Morning Coffee: $50m bidding war for 30 year-old ex-Morgan Stanley equity researcher. Bank CEO decries "venom" & "negativity" after associate's death
It wasn't long ago that Kevin Liu was your average sort of junior equity researcher at Morgan Stanley. Liu joined the bank in New York after graduating from Cornell in 2015. Two years later, however, he skipped to a hedge fund and now another hedge fund wants to hire him. For a huge sum.
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Liu, who by our reckoning, is aged in his mid-30s has been poached by Steve Cohen's Point72 Asset Management. Bloomberg reports that Point72 has hired him for $50m, a multi-year package that reportedly reflects all the pay he'll leave on the table at his previous employer, Marshall Wace. As is typically the case, the $50m is subject to "caveats," implying clawbacks if Liu happens to leave quickly for a rival or is dismissed "for cause."
How did Liu get so valuable so quickly? He's joining Point72 as an equity long short portfolio manager, and it undoubtedly helps that he specializes in technology, media and telecoms (TMT) stocks. Even as a junior at Morgan Stanley, Liu reportedly focused on US internet stocks.
In a world where seven technology stocks represent nearly 27% of the S&P's market cap and where NVIDIA can plunge 17% in a day, understanding the dynamics of that market clearly pays very well. It wasn't just Steve Cohen who wanted to hire Liu: various hedge funds reportedly engaged in a bidding war for him. It's not the same specializing in consumer goods.
Separately, Jefferies CEO Richard Handler has taken to Instagram with the series of posts below concerning the death of Jefferies' TMT associate Carter McIntosh.
Handler's outpouring comes as a long thread on Wall Street Oasis referring to McIntosh was pulled down and after eyebrows had been raised at one of Handler's jokey social media posts before the associate's death. This is his response.
Meanwhile...
A spokesperson for Jefferies declined to comment beyond the memo. McIntosh’s death remains under investigation by the Dallas police department. (Bloomberg)
Jason Sippel, who helped build JPMorgan's equities business, is leaving for hedge fund Rokos Capital Management as deputy chief investment officer and global head of markets. Pranav Thakur will be taking over his role at JPMorgan. (Bloomberg)
Millennium's commodities arm earned $500m last year, down from $600m in 2023. (Bloomberg)
Ryan Nolan, Goldman Sachs' co-head of global software banking, is joining ex-colleague Gregg Lemkau and others at BDT & MSD, the merchant bank that advises founder- and family-owned businesses on things like deals and succession planning while also investing in them through a fund. It probably helps that he's 'worked on some of the biggest tech deals in recent memory.' (WSJ)
Fernando Rivas, the former head of North American M&A at JPMorgan is now the sole head of the investment bank at Wells Fargo. (Financial News)
KPMG, PwC, Deloitte and EY hired a thousand fewer graduates, school leavers and apprentices in the UK last year. (The Times)
Mohammed Zina, an ex-Goldman Sachs analyst, has been ordered to pay £587,000 after he generated £1.1m from insider trading. He's also been sentenced to 22 months in prison. The judge said: “I cannot help but feel pity for you, because you have thrown away what was undoubtedly a promising career in banking. Your reputation now is lost, and it is likely you will never be trusted to work in a position of such responsibility again.” (Financial Times)
Deutsche Bank, HSBC and UBS all announced plans to make significant job cuts last week. (Fortune)
Private equity firm CVC replaced Chris Stadler, who ran its North American private equity business for 18 years, with co-heads Lorne Somerville and Cathrin Petty, who were both previously based at CVC in London. The fund said the US had been "clearly underperforming." (Financial Times)
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