesky while speaking at Business Insider's Global Trends Festival.

Change is a critical part of Olesky's business. Tradeweb operates electronic markets in over 40 products across the globe in rates, bonds, and exchange-traded funds. The company, which was cofounded by Olesky in 1996, has spent nearly 25 years convincing traders to handle transactions electronically instead of over the phone. 

See more:Tradeweb's CEO explains how the rise of passive investing is creating big knock-on trading opportunities for the electronic marketplace

From the rise of the internet, to the 2008 financial crisis, and the increase in regulations that followed, Olesky has seen his fair share of volatility in the outside world. 

Olesky said the pandemic, and the shift to remote work, represents the next great upheaval.

"Now the big driver, actually, I think is this work-from-home scenario. This remote scenario, that I think will stay sticky," he said. "I think that's really the big wave we're seeing right now."

The next stage

Olesky has been a big believer that the fallout of the pandemic will be long-lasting changes to how work is done.

While speaking on a webinar in late March, Olesky said there would be no turning back some of the adjustments made due to the pandemic.

"We are not going to go back. We are going to be in a new environment, and we now know we can function in many businesses — not all for sure — but in many businesses remotely," Olesky said while speaking on a webinar with Greenwich Associates Kevin McPartland in March. "I think that is a fundamental game-changer when it comes to, you know, the business impact here and the personnel impact."

To be sure, outside events aren't the only thing driving change at Tradeweb. Olesky said traditional goals, such as lowering costs, speeding up the time it takes to do transactions, and working more efficiently, also play a part. 

More recently, the rise in data, has been a factor.

"What's happened with data science, and what's happened with statistics and all the algorithms people are using now, further accelerates this move into an electronic change," he added.

To be sure, there is still resistance. Olesky acknowledged certain instruments still trade very infrequently, and require actual conversations. 

Still, Olesky sees promise in the continued progress Tradeweb has made.

"The resistance almost feels like it's gone," he said.

"Anything that trades with any regularity, we think, will be largely electronic."

SEE ALSO: Tradeweb just hired a former Citadel exec to lead its strategy for selling data and launching tools based on its massive fixed-income marketplaces

SEE ALSO: The CEO of Refinitiv says flexible working has boosted productivity and is here to stay at the $27 billion data giant: 'It's not going back to normal because I think attitudes have been changed.'

SEE ALSO: 'We are not going to go back': Tradeweb's CEO explains why working from home is a game changer for the $1 trillion-a-day marketplace

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How waste is dealt with on the world's largest cruise ship

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

If you're not yet a newsletter subscriber, you can sign up here to get your daily dose of the stories dominating banking, business, and big deals.

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.

Join the conversation about this story »

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There's been a mad dash for talent as Wall Street firms quickly overhauled their 2020 playbooks.

Equity and debt trading have surged as a result of the financial turmoil caused by the coronavirus outbreak. Hedge fund managers are responding to investors' expectations to outperform amid the chaos by aggressively hiring experts to fine-tune their strategies. 

But while many banks had pledged not to cut jobs during the pandemic, some have been starting to resume cuts. And upper-middle-management roles might be at risk, but firms are likely to want to hold on to senior executives and bankers. 

Read more:Wall Street job cuts are back — here's the latest on what Goldman, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan, and other banks are doing

The upheaval of normal life due to the pandemic has also put a huge focus on digitalization, accelerating plans for firms across industries to upgrade or build out new tech. 

Here's a roundup of some of the biggest appointments, exits, and hiring initiatives across the world of finance:

Trading 

Trader moves have been happening left and right. 

• A Barclays trading desk lost more than $60 million this year amid a bloodbath in distressed assets
• Deutsche Bank has poached a senior trader from HSBC to bolster its distressed-credit business, a powerhouse group that's been hit with defections in 2020
• Bank of America just elevated Soofian Zuberi to cohead of equities in the 2nd management shake-up this week for the company's stock-trading unit
• Another Deutsche Bank credit-trading exec just resigned, adding to a slew of senior departures at the firm
• Inside an exodus at Deutsche Bank's vaunted credit-trading desk, where even rock stars are feeling a pay squeeze that shows nothing's off limits from the struggling bank's cutbacks
• A top credit-trading exec is out at Wells Fargo. The exit comes as the bank is pursuing billions in cost cuts.
• Exclusive org chart of the most powerful people in Bank of America's equities division, which just shook up senior leadership
• Bank of America is shaking up its global equities division and its European regional head is leaving, according to an internal memo
• JPMorgan's top Treasuries trader Rob Allen has been placed on leave amid a compliance review of his electronic messages
• Bank of America has poached a top junk-bond trader from Deutsche Bank, leveling up in one of 2020's red-hot trading markets
• Goldman Sachs just hired Kurt Hoffman, an expert in distressed situations and bankruptcy, to join a trading unit known for some of the bank's most lucrative deals
• RBC is snapping up key hires in distressed-credit trading as Wall Street preps for a feeding frenzy
• Morgan Stanley hired a top trader away from Deutsche Bank in distressed credit — an area primed for a boom as corporate debt gets crushed

Tech and operations

• Morgan Stanley just shook up its tech and operations team with 2 senior promotions as Wall Street looks to double down its efforts around cyber and fraud

Banking

Banks have been busy hiring for different initiatives, from chief marketing officers to teams to build out tech projects. Dealmakers have also reshuffled to lean into hot coverage areas. 

• One of Wall Street's top dealmakers just quit to run for New York City mayor. Here's why Ray McGuire is running and the challenges his campaign will face.
• Read the full memo Goldman Sachs just sent announcing a leadership shakeup in its powerhouse M&A group
• REVEALED: The 20 leaders in charge of the powerful Goldman Sachs merchant-banking division that's raising $100 billion for a new alternatives push
• Wells Fargo's longtime CMO will leave her role as part of a bigger marketing shakeup across the bank
• After flashy hires and a big buildout, Perella Weinberg's media and telecom team has been gutted. We tracked the exodus — and what it says about the landscape for blockbuster M&A deals.
• Bank of America is shaking up its financials dealmaking group and just poached a senior Credit Suisse banker as it preps for a wave of bank M&A
• Citi just poached a top operations and anti-fraud exec from Wells Fargo as it continues to build out its consumer bank
• Citi just launched a new team that will apply data science to dealmaking. It shows how much tech is changing investment banking.
• Goldman Sachs' top tech exec explains how a fresh slew of senior hires are transforming the bank's approach to building products
• JPMorgan and Bank of America are reassigning staff to focus on troubled loans and companies amid a wave of pandemic-driven disruptions
• Read the full memo Goldman Sachs just sent naming 4 execs to lead its private-equity investments across the merchant-banking division
• 2 coheads of Goldman Sachs' private-investing business are retiring, in a blow to David Solomon's fundraising plans
• Read the full memo Goldman Sachs just sent to staff announcing its new head of regulatory affairs. The former White House counsel will be tasked with helping clean up the bank's 1MDB drama.
• Goldman Sachs just hired 2 senior recruiting execs focused on luring top talent from other firms —and it's a huge departure from the firm's traditional promote-from-within mentality

Private equity 

• Blackstone just hired an Amazon Web Services exec who helped the cloud giant do M&A. It's the latest sign that big private-equity firms are muscling in on specialty tech investors' turf.
• Meet Kewsong Lee, the private-equity exec who's now running the show solo at Carlyle. 20 insiders lay out why the move signals a big transformation at the $221 billion firm.
• Private-equity hiring is getting upended. From senior execs jumping ship to new timelines for scouting junior talent, 6 recruiters lay out what to expect.
• POWER PLAYERS: 13 Apollo execs, rising stars, and new hires who are propelling the firm's massive push into credit investments
• Big investors like Apollo and Carlyle are clamoring for a piece of the $30 trillion ESG space. We spoke to 15 insiders about how they're ramping up hires, raising money, and striking data-driven deals.

Hedge funds

There's been a shuffle of quant leadership in at big-name shops in recent months, as firms rethink their data plays. 

