WSO Podcast | E95: Former MD in Derivative Sales - APAC Region
About
In this episode, Jason Scott, former managing director at Deutsche on the derivatives sales desk talks with me about his 20+ years in finance. With stints at Barclays and Credit Suisse, Jason has an interesting perspective, especially since he also worked in a variety of locations including in London, Singapore and Hong Kong. We learn what it was like on Black Monday back in 1987 as a trader on the floor, the transition from trader to sales as well as how he thought about each successive jump in his career. Listen as he gives one piece of critical career advice near the end.
WSO Q&A
Check out my recent Q&A here
WSO Podcast
Or Listen to the Podcast Here:
Resources:
WSO Video Library (300+ full webinars and their ppt/excel files)
WSO Podcast (Episode 95) Transcript:
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis, your host and chief Monkey. And this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me as I talk to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it. In this episode, Jason Scott, former managing director at Dojo on the derivatives sales desk, talks with me about his 20 plus years in finance with stints at Barclays and Credit Suisse. Jason has an interesting perspective, especially since he also worked in a variety of locations, including London, Singapore and Hong Kong. We learn what it was like back on Black Monday back in 1987 as a trader on the floor. The transition from trader to sales, as well as how he thought about each successive jump in his career. Listen as he gives one piece of critical career advice near the end. Enjoy. Jason, thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Oasis podcast.
Jason Scott: [00:01:09] All right. Thanks very much, Patrick. Nice to meet.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:11] You. So it'd be great if you could just give the listeners a short summary of your bio. You can just kind of hit the high level.
Jason Scott: [00:01:18] Okay. So I was a graduate of the Royal Military Academy in the UK, and after I left my Army service, which I did a short service commission with a reconnaissance regiment in the British Army, serving in the British Army of the Rhine in Germany. After I left the Army, I joined Barclays in London as a derivative trainee on the on the floor of the options market. And I joined in 1986 just ahead of the 1988 87 crash. I'd been through that. So I was I just graduated as a trader in the options market just before the crash. So that was a really interesting introduction to the world of of finance and the world of derivatives. I worked for Barclays until 1990 on the floor, and then there was an opportunity to move to Frankfurt when the Deutsche Tim in Bursa set up with German Options Exchange set up and Barclays sent a team of people over there and I was I was one of those, and I ended up running the trading operation on the equity derivative side for for Barclays Capital in Frankfurt. Then while I was there, I moved I made a transition to Credit Suisse to run the sales team for equity derivatives in Frankfurt. And that was that was a really interesting move because it was moving from the trading side to the sell side. And that's where I stuck for the rest of my career.
Jason Scott: [00:03:01] I worked in London for Crédit Suisse and then was transferred in 1997 to Singapore. So the opportunity came up to work in Singapore, and I thought that would be very interesting because the markets were expanding, derivatives were expanding across the world, and Asia was absolutely a place where it was where it was growing. So I spent a few years on the floor in Singapore and the futures market here. And then in 2003, the floor effectively finished and I started working on electronic sales, which was another really interesting transition. So between 2000 and 2002, Credit Suisse developed a trading platform called Prime Trade. And I was very much involved in the development and marketing of that platform. I spent a couple of years doing that in Singapore and then moved to Hong Kong and arrived in Hong Kong just at the start of the the boom in the hedge fund world joined set up the listed derivatives sales team in Hong Kong, hired some guys and that was my first real management management role. And so we set up a team that started with zero revenue, and after three years we were really, really making a huge amount of revenue for the bank. Then the crash came in in 2008 and we we went through that as an extremely interesting experience and referenced my early days back in back in London. And so we survived that.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:50] We got back in 87, you mean?
Jason Scott: [00:04:51] Yeah, it was it was a relatively similar, relatively similar experience in terms.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:56] Of like, well, we're kind of like what we're going through right now with the Corona crash. Yeah.
Jason Scott: [00:05:00] Yeah. That's it's I mean, the three things have been and in fact, this is more in terms of the market movements, this is more similar to 87 than it was to 2008. Yeah. And hopefully we're going to get the same type of correction, but we'll see. Yeah. So that's so that was, that was very, very interesting. And in 2007 I came back to Singapore. We set up another sales team in Singapore to cater for a slightly different market. And then I was hired by Deutsche Bank to become the the leader of the business across the region, head of listed derivatives and OTC derivative sales as a managing director, and that was obviously representing the region in a global business. And that was another interesting transit transition there. We I worked there for four years running that business, and then Deutsche Bank dialed that business back. And a lot of the senior people in 2014 were restructured out of the business. And I thought an opportunity for me to do something different. And so I worked on decided to become a financial trainer working on the training side. So I set up a small my own business, saw advisors and did some training for various companies as a freelance, and then joined Fitch Learning, part of the Fitch Group, Fitch Ratings sister company, and worked for for them as a financial training faculty and did that for four years, learned a lot about training instructional design, worked with a lot of great young people and a lot of the international banks. And then I became independent a year ago, and I'm running that business now, working as an associate trainer for many four different financial training organizations. So that's a little bit about me.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:16] That's great. No, thanks for the summer. I think going all the way back, let's let's start all the way back and then I'll probably just jump around a little bit. But from from coming out of school and going straight in, is is it pretty typical to come out of the military and then just come in as a trader kind of ground zero or back then? Is that still do you know if that's.
