Morning Coffee: Hedge fund recruiter on $800k is unhappy in Hong Kong. Goldman Sachs' rehired partner was a good buy

How much do you earn as a senior business development professional who recruits portfolio managers (PM) for a hedge fund? Based upon a recently filed court document in Hong Kong, you won't get as much as an actual PM, but you will still get a lot.

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Reporting on the filing, Bloomberg notes that Elizabeth Xiang spent nearly five years working for Verition, the friendlyish multistrategy hedge fund. Xiang was Asia-Pacific head of business development there and her court filing says Verition’s headcount in the region grew from four to 87 during her time. Thirty PMs were hired locally and Xiang says she was responsible for 27 of them. 

As a reward for her efforts, Xiang says she was paid a salary of around US$200k in 2025, plus a bonus of roughly $600k. When she joined in 2021, her salary was $150k, and she says her bonus rose every year. Times were good.

In late 2025, though, Xiang's mother in China had a cancer relapse and she spent early 2026 travelling to and fro to care for her. Xiang says Verition started a new project to map portfolio managers in the APAC market without telling her. Then she says the fund suddenly fired her in June, citing “failure to consistently follow reasonable management instructions,” “inconsistent follow-through” and “ongoing communication concerns with internal and external stakeholders.” Xiang claims she was fired because she took time off to care for her mother and because Verition didn't want to pay her 2026 bonus. 

Verition didn't comment for Bloomberg's article. We have contacted the fund for comment. The account of Xiang's employment and firing is therefore drawn from her own perspective. Bloomberg says she plans to file for discrimination too. Working as a bus dev in hedge funds is good, until it's not. 

Separately, it's not really so long ago that Nick Giovanni galloped back to Goldman Sachs after an eight month holiday and three and a half years at Instacart, during which the company completed a $660m IPO and Giovanni presumably became quite rich. 

A lesser man might have retired at this point but as we noted in February, Giovanni is very passionate about being a banker and has said things like: “Advising founders, executives and boards is what I love to do." 

This is fortunate for Goldman Sachs, because yesterday the bank won yet another prestigious lead left position on a key 2026 IPO, this time Anthropic's. Giovanni and Jung Min - a Goldman TMT banker friendly with NVIDIA - appear to be the Goldman bankers responsible for this. 

Giovanni's passion is less fortunate for Morgan Stanley, which has once again been relegated to the position of stabilisation agent. This is contrary to earlier reports that Morgan Stanley was going to be lead left this time after sadly ceding the position to Goldman on the SpaceX IPO. It may also be contrary to Morgan Stanley's own expectations. Bloomberg notes that Morgan Stanley led Anthropic's $15bn revolving credit line. Its bankers may have expected to get prime position on the IPO as a result. It was not to be; Giovanni is too passionate.

Meanwhile...

Anthropic has seven co-founders. They will each be worth more than $13bn. (Bloomberg)  

Revenue per employee at Anthropic is over $6.6 million as of September 30, 2026, compared to $1.4 million as of September 30, 2025. (Anthropic prospectus, marked up)

Citadel Securities is getting a bigger India office. (Bloomberg) 

Balyasny hired Matti Konsala from Citi for equities algo trading. (Trade) 

Capula is opening an Athens office and wants someone to set it up. (Bloomberg) 

AI could do the work of credit traders. Credit investors and traders are already asking Agentic BondGPT to alert them when a CCC bond trades more than 50 basis points wide from its prior day close. (Bloomberg) 

Microsoft is offering 60,000 employees a great chance to become unemployed. “This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support.” Standard severance will be paid. (Bloomberg) 

Ondřej Surý fixed the PHP flaws without being paid. He did get $10k in donations. (BBC) 

No one is leaving Deloitte either. The voluntary attrition rate there for the 2025/26 financial year was 10.3%, according to the pay report. That’s slightly up from 10% in 2025 and 9.4% in 2024, but below its pre-pandemic level of 12.8% in 2020 and 14.8% in 2019. (Financial News) 

The tragic tale of the man who exposed Howard Lutnick's links to Jeffrey Epstein. “I’ve lost all my money, my wife and I are separated, and I’m in danger of having my home repossessed. Speaking out has devastated my life.” Two months later he was dead. The FCA is accused of failing to protect him. (Banker) 

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