• Opendoor just hired a top quant researcher from $34 billion hedge fund Citadel to oversee home pricing and data as the iBuyer gears up to go public via a SPAC
• $26 billion Coatue is down one of its top alternative-data buyers after the firm's quant fund that relied heavily on the unique datasets was rocked by market volatility earlier this year
• Citadel poaches a rising star from billionaire Lee Ainslie's Maverick Capital to join its Ashler stock-picking unit
• Hedge funds are winning the war for talent against Amazon and Facebook. 3 charts show which firms are poaching the most top data scientists and engineers from Big Tech.
• $34 billion Citadel is dominating 2020. Here's a look at how it's outperforming its rivals — and the hedge fund's plan for its latest Goldman hire.
• Leaked memo: Billionaire Steve Cohen is hiring a former PDT executive who founded a flying-car startup to be his top quant and lead his Cubist unit
• $33 billion Citadel just poached an AQR exec for a new leadership role to supercharge billionaire Ken Griffin's bond trading team
• The head of Point72's Cubist quant-trading unit is joining one of billionaire Steve Cohen's top competitors
• $60 billion quant fund Two Sigma just hired Goldman Sachs' first-ever chief data officer to lead its massive tech team
• $7 billion hedge fund WorldQuant is bringing on the former top quant at Goldman to help create the 'future of quantitative investing'
• Citadel just poached Two Sigma's data chief for its tech team — and it's the latest sign of how aggressively the $30 billion firm is pursuing top talent from Wall Street and Silicon Valley
• 2 portfolio managers featured in 'The Big Short' are set to join the new hedge fund being set up by Steve Cohen's former right-hand man

Wealth management

• JPMorgan could double its advisor force, hiring as many as 4,000, as it eyes ambitions plans to catch up to rivals, says wealth boss Kristin Lemkau
• Goldman Sachs is hiring dozens of advisors for the firm's wealth business, and says it's getting a boost from companies pushing early retirements and layoffs
• Morgan Stanley is putting the brakes on hiring junior financial advisors. Here's how the massive wealth manager plans to close out the year.
• Goldman Sachs just shook up its divisions to create a new consumer and wealth-management arm that will be run by Stephanie Cohen and Tucker York
• How Citi is angling to turbocharge its wealth efforts as an industry-wide battle for Main Street investors heats up
• Goldman Sachs just lost another wealth team to UBS in one of the industry's biggest financial adviser moves of the year
• Bank of America has made at least 45 hires this year for an aggressive push into the red hot — and super competitive — business of courting corporate HR execs. Here's why it's betting on the space.
• Greg Fleming's $43 billion Rockefeller Capital has hired 19 adviser teams from top wealth firms in 7 months. Execs lay out where it's focused next.
• Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf just hired another JPMorgan alum — this time, to run wealth management. Here's how Jamie Dimon's one-time protege has been building up his team.
• A veteran Wells Fargo Advisors exec who helped navigate sweeping regulatory changes to the wealth industry just retired
• Wells Fargo is moving a wealth exec into its scandal-plagued consumer bank to fill a new 'accountability' role as it seeks to appease regulators
• Wealth management giant Merrill Lynch wants its worst-performing markets to catch up and just created a new role to oversee their progress

Cloud providers

Google and IMB  have been bringing on Wall Street talent in order to attract more clients from the finance sector to their cloud services.

• Google Cloud just nabbed another former bank exec as it looks to compete with AWS and Microsoft Azure for Wall Street customers
• Google Cloud just poached a long-time Citi exec. Here's why public-cloud giants keep adding Wall Street veterans to their ranks.
• IBM's new head of cloud says there's a $1 trillion opportunity in luring Wall Street firms and other holdouts onto the public cloud. Here's his plan to take on AWS, Google, and Microsoft.
• Bank of America's CTO, who played a key part in a private-cloud strategy execs praised for saving billions, has left the bank

SEE ALSO: Here's who's most at risk once Wall Street kicks off the tidal wave of layoffs many banks had put on pause

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How waste is dealt with on the world's largest cruise ship

Banking is one of the most lucrative – and most competitive – industries for talent. 

Goldman Sachs, for instance, only hires about 0.5% of the applicants for midlevel jobs each year, making the bank nearly 10 times as selective as Harvard. The competition is fierce at boutique investment banks, too, with a top-notch talent pool vying for a small number of spots. 

About 3% of Harvard Business School's class of 2019 went into investment banking, per the most recent numbers disclosed by the school. Those HBS grads made a median base salary of $150,000, and inked a median signing bonus of $57,500. (People typically join firms at the level of investment-banking associate after graduating business school.) 

Read more:We built the first-ever searchable database of the top Wall Street recruiters for banking, hedge funds, and private equity

Many boutique banks hire dozens of foreign workers for their US offices. When US companies file paperwork for visas on behalf of current or prospective foreign workers, they're required to say how much base compensation the workers are offered. And every year, the Office of Foreign Labor Certification discloses this salary data in an enormous dataset.

Business Insider analyzed the agency's second-quarter 2020 disclosure data for permanent and temporary foreign workers to shed light on what the banks paid employees at different rungs on the ladder. The jobs were based around the country and typically include ranges for each role, though they do not reflect bonuses, which can make up a substantial chunk of bankers' pay. 

One of the firms, Evercore, broke out the salaries' job titles into sub-categories. For example: associate 1, associate 2, associate 3, associate 4. The others did not disclose this information. In general, investment-banking salaries can increase as you go from level to level, but also as you progress from year to year at a given level — from first-year to second-year analyst, for example. 

Read more: COMP COMPARE: From Goldman Sachs to JPMorgan, here's what you can make at all the bulge-bracket banks as a first-year IB analyst

According to US Department of Labor documentation, the offered wages in the disclosure data are the minimum amounts companies provided in foreign labor certification applications for specific workers.

The wages are derived from the average compensation that similar employees in each given job, industry, and with comparable qualifications are paid, which is known as the "prevailing wage." Prevailing wage sets a floor for their salary, but salaries are often much higher than the prevailing wage.

Representatives for the banks either did not respond to or declined requests for comment.

Jefferies

The firm has about 900 people in its investment banking division. 

• Associate: $97,000-$200,000
• Senior associate: $110,000-$150,000
• Vice president: $130,000-$300,000
• Senior vice president: $169,500-$275,000

See more: Inside Jefferies' all-virtual summer internship: 5 weeks of charity work, and guest appearances from the CEOs of Blackstone and Zoom

Moelis

About 640 of Moelis' 900 global employees are investment bankers. 

• Associate: $150,000-$200,000
• Vice president: $250,000

Lazard 

The company, which also has a sizable asset management division, has about 3,000 employees. 

• Analyst: $85,000-$95,000
• Associate: $100,000-$150,000

Evercore Partners

Evercore had about 1,900 employees at the end of 2019. 

• Analyst 1: $73,424-$95,000
• Analyst 2: $73,424-$100,000
• Senior analyst: $76,742-$105,000
• Associate 1: $137,821-$160,000 for associates without sector designation. By sector: 
  • Restructuring: $137,821-$160,000
  • Technology: $156,978-$160,000
• Associate 2: $137,821.00-$160,000
• Associate 3: $170,019-$180,000
• Associate 4: $170,019-$196,000
• Vice president: $203,221-$250,000

Houlihan Lokey

The Los Angeles-based firm has nearly 1,500 employees.

Houlihan listed one job, associate, which paid $130,000 - $150,000. 

Read more: 

• Private equity is backing off from recruiting young investment bankers in their first few weeks on the job. Here's what triggered the reversal.
• COMP COMPARE: From Goldman Sachs to JPMorgan, here's what you can make at all the bulge-bracket banks as a first-year IB analyst
• How to use cold emails to land a gig working on Wall Street, according to a JPMorgan banking analyst turned VC who did it herself

SEE ALSO: Boutique banks like Evercore and Moelis are saving tens of millions in travel and entertainment costs while dealmakers are grounded. Here's what that newfound efficiency could mean for the future of business travel.

SEE ALSO: COMP COMPARE: From Goldman Sachs to JPMorgan, here's what you can make at all the bulge-bracket banks as a first-year IB analyst

SEE ALSO: Private equity pay revealed: Here's a look at how much people are making, broken down by level of experience and firm size

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NOW WATCH: July 15 is Tax Day — here's what it's like to do your own taxes for the very first time

JPMorgan is the biggest bank in the US and a bellwether for the global financial system. So when it comes to the bank's most senior leaders and their plans, Wall Street pays attention.

JPMorgan is planning to significantly expand its financial advisor force, bringing the firm closer in size and scope to its rival firms in wealth management. Over the next five to six years, the bank is considering hiring as many as 4,000 advisors to roughly double its current base, US Wealth Management Chief Executive Officer Kristin Lemkau told Business Insider. 

Lemkau, who has been with the bank for over two decades and was previously its chief marketing officer, was named head of JPMorgan's new wealth division last December. Its various wealth businesses, including its self-directed wealth product, were reorganized under one umbrella.

