Morning Coffee: Goldman Sachs & Morgan Stanley bankers' strange new shoes. London analyst jobs collapse

If you look at Elon Musk's personal X account, you will see some curious sights. Among the retweets of claims that SpaceX is a company whose mission is 'axiomatically the love of humanity', there are Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley bankers wearing green shoes. 

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The green shoes are not the same; Goldman bankers' are less garish. Both sets are reportedly inspired by a 'green shoe' clause which the bankers themselves wanted to add to the SpacexIPO. The clause allows for up to 15% more SpaceX shares to be sold over a 30 day period if demand is strong. Musk agreed to add it, but only if the bankers wore actual green shoes. 

Immersive outfits are standard for bankers competing for IPOs (David Solomon once wore Lululemon). The groups of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were each paid $100m for their lead roles; BofA, Citi and JPMorgan got $75m. Lurid shoes are a small price to pay.

But there is more to it than that. Bloomberg reports that Musk negotiated that if the green shoe clause is activated and if SpaceX sells an extra $11.25bn of shares, the Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley bankers wearing the footwear won't receive any extra fees for their extra work. The additional fee should have been $75m. It comes after Musk already negotiated bankers' main fee on the IPO down to 0.67% versus a standard 4-7% of money raised. The green shoes might therefore be interpreted as a public display of subjugation.

Goldman and Morgan Stanley's bankers probably wouldn't see it like this. The $75bn SpaceX IPO was oversubscribed with more than $100bn of retail orders alone. Bankers with SpaceX stock to allocate are therefore kingmakers and able to ingratiate themselves with clients. The Financial Times reports that investors "cycled through" Goldman's offices on Thursday petitioning for a slice of the SpaceX deal. 70% of the offering reportedly went to long only managers; 20% to retail; hedge funds only got 10% of the book. The extra $11.25bn will therefore banks' opportunity to keep lucrative hedge fund clients happy. Zero fees and garish shoes are probably ok in the circumstances. 

Separately, Bloomberg reports that analyst jobs in London seem to be vanishing and that where four years ago there were 350 jobs for 'finance analysts' available at any one time, there are now only 80. 

AI appears to be the culprit. AI can do analysis. “The demand for great portfolio managers has never been higher,” Sean Sweeney, one recruiter declares. “But the layer of people underneath them is disappearing fast. Firms aren’t building teams around PMs anymore, they’re handing one person an AI tool and calling it a day.”

Meanwhile...

Elon Musk has described Mars as a “fixer-upper of a planet” with “a lot of potential.” Musk wanted the SpaceX IPO to happen last week because Mercury, Venus and Jupiter were in rare alignment in the night sky. (Financial Times)

JPMorgan had a SpaceX party on the 57th floor of its New York headquarters. There were with tomahawk steak bones branded with JPMorgan and SpaceX logos. (WSJ)

There’s a sharp drop in commercial bank employment that starts in 2026. This is the beginning of back-office downsizing and still has a long way to go. Banks are only just getting started. (Robin Brooks) 

DRW lost $176m in the first three months of the year and parted company with the head of its US desk for power and natural gas trading. (Financial Times) 

Susquehanna International Group's sports trading unit lost over $10m after offering to bet on the Knicks losing. They won, despite their chances being only 5%. (Bloomberg) 

Rates trader Luke Ryan left DRW in December 2025. Now he's at BlueCrest. (Financial News) 

Centerview was negotiating a $150m fee to restructure Venezuela's debt. Then Lazard came along offering to do it for $25m. (Bloomberg) . 

Russell Horwitz, Goldman Sachs' outgoing chief of staff, didn't agree with David Solomon's backing of Kathy Ruemmler. Horwitz says this isn't why he's leaving. (FT)

Chirayu Rana has got a new lawyer. He is saying: "We intend to vindicate every one of Mr. Rana's rights and hold JPMorgan and Ms. Hajdini fully accountable for the catastrophic harm they caused. The story the public thinks it knows is about to change dramatically. Stay tuned." (MorningStar)

Now HSBC has $400m of exposure to IFFCO Group, a consumer credit company in the Middle East that might be going insolvent after trying to restructure $2bn of debt. (Bloomberg) 

KPMG issued a report saying that UBS “integrates AI agents across investment advisory, risk management and compliance monitoring”. UBS said this was incorrect. (Financial Times) 

Simon Dove was MD and head of liquidity at Instinet. Now he's left. (The Trade News) 

SocGen expanded into cash prime brokerage. Good luck with that. (Financial News) 

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley bankers can request to work from home on match days during the world cup. (FT) 

Apollo Global's second biggest US office might be in Austin. (Bloomberg) 

Solo participants in the International Quant Championship, hosted by hedge fund WorldQuant, were 150,600 this year, an increase of nearly 100%. Blame AI. (Financial News) 

Citadel put $500m into New York-based Toms Capital run by Benjamin Pass. (Bloomberg) 

What developers do now: "LLMs are superb at spitting out small chunks of reasonably good code if asked to do a reasonably specific thing. This was what junior developers used to do. My day to day focus is now on “architectural” decisions (I.e. how do we best assemble all of those small chunks of code to do something complicated?)" (Financial Times) 

Beta mothers let their kids explore on bikes and achieve only moderately good grades. Anything to get them away from screens. (WSJ) 

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