JPMorgan’s investment banking analysts are now mostly back in the office. But when they weren’t there and complained about attempts to monitor their industriousness at home, they found a way to bypass the bank’s surveillance systems: mousetraps.
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Mouse jigglers were first reported at JPMorgan in the summer of 2022 and were believed to be a means of evading JPMorgan’s “Workplace Activity Data Utility” (“WADU”) data collection system. Two years later, Bloomberg reports that similar swaying devices led to the firing of more than 12 people at Wells Fargo. The regulatory filing said the fired individuals at Wells Fargo were “dismissed following a review of allegations involving the simulation of keyboard activity giving the appearance of active work.”
It’s possible that the mice used by the Wells Fargo bankers weren’t the best. Various threads on Reddit suggest that some jigglers are harder to detect than others, although all are detectable if the employer also asks for occasional automated screenshots of the work you do. Some people suggest that the best way to simulate real work is to attach a mouse face to the watch so that it moves whenever you move your hand.
The Financial Times reports that most of the Wells Fargo employees fired for using the device were younger, though one had been with the bank for seven years, presumably making them a vice president who should have known better. The bank said it “holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behavior”.
Wells Fargo is fairly lenient on working from home and only requires juniors to be in the office three days a week. Maybe she’ll think about it and now she knows the juniors are playing her systems.
Separately, Balyasny’s UK business was blamed for contributing to a $100m loss last year. Recently published accounts for the year to December 2023 reveal that the UK hedge fund’s (Balynasy Asset Management UK) profit came in at £5m, down from £26m the previous year. The money available for distribution among Balyasny’s partners fell by the same amount. Financial News notes that the number of employees at Balyasny International Asset Management, another UK subsidiary, fell from 266 to 219 people during the year.
Meantime….
Aaron Weiner, who is leaving Coatue, is getting backing from Millennium to join his own fund. (Bloomberg)
Marshall Wace and Capula are considering expanding to Abu Dhabi. (Bloomberg)
Robert Tau, star macro fixed income trader for Balyasny in Asia, joins Millennium with his team. (Business Insider)
Citadel Securities has hired three sterling rates traders and five dealers in London alongside four euro rates traders and two dealers in Paris. Paris is its European interest rate trading hub. (Bloomberg)
Jain Global has an office in Singapore that has a capacity of 40 seats and has plans for an office in Hong Kong of a similar size. (Bloomberg)
Sri Shivananda, JPMorgan’s new firm-wide CTO, who joined from PayPal, does have a background in artificial intelligence. Shivananda led the rollout of several new AI tools at PayPal, including one that predicts how customers would like to pay. (Business Insider)
Elizabeth Warren is introducing a bill that says private equity executives who “loot” healthcare businesses like hospitals and nursing homes could face up to six years in prison if their looting results in a patient’s death. (Silica)
Revolut is moving to a new building in Canary Wharf as it plans a 40% increase in staff. (Finextra)
Ex-Credit Suisse banker Caroline Waddington is CFO of St James’s Place. (Bloomberg)
America’s $4 trillion leveraged financial market now includes subprime bonds, leveraged loans and assets managed by private credit companies in roughly equal proportions. But the golden age of private loans may be coming to an end. (Economist)
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