Rivals have meanwhile also been making deals in the asset-management space, putting a spotlight on JPMorgan's own plans. On the back of Morgan Stanley's $7 billion deal for asset manager Eaton Vance announced earlier in October, analysts peppered JPMorgan execs with questions about their appetite for M&A.

"Our lines are wide open. We would be very interested, and we do think you'll see consolidation of the business," JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said. 

Here's the latest on what's been going on inside JPMorgan: 

Wealth management 

Tech investment and digital transformation

• JPMorgan just inked a deal with a startup to let airlines and hotels tap their loyalty programs for capital. Here's why it's a game-changer for cash-strapped companies.
• Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Citi are Wall Street's most active fintech investors. These are the 10 startups they've poured money into so far this year.
• Here's a look at what technologists get paid at JPMorgan, where senior engineers can make upwards of $200,000
• JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs execs gave us an inside look at how they're slashing the time and cost of bringing fintechs onboard as Wall Street looks to newcomers for innovation

Retail banking

• Here's what execs at Bank of America and JPMorgan are thinking about the future of brick-and-mortar branches as digital banking adoption soars
• Chase is adding 100 branches and hiring home-lending advisors to help boost access to mortgages for Black and Latinx customers
• JPMorgan Chase has named the president of its co-brand credit cards business as its new CMO

Coronavirus response

• Wall Street is starting to get back to work. Here are the latest return-to-office plans for 5 firms, including Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.
• JPMorgan Chase is looking into customers' misuse of PPP loans — and the role the bank's own employees played
• JPMorgan says the coronavirus pandemic has distorted a key gauge it uses to manage billions in loan losses, and explains why the 'easy months' of delinquencies may soon be over

Leadership and succession 

• A monster trading quarter saved the day at JPMorgan and Citigroup
• JPMorgan's top Treasuries trader Rob Allen has been placed on leave amid a compliance review of his electronic messages
• JPMorgan has pulled at least 3 bond traders off the trading floor as part of its 2nd investigation this year into chat messages
• A star quant just left JPMorgan for Citigroup in one of the most fiercely competitive hiring grounds on Wall Street

Investment banking

• JPMorgan is going through a big investment-banking leadership shakeup and 18 rainmakers have new roles keeping its biggest clients happy

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We tested a machine that brews beer at the push of a button

Underneath all the tragedy of the coronavirus pandemic is a massive digitization effort within nearly every industry across corporate America that promises to change how we shop, get healthcare, or even find our next job. 

There are many visible examples of this. Some Walgreens shoppers have already had a glimpse at the new, internet-enabled displays from Cooler Screens that will soon be in 2,500 stores across the nation. At non-profit hospital chain Banner Health, a new chatbot (the brainchild of a former Target executive) helps mitigate one of the biggest complaints in the healthcare industry: waiting for a doctor. And more regional banks are investing in online banking, an offering that many of the Wall Street titans have perfected but that, prior to the coronavirus, had less urgency among smaller institutions as customers still preferred visiting local branches. 

But there are many improvements that may not be noticeable to the average shopper or patient. Walgreens, for example, is partnering with Microsoft and Adobe to create a digital profile for each of its customers — which allows the retailer to create custom promotions based on shopping habits.

PepsiCo is using artificial intelligence to scan tweets, menus, and other online information to help get deepen insight into rapidly changing customer preferences. Those efforts even helped support the launch of new SodaStream flavorings. At IBM, the tech giant is automating many of the more mundane human resources operations— like pinpointing the skills that certain teams may be lacking based on the resumes of the employees. 

These digital transformations are only accelerating, as COVID-19 prompts a quicker shift to online interactions. And both sides of the spectrum — the visible improvements and the behind-the-scenes advancements — will only get more robust. 

Below are a few other stories that you may have missed from the last two weeks. As always: If you're interested in receiving this biweekly newsletter and other updates from our ongoing Innovation Inc. series, please be sure to sign up here.

• A top MoneyGram exec lays out a digital transformation that's helped fuel triple-digit growth in cross-border payments during the pandemic
• How Stanley Black & Decker avoided 'pilot purgatory' in launching new tech projects that have saved it millions, and why it's making a broad call for partners with big new ideas
• FactSet's CFO lays out how the data giant quantifies innovation, and why tracking failed projects is a key metric
• 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.'
• How the NBA used tools from Qualtrics — which is gearing up to spin out of SAP — to make sure that teams in its pandemic bubble felt 'heard and taken care of'

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why thoroughbred horse semen is the world's most expensive liquid

Bank of America has filled a vacant senior position in its equities division, promoting an executive with a background in fixed-income markets to the role once held by equities head Soofian Zuberi.

In a staff memo sent out Wednesday morning, Orly Avidan was announced as the head of global equities distribution, joining the division's management team and reporting directly to coheads Fab Gallo and Zuberi.

A Bank of America spokesman confirmed the contents of the memo, which was from Gallo, Zuberi, and Sanaz Zaimi, the global head of fixed-income, currencies, and commodities sales. 

Avidan was previously the head of senior relationship management for the global-markets division, a role she assumed sole leadership of in 2019 after the retirement of cohead George Livingston. Her background is in fixed-income, currencies, and commodities trading, and she has worked in various emerging-markets credit roles since joining the bank in 2010.

In the senior relationship-management role, she worked across the FICC and equities divisions, reporting to Zaimi and Zuberi.  

Taking over Avidan's role as head of senior relationship management is Rashaan Reid, according to the memo, a BofA lifer who joined the sales and trading division out of college in 2001 and spent time in mortgage and securitized-product sales.

The changes come after a shake-up in the equities division over the summer. Zuberi, a 25-year company veteran and for many years the second in command to Gallo, was promoted to cohead of the group. Gallo had held sole control of the group since his arrival in 2011, reporting directly to Chief Operating Officer Tom Montag.

That same day BofA elevated eight execs into the firm's management committee, bringing membership of the group to 22, none of them from the equities division. Among the new members was Jim DeMare, a fixed-income-trading exec who was named to a new role running all markets — giving Gallo a new boss in between Montag and himself. 

The firm in July also announced the departure of Julien Bahurel, the head of equities in Europe, and the appointment of Martina Slowey to replace him. 

SEE ALSO: Bank of America just elevated Soofian Zuberi to cohead of equities in the 2nd management shake-up this week for the company's stock-trading unit

DON'T MISS: Bank of America is shaking up its global equities division and its European regional head is leaving, according to an internal memo

NEXT UP: Bank of America has poached a top junk-bond trader from Deutsche Bank, leveling up in one of 2020's red-hot trading markets

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NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence

Starting next quarter, Google parent company Alphabet plans to break out Google Cloud as a separate reporting segment, underscoring the opportunity the search giant is seeing in its cloud business.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced Thursday that the company will make this change starting with the fourth quarter of this year, saying he was working with Google CFO Ruth Porat and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian to "make investment decisions to drive progress."

"Given the progress we are making and the opportunity for Google Cloud and its growing global market, we continue to invest aggressively to build our go to market capabilities, execute against our product roadmap and extend the global footprint of our infrastructure," Pichai said on the earnings call.

Google Cloud has helped the company drive overall growth this year. Google reported Thursday that Google Cloud generated $3.4 billion in revenue in the most recent quarter – a 45% increase from this time last year.

Google Cloud includes Google Cloud Platform, as well as its productivity software suite Workspace, formerly known as G Suite. The company sees a major opportunity in its cloud business and plans to continue to invest in sales, engineering, and other areas.

By breaking out Google Cloud as a segment, Pichai says that it will report data about the unit's scale of investment. It will also add the segment's operating income, Porat said, as well as Google Cloud's full-year results for 2018, 2019, and 2020 – shedding new light on how Google Cloud generates and manages its revenue. 

Read more:Google Cloud's revenue growth picked back up slightly in Q3, and it's continuing to help drive Google's strength overall

"We are investing aggressively in cloud given the opportunity that we see and frankly that we were later relative to our peers, we are encouraged by the pace of customer wins and the very strong revenue growth in both GCP and Workspace," Porat said on the earnings call.

Google Cloud did not start reporting its quarterly revenue until February this year. 

Google Cloud is widely considered the third-place player in cloud computing, behind the leading Amazon Web Services and second-place Microsoft Azure.

Do you work at Google Cloud? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at rmchan@businessinsider.com, Signal at 646.376.6106, Telegram at @rosaliechan, or Twitter DM at @rosaliechan17. (PR pitches by email only, please.) Other types of secure messaging available upon request. 

