Happy Friday! Aaron Weinman here. It was a bumper Thursday with Amazon announcing a play for the primary-care market with a nearly $4 billion deal to buy One Medical.
We will get to that, but today I want to unlock the golden handcuffs that have trapped some of Wall Street's financial advisors, and introduce you to a fun app that's helping bankers destress from all the hoopla around layoffs and weaker earnings.
And of course, there's our Banker of the Week!
Let's go.
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1. Wall Street is keeping financial advisors tied down. Those who dare leave might also jeopardize recruitment bonuses.
Wealth-management firms like UBS or Morgan Stanley lure in the Street's best financial advisors with sizable loans. Structured as promissory notes, they can be life-changing for high-earning advisors. But these loans come with strings attached.
If advisors stay with the company for a number of years and meet their performance goals, they pay off these notes, which can amount to millions of dollars.
It's an easy win for both advisor and wirehouse if the rainmaker stays with the firm until the loan matures. But what happens if a successful advisor wants to test the job market? They have to pay this money back.
It's the "ultimate golden handcuffs," Louis Diamond, the president at recruitment firm Diamond Consultants, told Insider.
Check out the full story from Insider's very-own billionaire chaser, Hayley Cuccinello.
Meanwhile, as previously reported, investment-banking revenues shouldered much of the burden for banks' latest quarterly results.
But one banker has found a way to let peers — stressing about potential layoffs — flush their concerns away.
Jake Chasan, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, has a side hustle on the App Store. His app, Swirly, allows you to scrape a picture of someone off the internet, or use a picture you take, and that person's picture spirals down a virtual toilet bowl.
"On Wall Street, people are worried and stressed," Chasan told Insider. "Everyone I've spoken to from a waiter to my fellow banker, it can help."
I can't imagine Goldman Chief Executive David Solomon loves the idea of his face being flushed down a pretend dunny (Aussie speak for toilet) by disgruntled staff, but according to Chasan, the app has been a hit with his colleagues.
In other news:
2. Amazon just made a near $4 billion bet on the primary-care industry. The tech giant agreed to buy clinic operator One Medical for $18 a share in cash, the third-largest acquisition Amazon has made to date.
3. Some venture capitalists believe they're integral to people's lives. Here's 26 rising-star fintech VCs who remain excited about the space despite many of their peers tightening their purse strings.
4. What do you get when you combine bitcoin and peso? Latin America's leading crypto exchange, Bitso. The firm has nabbed over four million users across five countries, and it's hoping crypto can help the region as it combats weak currencies and high inflation.
5. HSBC has installed a Communist Party committee at its Chinese investment bank, the Financial Times reported. It's the first foreign lender to put in place such a committee in the country.
6. The party's over for Amazon aggregators. These folks were once the belle of the ball, and raked in billions of dollars in capital. Insiders share what's next as funding evaporates.
7. Goldman Sachs-backed Casavo has raised over $400 million in debt and equity. The real-estate startup wants to shake up how people buy and sell homes online at a tough time for the industry, and Insider got a look at the 12-slide pitch deck it used to snare funding.
8. Coatue just led a $60 million funding round into a tax-automation startup. Check out the 25-page pitch deck that Fonoa, founded by former Uber staffers, used to secure the money.
9. More companies are taking their talents to South Beach with snazzy office spaces in Miami. Venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz will open an office in the Starwood Miami building, while law firm Sidley Austin signed a lease for a new spot in the Brickell area, according to Bloomberg.
10. And here's our Friday Banker of the Week. Meet Dan Pietrzak, KKR's co-head of private credit.
He and his team just closed a $2.1 billion asset-based financing fund, the first fund KKR has dedicated to asset-backed financing.
Pietrzak has long been a fan of the asset-backed space, and since he joined the investment firm in 2016, he's helped close 54 deals that has amounted to about $6 billion in cash.
Check out the full story here, and learn more on why Pietrzak thinks KKR is ahead of the curve when it comes to this counter-cyclical asset class.
Done deals:
- Bain Capital and a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority have agreed to acquire Merchants Automotive Group, DBA Merchants Fleet, and Merchants Auto. Known collectively as Merchants, the target companies provide fleet-management services.
- Blackstone Real Estate has agreed to buy real estate investment trust PS Business Parks for about $7.6 billion. PS Business Parks acquires, develops, owns, and operates commercial properties.
Curated by Aaron Weinman in New York. Tips? Email [email protected] or tweet @aaronw11. Edited by Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London.