Jason Scott: [00:07:35] That was that was the way it used to be and it doesn't happen now they the now you need a master's degree really or a definitely undergraduate degree to get to to start. It's much more formalized. I think I was I was very lucky and you know, I joined.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:56] How did you get that? How were you? How were you? Lucky. Just networking. Did you know the networking?
Jason Scott: [00:08:02] The the my experience in the forces was extremely useful. So I knew a lot of people in London. I met people who were whose family were in the business in those days. It was it was very much stockbroking, stock jobbing. It was very it was a very old school business in London.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:24] But did you know did you know you wanted to do something in the with the markets back when you were at the in the force.
Jason Scott: [00:08:31] Yeah. I mean I knew people and who were in, in in in London in the city and it's it was something that I was very, very interested in. I spoke to a lot of people and after the military, I had the opportunity to go and have an interview with a company that was called whether they were a trading company in London. And in those days, all there was there were separations between the traders and the brokers. It was before the Big Bang and so that was that was that was I was lucky. There's no doubt that I was lucky. I networked. Well, I knew what I wanted to do.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:18] That's not lucky if you're putting in the work. Networking. Yeah, I say luck. You're making your own luck when you're meeting a lot of.
Jason Scott: [00:09:25] Yeah, I know that was. But it was, it was a different time. It doesn't, it doesn't necessarily happen like that anymore.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:31] So you and that was your first big break. Your first big you know, the bank you worked for was Credit Suisse, correct.
Jason Scott: [00:09:38] So yeah, the first the first my first break was my first job was on the floor in London at Barclays. Yeah. So but it was, you know, they hired every year they hire like 30 guys and they put them on the floor and you're basically a runner. So you're a trading assistant running around a similar role like a desk nowadays. Cutting people's lunch. Yeah, Taking the dry cleaning. Yeah. So that was that was the those were the early days. And after a year, then there were maybe four or five of us left. So that's, that's the thing. You, they throw you in.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:17] How do you survive. How did you survive. How were you one of the. Because you were there for seven years, your initial stint with Barclays. How did you survive that initial kind of runner time period and what was the transition like? How did you actually what's the goal to actually get you to start trading eventually, Right?
Jason Scott: [00:10:31] Yeah. So the goal is to become a trader. So to get your trading badge. So you start off with a, you know, a blue badge and you end up with a yellow badge and then you go, you know, and so are you going to eventually you should get a silver badge. So that's the idea. But that and the my focus was always on what was going to happen next, you know, because it was pretty old school and what was developing was the derivative world. So the options market was opening up and we had a lot of clever people coming over from the States and from Europe, and they were all in our market. And I knew that that was what was going to change. That was so. My advice is always look to what the next thing is. So that. Options market derivative market was opening up. That's where I wanted to be. And there were very few people who were interested in it that nobody really knew that it would be such a big thing.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:30] So that were I mean, you were at Barclays for seven years, so you eventually how long did it take you to get to that silver badge? And what what is it typically today? Is it. I mean, it's obviously very different.
Jason Scott: [00:11:39] It's a lot. It was a lot shorter for me. So basically, I was there for a basically 18 months before I was able to before I was given my own book. So obviously under supervision of senior dealers, but I was given my own book after 18 months. And then, you know, you just have to progress. Then I was also very lucky because the the financial markets went into a tailspin in 87.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:08] And that was good for you. That was good for you guys, because you did.
Jason Scott: [00:12:12] Very, very good because we had the book was set up absolutely perfectly for that type of a move, you know, a very long of options, very long of volatility. And the market, the markets spiked in terms of volatility very, very quickly.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:28] Tell me about that day. Was it Black Monday or.
Jason Scott: [00:12:31] Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:32] Were you were you you said the book was positioned. You had a small book on that day. Do you remember it and do you remember?
Jason Scott: [00:12:39] Yeah, I remember it very well. We had.
