[ad_1]
It's the mark of a strange employer to pay millions of his employees each year, but when he decides to let them go, ask them to quickly leave the building by holding their belongings.
Since the failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the scene we witnessed Monday at Deutsche Bank in London, New York and Hong Kong has become familiar. It was considered internally as evidence of rare humanity that Deutsche stock traders and sellers were allowed to stay at the company's headquarters in London for three hours before being ejected.
Some showed signs of distress, but many of them went to a nearby pub, having planned that their days at the bank would be numbered. This is what you expect if you work in the trading room of any global investment bank: the last ticket you sign is the one that pays.
There is a certain logic to the way the ax falls so suddenly in the investment banks, with invalidation of security cards and closure of access to the systems in case a dissatisfied employee performs a fraudulent business as revenge. But it is also a symptom of uneasiness – the alienation of a bank to a banker, as if the job was just another transaction.
"Discipline" was the word used by Christian Sewing, General Manager, to explain why he was ending his ambition, after 20 years of repurchasing Bankers Trust in 1999, to compete with Goldman Sachs and others. Bernd Leukert, a former SAP executive, will be responsible for strengthening the bank's automation.
It is understandable that Mr. Sewing was tired of employing people who did not produce enough to justify their premiums. Deutsche's costs were higher than its revenues in the last quarter of 2018 and it planned to cut 18,000 jobs by 2022. Under the traders who led its expansion, what he called "spectacular ambition" was substituted for The strategy.
But it's hard to see how a business can succeed in the long run when there is obviously so little connection between it and its employees. Deutsche is not alone in dealing with this absence: many investment banks rely almost entirely on money as a motivator and their crops are very fragile.
Most professionals, especially in sectors such as medicine or education, identify with their jobs and derive a purpose. Citing Karl Marx's notion of alienation at work, a study last year concluded that "when there is no purpose, the work becomes absurd, alienating or even degrading. ".
Two academics studying investment bankers in London who had survived the sector's upheavals to succeed and be well paid were surprised by their degree of cynicism and noted the lack of "meaning, emotion and personal investment in values of work ".
They encountered "identity minimalism" among investment bankers, who focused solely on making money with an "instrumental, almost mercenary attitude towards oneself and work." The bankers did not expect any loyalty from above and assumed that they would be fired someday.
Business bankers are human beings, despite their popular image, but they tend to maintain loyal relationships with their colleagues, their asset managers and their clients, rather than with their employers. The latter reward them for the money they bring back, and they make that lack of feeling.
"They are doing very well, they are paid a lot, they are considered indispensable, but in bad markets, they are not doing very well, and frankly, they are treated poorly," concluded a senior executive referring to the "- correlation with market performance – traders jobs.
This is a relevant description of what happened to Deutsche and the fatalism with which it was greeted by those who were fired. After drinking with colleagues around a drink, some would have called headhunters, touting their revenue potential for another bank.
"We lost our compass over the past two decades," Sewing told investors after the announcement of the restructuring; He also wrote to staff wanting to create a new corporate culture that "always puts the bank and its customers first, before the interests of the individual."
But to suggest to the people you just rejected that they are not sufficiently dedicated is irrational. Some may have treated Deutsche as the place where they paid their premiums for a while. They proved to be correct: it would have been foolish to put too much trust in them.
Disloyalty is so entrenched in investment banks that it's hard to break the habit on both sides. Traders demand big bonuses and threaten to leave for higher offers because there is no security; banks grow into profitable businesses or growing regions such as China, while launching latecomers.
Mr. Sewing is not the first to conclude that the investment bank is too unstable and that the risks are too great. Maybe one day, another aspirant will decipher the code and create a bank that will work differently. Until then, bankers will continue to be very well paid and available.
[ad_2]
Source link