Have CV, will travel

Following the removal of many restrictions that were imposed on international travel because of the pandemic, it feels like cross-border relocations of bankers are taking place more frequently than ever.

Take George Kalbin, for instance. He is set to move from London to Paris to take a FIG syndicate job at Barclays, having worked for Crédit Agricole for the past four years.

Unlike some of the bankers that have flooded into Paris in the years since Brexit, Kalbin is not a French national returning to the homeland, but a confident, trilingual citizen of the world who has lived, studied and worked in Stockholm and Amsterdam as well as London.

At Barclays in Paris, he will fill a gap left by Yasser Chahboun, who is staying with the firm but said to be relocating to Dubai to run CEEMEA debt capital markets, as GlobalCapital first reported back in February.

Moving in the opposite direction is Souad Benkredda, Standard Chartered's global head of strategic investor group sales, who is leaving sunny Dubai for the decidedly greyer climate of Frankfurt to take the job of head of capital markets and treasury at DZ Bank.

Indeed, almost every story about someone getting a new job these days seems to involve them getting on a plane. Take Furhaan Khan, Credit Suisse's head of EMEA internet and digital media investment banking, who will be jetting off to San Francisco for his next assignment at the bank.

Those looking for their next posting in advisory and capital markets would do well not to leave their passport renewals until the last minute.

Meanwhile, back in London, Mizuho has let its head of EMEA project bonds go. The senior banker, William Mills, had been with the Japanese firm for 17 years. The rationale for the move could not entirely be established. Mills and Mizuho declined to comment when contacted by GlobalCapital.

Mills has a wide range of debt capital markets experience and, like the bankers already mentioned, is no stranger to working in different countries. He covered CEEMEA DCM from Dubai for a while before taking the project bonds job and has covered UK, Ireland and Netherlands issuers from London, too. He even did a short stint in Mizuho's international finance department in Tokyo.

And finally, if there's one lesson everyone should draw from the strip club expenses affair, it is never to be complacent about workplace culture. Because although in this case the headlines were about Deutsche Bank, next week it could be your firm.

Some bankers were shocked by the revelations.

"Most of us male bankers have witnessed things like events being held at strip clubs, but more recently, things have very much changed for the better, i.e. that kind of thing doesn’t go as much," one banker in Frankfurt told GlobalCapital. "So when you hear about this kind of thing going on, you think: “Really? Still?"

It is perhaps worth pointing out that it is only five years since the #MeToo hashtag was born. Google reportedly fired as many as 48 people for sexual harassment between 2016 and 2018, not a million years ago. And not all sackings for inappropriate conduct are aired so publicly.

Surely we all know at least one person who still thinks that political correctness is sucking all the fun out of life, and that there was nothing really wrong with hiring strippers for the Christmas party anyway. Someone who just doesn't get it.

No amount of mandatory training videos and quizzes on sexual harassment will completely fix the culture of investment banking. The best that those at the top can do is send clear messages and set an example.

Keep scrolling for all of the week's people and markets headlines from GlobalCapital.

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