Jason Scott: [00:12:41] Yeah.
Jason Scott: [00:12:42] So what? So what happened basically is that over that that period leading up to the actual Black Monday, there'd been the market had been going up and up and up over the summer. A lot of pension funds and asset managers had been selling a lot of options because they wanted extra yield and they wanted to take in the premium. And we were the ones who were effectively warehousing a lot of those options. The October expiry was going to happen in about five days time and or in about a week's time. And we had our books were loaded with out of the money options put on mostly puts because the market would be going up and we were getting new strikes higher and higher strikes and we had a lot of options on our books. And so the we what happened on the Friday was that there was a massive storm came across London Thursday night, Friday morning, that it was very difficult to access London. A lot of trains and buses and things were were were were down. I was actually I actually lived relatively close to the office. So I walked in. It took me about an hour, but I walked into the office that morning because there was no traffic. No, there were a lot of trees down on the roads. So the stock market didn't open that day on the Friday and the but the futures market was open, so it was gyrating all over the place. And we so we didn't I didn't we didn't know what our books were going to look like on Monday morning because the stock market hadn't opened and we didn't know what the equity prices were going to look like.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:19] But sorry to interrupt you out of the money puts. Those were expiring on Friday, so they theoretically they wouldn't help you on Monday.
Jason Scott: [00:14:26] They were going to expire the following week, so. Oh, the following week.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:29] So you they were still good. Okay.
Jason Scott: [00:14:30] They were still good. Yeah. Thank goodness they were still good. So yeah, so we had so as we were, obviously there were further months as well. So we had October, November, December, etc.. So the we were, there was a massive move on Wall Street that Friday and, and because London hadn't been open, nobody would be able to hedge themselves. So coming in on Monday morning was, was going to be quite interesting and it was and the market was in was pretty much in freefall and and things were relatively easy to trade that day. It was the Tuesday when things really got bad because that was the night that Black Monday was the night that Wall Street that the S&P fell over 20%. And that was that's like an 18 standard deviation move. So it's Tuesday was a total panic. Effectively, what was happening is that all all our computer models were completely out in those days. We didn't have things that could update dynamically. So it was very much suit your pants trading to know what our positions were going to be. It was because I was operating on the floor based trading market. There was it was pretty chaotic and it was very difficult to get in touch with our the the books who were running the underlying stock equity that to hedge yourself. So it was I had a walkie talkie radio, we had phone lines, but our traders weren't picking up. And so our positions were just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Fortunately, the right way because of all the puts that we had.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:14] So it was almost good you couldn't trade out of them.
Jason Scott: [00:16:17] Exactly. I. Couldn't have it.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:19] Made for a bigger win.
Jason Scott: [00:16:21] Exactly. So, yeah, so we had yeah, we had we had a good experience that the index book not so bad. Not so much. They were they were actually short of a lot of options. They're short of premium so they, they lost a great deal of money initially.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:40] Do you remember how much your book actually made you? I don't know what you were running, how much you were managing?
Jason Scott: [00:16:45] I do remember, but I'm not going to tell you. So it was because we had the individual stock options, traders and the pits, and then we had the index book who was running the Footsie index. And those guys were bleeding badly. And they were not really they were supported but not fully hedged off by us on the equity individual equities options teams. And so the boss of our team was was obviously very worried. He spoke to his leaders and they told us that effectively that we were supported by the bank and that we would that we just had to make the best of it and work through it. And in the end of the day, those guys doubled up on their short position in terms of vol. And they they took some very brave decisions over that period of time, traded as if they were coming in flat and they they effectively doubled up their short vol position at a much higher level. And over the next three or four days, those, those positions really came, came good.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:56] So they affect the market as the market rebounded.
Jason Scott: [00:17:59] Yeah. As the market readjusted, as the market sort of readjusted at a higher vol level, but, but not at the complete spike. So if you think about the VIX index now, you know, it's been up to 83 in the last few days. Now it's, it's I don't I don't know what it was last night, but it's been from like 20 to 83 and then back down to 60, down of 50 and so on. So you have to if you're short of vol, you know, it's not going to go up forever. So you just got to keep, keep, keep going, sell and buy, sell and buy, sell and buy on the vol side. So those guys were very brave considering they came in with a very dodgy position at the beginning of the week. And so they basically ended up flat on the week. And the option books, the individual equity option books had. We've made a lot of money because of the book position. Effectively, all we had to do was try and sell options that we had and try and hedge our delta positions so that we could when the market rebounded, we had we had we were long and not short still. So that was that was the key thing. We had a relatively easy job compared to the index book. That was my experience on on that crash.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:19] Fascinating. It's like I look back in history, it's really very, very timely to talk about that, given what's going on now.