SEE ALSO: Cybersecurity as we know it will be 'a thing of the past in the next decade,' says Cloudflare's COO, as security moves towards a 'water treatment' model

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NOW WATCH: Epidemiologists debunk 13 coronavirus myths

Bank of America's global equities chief Fabrizio Gallo is resigning after nearly a decade at the firm.

Gallo, the longest-tenured equities head among Wall Street banks, informed Chief Operating Officer Tom Montag of his decision to leave, effective at the end of the year, according to a memo from Montag viewed by Business Insider. 

"During his tenure at the firm, he has played a strategic, important role in building our equities franchise," Montag wrote in the memo. "Amongst his many legacies he helped develop an electronic infrastructure that is critical to our success and a Prime Brokerage business that has become an industry leader."

"It's been an honor to lead the division for the last nine years. We have built a world-class team to serve our clients and we are proud of our collective accomplishments," Gallo said in the memo. 

Soofian Zuberi, who was elevated to cohead of equities alongside Gallo this summer, will take the reins as sole head of the group. 

A Bank of America spokesman confirmed the contents of the memo.  

Gallo was one of the longest-serving division senior leaders under Montag, who has overseen the firm's Global Banking and Markets operations since joining the company in 2008. Top execs in investment banking and fixed-income trading have shuffled through and shared power over the years, but since arriving, Gallo had held sole control of the equities group. 

The division has for years ranked fourth in equities trading, trailing Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase.

Gallo, a longtime Morgan Stanley equities exec, was initially hired by Montag to cohead the stock-trading unit in 2011 alongside Mike Stewart. But Stewart decamped for UBS before Gallo got there, and Gallo assumed control of the top seat, reporting directly to Montag and keeping a firm grip on the wheel. 

But that all changed this year. 

In July, Zuberi, a 25-year company veteran and for many years the second in command to Gallo, was elevated. Gallo would have to share power for the first time during his tenure, and with someone who was for years his subordinate, no less.

That same day BofA elevated eight execs into the firm's management committee, bringing membership of the group to 22. Three were promoted from the upper ranks of the fixed-income trading unit, none were chosen from equities.

Among the new committee members was Jim DeMare, a fixed-income-trading exec who was named to a new role running all of markets — giving Gallo a new boss in between Montag and himself. 

Gallo's departure has been speculated by many on Wall Street ever since. 

SEE ALSO: Bank of America just named a former fixed-income executive to fill one of the most senior positions in its stock-trading business

SEE ALSO: Bank of America just elevated Soofian Zuberi to cohead of equities in the 2nd management shake-up this week for the company's stock-trading unit

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A cleaning expert reveals her 3-step method for cleaning your entire home quickly

Investors have been spooked all week. Amid another foreboding uptick in coronavirus cases and stalled efforts at an economic stimulus, the stock market suffered its biggest weekly drop since March.

But some traders have been buzzing about an entirely different market phenomena — a monster derivatives trade executed amid the selloff that stands to make a killing depending on how markets react to the US presidential election results.

A single whale investor this week appears to have spent more than $300 million buying up tens of thousands of S&P 500 option contracts that expire in the days following Tuesday's election, betting the market will experience a massive rally, according to trading records and derivatives professionals who were familiar with the trades but not involved in executing them. 

The trades — bull call spreads that bet on a specific price range, offering capped gains but also limiting potential losses — have been made in flurries throughout the week. But they follow a similar pattern and share features that caught the attention of traders and brokers: Large, aggressive, short-term call spreads that will profit from the S&P 500 rising significantly in the coming days.

The mystery investor the first three days of this week purchased upwards of 60,000 SPX call spreads that expire on November 4th and 6th — the Wednesday and Friday after the election — according to derivatives professionals and trade execution data from Trade Alert, a subsidiary of Cboe Global Markets. The notional value of the trades is more than $19 billion, but would have been north of $20 billion prior to the S&P 500's plunge this week. 

"They're as specific as you can get for a definitive election trade," Henry Schwartz, head of product intelligence at Cboe Global Markets, told Business Insider. 

In one trade on Tuesday the client purchased 20,000 SPX call spreads at 3,500/3,600, expiring on Friday, November 6th, according to trading records. Schwartz said the trade would've cost the investor at least $45 million to put on, and presents a potential payout of $200 million if the S&P 500 eclipses 3,600 in the next week. 

The same exact trade, but in a bundle of 10,000, was placed the previous day as well, costing roughly $15 million in premium and a potential payout of $100 million, Schwartz said. In a best-case scenario, the trades expiring on November 4th and 6th could payout nearly $600 million. 

The identity of the investor and the aggregate total they've wagered remains unclear, but other similar trades, including options that expire on November 13, have been placed throughout the week, a broker told Business Insider, and the total cash outlay likely exceeds $300 million.

An unconventional choice of broker

While it's not definitive, Schwartz and three other options-trading experts Business Insider spoke with said the call spread trades likely belong to the same customer — a customer that most likely isn't a frequent SPX trader — in part because of the distinct fingerprint of the trades, including an unconventional choice of broker: electronic trading platform Interactive Brokers. 

"It is a very distinct, short-term, bullish trade. It seems to be one customer going through Interactive Brokers — and not your typical SPX user, not a hedger," Schwartz said. 

Three of the sources called it "unusual" that the trade went through Interactive Brokers. Partially, that's because SPX options are a high-touch product — they're more commonly traded with live brokers in the pit, where you're likely to get better pricing than via electronic platforms. 

Moreover, the S&P 500 index is typically traded by large investors looking to hedge. Large hedge funds, for instance, will usually place such trades with a major Wall Street bank, which will provide capital commitments to smooth the process. 

"It's an institutional hedging product. It's not used for big speculative trades, and these are big speculative trades, there's no way around that," Schwartz said. 

An Interactive Brokers spokesman declined to comment, noting that they do not discuss clients' trades.

Read more: Interactive Brokers has upended Wall Street time and again. Its cofounder explains how causing chaos is key to staying competitive in a cut-throat industry.

What election result are they betting on?

Some of the lower strike prices in the bet start to pay out if the S&P 500 eclipses 3,425, a 4.7% increase from Friday's close, though most of the call spreads require the S&P to lift past 3,500, a 7% jump.

The highest strike price observed in trades was 3,700, meaning the S&P 500 will have to rise a substantial 13% from Friday's close to reach their maximum payout. 

So what election result are these trades betting on? 

Two of the options-trading professionals Business Insider spoke with immediately identified it as a bet on President Donald Trump winning reelection. A Trump victory over former-Vice President Joe Biden would present a more business-friendly regulatory and tax environment over the next four years, making corporate stocks more valuable. 

"This is a Trump trade," one said, noting Trump's competitiveness in Florida.

Another agreed, but thought it was driven more by Trump's chances in Pennsylvania. 

But some Wall Street analysts believe the stock market could also jump on a Biden victory, despite his vows to raise corporate taxes. If Biden wins by a wide margin and Democrats also retake the US Senate — a blue-wave scenario — experts believe a robust economic stimulus could quickly follow, lifting stock prices higher in the short term.  

The worst-case outcome for investors is a contested election without a clear winner, which could precipitate a stock slide of as much as 20%, according to Bank of America strategists. 

In that scenario, regardless of the ultimate winner, the investor placing the massive call-spread wagers this week would lose all of their money — more than $300 million. 

Read more: Private-equity giants have been looking to fast-track asset sales because they're worried about a bigger tax hit if Biden wins the election

Have a tip? Send internal memos or intel about strategic shifts, personnel moves, or other changes at Wall Street investment banks to the author at amorrell@businessinsider.com or via secure chat on Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp.

SEE ALSO: Private-equity giants have been looking to fast-track asset sales because they're worried about a bigger tax hit if Biden wins the election

SEE ALSO: Interactive Brokers has upended Wall Street time and again. Its cofounder explains how causing chaos is key to staying competitive in a cut-throat industry.

SEE ALSO: Fab Gallo, Wall Street's longest-tenured equities chief, is leaving Bank of America months after having his power checked

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Epidemiologists debunk 13 coronavirus myths

Good morning!

Investors have been spooked all week. Amid another uptick in coronavirus cases and stalled efforts at economic stimulus, US stock indexes notched their biggest weekly drop since March.

But as Alex Morrell reported yesterday, monster derivatives trades executed as stocks tanked could see a big payoff depending on how markets react to US election results. 

"They're as specific as you can get for a definitive election trade," Henry Schwartz, head of product intelligence at Cboe Global Markets, told Business Insider. 

