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☆ Wall Street's shift to the public cloud hasn't come cheap. From dashboards to automation, here's how firms like Morgan Stanley and Vanguard are keeping costs down while using the tech.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Carter Johnson | Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

But the pay-as-you-go subscription model associated with the cloud can also lead to higher expenses when usage goes unchecked. Collaboration is keyAs with most technology applications, there's a human behavior element to cloud cost savings. At Capital One, it took years to build a culture of collaboration between technology and finance teams within the bank's centralized cloud expense management division, Johnston said. Before, the finance team would send the tech team an aggregate bill at the end of each month and "that was kind of the end of the story," Johnston said. Speaking the same language has instilled a greater sense of empathy across different teams, like finance, technology, business, and others.

☆ Struggling sneaker brand Vans is trying to lure millennials away from Nike and other brands with nostalgia, high heat collabs, and better arch support
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-13 | by ( Danni Santana | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

But Harrer, who joined Vans from Dollar Shave Club in April 2021, noted that Vans wasn't reminding people about those classic shoes. Vans stopped marketing its classic sneakers for some time before resuming earlier this year with the "Classic Since Forever" campaign. "Our top-tier limited-distribution footwear, which you may know as Vans Vault, has previously met the needs of influential footwear-trend accounts in the past," he said. With Vans Vault, the company takes classic shoes and collaborates with popular designers and boutiques on new colorways. Vans Vault releases compete with Nike, Adidas, Converse, and others for the general sneaker lover.

☆ A former top tech exec at Bank of America just launched a new consulting business. Here are 3 key mistakes he said firms are making as they plan for the future.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Bianca Chan | Carter Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Sumeet Chabria, a long-time Wall Street tech exec, is launching a network-based consultancy firm. ThoughtLinks will have a wide range of experts who can offer clients bespoke and practical advice. Chabria was most recently the COO of Bank of America's global technology and operations team. Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest stories in hedge funds, PE, fintech, and banking — delivered daily to your inbox. Ahead of the launch of ThoughtLinks, Chabria detailed three of the biggest mistakes financial firms and those in other industries are making when it comes to digital transformation and the future of their workforces.

Cloud computing has dominated the tech industry, created armfuls of multi-billion dollar companies, and it's still growing exponentially. All of that makes cloud computing an excellent career choice now and for years to come. To that purpose, we created this list of people to know who are working on the next iterations of the cloud. We looked for leaders in six categories that make up the cloud universe — or cloudverse. Read on for the 2022 Cloudverse 100 list, organized alphabetically.

☆ Private equity is starting to bet big on the cloud. Here's why firms like Blackstone are making the move.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Like other Wall Street firms upended by the technology, PE firms' motivation to make the move is tied to harnessing the copious amounts of data they manage. GFT works with more than 20 private-equity firms for digital transformation, including a handful of tier-one PE companies, he said. Some PE firms have tried to leverage their scale for pricing discounts among cloud providers, Mahenthiran said. Major cloud providers, like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, have been hungry for more Wall Street market share. That hasn't stopped PE firms from trying to hire out data-science and cloud teams to help front-office researchers find new opportunities and oversee internal cloud infrastructure, Vyas said.

☆ Wall Street's most important consultant might be its cloud provider
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Insider's Bianca Chan explored this trend with a piece on how cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are reimagining themselves as business consultants. Many of the biggest cloud providers have stood up teams focused on interfacing with the C-suite to advise them on how a move to the cloud can be an opportunity to overhaul things. It's not hard to see how this could end up being big business for the cloud providers. Cloud providers still have a long way to go to be a real threat to consultants, but there is potential there. Click here to read more about how cloud providers are becoming the new-age consultants for Wall Street.

☆ Public-cloud providers are reimagining themselves as consultants. Here's how AWS, Azure and Google Cloud are helping finance firms use the tech to rethink their business.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

In turn, public-cloud providers are reimagining themselves as business consultants. Wall Street firms are embracing the cloud for everything from research to risk and marketing. Cloud providers are building teams to interface with execsFinancial firms making the jump to the cloud are thinking beyond their IT divisions. Some of the largest Wall Street shops are taking the opportunity to rethink how they run their businesses entirely. Wall Street uses cloud to hit the reset buttonSelipsky's comments ring true on Wall Street, where cloud projects can have firm-wide ripple effects.

☆ From Python to Rust, these are the top coding languages for landing a gig on Wall Street
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Bianca Chan | Carter Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Coding languages are a foundational element of any tech job, but not all are made equal. Coding languages, like Python and Java, are how humans can communicate with computers by providing a set of instructions for a system to execute. As it turns out, not all programming languages are made equal and some are more relevant to certain corners of Wall Street than others. Insider spoke with recruiters, Wall Street tech execs, and industry insiders, and analyzed job postings to get the low down on in-demand skill sets. Here are the top coding languages to know to land a tech job on Wall Street.