Jason Scott: [00:19:28] Now, it was it was a good job.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:29] So you were there for another five years after that, that momentous week, I'll call it. And what kind of what made you move? Can you remind me what was that kind of transition like? Where had you started looking? Obviously, by that point, you're running a larger book, I.
Jason Scott: [00:19:45] Assume, with. Yeah. So we were I was running a larger book and then they said, did we want to go and go to a new market? So the new market that was opening was in Europe and it was in Germany. And they decided in 1990 that they were going to open an options trading part of the exchange. And so that was something that was really interesting for me because it was electronic. They were the first real electronic market to start up and in German style, they decided they were going to do it. They're going to do it well. And so Barclays set up an an office over there and they asked if any of us wanted to go. And I knew or I had a feeling that the floor operations around the world were going to start closing up. And so the first opportunity was a great opportunity was to go over to Germany and learn how to trade in an office and not on the floor to learn about their technology, how you would build or use models, how you would how we'd start to become more professional about the whole thing. And as soon as you get those the electronic side of the market, then you can obviously layer over a huge number of programs and stuff that you can start being much more professional about the whole thing. And it was actually so that was the motivation was to go over there and join an electronic or C and the nascent electronic market.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:12] And that was with BART. So you made that move with.
Jason Scott: [00:21:14] I was still with Barclays, yeah. Then while I was there, I became very friendly with the team at Credit Suisse and they were looking for somebody on the sales side to to build our sales team up. And they, they asked me if I wanted to come across. Now, that was that was interesting because it was a sales role and building a sales team, not something that I'd done before, but I was attracted by that. And so I used my knowledge on the on the trading side. I use my product knowledge and talk to and to talk about to talk to clients effectively and build a client base. And that was a really good move for me because you as a trader, you're really only as good as your last pal and you have to make you have to make money, make money quickly. And if things things change. People, people's priorities change, business priorities change. And as a working for a big bank, you'd be working on this product. You might you may well be very successful, but they may decide that that they're not interested in running a team in there anymore or this and that. So I think if you can build up a sales team, build up a client base, that gives you a more longevity in your career, to be honest. So less volatility in your career.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:42] Yes. On the trading side, it's more volatile. You consistently have to be generating pal or positive pal. You can have your down months or whatever, but overall you can't have too many in a row, I assume.
Jason Scott: [00:22:54] Sure. Yeah. And bank's priorities changed, so they might move out of your products and you find yourself on the shelf. So it's more of a volatile.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:02] So the jump to the sales side, how should I think of it? Were you jumping to the sales side for the exact same types of products you were like derivative products that you were trading before?
Jason Scott: [00:23:11] Exactly. So there was a huge number of new products available on the derivative side for for for clients to trade. There was a new market Europe.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:23] And so so tell me, what was that like? You had to build a team. So tell me, like, how much guidance did the bank actually give you? Were they just like, here are some people we know are interested here. Here are a thousand phone numbers to call. Here's here's air and good luck. Just create a team. Or how much like was it you talking with the head of I don't know, the head of all sales like trying to strategize about that or I'm curious how much professionalism there is in a large bank like this opening up a new new initiative like this.
Jason Scott: [00:23:58] Right. Well, it was it's an interesting question. So that the key was working with other. Parts of the business. So that on the trading side, you know, it was I had to work very closely. You do you have to work very closely with the traders because they're the guys who are going to be the ones who are going to take your client positions. And they need to know that you're that you're very professional, that you know, you're talking about. So I work very, very, very closely with the trading team. So the derivatives trading team, the guys who are running the book for Credit Suisse in. And so the work very closely with those guys, work with the operations teams to make sure that they understand that they're confident that you can book the trades to the clients. You work with a compliance team so that they understand that you're onboarding clients in the correct way. So you look with the legal guys, the risk management teams and the HR people who are doing the recruiting. So to to build a sales business is a very, very broad brush stroke. It's not just sitting down in a desk and starting to call clients. You have to the the bank has to be confident that you understand that on board your client legally and in compliance with all the rules to make sure that the operations team are confident that you can book the trades out.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:24] It sounds like a lot of upfront work. A ton of work.
