"I am a junior at a top US bank. We openly discuss whether this bank is going under"
I'm a junior M&A banker at one of the leading investment banks. I've worked in this industry for the past five years, but I was still a child in 2008.
Get Morning Coffee ☕ in your inbox. Sign up here.
In the past few weeks, a lot of the discussion on the desk has been about that period. Banks that used to exist - Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, RBS - basically ceased to exist. And then Credit Suisse ceased to exist in 2023.
Could this happen again? Could this happen to us? This is our new topic of debate. Yesterday, the share price of this bank plummeted. It's not 2008 - we're simply back to the level of 2021 - but we're worried anyway. It's not that the bank is going bankrupt any time soon, obviously, but we're all painfully aware of its flaws.
What are these flaws? Mostly a lack of confidence in senior staff. There are endless discussions about the CEO and business heads. Friends of friends are being hired in - sometimes competent, sometimes not - and our existing senior people are frustrated. A lot have left. There are a lot of new big egos and it's detrimental to people who've been raised here.
We will hopefully be fine, but the tariffs are a new worry. Writedowns are expected on the loan book and fees this year are likely to be lower than ever. This is why the share price is falling. The fact that we're openly discussing the bank going under is remarkable, but it also feels strangely normal right now.
Samuel Byrne is a pseudonym
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, Whatsapp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libellous (in which case it won’t.)
Photo by Nikola Tasic on Unsplash
