Whenever JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs in London manage to poach staff from each other, it usually leads to a bout of cheering and high-fives in the relevant office. No doubt much of the rivalry comes from the close proximity of their headquarters, which are less than five minutes' walk from each other near Blackfriars Bridge.
The first to the celebrations this year was JP Morgan, which proudly announced that it had lured Mike Betts away from its US rival.
Not a bad coup: Betts, a construction and building materials analyst, is ranked number two in his field by, Reuters, Institutional Investor and Extel.
His former colleagues at Goldman were sorry to see him go, especially since he'd only been at the firm since the start of 1996. What amazed one Goldman employee was Betts' choice for his new job. "Hang on, didn't we get him from there?"
Indeed you did. Betts had worked at JP Morgan before, as a buy-side analyst for the investment management division, for 18 months. But that's not all. His previous job, between 1992 and 1994, was as a UK industrials analyst with, you guessed it, Goldman Sachs.