Jason Scott: [00:25:28] A ton of upfront work, Yeah. So it was several months or a few months and and there were there's various people in the senior management, the business managers, the CEO and the CEO of the business who was interested to know what the progress was. And obviously they, the CEO wants to make sure that you're going to start booking trades and start earning commission as soon as possible. The recruitment of other salespeople is relatively easy compared to all that the network across the bank. You've spoken to a lot of these people in the phone already because working as a trader on the I've been dealing with salespeople all the time, people that ring me up and ask for prices. So you know who the good sales people are around the street. It isn't difficult. That isn't difficult. It's the business of setting up the actual business within the bank is is tricky. And you have to deal with all these different agencies within that are going to support you.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:32] So let's say you're a few months in. You feel like you have everything, all the processes set up, all the for the hiring. You've started bringing sales people in. Tell me what that kind of next stage of growth is in terms of building that business out. And if you can give the listeners just a little bit of a almost like a little proxy of what how they can think of like the trading, the actual trading side versus the sales side. So the trading is the actual execution of the trades that the clients want. And the sales is to make sure that the the institutions and the hedge funds and the are doing the trades with your bank.
Jason Scott: [00:27:07] Is that so in derivatives, especially in that in that market, in the futures market. And then there is two aspects to it. One is the execution of the client orders and the other is the the sales of the ideas and the marketing of your business to the to the client base. And so we have to you have to have your desk manned. You have to be you know, it's a very rigorous process. You have to interact with other teams across the world because you've got to hand on the book. So at the end of the day, you've got a book of client business that you've built up and they've got positions and they have to be able to call somebody 24 hours a day to understand what their positions are and to be able to trade them so that that process needs to be set up correctly in order that clients on the on the execution side, the clients are convinced that you can support them. 24 hours a day. So that's important and that's the execution side of the business. On the off onboarding clients or getting clients to work with you is a question of more on marketing. It's about connecting, networking, talking to people, thinking about trade ideas and selling those ideas. And the important thing is to get at least a couple of clients who are going to be your go to people. And you've got to have you've got to build relationships with those guys. You've got to make sure that they that they are successful and that they come back to you when you know because they appreciate what you're doing for them. And at the initial stages, you're talking about the initial stages, then it is important to have at least three or four or five clients who really love you and are going to come back to you and going to go.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:05] We do. Those just by definition have to be larger clients for the flood for there to be enough flow. Does it?
Jason Scott: [00:29:12] Well in the derivatives world, it doesn't have to be a large in terms of a large institution. It doesn't have to be a large institution. It just has to be somebody who's doing a lot of trades, getting a lot of thought. And and so I was lucky because I built relationships with a couple of hedge funds who were based in in fact, on the West Coast, in in the US. And so I built relationships to these guys. They were interested in what was going on in Europe at that time. And we had there was a lot of mispricing of options at that time because a lot of people didn't really quite understand about the the carry trade, about how to price options for dividends and so on. So a lot of dividend and dividend arbitrage trades going on and so on because people looked at pricing in different ways and some of the offshore people had a different perspective on what the right prices were compared to the onshore people. So there was a lot of opportunity and once you've done that for one client, you can refine the trade and then you can sell that trade to another similar client and slowly you can build up your key bunch of ten, 15 clients that are important to you and your important to them.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:37] Why wouldn't the bank answer some of these best arbitrage trades? Why wouldn't the bank take that in when they were allowed to do their own prop trading, take that idea than do it themselves?
Jason Scott: [00:30:46] Yeah, they were doing it themselves. And so the there's there were opportunities obviously that certain restrictions on how much when etc. etc. got it but arbitrage trading did happen and it but it wasn't just that wasn't the only trade that was going on. So it was there's a lot a lot going on there at the time the bank was taking on some of those trades, obviously restricted in terms of what they can do, both on the legal side, compliance position side, etc., etc.. But some clients, offshore clients who had onshore clients who wanted to do the other side of the trades. So we were putting through a lot of trades, through the through the sales team and through the, through the and onto the trader's books. When we didn't find a client for the other side of the trade. So it was a lot of mostly agency, but a lot of times we would put it onto the traders books as well there.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:51] So you were at Credit Suisse for a great run. Tell me how things evolved over time there and then what prompted you to kind of for your next chapter, what prompted you to leave?
Jason Scott: [00:32:03] Okay. So always looking for the next thing. So Asia was the next thing that opened up and I was given the opportunity to come work in Singapore and thought it was just the best idea. I had a young my personal circumstances suited that my wife was working in the industry and we had a young child and it was very, very it was a great place to it's a great place to bring to bring a family up. And so we both got a chance to move and we moved and that initially we were a bit worried because the markets we went into straight into the Asian crisis, 1998, 99. But you know, we had experience of that already. So it was it was it was again, another interesting move. So always looking for the next thing. So Asia was the next thing for us and the next thing for me. Again, derivative markets opening up, you know, a lot of interest from global investors trading into Asia and a lot of products that were being new, products that were being brought to market. And so that was that was that was the next interesting move for me. I went with Credit Suisse. They were very, very good to me. They built the team up very, very quickly. They put a lot of investment into it. I think they realised that Asia was the next thing. And so we we built up in Singapore, we built up in Hong Kong, we built up in Mumbai, in India, we built up in Seoul, Korea, basically that sort of. Non Japan Asia type business.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:41] And when you say built up, you mean you're creating teams in each of the markets.
