Morning Coffee: 36-year-old Bank of America associate works until 2am. Why 50-year-old bankers won't leave

If you're back at work this morning after a seasonal break and are feeling disinclined to exhibit the enthusiasm appropriate to a new beginning in the dead of winter, then there is an associate at Bank of America in London who can show you the path of positivity.

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The Wall Street Journal discovered Ralf Etienne. Etienne is a 36-year-old associate on Bank of America's London financial sponsors team who lost a leg aged 20 and who's infused with a contagious optimism for life.

“They had to carve my flesh out of the building to get me out," says Etienne, who is Haitian and whose leg was crushed in the 2010 Haiti earthquake. “I was hanging upside down for eight hours.”

Etienne began working for BofA in 2022 after completing an MBA in the US. He moved to London last year when President Trump began clamping down on the international movement of foreigners in the US on work visas. Etienne travels frequently, because along with his job in BofA's financial sponsors team, he's representing Haiti in the skiing team at the winter Paralympics next year. This means regular trips to the mountains in Switzerland. 

Etienne also works a gruelling schedule. There are some nights that he's late in the office and early at the airport. “Sometimes I’m leaving the office at 2 a.m. because I have work I need to finish before I get on a 6 a.m. flight to get to Switzerland,” he tells the WSJ.

BofA has done its best to support him. When travel from the US became impossible, the bank arranged Etienne's relocation to London. During the last two weeks of 2025, the WSJ says BofA's entire financial sponsors team was allowed to work from anywhere. Etienne worked from Switzerland and balanced skiing with spreadsheets. He is irrepressibly optimistic and has a contagious "I can" belief in himself, says a fellow Paralympic skier. London bankers who feel disinclined to make the journey to their desks could seek him out. 

Separately, Craig Coben, a former co-head of capital markets at BofA, has written a piece for the FT explaining why bankers who are less enthusiastic about things don't just go away.

It's because they are very well aware that there are no jobs for them to go to, says Coben. As a result, some senior people become specialists in pretending to work, says Coben. "They latch on to project teams like barnacles to guarantee a mention in internal deal memos," Coben observes. They also have a rage if they're not included. 

Meanwhile...

SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are all preparing to launch IPOs this year. In combination, the three would be worth more than 200 IPOs that took place in 2025. OpenAI is aiming for a valuation of $750bn; SpaceX is aiming for $800bn; Anthropic is aiming for $300bn. (FT) 

Jane Street has invested heavily in Anthropic and is not dissimilar to a VC. It seemed to make hundreds of millions of dollars from the investment in the fourth quarter of 2025. (Rupak Ghose) 

Open AI's stock-based compensation is about $1.5 million per employee, on average, across its workforce of roughly 4,000. (WSJ) 

Citadel's Wellington fund increased 10.2% last year. Millennium was up 10.5%. DE Shaw was up 28%. (Bloomberg) 

Citadel is returning $5bn of profits to investors, bringing its assets under management to $67bn. (Bloomberg) 

DE Shaw paused cash returns to its investors. (Bloomberg) 

The highest earner at Ilex Capital was paid £80m. (Financial News) 

Mid-level lawyers at some US firms will be paid bonuses of more than $300,000 this month. (Financial Times) 

Senior banker hiring in Asia was up 60% last year. (Bloomberg) 

A 23-year-old London banker converted to Orthodox Christianity but couldn't remember his new name. He arrived in a starched white shirt, gold Bulgari cufflinks and a pin-striped suit. (Unherd) 

The Chancellor at St Paul’s Cathedral, says City workers talk to her “about uncertainty . . . the uncertainty in job security, in climate change, in how the world’s going to be.” (Financial Times) 

35-year-old Gabby Stonkute jumped a red light on her bike outside St Paul's. She crashed into a bus and underwent emergency surgery for bleeding on her brain, a collapsed lung and 10 fractures to her face. (Financial Times) 

64-year old Jeff Falls has been driving for Uber since losing his job as a financial adviser at a major asset-management firm two years ago. He's still looking for a new job in financial services. (WSJ) 

Like nearly all ancient calendars, the first Roman calendar started on the spring equinox (approximately 21 March). The 61-day gap in the dead of winter had no name. The days were not marked, and the world was dead; in fact, it belonged to the dead. (Substack) 

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