You can read the full story here:

Traders are buzzing about a mysterious market whale that's placing massive bets on stocks skyrocketing post-election

There was also plenty of fresh news on people moves in Bank of America's equity-trading division this week. Here's a recap:

• Fab Gallo, Wall Street's longest-tenured equities chief, is leaving months after having his power checked
• Bank of America named a former fixed-income executive to fill one of the most senior positions in its stock-trading business

More below on Charles Schwab layoffs and branch consolidation; WeWork's rent demands; a new twist on paychecks that's being piloted by payroll giant ADP; and a look at Kristin Lemkau's big plans for JPMorgan's wealth-management business. 

If you're not yet a newsletter subscriber, you can sign up here to get your daily dose of the stories dominating banking, business, and big deals.

Leaked memo sheds more light on 'difficult' day as Charles Schwab slashes 1,000 jobs

Charles Schwab told staff it would cut 3% of its combined workforce with TD Ameritrade. And Schwab has "moved aggressively" to start streamlining branch networks now that its tie-up with TD Ameritrade is complete.

From Rebecca Ungarino, here's a look at a memo that circulated on Monday for one team. And here's a map showing the existing branch footprint for Schwab and TD-Ameritrade. 

How JPMorgan's Kristin Lemkau is planning to turbocharge a $500 billion wealth business

JPMorgan's vision for building out a bigger, better wealth-management business is in Kristin Lemkau's hands. 

In her first press interview as chief executive of what has been renamed JPMorgan Wealth Management, Lemkau shared new details about the strategy for growing her division.

WeWork is demanding overdue rent from hundreds of small businesses

WeWork has taken a more aggressive stance toward nonpaying members than at the start of the pandemic, Alex Nicoll, Paige Leskin, Dan Geiger, and Meghan Morris reported this week. 

Since WeWork sells memberships and not leases, the company can skirt local eviction moratoriums, like New York state's measure halting COVID-19-related commercial evictions until Jan. 1.  

You can read all the details here. 

Payroll giant ADP is getting in on the paycheck-on-demand frenzy

ADP, one of the world's largest payroll providers, is piloting an earned wage access option. Belinda Reany, who heads up ADP's new products and innovation, says the pilot will help the company determine the best version of the now-prolific on-demand pay feature.

"It's very clear that employees are looking for more flexibility compared to what I call the traditional pay cycle," Reany told Business Insider's Shannen Balogh.

The exam software company law grads say botched the online October bar is raking in $2 million in fees 

ExamSoft, the software company used by states to run online versions of the bar exam, will be paid upwards of $2 million in test-taking fees, an analysis by Business Insider's Yoonji Han and Jack Newsham found. 

Here's the full rundown. 

Pitch decks

• See the 13-page pitch deck that DriveWealth, a fintech that powers trading and investing apps, used to nab $57 million

Deals

• Franklin, Invesco, Janus, and other money managers are prepping for the next wave of  M&A — keeping balance sheets clean and options open

Real estate

• Flex-workspace firm Industrious is eyeing a big expansion in Asia and just inked its first deal outside the US
• Knotel just slashed headcount again, with the flex-space provider's CEO telling staff he expected more of a bounceback in office demand by now
• BlackRock's former real estate head is joining a crowdfunding startup's investment committee with hopes to help smaller investors access private bets
• ByteDance quietly leased 'massive' US data centers in 2020, a sign it may have planned to shift TikTok operations to the US

Billable hours

• Government-focused consulting firm Booz Allen doubles acquisition war chest as it readies for possible deals
• Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are threatening to sue an anti-Trump PAC that put up scathing billboard of them. Meet the litigators behind the spat
• The majority of law firms and in-house legal departments may not extend bonuses to employees this year. A new survey reveals how they're rethinking hiring and pay.
• An inside look at how Big Law firm Perkins Coie built up a diverse attorney base, winning major clients like Microsoft and Intel
• Mega law firm Dentons has poached another FTI crisis communications pro as it looks to create a one-stop shop for clients

Alt data

• How one alt-data company that rates CEO performance aims to be the S&P or Moody's of tracking management teams — and expects a surge of interest from data-starved ESG investors

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We tested a machine that brews beer at the push of a button

Welcome back.

Buckle up for what should be a wild week. 

If you're not yet a subscriber, you can sign up here to get your daily dose of the stories dominating banking, business, and big deals.

Like the newsletter? Hate the newsletter? Feel free to drop me a line at ddefrancesco@businessinsider.com or on Twitter @DanDeFrancesco. 

Click here to read the entire story.

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NOW WATCH: Why it's okay to eat the brown part of an avocado

As Wall Street navigates a health pandemic that's changed the way we work and dramatically changed the economic landscape, we take a look at the players rising up despite the challenges and grasping opportunities as they see them.

From launching game-changing groups within global financial institutions, to having a hand in restructuring entertainment giants like AMC, these 25 stood out as the leaders for tomorrow.

In addition to being at the top of their class, these finalists are also trailblazing in new areas like data science and machine learning, executing on sustainability goals, and paving the way for a more diverse and equitable workforce by speaking out and taking part in recruiting efforts.

Selecting the final list wasn't easy. We received hundreds of nominations from bosses, colleagues, recruiters, and others working in the finance industry. We asked that nominees be 35 or under, based in the US, and stand out from their peers. Editors made the final decisions.

We've included people with a variety of roles and experiences from companies including Bridgewater Associates, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, and the Carlyle Group.

Here's our full list of the next crop of Wall Street leaders.

We also asked this year's rising stars of Wall Street to give us their best advice for people just starting out as well as for their best book recommendations.

Read some of the lessons and insights they've learned along the way

Here are the 32 books our 2020 rising stars of Wall Street think everyone should read

SEE ALSO: Meet 2020's Rising Stars of Wall Street from firms like Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, and Bridgewater shaking up investing, trading, and dealmaking

SEE ALSO: Meet 2019's Rising Stars of Wall Street from firms like Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, and Apollo shaking up investing, trading, and dealmaking

SEE ALSO: We built the first-ever searchable database of the top Wall Street recruiters for banking, hedge funds, and private equity

Alex Tingle, 27, UBS

Alex Tingle wears several hats at UBS, where he is a New York-based director in the firm's investment bank focused on the technology, media, and telecommunications sectors.

Outside of working with clients day to day and executing deals, he's also long been interested in the strategy side of what it takes to keep an investment bank humming.

Last year he helped launch the bank's private financing markets group, a unit geared toward connecting wealthy clients with private capital markets investments, a fast-growing space that firms are increasingly embracing. That group was expanded across the firm this year.

He is involved with recruitment and workforce diversity efforts at the bank, sitting on the investment bank's Diversity & Inclusion Council and the Pride Leadership Council for UBS Americas.

"I'm really proud of the brand that we have built for students in the LGBTQ community, because I think for a lot of gay kids Wall Street still looks like somewhere that's unapproachable, that it's very macho, very traditional," Tingle said, adding he believes the wider industry has made progress in distancing itself from that image over the years.

A native of Ontario, Canada, Tingle has been with UBS for his whole career on Wall Street, since he graduated from Boston College six years ago. He now coheads campus recruitment, a passion, for his alma mater, which is UBS' largest target school for junior investment banking hires. He also heads up the firm's LGBTQ+ recruiting efforts in the Americas.

He was previously a summer analyst as a college sophomore and junior with the Swiss firm before joining full time in 2014.

Click here to read the full list.

Alice Leng, 31, Bank of America

Alice Leng is part of a cutting-edge team at Bank of America, the data and innovation group within the firm's global markets division. A machine-learning expert who has master's degrees in financial engineering and economics, Leng leads an initiative in the group that amasses giant troves of information on trading flows and positions across asset classes on a single platform, mining some 2 billion daily transactions for market signals and insights.

Leng has had an unorthodox, circuitous path to a leading role in the hottest corner of Wall Street. Born in China, Leng left home for boarding school at age 8, and then moved across the world at age 18 to study applied mathematics at the University of Toronto, earning a bachelor's and master's degrees in 3 1/2 years.

In 2011, at 21, she moved to Chicago and started studying economics with University of Chicago Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker, whom she credits for instilling in her the importance of melding human intuition with deep analysis. She left with her master's in economics and briefly moved to London to work with BlackRock before starting another master's degree — this one in financial engineering — at the University of California at Berkeley, which she completed in 2015.

Leng then spent 2 1/2 years at Moody's Analytics in San Francisco doing quantitative fixed-income research before jumping to BofA in 2017. Initially, she worked in research, helping construct complex derivatives trades and authoring an influential report in 2018 on the applications of machine learning to FICC trading, the first of the big banks to publish such research. She started working with the data and innovation group later in 2018.