Jason Scott: [00:33:45] We we, we hired five guys in Mumbai to access the Indian market, which was very big. And this is all tied in a lot with the fact that hedge funds were interested in trading in emerging markets. And so there were huge opportunities in in Korea, in the Korean one market that was exploding. So we set up a team down there with three guys in Seoul. We had five guys in Mumbai. Hong Kong was we put five guys into Hong Kong. I moved into Hong Kong to to open up that business. And so the non Japan Asian market, especially for the hedge funds, was very, very interesting.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:27] I'm curious how your role you are obviously in a leadership role at this point, doing a lot of managing, managing and recruiting and setting up processes. I'm curious like what your day to day was like and you're flying a lot, traveling a lot. Are you on are you doing any of the actual selling to the clients or keeping the relationship going, or.
Jason Scott: [00:34:47] Are you just by then? I was there was a we had a very, very professional team of execution sales guys who were making sure the phones weren't being answered and so on. But, you know, so although I had a seat at the desk, I wasn't always at the desk. A lot of the time was traveling and meeting clients, building relationships with clients, and working with the prime finance team at Credit Suisse. So obviously a lot of our clients were clients of the prime brokerage operation, and so we spent a lot of time with those guys talking to clients, doing introductory pitches. And because the hedge fund industry was booming at that time in Asia, then we were doing a lot of pitches involved in pitches for prime brokerage relationships.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:38] So as the derivative kind of expertise.
Jason Scott: prime when when you're selling a prime services business listed derivative futures and clearing is is very much part of that. They don't have to if they become a prime services relationship, they don't have to do their clearing and and trading on the derivative side with that prime broker, but obviously helps to have that relationship built in for sure.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:10] So when you said entertaining clients, how much of your time, by the time you're let's say you're in Singapore for a few years, how much of it was going out and having to entertain clients? So you're taking them out to dinner or fancy dinners and doing all this. How much of your life became that?
Jason Scott: [00:36:27] A Quite a lot.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:30] But because hard with the family, with a young family.
Jason Scott: [00:36:34] Yeah. I mean, it was it was it was hard. There's a lot of traveling. That was the thing because and I would Asia is obviously split up over many, many different areas. And so we're trying to get into the regional client base. So there's there's two parts to the business. One is the incoming business from overseas. So obviously we couldn't entertain those clients too often, but we would do overseas trips. So we spent at least go to New York twice a year and we would speak to all the we would go and meet all the night desks in in New York. So it would be really meeting our clients from about 8:00 in the evening through till three or 4:00 in the morning as we were speaking to the night desk who trade into Asia. So we did a lot of trips. We did trips like that. Obviously, they were like twice a year. But on a day to day basis, we were trying to build up a regional client base as well. So we spent a lot of time traveling on business trips to Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Korea, etc. etc.. Yeah, so a lot of traveling entertainment within Singapore, not so much. We didn't spend every night out. Hong Kong was was pretty because a lot of hedge funds in Hong Kong spend a lot of time out in the evenings with those guys building relationships there. So yeah entertainment, travelling, all part of the business.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): you're like, okay, that's just not for me? Or did you just.
Jason Scott: [00:38:04] Know it was great? It's fantastic. Yeah, I loved it. I mean, it was a, it was a real buzz, you know? And we, we went to great sporting events like the F one and Shanghai that we went, I was ten years and running at the rugby at the Hong Kong Sevens rugby. We used to fly all our, all, our, all our clients over from London, put them up in hotels, take them out for three or four nights running in Hong Kong through the whole craziness. There's a lot of. Craziness going on in Hong Kong around the rugby sevens. I can promise you that.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:41] That's cool. I'm sure it was a blast. So tell me kind of what was your last state when you ended up eventually going to Asia? And tell me about kind of that, the last kind of formal bulge bracket experience for you in the still doing sales, doing significant similar kind of type of work. But tell me kind of. What was that final, final stint like? Kind of similar, I mean, besides title. Being a managing director there and leading that entire business.