☆ Musk says he's going to grant 'amnesty' to banned accounts as Twitter struggles to deal with hate speech
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-25 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

On Thursday, Twitter owner Elon Musk said he will reinstate nearly all banned accounts. The move comes after Musk conducted a poll on Twitter that garnered more than 3 million votes. On Thursday, Musk tweeted that he would grant "amnesty" to all suspended Twitter accounts that haven't broken the law or "engaged in egregious spam." The move comes as Musk continues to loosen the platform's grip on enforcement around posts with hate speech since buying Twitter for $44 billion last month. Before taking control of the social media company, Musk criticized the platform for "failing to adhere to free speech principles."

☆ Wall Street's trust issues with crypto won't be easily repaired in the wake of the FTX blowup
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-23 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Trust in the crypto industry — be it with Wall Street firms, politicians, venture capitalists, or the general public — is destroyed thanks to FTX's downfall. It's a bitter pill to swallow when one considers the hard-fought progress crypto had made on Wall Street in recent years. canvassed more than a dozen Wall Street insiders to get a sense of where traditional firms stand on their crypto plans. Meanwhile, firms hoping to bridge the gap between Wall Street and crypto have been put in an impossible spot, answering for another's sins. Click here to read more on how Wall Street is moving forward with its crypto plans in the wake of FTX.

☆ Insiders detail how Wall Street is preparing for a post-FTX world, from heightened scrutiny on crypto deals to rethinking hiring plans
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Morgan Chittum | Bianca Chan | Carter Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Most Wall Street firms have executed big crypto and blockchain initiatives. The ties between Wall Street, Main Street, and digital assets have never been tighter. Some traditional firms have chosen crypto custodians to do that for them, while others offer it themselves. Fidelity also has its own digital assets custody offering, and reportedly had plans to continue building out its digital-asset team as recently as late October. 121, which requires most SEC registrants to record the fair value of custodied digital assets as a liability.

☆ Wall Street's love language is coding. Here are the ones you need to know.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Insider's Bianca Chan and Carter Johnson dug into the most sought-after coding languages across Wall Street. C++, which was created in 1983, is still a mainstay despite being older than a good chunk of the people using it on Wall Street (and the person writing this newsletter). While that's certainly true, plenty of programming languages have sticking power. Perhaps the best example is COBOL, a 63-year-old programming language still being used today. But what would be a smart decision is reading this story mapping out the top programming languages for a variety of roles and industries across Wall Street.

☆ Want to work in tech on Wall Street? These are the 8 coding languages that are most in demand.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( Bianca Chan | Carter Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Coding languages are a foundational element of any tech job, but not all are made equal. But skilled technologists or those wanting to make a career switch into tech might still find a home on Wall Street. As it turns out, not all programming languages are made equal and some are more relevant to certain corners of Wall Street than others. Insider spoke with recruiters, Wall Street tech execs, and industry insiders, and analyzed job postings to get the low down on in-demand skill sets. Here are the top coding languages to know to land a tech job on Wall Street.

☆ Private equity is ready to make moves as the economy sours, but its approach to dealmaking might be different than in years past
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

When the going gets tough, PE gets going. Insider's Casey Sullivan and Rebecca Ungarino examined one segment of Wall Street that is primed to take off despite an economy that has left almost everyone hurting. The big question is where will PE firms look to deploy capital. How long PE firms resist those types of deals still remains to be seen, though. People who left Wall Street for crypto aren't second guessing themselves.

☆ Private equity is opening up to the public cloud, setting up a new battleground for AWS, Microsoft, and Google to win over Wall Street
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Like other Wall Street firms upended by the technology, PE firms' motivation to make the move is tied to harnessing the copious amounts of data they manage. GFT works with more than 20 private-equity firms for digital transformation, including a handful of tier-one PE companies, he said. Some PE firms have tried to leverage their scale for pricing discounts among cloud providers, Mahenthiran said. Major cloud providers, like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, have been hungry for more Wall Street market share. But the wait-and-see approach has put PE companies far behind their Wall Street peers.

☆ Vanguard's head of tech details the asset manager's move to the public cloud that's already helped it cut costs by 30%
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Bianca Chan | Carter Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Vanguard's tech chief is ready to play the field when it comes to the public cloud. Since Vanguard's first big push into public cloud in 2019, the firm has primarily relied on Amazon Web Services for much of its cloud tools. Similarly, he referenced the potential of Google Cloud Platform's "analytics capabilities" as another potential selling point. The public cloud is one of five main pillars of Vanguard's broader modernization of its application portfolio that began around 2019. In 2021, AWS detailed how the tech giant meets with Vanguard's Cloud Business Office monthly to review costs, and in one instance reduced its serverless compute expenses by 50%.