Leng earned an executive master's in business from HEC Paris this year.

Want to meet the rest of Wall Street's rising stars? Click here to read the full list.

For over a decade, the finance industry has relied on algorithms to conduct most of the stock market trades that occur on a daily basis. 

Now, RBC Capital Markets is looking to take it a step-further by deploying even more advanced technology that can largely function independently of any human interaction to help clients save money. 

Last month, the investment bank that sits under the Royal Bank of Canada launched Aiden: An AI-backed trading platform that helps minimize what industry insiders call "slippage," or the difference between the expected price of a trade and the actual price once it is executed. By providing more concise information around the total cost of a trade, RBC gives its clients more control over the amount of money they are spending. 

Using an evaluation method that is commonly tapped to eliminate bias in clinical trials, Aiden was shown to "significantly reduce slippage," according to RBC Capital Markets head of global equities execution Shary Mudassir. 

The introduction of the platform is part of RBC CEO David McKay's heavy focus on AI, a technology the former computer programmer has called "transformational" for the finance industry. Among other initiatives, the company runs its own AI research center, a setup that is more akin to the Silicon Valley tech giants than Wall Street firms. 

Aiden has been available to RBC's Canadian clients for over a year and the company was beta-testing the tool with a dozen US clients since the start of 2020. The pandemic tested the resiliency of the model, and it managed to remain accurate despite the volatility in the equity markets as the COVID-19 crisis spread globally.

Read more:Wall Street's fear gauge is warning that the upcoming election could trigger a prolonged period of stock-market chaos — one that's much worse than the aftermath of 2016

Aiden "has shown an ability to navigate the challenges of a fluid and dynamic market in real time, without the need for continuous recoding like traditional algorithms would need," Mudassir said. "That's because of its ability to learn and adapt through hundreds of data inputs that it's analyzing in real time, tens of millions of decisions that it makes over the course of that order, and then taking actions and learning."   

Now, its next test is Tuesday's presidential election, when the markets could once again go haywire. 

'You could see light bulbs going off around the room'

The journey to launch Aiden began in 2016 with the creation of Borealis AI —  an AI research center that operates as separate from RBC Capital Markets but underneath the umbrella of the Royal Bank of Canada — to figure out the role technology could play in improving results for clients.  

The structure enables the financial institution to build its own intellectual property portfolio to gain a "more sustainable competitive advantage in the long run," according to Borealis AI head Foteini Agrafioti. 

One of the biggest challenges for RBC Capital Markets and Borealis AI was to figure how to infuse the demands of customers into the development of new tech offerings. 

At the beginning of the discussions, Borealis AI was a much smaller group than the 100-plus team of scientists and PhDs it currently has. During initial conversations about what a product could look like, experts on RBC's capital markets team helped educate the very academic-focused Borealis group on how trading worked. 

"You could see light bulbs going off around the room," said Agrafioti. 

Deep reinforcement learning quickly emerged as the "technology of choice" and the team went to work building the platform, per Mudassir. The subsection of AI relies on both reinforcement learning — or training done via trial and error tests — and deep learning, a technique that effectively aims to empower a machine to think like a human brain.  

But as the cohorts began to actually build Aiden and create the models that would support it, they knew that explainability — the concept of being able to outline how a model came to a specific conclusion — would also be key given the need to earn client's trust in the system.  

"We had a dual problem," she added. "The biggest challenge was narrowing it into the use case. And that's why the partnership of scientists, and traders, and technologists works brilliantly well."

And after the success of Aiden, the teams are talking to clients to figure out what to tackle next — including looking at whether deep reinforcement learning can be deployed in other operations like digital banking, as well as the potential with other tech like natural language processing. 

"It sets the stage for now us working with them to figure out what would be the next right solution," said Mudassir. "The ability to deliver AI as a very complimentary technology that helps with the day-to-day efforts of our clients … is something that we're finding is gaining a lot of traction." 

SEE ALSO: Here's what recent tech job postings tell us about Walmart's push to use advanced tech to take on Amazon in digital advertising

Join the conversation about this story »

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No clear leader has emerged in the presidential race, as votes continue to be counted in key states. However, that didn't stop President Donald Trump from falsely declaring victory early Wednesday morning. 

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Like the newsletter? Hate the newsletter? Feel free to drop me a line at ddefrancesco@businessinsider.com or on Twitter @DanDeFrancesco. 

The battle lines are being drawn on the future of customer data.

Shannen Balogh has a great look on the state of data-sharing between banks, fintechs, and the data aggregators stuck in the middle. 

With regulators announcing plans for new rules around data sharing, Shannen spoke to industry insiders from Plaid and Yodlee to understand what's at stake. 

Click here to read the entire story.

Citadel, the $35 billion hedge fund, turned 30! Read the memo billionaire Ken Griffin sent to employees about the anniversary. Check out the full memo here. 

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why thoroughbred horse semen is the world's most expensive liquid

Happy Friday!

The weekend is finally here. Regardless of who you are — or who you support — I think we could all use it. 

If you're not yet a subscriber, you can sign up here to get your daily dose of the stories dominating banking, business, and big deals.

Like the newsletter? Hate the newsletter? Feel free to drop me a line at ddefrancesco@businessinsider.com or on Twitter @DanDeFrancesco. 

JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon preached patience. Goldman Sachs' David Solomon wants unity. 

That was part of the sentiment from Solomon's message to staff Wednesday night. 

Reed Alexander and Dakin Campbell have the full transcript from the audio message that Solomon, Goldman Sachs' CEO, sent to the banks entire workforce. 

"I know that many of our people are anxious for the election results, and that everyone in the country — and frankly, everyone around the world — is craving clarity," Solomon said, according to the transcript.

Click here to read the entire transcript. 

The Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Visa for its planned acquisition of Plaid. Shannen Balogh with a nice look at how the suit reveals plans for a new product out of Plaid. Read more here. 

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A cleaning expert reveals her 3-step method for cleaning your entire home quickly

Happy Saturday,

What a week! 

Looking to catch up on the latest US election news? Click here to get the full rundown. 

Visa-Plaid deal under fire

The Department of Justice sued Visa this week to block its planned $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid — and the fintech world is trying to unpack what this means for the M&A landscape. Here's everything you need to know: 

• Plaid has been quietly building a new payments tool and Visa wants to buy it to squash competition, antitrust regulators say
• The DOJ's antitrust lawsuit could put fintech M&A through a 'cold shower,' according to lawyers and fintech execs
• Execs from Plaid and Yodlee explain how new data-sharing rules will dictate the future of how banks and fintechs work together

Keep reading for a look at a new hedge fund launch from a Coatue rising star; a roundup of big trends in family-office recruiting; and the latest news on how flex-space firms are evaluating options as office demand tanks. 

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Family offices are snapping up talent from private-equity firms and elite wealth managers

Many banks and asset managers are slowing hiring or laying off employees during the pandemic. Or both. But family offices are outliers.

After pausing searches for brief periods earlier this year, many family offices have resumed hiring for investment roles in recent months, six recruiters said in interviews with Business Insider's Rebecca Ungarino.

They're looking to draw in talent from private-equity firms and elite wealth managers — and continuing to form operations that resemble established institutions with sophisticated capabilities. 

You can read the full story here. 

Consolidation pressure hits the flex-office space — and M&A chatter is heating up

Flex-workspace brand Breather has hired bankers at Moelis to help it explore options including a potential sale, Dan Geiger reported. The flexible-workspace industry has struggled as the pandemic made work from home the norm. 

"We have been approached by probably five different workspace companies already that are looking to either buy or sell or merge," Shlomo Silber, co-founder and CEO of flex-workspace provider Bond Collective, told Business Insider. 

Read the full story here:

Flex-workspace firm Breather has hired bankers to explore options including a sale, and it's a sign of a bigger consolidation push as office demand tanks

A Coatue rising star is starting his own hedge fund

As Bradley Saacks reported this week, a rising star from billionaire Philippe Laffont's Coatue is set to become the latest addition to the extensive Tiger Management family tree.  

Peter Zhou, a former senior managing director at Coatue, is launching his own fund, according to several sources with knowledge of the situation. He has at least $300 million in commitments already, sources say.

Read the full story:

A rising star from billionaire Philippe Laffont's Coatue is starting his own hedge fund and has at least $300 million lined up from investors

Billionaire Ken Griffin's Citadel just turned 30

Billionaire Ken Griffin is celebrating the 30-year anniversary of the launch of Citadel, which he started with two others in 1990 with $5 million in capital. It now manages $35 billion, and Griffin also has a separate market-making business, Citadel Securities.