Jason Scott: [00:39:13] There, there's a lot a lot of a lot of networking and a lot more as a as a senior, as the leader of the business. You've got to spend a lot more time building internal relationships across the across the bank, especially in a business that's that's relatively new. So making sure that you speak to the traders, speak to the operations teams, make sure you you you're the leaders of those business businesses really are going to rely on you so that you're the point person there, so that you are the significant person in that business, that you are going to be the one that they can rely on if things if they're unsure about things and things don't always go 100% right. And so you've got to make sure that the leaders of the compliance team, the leaders of the legal teams, the leaders of the HR teams, they know you, they that they look at that business and you are that person. So you are the go to person for that business.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:22] A lot of pressure.
Jason Scott: [00:40:23] Advertise it. Yeah. You've got to advertise your business to advertise your business within within the operation. It's a big it is a big operation. Those the trading floor has got several hundred people on it. You are just one tiny little desk in that huge operation and you've got to make sure that your business is significant because it produces a decent amount of money and therefore people can notice you notice your business, but you've got to also be out there making sure that that your advertising, your business, networking and because the people that are working for you rely on you to do that.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:05] Sounds quite entrepreneurial even being inside of a bulge bracket bank.
Jason Scott: [00:41:09] Oh, and more especially in a bank like Deutsche Bank, which is an extremely aggressive and we're certainly was at the time in extremely aggressive business, an extremely aggressive place.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:24] To some of the some of the story that I've heard from the trading floor is, you know, people throwing punches and stuff like that. I'm sure you have plenty of those.
Jason Scott: [00:41:31] Yeah. I mean, it's it all seems to be very I mean, it's all very, very professional. But it is also there's an undercurrent of aggressiveness. I mean, there's undercurrent of of of aggressiveness. And it's highly professional. There's not I didn't ever see any unprofessional behaviour. But, you know, you have to be aware that you have to promote your own business within the operation.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:59] So did you feel like in your stint there, the four years you were you were able to successfully do that or did you feel like it was just bad timing or bad luck that they decided they were going to pull out of that specific market? Or would you have would you have done let me rephrase that. Would you have done anything differently leading up? Would you have taken that jump to Deutsche, or would you have preferred to have stayed back? Looking back now.
Jason Scott: [00:42:21] At Credit Suisse, No, definitely taken the jump to Deutsche Bank. You've got to stretch yourself. You've got to find that if that opportunity to lead a business comes along, don't turn it down. The the reason is that you that you need to make sure that you've stretch yourself to the as far as you can and taken every role that you that you feel you can do the the Deutsche Bank wasn't set up for for a platform business like like ours you need a lot of heavy infrastructure and a lot of I.T. support. Credit Suisse was in an extraordinary place in terms of the platform that they had to integrate their clients in terms of technology. The technology at Deutsche Bank was much more geared towards entrepreneurial OTC trading, with each business having their own way of doing their risk management. They had their own specific I.T support. It wasn't really a platform business in terms of mass clearing of clients and so connections to exchanges, connection to KPS, less, less good, internal support, less good, but just a different type of business. And although Deutsche Bank was prepared to put in the resources and that's why they hired me and others across the across the globe and they were aggressively going after that business, then they effectively decided that that the capital. Constraints that they were under coming into 2014, 2015, where they weren't going to be able to put the resources in that they needed. So that's that. Was it there a bit late into the business? To be honest.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:15] They're a little late. And then the capital constraints. Was that what changed in 14? There's their performance was lagging so that they needed capital elsewhere or.
Jason Scott: [00:44:24] Yeah, I mean, especially in I mean they needed capital in specifically in the North American business. But I don't want to I'm not privy to everything that went on, of course.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:37] Yeah. I was just trying to get your perspective. And I know the last few years have been especially hard on them. Hear us as well. So maybe a continuation. What was starting.
Jason Scott: [00:44:48] There? Just this reprioritize. Go with what they feel they can do. Well, and if you're in if you're trying to build a business at that time, then you know they're going to withdraw the resources from that. Absolutely. The right decisions to be made.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:04] So when you when they tell me a little bit about that, that transition. So when they told you how much of a heads up did they give you, was it like one day you're working towards building this business, The next day they're like, Sorry, it's done. And tell me about that transition of how you started thinking about what you want to do next. I know it gave you a huge opportunity. You kind of maybe for the first time in 20 plus years, you could breathe and stop and maybe think about what you wanted to do personally. But tell me. Tell me about that.