Meanwhile, the number of "mega-deals" — or funding rounds of more than $100 million — dropped to its lowest level since 2018, CB Insights also reported. According to CB Insights, the volume of payments-related dealmaking reached nearly $4 billion, or slightly less than a third of all fintech funding. And while that's not a record-breaking amount, payments are accounting for a larger amount of the fintech funding pie. One year ago, when third-quarter fintech funding topped $36 billion in the midst of a bull market, payments accounted for roughly 20% of overall funding volume. But even amid a relative pullback in broader fintech funding, payments represent a safe, evergreen thesis because it is a largely complicated and analog space.

☆ American Express just hired a new top cloud executive who was the CTO at Groupon and led tech at Goldman Sachs' Marcus
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-01 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

American Express just hired Sachin Devand as EVP and unit CIO of digital, data, and AI/ML tech. Devand is the former CTO of Groupon and was a managing director at Goldman Sachs. American Express just nabbed a new top cloud executive to oversee the development of cloud-based solutions, Insider has learned. Sachin Devand, the former CTO of ecommerce marketplace Groupon, joined the company on Monday after only eight months at Groupon, according to a person familiar with the situation. During his stint at Groupon, Devand was focused on increasing automation and streamlining the company's tech stacks.

☆ Fintechs have been getting crushed this year, but the sector's biggest investors say payments are a key area to watch in 2023. Here's what they are most excited about.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-26 | by ( Emilia David | Carter Johnson | Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

☆ Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman says there's about to be a "washout" of fintech valuations and a wave of consolidation. Here's how the bank is thinking about potential deals.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-14 | by ( Hayley Cuccinello | Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman predicted a "wash out" for fintech firms in an earnings call. The market is volatile, but Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman sees it as a return to normalcy. Companies trading at 50 times revenue, what's gone on with Bitcoin trading at $60,000, and what's gone on with GameStop and other companies," Gorman said in the third-quarter earnings call on October 14. Consolidation in the fintech space is nothing new to Morgan Stanley, he added. Fintech founders, however, have been reluctant to face their new reality, according to a slew of VCs.

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☆ Google and Amazon are two of the biggest poachers of Goldman's tech talent. We mapped out the top 10 firms snapping up the bank's recent departures.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-12 | by ( Bianca Chan | Carter Johnson | Dakin Campbell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Amazon was the biggest poacher of Goldman tech talent from June to August. The organization tracked the LinkedIn profiles of people who left Goldman Sachs and picked up another job from June through August. Wall Street's tech hiring ambitions ramp up as tech powerhouses and startups pull backNonetheless, the demand for tech talent on Wall Street has remained strong. JPMorgan, the biggest beneficiary of the departures, hired 18 former Goldman Sachs employees. Citi and Morgan Stanley were also among the top poachers of Goldman talent, with the firms both scooping up 12 Goldman employees each.

Insider asked more than 40 investors to identify top up-and-coming fintechs. Investors nominated startups both inside and outside of their own portfolios. Insider surveyed 43 investors — including those from Bain Capital Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and QED Investors — about the most promising fintechs to watch. Startups that were nominated included a mix of investors' portfolio companies and ones they have no financial interest in. As was the case last year, the majority of those nominated work with other businesses, not individual consumers.

Parafin, launched in 2020, works with so-called platform partners, or companies that other small businesses sell their products through. All the cofounders knew was that they wanted to build technology that would help small businesses. And they may not get their first contract payment from the government for as long as 120 days," Reed, the startup's CEO, told Insider. Helping small businesses manage their taxesComplYant's founder Shiloh Jackson wants to help people be present in their bookkeeping. HoneyBookWhile countless small businesses have been harmed by the pandemic, self-employment and entrepreneurship have found ways to blossom as Americans started new ventures.

☆ From quantum computing to augmented reality, here's how 10 top Wall Street firms are looking to use cutting-edge tech
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-26 | by ( Carter Johnson | Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

JPMorgan is preparing for a quantum futureDavid Castillo, Andrew J. Lang, and Marco Pistoia. The difference could allow users of the tech to process algorithms and execute calculations at blistering speeds. That's because quantum computing uses quantum mechanics, a kind of physics that leverages quantum bits, or qubits, instead of ones and zeros used by classic computers. But JPMorgan researchers say there are signs the industry is getting close to the point where quantum computers can process real-world problems faster than classic computers, often referred to as quantum advantage. The platform, run by Castillo, is also hardware-agnostic, meaning it can interface with quantum computers from different providers without needing to rewrite the application code.

Investors nominated startups both inside and outside of their own portfolios. Check out the 61 startups identified as the most promising fintechs. Startups that were nominated included a mix of investors' portfolio companies and ones they have no financial interest in. In total, 61 startups that haven't raised beyond a Series B round were identified. Many investors noted B2B startups are one of the biggest bright spots in the sector as businesses and financial institutions continue to streamline their processes and cut costs where they can.

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