Morning Coffee: London JPMorgan analyst in her 20s launches complaint against pay. Goldman Sachs MD interviews

Saidya Najeeb is three years into her career at JPMorgan in London, but things do not seem to be going well there. Najeeb still works for JPMorgan, seemingly in the private bank, but she has embarked upon the simultaneously brave and kamikazesque path of suing the bank for emotional distress, adverse career progression and financial loss. She wants £58k ($76). 

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Given that this is as much as Najeeb might make in a bonus for a single year if she sticks with her career, taking JPMorgan to court when she's barely begun is an interesting move. But maybe Najeeb - whom we haven't spoken to - doesn't want to work in a bank. Or maybe she thinks JPMorgan doesn't want her and that her career there will be curtailed anyway.  

Either way, the nub of her complaint is pay relative to a male colleague. Bloomberg reports that Najeeb earned £55k a year when she joined as a first year analyst in 2022, while a male colleague earned £60k. In her second year, Najeeb says the same colleague earned £8k more than she did. 

She's calling discrimination. JPMorgan says it's not. It says it referred Najeeb's complaint to an independent hearing manager within the bank, who declared she was paid fairly. That male colleague got more money because he had longer experience in the industry, says JPMorgan. The bank also claims to have had concerns about Najeeb's performance and says it even contemplated putting her on a performance improvement plan at the end of her first year there. 

Najeeb isn't buying it. She says the bank retaliated against her when she complained. She says she received negative feedback, wasn't promoted and wasn't invited to office events. She claims, too, that colleagues told her male analysts at JPMorgan are often promoted a year earlier than females. 

Launching a court case against a bank, aged circa 24, is a bold move. However, it's one that more and more young people seem willing to take. Ex-Centerview analyst Kathryn Shriber is, for example, suing the boutique for excessive working hours and a lack of sleep, which worsened her anxiety disorder. Andrew Pardo, a former intern at hedge fund Point72, is suing the fund for making him sit at a desk with a lot of people walking nearby, which worsened his PTSD. 

Such things are unlikely to ingratiate young people with future employers. But now that a financial services career is seen as a brief interlude in which to earn enough to pay down a student loan or achieve a house deposit, then maybe suing a financial services firm for mistreatment is as good a route to that goal as any other.

Separately, Goldman Sachs has named 638 new MDs. Some people are already complaining that the list includes mediocrities, but maybe there will always be such whingers. 

Goldman, at least, seems to have been abnormally thorough in its selection. The Wall Street Journal reports that the firm conducted 6,000 internal interviews as part of the cross-ruffing process that identifies the people it wants to promote. They happened in a three-month period since September.

Meanwhile...

7% of Goldman's new MDs are in India. (WSJ) 

Only 27% of Goldman's new MDs are women. That's the lowest proportion since David Solomon took over in 2018. (Bloomberg) 

Point72 is raising $1bn for a private credit fund. (Bloomberg) 

UBS has more than $500mn of exposure to First Brands across its asset management and investment arms. It's liquidating several invoice finance funds, including a strategy that did not have exposure to First Brands. (Financial Times) 

Bank of America's got some new London heads of investment banking. James Robertson is now head of UK corporate and investment banking. Duncan Stewart and Stephen Little are co-heads of UK investment banking. (Bloomberg) 

Money markets are looking stressed. “One could argue that we’re not in an ample reserve environment anymore and these events could continue to happen . . . It would be prudent for the Fed to think about what other tools they have in their back pocket.” (Financial Times)  

Elon Musk got a $1 trillion stock package and all is well. “What we’re about to embark upon is not merely a new chapter of the future of Tesla but a whole new book. I guess what I’m saying is hang onto your Tesla stock.” (WSJ) 

Ruth Porat's father was a physicist at the Stanford Accelerator Laboratory and the two would tinker for hours in the garage, soldering radios and adding machines. (WSJ)

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