Jason Scott: [00:45:33] Yeah. So the transition out of the business is not easy for anybody. And it doesn't matter how much of a heads up you get. The the initially they started withdrawing the teams in New York and then in London. And so it was pretty obvious that the writing was on the wall. So at that stage you then decide, what do you want to do? Do you want to go after another job on the street, or do you want to take an opportunity, opportunity to do something different? And so the the day it happens is not for anybody. It's not great to to be told that the business is is not going to be running anymore and that that you that you are no longer acquired, that you're being restructured out of the business. It doesn't matter how much heads up you get. It's not it's not an easy day for you. But after you've taken the deep breath and looked around and you decide whether you want to really do another role like that or whether you want to do something different. And a lot of people do want to do another role like that. They want to get on. They want to continue in that business. And if there's an another opportunity for them, yeah, go for it. That's fine. I decided I was going to take a step back at that time and so I'd always been interested in mentoring. I always been interested in training. I've done a lot of training with clients.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:01] Before we get to the training aspect, do you mind? My listeners always asked me to ask in terms of compensation or are you comfortable sharing a round in a wide ballpark what you had been making? Was it a point where you could do what you wanted to do because you were very senior for for a good number of years? Was money no longer a concern or was it had you lived within your means so that you didn't feel like you needed it anymore?
Jason Scott: [00:47:26] The in I don't think we got as much of a compensation package as as the guys in New York and London and Asia was a less in terms of the revenues is less than those areas. So when you leave obviously if you've been a managing director working for Deutsche Bank and you've been a senior person throughout, you've got, you know, you're not penniless, right? So the compensation was good. And so there's not so much pressure to to immediately get another job, but not in your personal circumstance will decide that, you know, yeah, I've got kids at college and so there's no you know, you want to still earn I mean, you want to still make money. That's that's why you joined the business in the first place. You're not going to do nothing, right? It is it is nice to to still to have an income. And so yeah, I don't think there's nobody's ever going to say to you, Right. That's it I'm going to go off and just Long Beach.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:48:32] Right? Yeah. You'd be bored very fast.
Jason Scott: [00:48:35] Well, it's not just being bored. You need, you know, you're earning money as well. So it's and there's no point in just sitting around and spending your savings. Yeah. So the for my personal circumstances. No it was, it was, it's not, I was not in a position where I could just say completely, you know, lie on a beach somewhere but then didn't want to.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:48:55] Yeah. So, so continue. So you were saying you started looking into these training and something you enjoyed had enjoyed. Are doing.
Jason Scott: [00:49:02] Yeah. So I've done I've done quite a lot of training with clients. So training clients is a very important part of the business. And we used to do training sessions for them and then doing training sessions for our own internal people was important. So when I left I thought maybe that would be something that I could do. And so that was I learning about. That was just another, another interesting path. And so, yeah, that's, that's, that's what I did. And learning about instructional design, talking to people, standing up in front of people, something that I feel that that I can do. And I really it was it's become a new buzz for me and it's it is extremely gratifying to get good feedback and have an interaction with people who are in front of you or in a webinar getting the feedback. It is a gratifying experience. And so helping people to understand the way that things work and doing a good session, maybe a day to three a week, dealing with a graduate training program where you meet them over a period of time and you've got follow up that's going on. That is it's an extremely gratifying experience.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:24] That's great. So, yeah, you've been doing that for now five plus years. And anything else before we call the podcast, anything you kind of looking back over your career advice, you would give your younger self or give your give to the younger listeners as they kind of try to map their career.
Jason Scott: [00:50:41] Yeah, I think you've got to you've got to be aware that you are not just working for the bank, you're working for yourself to a certain extent. And so your networking within the business, outside of your of the bank is is equally important to your external interests. Your industry associations. You've got to market yourself as well. And so that's important. That is important. You know, you've got to be relatively selfish to a certain extent. You've got to understand where the next move is going to come. You've got to be able to keep your eyes peeled and make sure you build your industry connections. There are plenty of industry associations that you can join, whether you're working in the futures business or in investment banking, whether you're partaking in in forums and these type of the WSO, get your name out there because when if if you're going to look for a new opportunity, you've got to be known on the street, go to conferences, sit on panels, make sure you're a name in the industry. That is important. It's not just to represent the bank is to represent yourself.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:06] That's great. Well, Jason, I think while I'm there, thank you so much for taking the time a lot longer than I expected, but it was a really interesting story.
Jason Scott: [00:52:12] No, no. Well, you can edit it.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:14] No, that's great.
Jason Scott: [00:52:15] Stick it out there. Well, Patrick, it's been great to meet you. I hope I hope your listeners and readers find it interesting. I don't think I'll probably be the same profile as a lot of your people.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:27] So but we love that.
Jason Scott: [00:52:29] It's interesting to get a perspective from somebody who's been through it and come out the other end for sure.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:35] Thanks so much and thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street Oasis. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street Oasis dot com. And till next time.
or Want to Sign up with your social account?