| Happy Saturday, and welcome to Insider Finance. Here's a rundown of the must-know stories from the past week: If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here to get your daily dose of the stories dominating banking, business, and big deals.
One of Wall Street's most influential CEOs has dumped a bucket of cold water on the idea of long-term remote work and a second year of virtual summer internships, as uncertainty looms about the threat created by the coronavirus pandemic. "This is not a new normal," Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said this week, adding that the nature of remote work was in conflict with his firm's "innovative, collaborative, apprenticeship culture." "I don't want another class of young people arriving at Goldman Sachs in the summer remotely," he said. Read more about Goldman's remote work outlook, and what it means for young Wall Street.
Amid the uncertainty and chaos in the early days of the pandemic, Bank of America committed to avoiding layoffs for the year. For staff in trading and investment banking, that provided a reprieve from the annual culling of underperformers that's common across Wall Street. But now the reprieve is over. While some employees are already being handed pink slips, other senior staffers have voluntarily raised their hands to take an exit package, sources told Insider. Get the full rundown here.
A trading venue that aims to make it easier for large investors like mutual funds and hedge funds to trade blocks of stock is gearing up to go live following a fundraise from some of Wall Street's biggest names. PureStream Trading Technologies, started in 2018, is preparing for a launch sometime in the second quarter of this year. It's raised $14 million from a who's who of Wall Street investment banks and buy-side firms including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, AllianceBernstein, and BMO Capital Markets, which bought algo platform Clearpool last year. Here's what top trading execs are saying about the launch.
BlackRock is partnering with a red-hot tech company as a way of adapting one of its crown jewels to meet a customer base increasingly focused on data and coding. The world's largest asset manager is launching a feature called Aladdin Data Cloud with the help of Snowflake, the cloud-data storage firm that went public last fall. The new feature allows customers to access and combine Aladdin's data with their own internal or third-party data sets. It'll also serve as a big boost for Aladdin Studio, a set of tools for developers. The decision to open up Aladdin for more customization was a long time coming, Sudhir Nair, global head of the Aladdin business at BlackRock, told Insider. Read more about the new partnership here.
- TIAA named Thasunda Brown Duckett as its next president and CEO. She will join the firm on May 1 from her current employer, JPMorgan Chase, where she has served as CEO of Chase Consumer Banking. At TIAA, Duckett will succeed Roger Ferguson, who is departing the firm after 13 years as chief executive. JPMorgan co-president and COO Gordon Smith said in an internal memo that, in the meantime, leadership of the consumer bank will report in to him and that the firm will announce plans around succession shortly.
- Maverick Capital executive Andrew Warford is leaving the $9 billion hedge fund. Warford, chairman of the firm's stock committee and de facto head of the fund, is departing after 18 years. He was tapped to head up the stock committee in 2012 and became a managing partner in 2013 as Lee Ainslie, Maverick's billionaire founder, gradually stepped back and delegated more power. Sources tell Insider that Warford will run his own family office from Minnesota.
Read more for our full rundown of moves at firms like Goldman, Credit Suisse, and HSBC.
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