Morning Coffee: Goldman Sachs & JPMorgan bankers had their best day for 30 years. Remembering Wesley LePatner at Blackstone

If you're one of the many bankers waiting for the rain to fall, yesterday was a good day. By some measures, it was the best day for over three decades.

The Financial Times notes that equity capital markets bankers at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Allen & Company (a boutique bank specializing in technology, media and telecoms deals) worked as joint lead book runners on the $1.2bn stock market listing of San Francisco based design software maker FIGMA. Yesterday, FIGMA's stock jumped 250% on its debut on the New York Stock Exchange. 

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Bloomberg reported that FIGMA's market pop was the largest in over three decades. It ended the day 300% up after being 40 times oversubscribed. The rally in the share price was so intense that it triggered multiple pauses in trading.

The rally suggests that FIGMA was seriously undervalued by the bankers who worked on the deal. However, it was a fine day for bankers when measured in terms of the signal it gave to other clients waiting to go to market.  It was also a fine day for Sequoia, the venture capital firm that was one of FIGMA's early backers, and a particularly happy time for Dylan Field, FIGMA's 33-year-old founder, who is now worth over $1.6bn. 

FIGMA isn't the only recent successful IPO. The Financial Times notes that CoreWeave and Circle have also done well. The deal pipeline may finally flow free. If so, then bankers in the US at least can expect a strong end to the year and maybe an even better 2026. The only person who has lost out appears to be Frank Quattrone, the veteran Credit Suisse technology banker who represented FIGMA when Adobe tried and failed to purchase it last year. Quattrone is an M&A banker rather than an underwriter, and he had no role to play in the IPO. 

Separately, family, friends and colleagues have been remembering Wesley LePatner, the Blackstone executive killed in the shootings at Blackstone's New York office on Monday.

Speaking at her mother's funeral, LePatner's 14-year-old daughter gave a harrowing elegy in which she described how every time the doorbell rings, she thinks it's her mother coming home. "I only thought this would happen when I was older. I never thought it would happen when I was 14," she said. 

Jon Gray and Steve Schwarzman, Blackstone's COO and CEO attended the funeral at the Central Synagogue, near Blackstone's office at 345 Park Avenue. Bloomberg said Gray asked the congregation to raise their hands if they'd benefited from LePatner's judgement; many had. 

LePatner's husband told the attendees to take a moment each day to hold the people they loved the most.   “Grab them tight and tell them you ‘extra love them,’" he said, using one of his wife's phrases. "Cause one day you may find that they have disappeared in the blink of an eye.”

Meanwhile...

Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters says employees are not being forced to return to the office. “We work with adults. The adults can have an adult conversation with other adults and decide how they’re going to best manage their team...Our MDs want to come to the office,” said Winters. “They come to the office because they collaborate, they manage their people, they lead teams. But if they need the flexibility, the can get it from us.” (Bloomberg) 

KPMG is letting its UK employees finish at 1pm one day a week from mid-June until the end of August. UK fund manager Jupiter is allowing staff to log on remotely for the whole month of August to help with holiday and childcare arrangements. (Financial Times)

Hedge fund Jain Global got off to an inauspicious start, losing money in its first two months but clawing into the black by the end of 2024, finishing up 0.5%. But it started to hit its stride in the second quarter of 2025, posting three straight months of gains and ending its first 12 months of trading up 2.7%. (Business Insider) 

Starting Jan. 1, companies in Ontario with at least 25 employees will have to inform candidates about their status within 45 days of a job interview. Employers also will have to disclose whether a vacancy is actively being filled and whether artificial intelligence is being used to screen and select candidates. (Bloomberg) 

Civil service interns in the UK will have to be working class from now on. Working class credentials will be judged by the professions parents did when candidates were aged 14. (BBC) 

Goldman Sachs' CEO David Solomon says it's good to do what you don't want on an internship. "I would tell you that sometimes the best opportunities come from being asked to do something you don't want to do, and actually taking it on and trying to do it. Because that's when people grow the most. That's where I grew the most." (Fox News)  

The co-chief executive of Blue Owl says there's manic activity in the secondaries market as retail investors pour in. “The level of activity, this idea that somehow it seems like people think it’s all just like low-hanging fruit, I don’t think that’s right.” (Financial Times) 

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