Morning Coffee: Bank of America's unassuming CEO has some jokes. Barclays likes a shakeup

Brian Moynihan, who knew? Bank of America's CEO is not known for his light-hearted banter, but it turns out that he's a funny guy who's been into jokes and pranks all along.

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Brian's pranks are not the pranks of the trading floor, where eating 20 Big Macs was once considered funny. Nor are they pranks of Jane Fraser at Citi, who stole a colleague's chair and photoshopped it into a world tour. Brian's pranks involve inserting difficult and possibly incomprehensible words into quarterly results calls with investors. 

The WSJ is alert to Brian's ways. It reports that he has an in-joke with a "small circle inside Bank of America" based upon using "obscure archaic words" in the investor calls. These words are 'randomly chosen at the last minute for Moynihan to insert within the prepared scripts,' says the WSJ. 

Bank of America doesn't appear to be denying this. A spokesperson told the WSJ: “There is no question, Brian loves a good challenge and always makes us think. Or what might be called ludically noetic.”

To our knowledge, Brian has not said "ludically noetic" in any calls. However, the WSJ notes that he has said things like "fructify," “infructuous,” and "fantods." People at BofA who are in on the joke try to spot these words, says the WSJ.

It's not clear who these people are. The WSJ mentions BofA executives. Brian is thought to spend a lot of time in Boston, where he lives, so these people may be there too.

Not everyone is a fan of the joke. Banking analyst Mike Mayo said it's better to keep language simple, in the style of Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan. Moynihan, who is described as an intelligent lawyer with a near-photographic memory, is engaged in an "intellectual flex," said Mayo. He might be better off kidnapping chairs.

Separately, Mike Joo left Bank of America after 20 years two weeks ago and now - surprise - he is joining Barclays. 

The Financial Times reports that Joo will be co-chief executive of Barclays' investment bank, along with Adeel Khan, the head of the trading business who can be scary but serves lasagne. 

The FT also notes that Barclays last shook things up at its investment bank only three years ago, and that the arrival of Joo makes the future of the current investment banking co-heads - Taylor Wright and Cathal Deasy - unclear. Joo is presumably on gardening leave at the moment. Maybe Deasy, who previously worked for Credit Suisse, could look for a new job somewhere like UBS, where Marco Valla's efforts have yet to bear solid fruit. 

Meanwhile....

It's a hard time to be a senior investment banker. "It is super competitive and the talent pool has shrunk. I hate mediocrity and only want the best people who can add value, but so does everyone else. We are also losing people, which means we have to make reactive hires as well focusing on our growth areas." (Financial News) 

A study of 8,700 hedge fund managers employed by 2,100 U.S. firms over a 27-year period (1992 to 2019) found that hedge fund managers who'd jumped jobs a lot only took two months to get up to speed versus five months for those who hadn't. (Rutgers) 

Prime brokers didn't lose money during the Situational Awareness meltdown, and this was a great achievement.  “There was never any risk of a credit loss," said the senior bank trader. "[There was] adequate margin, the LTV was low and [there was] recourse to Anthropic." (Bloomberg) 

Michael Platt at BlueCrest has invested $100m in SpaceX. (Bloomberg)  

Jane Street's debt swap was partly to protect itself against the threat of sharper spikes and falls in the value of its debt, which could hurt its access to other funding that backs its bets on markets. (Bloomberg) 

In its latest debt offering, Jane Street described its strategy as evolving to also include longer-term bets, in line with a hedge fund. (Bloomberg) 

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