Morning Coffee: Irascible hedge fund chief executive refused to work from home. Failed bankers' back-up career is having problems

For many people in financial services, being given the option to work from home more frequently would be a fine thing. Just ask the junior bankers at UBS, or staff at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in London. However, for a certain vintage of person, mandatory working from home is tantamount to excommunication and must be resisted at all costs. 

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Those people include Crispin Odey, the 67-year-old British hedge fund manager who ran Odey Asset Management and who liked to make an appearance in the office wearing brightly coloured shirts and ties. Odey is currently in court in the UK challenging the FCA's decision to ban him from working in financial services. Various of his foibles are being aired in the process.

One such foible was an alleged utter refusal to work from home when asked. Reporting from the court, Bloomberg says that Tom Richards, who was on Odey's executive committee, said Odey wasn't keen to either work from home, take a sabbatical, or to work in the office basement to segregate him from everyone else while the firm investigated inappropriate conduct accusations against him. Odey really wanted to stay on the first floor, amidst the throng.

He's not the only chief executive to feel this way. David Solomon at Goldman Sachs famously came into the Goldman head office during COVID even when no one else was around. Jamie Dimon thinks working from home is a road to dissolution. Ken Griffin reconvened Citadel's office in a Miami hotel when work from home threatened. 

In Crispin Odey's case, the in-office insistence was linked to a refusal to be "punished" as the firm investigated the allegations. He was pretty forceful on this. When another executive visited Crispin Odey at home to discuss closing the firm, Odey was said to exhibit "pure rage," changed colour, and made the table shake. Having such personas in the office might liven things up but is not ideal for team culture. 

Separately, being an accountant is not cool. The Financial Times reports that people can't be bothered to hang around to become a partner at Big Four firms any more. "A large chunk of my intake are failed bankers,” complains one junior auditor, who says he's surrounded by people who are "second tier."

The grumbling comes as accounting firms deploy AI to do junior work. On one hand, this deployment is expected to "help make the role even more exciting," in the words of senior auditors trying to sell the career.  On the other, it means that fewer graduates are being hired and that those who are aren't very enthused about their futures. 

It doesn't help that incumbents say junior accounting roles pay poorly and involve “tedious work” with “extremely long hours during busy season.” Deloitte is attempting to combat the malaise by shortening its qualification period. 12 out of 14 ACA exams in the UK will be in future be taken in year one of Deloitte's graduate training programme instead of over three years while AI takes over juniors' repetitive tasks. Students rejected from banking jobs don't seem convinced that this will make audit jobs more appealing.

Meanwhile... 

xAI is recruiting Wall Street bankers, portfolio managers, traders and credit analysts for its data annotation teams that train Grok. It particularly wants credit experts to teach financial modeling, leveraged loan syndication, distressed investing and niche bonds such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized loan obligations. (Bloomberg) 

John Zito, co-president of Apollo's asset-management arm, said a private-credit loan made to a generic small or midsize “Joe Software Company” might recover 20 to 40 cents on the dollar. He also queried the interest in private equity secondaries when private credit finances "80% of those portfolios." (WSJ) 

A “substantial portion” of the private equity industry is already “stressed or distressed.” - “You’re not looking at a problem five years from now, you’re looking at a problem that exists today,” said Tony Yoseloff, managing partner and chief investment officer at credit hedge fund Davidson Kempner Capital Management. (Financial Times) 

The $42 billion Cliffwater Corporate Lending Fund has more than 3,600 individual holdings, including direct loans to middle-market corporate borrowers and ownership stakes in other private-credit funds. (WSJ) 

JPMorgan has begun offloading $30bn of debt related to Electronic Arts and Sealed Air Corp. It says investors already placed order for $19 billion of orders for debt related to EA. (Bloomberg) 

Citi hired Eric Farina as global co-head of infrastructure financing and capital solutions from Morgan Stanley. (Bloomberg) 

Nomura is building a precious metals trading team in London and hired Aleksander Ganchev who worked for Standard Chartered. (Bloomberg)

Stefan Bollinger, the ex-Goldman Sachs partner in white sneakers who now runs Julius Baer was paid $30m for his efforts last year, despite allegedly irritating some existing staff. (Financial News) 

Singaporean data centre firm DayOne is filing for a $5bn IPO but it's in the US and all the banks working on it are America. (Bloomberg) 

Millennium pulled a $1bn investment from hedge fund Scopia after staff changes. It's not clear which changes though. (Bloomberg) 

If you're hit by a drone strike in Dubai don't take photos to share with your family at home as you will be arrested. (Daily Mail) 

Women experience pain more intensely than men. It's because of testosterone. (WSJ) 

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