The firm's 30-year-old flagship Wellington is up 20.1% for the year through October after gaining 1.1% last month. Several segments of the firm had their best-ever starts to the year, including the quantitative strategies unit.

Here's the full story:

Read the anniversary note Griffin sent staff on going from a 22-year-old 'entrepreneur' to running a $35 billion hedge-fund firm.

Real estate

• Uber is looking to dump a big chunk of a huge new NYC office it recently signed. It's an abrupt turnaround for the ride-hailing giant.
• Salesforce and other companies are making a record number of investments in construction-tech startups. Here's a rundown of big bets in the red-hot contech space.
• A construction-tech startup that's developed a faster way to model a building's energy efficiency used this 13-page pitch deck to nab $5.7 million
• With $1 billion in recent funding, REEF Technology is poised to transform distressed parking lots into ghost kitchens and logistics hubs

Hedge funds

• Nick Maounis' $2 billion Verition Fund Management is up more than 22% — outperforming other multi-strategy hedge funds like Citadel and Millennium

Fintech

• A startup that's embedding digital banking for small businesses into services like Shopify and Fundera used this pitch deck to nab $12 million

Join the conversation about this story »

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We asked our Rising Stars of Wall Street to recommend a book to our readers and their selections range from the origins of value investing to a timely retelling of the Spanish Flu Pandemic, from "Margaritaville" singer Jimmy Buffett's autobiography to a 368-page work on why we sleep. 

The full selection of 32 books, and the stars' comments about them, are below.

Read our full list of the rising stars of Wall Street shaking up investing, trading, and dealmaking.

SEE ALSO: Meet 2020's Rising Stars of Wall Street from firms like Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, and Bridgewater shaking up investing, trading, and dealmaking

"A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara

Rising star: Alexander Tingle, director of technology, media, and telecom investment banking, UBS Investment Banking

Tingle's partner, who is also a banker, once recommended he read "A Little Life," the haunting, critically acclaimed novel by Hanya Yanagihara that was published in 2015 and centers on ambitious young men who move to New York City.

"I loved it," Tingle said, admitting with a laugh that he's not the most avid reader, but "A Little Life" has stuck with him — and not only because it's set in New York, where he's now building his career.

One of the central characters, a successful go-getter, is struggling with his mental health throughout the story. For Tingle, he was inspired by that character's portrayal and brought to mind mental health-related stigmas that persist in some workplaces, especially for people in cutthroat positions.

"How to Lead: Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers" by David Rubenstein

Rising star: Will Boeckman, head of US electronic sales, Citadel Securities

Will Boeckman, Citadel Securities' head of electronic trading for fixed income, currencies, and commodities, named Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein's recently-released book "How to Lead: Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers" as his go-to pick.

"It's kind of an anthology of various industries," Boeckman said of the book, which aggregates highlights from Rubenstein's interviews with noteworthy individuals like Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, whom he spoke with on his eponymous show on Bloomberg TV.

"A key takeaway from these stories is the importance of finding your passion. I'm obviously very passionate about finance," Boeckman said, "and it's something that was mentioned by a few of the people" that Rubenstein interviewed.

"Give and Take" by Adam Grant

Rising stars: Rachel Murray, vice president at Moelis, and Lacey Vigmostad Giliberto, vice president at Credit Suisse 

Lacey Vigmostad Giliberto, a vice president in syndicated loans sales at Credit Suisse, named "Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success" by Adam Grant, a legendary Wharton professor, as among her favorites. "It's about striving to be somebody who gives to others and then expects nothing in return," she said, "and how ironically fruitful that can be for your own life and career."

Moelis's Rachel Murray, a restructuring banker told Business Insider: "It shows that it's not just about you. In the grand scheme of things, it's how you help others along the way. How you can grow the pie for everyone.'

"Open" by Andre Agassi

Rising star: Daniel Costanza, chief data scientist, Citigroup

Citigroup's Daniel Costanza recommends "Open" by tennis champ Andre Agassi, which he called "a really wonderful book about his experience in tennis where he didn't really like tennis in the moment," but eventually came to embrace it, he said.

"I think his experience of learning how to love the day to day and love the moment is really powerful," Costanza explained. 

"Young Money" by Kevin Roose

Rising star: Daniel Costanza, chief data scientist, Citigroup

For those flirting with the idea of a finance career who have yet to take the plunge, Daniel Costanza recommended "Young Money," a collection of stories by author Kevin Roose about the trials and tribulations of young financiers. 

The book holds insights into "all the wrong reasons why you can go into finance," Costanza said, making it a cautionary tale for those who aren't sure if the intense pace of life on Wall Street is right for them.

"Dare to Lead" by Brené Brown

Rising star: Alexis Rosenblum, chief corporate sustainability officer, BlackRock

Throughout the pandemic, Rosenblum has switched to audiobooks — "I'm not sure why, but I think that's the only time I get out of the house: when I take a walk in the afternoon, put my headphones in, and listen to something"— and recently listened to"Dare to Lead", a book by Brené Brown.

It resonated with Rosenblum, who said that she's always been drawn to learning about the field of psychology, and Brown explores human themes like empathy, courage, and shame.

Brown builds the book around the famous "arena" quote from Theodore Roosevelt, about credit belonging "to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood." It inspired Rosenblum, who took away lessons about being a leader.

"Leaders are in the arena, and there are lots of people in the stands who are there just to criticize or comment on what you're doing. But being in the arena takes courage. It gives you a lot of advice around, how do you think about having that courage?" she said.

"Active Portfolio Management: A Quantitative Approach for Producing Superior Returns and Selecting Superior Returns and Controlling Risk" by Richard Grinold and Ronald Kahn

Rising star: Robert Lam, co-head of credit, Man Group's Man Numeric 

Man Group's Robert Lam recommended "Active Portfolio Management: A Quantitative Approach for Producing Superior Returns and Selecting Superior Returns and Controlling Risk" by Richard Grinold and Ronald Kahn.

"It's pretty technical, but a must-read for any quant," he said. 

"The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace" by Jeff Hobbs

Rising star: Mir Subjally, credit trader, Deutsche Bank

"It was a really interesting dichotomy. It's about a young African-American man who grew up in a rougher neighborhood in Newark but went to Yale and ended up being really successful in his academic work. But he struggled at times to mesh the two worlds together," Mir Subjally, a credit trader, told BI about "The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace" by Jeff Hobbs. 

"It shows that the path to equality isn't always as easy and seamless. Going to Yale on a scholarship, it can still be really hard for people. People often don't get that."

"Start With Why" by Simon Sinek

Rising star: Doug Scott, CEO, Ethic

In Ethic's early days, CEO Doug Scott said he and his team gave investors and employees the business and leadership-focused book "Start With Why," written by the author and motivational speaker Simon Sinek. It was inspirational for the co-founder, and integral for starting Ethic and making a transition from traditional financial services.

It tries to get across that the "core of everything is: why this, why are we actually focusing on this? Why are you building this business? Why are you in this career? 'Why' — that was the core tenet," he said.

"The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration" by Isabel Wilkerson

Rising star: Danielle Cooper, director, Annaly Capital Management

"The Warmth of Other Suns" by Isabel Wilkerson is an analysis of the 70-year Great Migration of Black people in America from the rural south to the urban north after the end of reconstruction and the beginning of Jim Crow segregation.

The book is very narrative, following the lives of multiple migrants, and inspired Danielle Cooper, who is Black, to talk more with her family about their history of migration.

"The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague in History" by John M. Barry

Rising star: Danielle Cooper, director, Annaly Capital Management

Danielle Cooper also recommended an exceedingly timely read: "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague in History" by John M. Barry.

While Cooper said she usually reads fiction, she read this book as part of a series of firm-wide virtual book clubs since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

"The Great Influenza," is an in-depth retelling of the Spanish Flu Pandemic, the last global pandemic, and Cooper said the similarities between this pandemic and the last one show how much we still have to figure out.

"Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming" edited by Paul Hawken

Rising star: Jay Lipman, co-founder and president, Ethic

Jay Lipman pointed to a book that Ethic has given to people close to the company, called "Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming," edited by Paul Hawken and produced by the non-profit organization Project Drawdown.

"For me, it's a game plan of how to actually seek solutions to the biggest existential threat that we actually face as a species and as a planet," Lipman said. "Whenever I introduce people to the book, you see people get obsessed with the kinds of things that we can be doing, whether that's regenerative agriculture, renewable energy, or reducing food waste."

