Morning Coffee: The busiest Goldman Sachs banker in London. Ex-Citadel Securities insider says banks were complacent

If you're a big believer in meritocracy and the concept that anyone can make it in banking, irrespective of background and parental wealth, you might be challenged by Mark Sorrell, the global co-head of M&A at Goldman Sachs. Sorrell is Goldman's busiest banker in London. He also comes from a very wealthy family.

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Financial News notes that Sorrell, whose father is Sir Martin Sorrell, the advertising mogul, has completed more deals by value than anyone else this year. His notches include the £5.4bn ($7.2bn) takeover by CVC and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority of Hargreaves Lansdowne and private equity firm Thoma Bravo's £4.3bn bid for DarkTrace. 

There's no intimation that Mark Sorrell, now aged 51 owes his job or dealmaking prowess to his father, but neither her nor his two brothers - Robert and Jonathan, who each began their careers at Goldman Sachs, started out at the bottom of the pole. After attending Winchester College and Cambridge University, they each worked for Goldman in London, and each became managing directors. Mark Sorrell stayed (Robert and Jonathan now work for Moelis & Co. and Capstone respectively), and has been a Goldman partner since 2010. This isn't the first year that Mark has done more deals than anyone else in London: it's been a regular occurrence since at least 2020. 

Does this mean that it helps to have your own wealthy parent if you want to make it at Goldman Sachs or British banking in general? Hypothetically, no. Sorrell began working for Goldman in 2004, and banks have since become very conscious of anything that might be perceived as nepotism. When you're applying to Goldman now, you're as likely to receive a personal recommendation if you're a talented diversity candidate as the talented progeny of a client. 

However, once you're in the job, the ability to bond quickly with wealthy business leaders helps. This can be learnt: Anthony Zammit, the second-busiest banker in London this year and the co-head of UK and Ireland investment banking at Morgan Stanley, attended a grammar school in Kent...  

Separately, as the likes of Citadel Securities and Jane Street increase their share of sales and trading revenues globally, there are suggestions that big banks were caught with their eyes off the ball. 

Speaking to the Financial Times, one former Citadel Securities insider said banks failed to recognize the threat electronic trading houses represented to their business models. “They got stuck in and thought their old-school model was going to live forever,” he said. Now, banks lament that they cannot catch up. “How much would we have to invest to replicate their set-up before we even break even?” said one senior trading executive at a large US bank told the FT. “It could be three to five years of investment in an environment that is still evolving.”

Meanwhile...

UBS cut more than half of Credit Suisse's bankers in Germany. (Bloomberg) 

Partners at Deloitte in London were paid £1.01m for the year ended 31 May, down nearly 5% from £1.06m the previous year. (Financial News) 

Anna Anthony is the new UK managing partner at EY.  She is also the first woman to permanently run a Big Four operation day-to-day in the UK. (Financial Times) 

Boutique investment bank Qatalyst Partners paid its handful of London employees an average of £1.2m last year, down from £2.1m in 2022. (Financial News) 

Bridgewater Associates has got a new 60,000 foot office at 295 Fifth Ave. (NY Post) 

Citadel Securities will be building its own brokerage in China. (Bloomberg) 

Walleye Capital has hired Citadel’s Eric Nollette as director of data and insights. (Financial News) 

Deutsche Bank sold a significant risk transfer linked to $3bn of leveraged finance debt to Apollo. (Bloomberg) 

If you lose your job, the new perk is $40k of executive coaching. (Bloomberg) 

Men on the Bear Stearns trading floor used to inflate sex dolls and punch them through the air to keep them aloft. Women there were compelled to assemble lists of sexual predators. (WSJ) 

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