Morning Coffee: Citi hired the man with JPMorgan’s most interesting job in London. Bank CEO’s controversial comments

Chuka Umunna didn’t have a particularly auspicious start in investment banking.  He was a British politician who looked like a rising star in the 2010s, but fell out with Jeremy Corbyn, then launched a party of his own which quickly imploded and then gave up politics just in time to miss the Labour Party’s revival. But Chuka is making up for lost time.  After giving up on politics, he joined JPMorgan five years ago. Now he’s gone to Citi, joining Stuart Ord, Joe Seifert and all the other big bankers being brought in as Tiina Lee and James Fleming inflate the bank’s UK franchise.  Alongside his new job (and presumably a significant increment in pay), Chuka is likely to be doing some deals.

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Umunna’s early title at JP Morgan was “Global Head of Corporate Governance and Sustainable Solutions”.  This sounds quite nice, but to people familiar with the industry it’s got that “oddly non-specific” feel to it which is often associated with former politicians and other appointments which bring prestige to the franchise rather than directly generating revenue. 

That all changed in February 2026, when Umunna became UK Head of JPMorgan’s Security and Resiliency Initiative.  This is JPMorgan’s worthy and exciting project to finance industries relevant to national security. Globally, the bank is making $10bn of direct venture capital investments with the aim of facilitating $1.5trn of total financing in industries including defence, aerospace, supply chains and nano materials. Most of the money is likely to be invested in the USA rather than the UK, but that’s a lot of deals. JPMorgan’s illustrious advisory council for the security and resilience mission includes the likes of Jeff Bezos.

Umunna has given this all up for Vis Raghavan’s Citi. Presumably he will be an MD, with revenue-generating responsibilities to match. 

More broadly, Umunna’s career trajectory tells us a lot about the development of ESG as a field. When ESG meant 'Environment, Social and Governance', the main use of a former politician in was to help smooth over relationships with people who might get angry at you, while advising on the financing of renewable energy subsidies.

Nowadays, though, ESG is coming to mean “Energy, Security and Guns.”  Global governments are rethinking defence spending. Someone with a good contact book and familiarity with the workings of government is now not just a nice “third MD in the room” to help meetings go more smoothly; they’re potentially able steer the path to someone with check-writing authority. Umunna appears to have mastered the art of being in the right place at the right time.

Elsewhere, people are getting cross about Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters, who referred to some of his staff as “low value human capital”.  It’s an unlovely phrase, admittedly.  But in banking, it’s often better to get a blunt truth than a polite lie.  In context, Winters was referring to as many as 7,800 people in back-office and corporate centre roles, who are likely to be replaced by AI.

There’s not really a nice way to put that; the problem isn’t that the language is disrespectful, it’s that the news is bad.  Even if Winters had strategized for hours with his comms team and come up with a phrase like “front-line AI trailblazers”, people would still be upset. There’s a phenomenon called the “euphemism treadmill”, whereby something which starts as a polite way of referring to a nasty reality inevitably gets tainted by association with the thing that it describes. 

So, although “people” is almost always better than “human capital”, and it’s never a good look to refer to one’s fellow human beings as “surplus”, “low value” or similar, we shouldn’t really spend too much time blaming Bill.  In many ways, criticising his words is a coping strategy to try and ignore the importance of what he said.

Meanwhile …

Half of Deutsche Bank’s businesses earn less than their cost of capital. Christian Sewing is not saying which ones at this point.  And given that banking is a cyclical business it’s probably more important to know how well the successful half are doing.  The intention is to reallocate capital until 70% of it is allocated to businesses beating their benchmark.  (Bloomberg)

Lucy Baldwin has gone from head of global head of research at Citi to global head of equities at Rothschild.  That’s a move down in size of firm, but a move up in terms of responsibilities; given that equity research is a notoriously challenged business line, it probably makes sense in career terms. (TheTrade)

After a few not so great years, Deloitte is raising its bonus pool by 14% and lots of accountants will be getting promotions. (FT)

Darin Oduyoye, who is responsible for putting together the JP Morgan wealth management summer book recommendations, says that “family office clients are especially interested in books on generational transition”, presumably now that “Succession” and “Game of Thrones” have come to an end. Other recommendations from JPM advisors seem to consist of the usual mix of dad-friendly history, airport business biography and oddly technical finance. (CNBC)

If you’re looking for an alternative career to make six figures in New York, the hotel housekeeper’s union have agreed a new set of contracts that will take their members there. (NYT)

Or if you want something more glamorous, Mark Zuckerberg is looking for a “beach water person” (seems to mean a lifeguard) for his place in Hawaii. (WIRED)

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