Morning Coffee: Hedge fund “nerd” accidentally highlights danger of US meetings. Downsized HSBC banker makes a comeback

One of the most important pieces of knowledge that’s passed on from senior bankers to their juniors, is that when you're dealing with US border controls, “whatever you say, say nothing”.  Don’t try to describe your role in detail – just say “investment banker”. Don’t start talking about what an exciting deal it is – you're just travelling “for some meetings”.  Will you be doing any work? “No, just the meetings”.  There’s no upside from a long conversation and plenty of potential downside.

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The New York Post suggests that Jasmina Midzic of self-proclaimed "leading multistrategy hedge fund" Typhon Capital Management might not have handled things as well as she could have on a recent attempted trip to the Milken Conference in Los Angeles.  There certainly seems to have been some misunderstanding, as she and her firm are adamant that she wasn’t breaking any laws, but the Department of Homeland Security appears to have formed the opinion that she was trying to work on an inappropriate visa.

The visa in question, a B1 or B2, is one that allows you to go to conferences and do things like “negotiation of contracts”, “consultation with business associates” and the like, but not “gainful employment or productive activity”.  So it’s easy to see how hedge fund investor relations, which seems to have been Ms Midzic’s profession, could see it as a fuzzy line; when does “having a few meetings” shade into “doing your job”?

American lawyers suggest the border guards have got a lot more picky on this sort of thing recently.  In fact, Ms Midzic might have got off lightly, as there seem to be more cases of people being held in immigration jails, rather than just refused entry.  They are also making much more use of background checks, and this may be where she didn’t help herself.

To begin with, Ms Midzic’s social media is apparently ... not such as to dissuade a bored immigration guard from having a good thorough look.  Her Instagram is now locked, but was apparently full of bikini pictures taken in Miami and Dubai, along with a photograph of her as a scantily dressed nurse. She professes to be a "hedge fund nerd" and there were other pictures of her regularly doing hedge fund things, plus a claim that she is a resident of “London and New York”. In another profile, Midzic not only claims to have been working for a hedge fund in New York from 2018 to 2020, but also for another hedge fund in San Francisco at the same time.

She apparently applied for the L1 visa, under which a multinational company can transfer employees in and out of the USA, a few years ago, but was turned down. Combined with the frequent visits, this made for what one immigration lawyer called “a very easy clip”, followed by an apparently “fiery” exchange. The lesson to learn here is that the old folk wisdom of bankers has always been correct – don’t do anything to attract attention, adopt a non-confrontational posture and never say a sentence when a single word (or better still, a nonverbal grunt) will do.

Elsewhere, you can’t keep a good banker down.  After having been one of the highest-profile cuts back in February, and with his business unit being dismantled, Alfred Traboulsi, the former head of investment banking in the Americas for HSBC, is back in the game.

He's going to CIBC, in a new role that’s meant to bring together all the Canadian national champion’s investment banking teams in the USA.  You couldn’t really imagine a better fit – Traboulsi is going directly from one second-tier but well-regarded player with broad coverage but a few specific niches, to another.  He will probably have to deal with issues of a head office that blows hot and cold, inconsistent capital allocation from one year to another (and the consequent difficulties in the hiring market), but he’s experienced in that. And for their part, CIBC have got an executive that’s used to fighting to get into deals, trying to do more with less, and then taking full advantage of boom times when they come along.  It’s nice when a story has a happy ending.

Meanwhile ...

After urging people to take risk earlier in the year, Citadel's Ken Griffin says it might have been better to hold cash during the tariff turmoil. (Bloomberg) 

Someone who joined the family office of a former Australian Rules footballer, then found themselves managing assets including eight golf courses, might have thought that they were in sporting heaven, particularly when the investment firm they began to work with was called “Fairway Capital”.  In fact, the pleasure might be a bit bittersweet, as the plan is to build 3,000 houses on the fairways, which are all located on prime greenbelt land near London. (Bloomberg)

Deepfakes of British financial heroes like Anthony Bolton and Martin Wolf are appearing on social media videos, trying to persuade retail investors to pay to join WhatsApp groups for stock tips. (Financial News)

It feels like a headline from a few years ago, but maybe it’s a sign of where we are now; Andrew Peel, the former Credit Suisse trader who went to Morgan Stanley to become their head of crypto, is now leaving to “set up a fund closing the gap between traditional and decentralised finance”, based out of Zug in Switzerland. (Bloomberg)

Formerly one of Jamie Dimon’s top lieutenants and a member of the JPMorgan operating committee, Carlos Hernandez has gone to Brevan Howard, where he’s being described as a “longtime friend of our firm” and going into an executive chairman role.  This apparently doesn’t indicate any change of role for Alan Howard, for now. (Business Insider)

According to Nicolai Tangen, CEO of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, news summaries which previously took “days” can now be wrapped up in ten minutes with AI.  The fund does not “forsee the number of employees increasing any further” until they have managed to exhaust the benefits of technology. (Bloomberg)

What could be more “finance bro” than doing two private equity internships and getting onto the analyst program at a bulge bracket?  Answer – quitting that analyst program in order to have one last shot at winning the NCAA lacrosse championship (Bro Bible)

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