Wall Street banks are always getting into hot water, but it’s generally over something more exciting than a job title.
Not so last week, when it emerged that a senior banker claimed he was given a fancy fake title when he joined Morgan Stanley in Frankfurt three years ago, purely to fool European regulators into thinking the bank was obeying Brexit rules.
Since the UK left the EU, regulators have urged big global banks to run their EU operations with local staff rather than bosses in London. This banker was made “head of loan trading”. But during an appeal against his dismissal from Morgan Stanley, he told a court his boss had made it clear the title “only existed on paper” and had just been created to satisfy financial watchdogs.