Citi head Vikram Pandit and HR head John Donnelly are working on a new bonus plan that will reward “co-operation across different divisions and the performance of the company as a whole,” the FT reports.

The plan, a work in progress, is something Pandit wants to put in place before the end of the year. It’s unclear from the FT article whether the changes would affect just “top managers” or also junior staff.  A Reuters follow-up report cited an unnamed source who said the bonus system would change for “senior managers.”

An anonymous Citi executive told the FT: “The new compensation plan is absolutely crucial to put teeth behind Vikram Pandit’s strategy… We have to put a premium on partnership-like behaviour.”

A first step could involve “skewing bonuses to take into account how much shared business each manager generate.”

From December 07 to April 08, the approximately million people working in finance in London collected bonuses totaling £13.7BN or $27.3BN, reports the Guardian, citing early numbers from the Office for National Statistics.

The bonuses averaged about $27k per head. That was down from the £14BN from the prior season.

In a salary survey from earlier this year, approximately 70% of London finance workers reported a similar or greater bonus than 2007.

BusinessWeek reports that Robert Burgoyne, an attorney representing GMAC in the organization’s case, says that VIP members of the site, who paid $30 for 30 days of access to the site, will not automatically have their GMAT scores canceled: “GMAC isn’t going to start canceling scores because people are VIP members … We’ll look for something that actually links people to conduct they should have known was improper.”

Meanwhile, one person claiming to be an ex-VIP Scoretop user has purportedly posted GMAC’s response to his inquiry about his Scoretop membership might affect GMAT scores:

“The initial focus of our investigation will be on those who have distributed and disclosed real GMAT questions on the website. If through our investigations we come across individuals who have knowingly accessed “real”GMAT questions, then we will consider such cases as well.From your email, you seem confident that you never accessed real GMAT questions. If this is the case, you have nothing to worry about.”

But at the same time it appears that users were indeed able to access live questions via the website. Users called those live questions “JJs” or “Jungle Juice” (we have our guesses, but any user care to explain why?). BusinessWeek reports:

In one post cited by GMAC in its copyright infringement case, “h3adsh0t” describes the value of the JJs as “inestimable,” adding that he saw “10-12 JJs [when I took the GMAT], word by word, and many of the other questions felt very familiar.” In a “post-exam debriefing” filed by “sammi,” he described how he “got 3 successive [math] questions, of which all three were from scoretop Nov or Dec! …[T]he confidence you derive out of solving a seen problem is incomparable.”

GMAC and Burgoyne will be looking for those who accessed the “post-exam debriefings” and test takers who reported JJs on the website.

We wonder whether the case will extend beyond just Scoretop to all of the countless other MBA-prep sites out there, not to mention other forums and blogs where test takers discussed info regarding either Scoretop or “live” questions.

One B-school blog we found goes so far as to thank Scoretop for all of the “help”, especially specific forums of the site. Another detailed a GMAT test taking strategy as well as credited his (her?) 780 “courtesy Scoretop,” giving shout outs to members (”Stone, Tianlong, and Spiderman”) and recommending “Start doing the JJ’s (JJ = Jungle Juice = material that IS representative, and I mean EXTREMELY representative). Hit the ‘Forum’ button in the ‘Community’ drop-down menu, then choose the appropriate sub-forum.”

As expected, some people who used Scoretop and already have MBAs are up in arms. What will happen to their MBAs we wonder? And their companies… what happens when their MBAs vanish into thin air?

GMAC says that approximately 6,000 people paid for VIP access to the site. Scoretop, according to beatthegmat, was shut down in mid-May, (though one forum poster says that someone from Scoretop tried to restore access through some kind of hack). A note from GMAC on the now defunct Scoretop website states the following:

GMAC^® takes cheating very seriously, especially attempts to obtain access to live test questions in advance of an exam. We also take very seriously any unauthorized distribution of our copyrighted GMAT^® preparation materials. GMAC^® constantly patrols the Internet for:

• Sites that claim to sell or distribute purportedly “real” GMAT^® questions.
• Unauthorized copies of our official study guides and supplements, GMATPrep^® software, and other GMAC^® products.

If you are caught disclosing, accessing, or using “real” GMAT^® questions:

• Your GMAT^® scores will be cancelled.
• You will not be allowed to take the GMAT^® exam again.
• Business schools will be notified.
• You may be subject to a civil lawsuit or criminal prosecution.

You are responsible for making sure your preparation materials don’t violate our intellectual property rights. In other words:

• Do not purchase, request, or share materials that claim to be “real” GMAT^® questions in any form.
• Do not download GMATPrep^® software from anywhere but www.mba.com, where authorized GMATPrep^® software is available for free.
• Do not request or distribute pirated software or books such as the GMAT^® Paper Tests, GMAT Focus^TM or the Official GMAT^® Guide.

Strange how undergraduate programs remain four years while schools where you actually learn things get more and more abbreviated. In any case, law school, which I would hope teaches people things, is getting shorter. Northwestern Law will begin offering a 2 year-only law program beginning in 2009, joining just two other schools (and no top tier schools) in offering an accelerated program. As the WSJ Law Blog reports, it doesn’t appear that you save any money.

25-60 candidates will be in the accelerated program, and are expected to take the same number of credits are regular students. The target candidates of this type of program must have at least two years of work experience (80 percent of the school’s law students already have two or more years), according to the press release.

