JPMorgan juniors and others disclose the joy of syndicated loan jobs
Careers in syndicated loans were never as high profile as jobs in equities sales and trading or M&A, and now that private credit is all the rage, they risk being sidelined further still. The Loan Market Association, which promotes the syndicated loan market in Europe, is trying to do something about it.
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At a recent conference, the LMA asked juniors working at various banks in London to explain why syndicated loan jobs are great. While none of them actively set out to work on syndicated loan desks (in which multiple lending institutions club together to make very large loans to borrowers, and then potentially sell them on again in the secondary market), they all said they were very happy to find themselves there.
Poppy Fox, an associate on the EMEA loan sales desk at JPMorgan in London, who joined from Nottingham University in 2018, said, for example, that she didn't "seek out" a job in loan sales at the bank, but was "sold" when one then became available. Margaux Carluer, a loan originator at Siemens Financial Services, said she'd wanted to work in medicine and was "passionate" about creating a better world, but took a job in syndicated loans after realizing she was in fact "a generalist." Aakanksha Aggarwal at Standard Chartered, said syndicated loans are about more than simple yes and no lending decisions; they are 'structured and nuanced' and interesting.
Among the advantages of working with syndicated loans is the fact that buying and selling them still requires human beings. While other areas of the equities and credit markets are increasingly automated, Fox said syndicated loan sales is still, "a 100% voice product and, due to the lack of electronification and more bespoke nature of the product, you have more frequent interactions with clients.”
If you like interacting with humans rather than computer, syndicated loan desks are therefore a good place to be. “It is a very well-connected market, and it doesn’t take long to realize that everyone knows everyone," said Aggarwal.
Human interaction makes it more likely that you'll be in the office full-time. Fox said she moved out of Central London into South East London a few years ago, resulting in a much longer commute "I felt frustrated initially as I had less time to switch off in the evening but a change as simple as reading a book on the way home allowed a mindset shift,” she declared.
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