A $250 million day for Barclays; Snowflake's data exchange; flex-space meltdown

March 28, 2020

A $250 million day for Barclays; Snowflake's data exchange; flex-space meltdown

Welcome to Wall Street Insider, where we take you behind the scenes of the finance team's biggest scoops and deep dives from the past week.

If you aren't yet a subscriber to Wall Street Insider, you can sign up here.

Deals, IPOs, and fund launches may be slowing to a near-standstill, but work is just as busy as ever for some on Wall Street.

Restructuring bankers are suddenly a hot commodity, and they're swamped with calls as companies look to navigate the coronavirus pandemic. Lawyers on the restructuring side told how us a sudden collapse of revenues in areas like retail and energy is accelerating work, as one put it: "all hands on deck would be an understatement."

In a firm-wide voice message, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon explained how important it is to avoid burnout, especially when WFH blurs the lines between work and home. (Solomon said he went for a two-hour ride on his road bike last weekend to unplug.)

And as Dakin Campbell reported on Monday, extreme market volatility has been good for trading desks. At Barclays, the bank's global-markets business took in about $250 million in revenue in just one day earlier this month. And JPMorgan has been racking up record daily volumes in forex, rates, futures, and algorithmic execution.

Read the full story here:

Barclays made $250 million in one day of trading as banks raked in money on market volatility

Wishing everyone a healthy and safe weekend. As always, my line is open at mmazzilli@businessinsider.com.

-Meredith

Early adopters are looking for a data solution

hedge funds and alt data 4x3

As Wall Street's obsession with data continues to grow, firms are eager to make digesting information as easy as possible. Dan DeFrancesco and Bradley Saacks explain how Snowflake, a startup most recently valued at $12.4 billion, has launched a data exchange that already counts hedge funds like Philippe Laffont's Coatue and data vendors like FactSet as users.

Read the full story here:

Coatue and Fidelity are early adopters of $12.4 billion startup Snowflake's new data exchange — here's why they think it can transform Wall Street

Bad tidings for bonus season

future of data on wall street 4x3

Bonus pay on Wall Street could fall by as much as 40%, according to compensation consulting firm Johnson Associates. As Shannen Balogh reports, firms may take steps including getting creative with non-cash bonuses and limiting executive pay to help boost morale and keep top talent.

Read the full story here:

Here are 5 ways Wall Street firms can get creative on compensation as bonuses are expected to plunge this year

What a 'protracted slump' looks like for commercial real estate

houston

Alex Nicoll highlighted the must-know takeaways from a recent Moody's Analytics report that forecasts the effects of a coronavirus-fueled, Great Recession-sized hit to commercial real estate. Unsurprisingly, retail and hospitality assets will likely see the worst of it, but some niche parts of the multifamily segment, like student and senior housing, could also be at risk.

Read the full story here:

7 charts show how the coronavirus could clobber real estate, from retail vacancies of nearly 15% to plunging office rents in Texas cities

hedge fund trader

Hedge fund closures have been outnumbering launches the last couple of years, and the novel coronavirus will likely only speed up that trend. As Bradley Saacks reports, with allocators' portfolios hit hard and markets going haywire, both hedge-fund investors and money managers looking to start their own fund are slow to dive into something new.