Morning Coffee: Married senior bankers fired for having an affair deny all knowledge of it. No disruption to coming deals
53-year-old Nadine Ahn is married with children. So is circa 56-year-old Ken Mason. Nadine and Ken were good friends for a decade and both worked for Royal Bank of Canada. She became CFO and says she was even on track to become CEO. He was a VP of in the treasury team, dealing with capital and term funding.
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On April 5th both Nadine and Ken were fired. RBC says they were having an affair and that it, "conducted a thorough review with an investigation by outside legal counsel and the facts are very clear that there was a significant breach of our Code of Conduct based on the irrefutable evidence." RBC also says Nadine gave Ken preferential treatment in his career.
Nadine and Ken say this is absolutely not true; they were not having an affair, there were no preferential activities. She was earning about $3m a year and is now suing RBC for $49m, including $20m due to “devastating, worldwide reputational harm.” We don't know how much Ken was earning, but he's suing RBC for $20m.
Dave McKay, RBC's president and CEO was even roped into the intrigue. He reportedly sent Nadine a confounding text message on the evening of Thursday April 4th, asking her to attend an unexpected meeting on Friday morning. When she arrived at the meeting, there was no sign of McKay and only a lawyer and HR person who promptly seized her laptop and phone and interrogated her for two hours. Mason was lured by the chief risk officer and faced a similar fate.
The case is curious to the extent that the bank is adamant that the affair occurred and plans to "vigorously defend" itself, but the alleged perpetrators are equally adamant that theirs was a purely platonic and professional non-tryst.
At the very least, work friends at RBC and banks everywhere have been warned.
Separately, after last week's volatility, there have been fears that deals scheduled for the fourth quarter might not happen while the dust settles and the US election is got out of the way.
Not so, apparently. At least not in Europe.
“Markets have calmed down very quickly, which is encouraging to see, so it is possible that there is little impact on the timing of second-half listings,” Andrew Briscoe, Bank of America Corp.’s head of equity capital markets syndicate in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told Bloomberg.
This is probably what a head of ECM syndicate is paid to say, but in a separate article, Bloomberg notes that the London stock market is on track for a revival in its fortunes with potential IPOs from Anglo American Platinum, CK Infrastructure Holdings and Shein. It sounds promising and London needs it after the total capitalization of London-listed equities fell from a high of $4.3 trillion in 2007 to about $3.2 trillion in June 2024, while the value of US stocks almost trebled.
It's not a done deal, though. “Let’s see how it goes over the next few weeks,” added Briscoe.
Meanwhile...
JPMorgan strategists think 75% of carry trades have now been closed out. (Bloomberg)
Insights of a banking intern. “It was a huge culture shock. I’d never even been to London before. I was there in my Topman suit, surrounded by people who all had pinky rings. Everyone was uber-posh and it was a complete mono-culture.” (Financial News)
Junior private equity professionals' jobs are changing. Blackstone already has something called BX Atlas, a standardised LBO model that gives Blackstone dealmakers a near-instantaneous readout of a deal’s feasibility and whether it merits a more detailed study. (Financial Times)
Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, PIF, which has $925bn in AUM, is flexing its might and encouraging banks like Goldman Sachs, Moelis & Co., Lazard Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co, to open local offices. (Bloomberg)
People embrace certain values — purity, loyalty, and respect for authority — more strongly in spring and fall, compared to summer and winter. (Vox)
People want to date a banker because their exhausted and overwhelmed by their own career prospects and life chances and want a shortcut to a life of luxury. (Atlantic)
How to get a job at JPMorgan, even if you don't want it: "My strategy has always been to add 100 to 150 jobs to a spreadsheet with their details and apply to five each day until I run out." (Business Insider)
The one-day flight trip for work “went out the door at the beginning of Covid and hasn’t really come back.” (Financial Times)
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