82,891
edits
Co-head: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) (Created page with "{{a|people| 450px|frameless|center }}{{d|Co-head|kəʊ-hɛd|n|}} To ''appoint'' a co-head is to convey the impression one has overdone managerial resp...") |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 5: | Line 5: | ||
To ''appoint'' a co-head is to convey the impression one has overdone managerial responsibility whilst creating a vacuum of it. To ''be'' a co-head is to claim credit for the cake that is kept, and blame someone else for all the cake that is eaten. | To ''appoint'' a co-head is to convey the impression one has overdone managerial responsibility whilst creating a vacuum of it. To ''be'' a co-head is to claim credit for the cake that is kept, and blame someone else for all the cake that is eaten. | ||
A staple motif of corporate mis-management<ref>See ''here'' for a [https://www.google.com/search?q=%22appoints+co-heads%22&tbm=nws daily-updating hall of shame].</ref> technique of the multinational, the co-head speaks to every conceivable weakness in upper management. | |||
===Co-head is no head=== | ===Co-head is no head=== | ||
| Line 11: | Line 11: | ||
If you share a hot-seat with someone else, and something goes wrong, there’s always a reason it wasn’t ''you''. The greatest, most glaring example of this is at our old friends Credit Suisse, who found to their cost what [[Archegos|happens when you have co-heads of prime services]]. For those without the stomach for a deep foray into hedge fund financing, you need to know only this: prime services business generally splits into ''physical'' and ''synthetic'' components; both Europe and the US are centres for prime services businesses, and Credit Suisse appointed co-heads of their business, one in the US and one in Europe. A hedge fund blew up trading synthetic prime services in the Americas. The co-heads were summoned to the executive board. The one based in America explained that ''he'' was responsible onky for ''physical'' prime services. The one based in London said ''he'' was only responsible for ''European'' prime brokerage. | If you share a hot-seat with someone else, and something goes wrong, there’s always a reason it wasn’t ''you''. The greatest, most glaring example of this is at our old friends Credit Suisse, who found to their cost what [[Archegos|happens when you have co-heads of prime services]]. For those without the stomach for a deep foray into hedge fund financing, you need to know only this: prime services business generally splits into ''physical'' and ''synthetic'' components; both Europe and the US are centres for prime services businesses, and Credit Suisse appointed co-heads of their business, one in the US and one in Europe. A hedge fund blew up trading synthetic prime services in the Americas. The co-heads were summoned to the executive board. The one based in America explained that ''he'' was responsible onky for ''physical'' prime services. The one based in London said ''he'' was only responsible for ''European'' prime brokerage. | ||
The only way a co-head arrangement could work is one that few investment bankers would entertain for a moment: that of [[partnership]]: [[joint and several liability]], and therefore individual responsibility for the totality of any loss, and proportional sharing of any profit. This is, of course, to increase one’s vulnerability to one’s comrades in the service of the firm’s interests, and is not how the professional managerial class like to go about things. | The only way a co-head arrangement could work is one that few investment bankers would entertain for a moment: that of [[partnership]]: [[joint and several liability]], and therefore individual responsibility for the totality of any loss, and proportional sharing of any profit. This is, of course, to increase one’s vulnerability to one’s comrades in the service of the firm’s interests, and is not how the professional managerial class like to go about things. | ||
===Rationale=== | |||
Purported rationales are to encourage a lean market inside the organisation for ideas, and to sort wheat from chaff. Pitting two young thrusters against each other is some sort of Spartan matriculation: one will emerge, soon enough, the other will expire in the cage in a mess of blooded feathers. This is how Goldman looks at it, anyway. Elsewhere, kinder places, it is a symptom of the failure to weed out senior players who have passed their use-by date, but no-one can | |||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||