"Beating the Street" by Peter Magellan

Rising star: Jennifer Fo Cardillo, portfolio manager, Fideltiy

"Being a Fidelity person, I had to pick a Peter Lynch book," said Jennifer Fo Cardillo, a small-cap portfolio manager at the firm, referring to the famed money manager and longtime Fidelity investor.

Lynch ran the firm's Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990.

"'Beating the Street has been one of my favorites, such a classic. It's about how Peter ran Magellan day-to-day. And so I've just found it to be an excellent guide to investment processes for new fund managers," she said.

"Faith of My Fathers" by John McCain

Rising star: Victor Perez, vice president in credit derivative trading, Wells Fargo

For Victor Perez, a Naval veteran and vice president in credit derivative trading at Wells Fargo, the late John McCain's "Faith of My Fathers,"a 1999 autobiography and memoir, is a must-read.

The late Arizona senator and Naval officer "was a role model for us going through the Naval academy," Perez said. The book looks back on McCain's pedigree, his father and grandfather both being esteemed four-star Naval admirals, and McCain having survived imprisonment and torture in Vietnam starting from when he was shot down while flying over Hanoi in 1967.

"A Pirates Look at Fifty" by Jimmy Buffet

Rising star: Victor Perez, vice president in credit derivative trading, Wells Fargo

Another book Victor Perez recommended, albeit with a much different tone, is Jimmy Buffett's "A Pirate Looks at Fifty," in which the musician takes readers on a journey through the Caribbean, and shares stories from his life. The book centers on Buffett's experiences surrounding his fiftieth birthday.

"The guy is just so chill, so cool," Perez said, adding, "I'm like, man, that's that's what I want to do when I'm older."

"Just Kids" by Patti Smith

Lauren Goodwin, economist and multi-asset portfolio strategist, New York Life Investments

"It's a story about friendship and finding beauty in New York City when times are hard both for yourself and for the city, and the drivers of the creative process," New York Life Investments's Lauren Goodwin said about Patti Smith's popular "Just Kids". "I am trained in music and language, and so these processes and styles are really near and dear to my heart."

"But Patti Smith is just a generous and lyrical narrator, and she shares glimpses of the fabulous yet grungy 70s, music scene, while really anchoring in the humanity of her experience and that time."

"Security Analysis" by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd

Rising star: Paul Kamenski, co-head of credit, Man Group's Man Numeric 

If you're looking to read about value investing, Man Group's Paul Kamenski suggests not worrying about getting your hands on billionaire hedge funder Seth Klarman's out-of-print book, "Margin of Safety".

"Much has been said about 'Margin of Safety' over the years, but in my opinion nothing quite compares to the original "Security Analysis" by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd. They epitomized the concept through their careful approach, still relevant to this day," said Kamenski.

"Contrarian Investment Strategy: The Psychology of Stock Market Success" by David Dreman

Rising star: Paul Kamenski, co-head of credit, Man Group's Man Numeric 

Paul Kamenski also put forward David Dreman's "Contrarian Investment Strategy: The Psychology of Stock Market Success"  as a must-read as they served as his first entrance into the world of systematic, quantitative investing.

"Compared with what has now often become fairly complex and evolved, his works as an early adopter of the approach were simple, intuitive, and persuasive, establishing clear roots for what it means to use a systematic approach," added Kamenski. 

"Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott

Rising star: Kelly Winnop, principal, Blackstone

Louise May Alcott's literary classic "Little Women" is Kelly Winnop of Blackstone's top pick.

"I was just drawn to Jo's independence, and I enjoyed that it was a book about family," she said.

"Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less" by Greg McKeown

Rising star: Lacey Vigmostad Giliberto, vice president, Credit Suisse 

Lacey Vigmostad Giliberto's reading list comprises titles that can help make all of our lives a bit better.

"Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less," by author Greg McKeown, is a book that can help people who "feel pulled in multiple directions and can get overwhelmed," Vigmostad Giliberto said, and it helped her to "consolidate and prioritize the activities in my life, and more importantly, the thoughts in my head."

"Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams" by Matthew Walker

Rising star: Lacey Vigmostad Giliberto, vice president, Credit Suisse

For those struggling to get in some much-needed rest, Lacey Vigmostad Giliberto recommended "Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams" by Matthew Walker."This book explores sleep's impact on your body and mind," she explained.

"Before the coronavirus pandemic, I was a daily 4:30 A.M. workout warrior and advocate for holistic nutrition, but I certainly was not prioritizing sleep in my health equation."
"This was an eye-opening and convincing read," she added," that has helped me to get significantly more shut-eye."

"The Art Spirit" by Robert Henri

Rising star: Alice Leng, vice president and quantitative finance analyst in the data & innovation group, Bank of America

An artist on the side who paints landscapes, Alice Leng recommended Robert Henri's"The Art Spirit" in part because it taught her to respect the flow of nature in her work. 

For Leng, a machine-learning expert in BofA's data and innovation group, favorite quotes include: "Art when really understood is the province of every human being," and "For an artist to be interesting to us he must have been interesting to himself."

"The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell

Rising star: Rayhaneh Sharif-Askary, director of investor relations and business development, Grayscale Investments

Rayhaneh Sharif-Askar of Grayscale Investments recommended Mary Doria Russell's "The Sparrow."

"It's this really unique narrative that transcends time and space and involves a story that has extraterrestrial life in it. And also touches on themes of art and spirituality and society and language," Sharif-Askary said.

"A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market" by Ed Thorp

Rising star: Philip Dobrin, senior portfolio strategist, Bridgewater Associates

Senior portfolio strategist Philip Dobrin suggested card-counter turned pioneering quant investor Ed Thorp's autobiography "A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market" and Bill Browder's "Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice".

"Reading the stories of great investors is both fun and informative," he said. "What's most interesting is the commonalities you see between the two investors despite radically different approaches and asset classes."

"Foundation" by Isaac Asimov

Rising star: Vlad Moshinsky, director, Miller Buckfire

"There's a lot of game theory involved, analyzing big data to predict outcomes," Vlad Moshinsky, a restructuring banker, told Business Insider about "Foundation" by Isaac Asimov.

"The concepts in that book and trilogy are very relevant today."

"Super Forecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction" by Dan Gardner and Philip E. Tetlock.

Rising star: Rachel Dwyer, principal, Apollo Global Management

Apollo's Rachel Dwyer put forward"Super Forecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction" by Dan Gardner and Philip E. Tetlock, which she read as part of her credit division's book club. 

"We have an Apollo book club. That is one of John Zito's (deputy CIO of Apollo Credit) brainchilds. Most of the people in the group participate in it. It's pretty interesting to read a book a month. We have Zoom get-togethers."

"When Breath Becomes Air" by Paul Kalanithi

Rising star: Shaan Tehal, vice president, Global Technology Investment Banking Group, Morgan Stanley

One of Shaan Tehal's favorite book picks is "When Breath Becomes Air," an autobiography written by Dr. Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon who died at age 37 from stage IV metastatic lung cancer in 2015.

The book was published by Random House after Kalanithi passed away.

Kalanithi wrote "so poignantly and beautifully about the hard questions we should ask about our life and how we live it," Tehal said. "It was a very well-written book around the deeper philosophical thoughts that you should have around life itself."

"Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by David Epstein

Rising star: Shaan Tehal, vice president, Global Technology Investment Banking Group, Morgan Stanley

Another of Shaan Tehal's suggestions is a book called "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by journalist David Epstein; it was released last year.

The book, he said, "looks at the benefits of late specialization and a diversity of experience," and how knowledge in a variety of arenas can pay off "especially when solving complex problems that require creative solutions." 

"Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance" by Angela Duckworth

Rising star: Sharo Atmeh, equity analyst, Alyeska Investment Group

"Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance" by Angela Duckworth, was the pick Sharo Atmeh of Chicago-based hedge fund Alyeska Investment Group put forward.

He was impressed by how she could identify something as qualitative as "working hard" and dissect it.

"Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers" by Geoffrey A. Moore

Rising star: John Curtius, partner, Tiger Global

Tiger Global's John Curtius suggested"Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers" by Geoffrey A. Moore, which he calls a must-read for any aspiring tech investors

"Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger

Miles Tobin, principal, Carlyle Group

Miles Tobin, a principal at Carlyle, said he's become more of a listener of books than a reader and that the "Catcher in the Rye", by J.D. Salinger is "one of his older but all time favorite" reads.

Read our full list of the rising stars of Wall Street shaking up investing, trading, and dealmaking.

Or take a look at their best career advice here.