Students would begin interviewing for their all important summer associate jobs after one semester, according to Law.com. Commented Lee Miller, co-chief executive of DLA Piper, who told Law.com that the firm worked with Northwestern to develop it’s “Plan 2008″ (a larger strategy to modify the law school program):”It’s tricky … Sure, it would be better to have more grades, but law firms have got to roll with the punches.”

Northwestern’s b-school brudda, Kellogg, already offers a one-year MBA, and is really the only top-tier school in the US that offers a one-year program. Typically it accepts about 70-80 students per year. Of the other higher-rated business schools, there’s also the INSEAD program, the Judge Business School at Cambridge, the International MBA from the Instituto de Empresa, the Said Business School at the University of Oxford, and Cornell’s Johnson school.

First news that Standard Chartered is hiring; now more word that there are firms adding staff in the M&A world.

FT surveyed several M&A boutiques ranging from 11 to 140 bankers, with a presence in London plus at least one other major market. And guess what? The firms had grown staff by approximately 15 percent, or 80 people. Not much when it comes to absolute numbers, but not too shabby either, when you consider all of the boutiques out there.

On the up and up include Evercore Partners, Hawkpoint and Gleacher Shacklock, reports the FT.

Hawkpoint has absorbed the oil & gas team from BoA, while Evercore has hired 15 in US and Europe since 2007, including former Bear Stearns restructuring head Daniel A. Celentano. And the firm plans on adding three new partners in 2008, according to Dealbook.

Anyone been approached by a boutique?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FXsK8r_wc8

The FT reports that Goldman is expected to cut up to 10 percent of jobs in investment banking over the course of 2008. Some cuts were reportedly announced last week. Between the 1st and 2nd quarters, headcount fell by about 400.

There is good news for undergrads, however. The bank still plans on recruiting “aggressively from universities” and will increase overall headcount this year, says the FT.

Meanwhile, HK-spokeswoman Connie Ling told Bloomberg that in Asia, the bank is “continuing to grow, and that includes the investment banking division.”

Unfortunately our drive to lose lbs ended sometime in the fall, not too long after the ‘07 JPMorgan Corporate Challenge, so we didn’t have firsthand coverage like last year.

But 15,000 others packed Central Park for the race yesterday and today for 2 days of some intense 3.5 mi runs. Financiers DOMINATED the races on the second day, with first place finisher Matthew Forys of BlackRock bringing home the bacon and Katarina Melville of Sumitomo coming in 2nd. Karl Dusen of AIG Investments was the first place finisher on the first day. Goldman Sachs was first as well, first for bringing in 957 participants — the most of any organization.

JUNE 18, 2008
TOP MEN
Place Name Time Company
1 Karl Dusen 17:28 AIG INVESTMENTS
2 Ryan Hays 17:36 LEVY & HALPERIN
3 Ben Reynolds 17:42 MERRILL LYNCH & CO.
4 Chris English 17:57 LEVY & HALPERIN
5 John Traugott 17:58 CREDIT SUISSE

TOP WOMEN
Place Name Time Company
1 Kathleen Jobes 19:31 RODALE INC.
2 Megan Guiney 19:54 REAL ESTATE CAPITAL PARTNERS
3 Jessie Webb 20:30 GLAXOSMITHKLINE
4 Maria Pavkovitch 20:38 WEIL GOTSHAL
5 Natalie Gingerich 20:46 RODALE INC.

JUNE 19, 2008

TOP MEN
Place Name Time Company
1 Matthew Forys 17:25 BLACKROCK
2 Francis Corrigan 17:30 THOMSON REUTERS
3 Chris Ellis-Ferrara 17:51 ALLIANCEBERNSTEIN LP
4 Mark Olivier 17:54 TEAM PFIZER (PGRD)
5 Dean Charette 17:59 UBS

TOP WOMEN
Place Name Time Company
1 Caitlin Tormey 20:06 CHRISTIES INC
2 Katarina Melville 20:07 SUMITOMO MITSUI BANKING CORPORATION
3 Arianne Field 20:36 JPMORGAN CHASE
4 Ana Segura 21:09 BBVA
5 Jen Zehr 21:44 D. E. SHAW & CO.

All we can bring you in terms of coverage is culled from the internet at large.

> Chicks from the NYC race
> Barclays runners in the Singapore race
> JPMCC-Frankfurt was the largest race in the WORLD with 73k+ participants … some very into t-shirts (we feel you)

Objective: “I’m looking to move to the San Fran area to try and break into investment banking … I’m currently in the investment management industry so I’d like to hear how my resume stacks up for ibanking.”

Send your resumes to editor [at] bankersball dot com.

Think the world of high finance is all sex, drugs and glamour? Well “City Boy” Geraint Anderson won’t disabuse you of those beliefs.

Anderson joins the ever longer list of ex-financiers out with a book, and from the looks of the book, there’ll be plenty more kids lining up for banking jobs.

The book is a follow-up to the anonymous column he penned for the last few years (”Who is Cityboy? He’s every brash, bespoke-suited FT-carrying idiot who pushed past you on the tube. He’s the egotistical buffoon who loudly brags about how much cash he’s made on the market at otherwise pleasant dinner parties. He’s the greedy, ruthless wanker whose actions are helping turn this world into the shit-hole it’s rapidly becoming. For a period in my life he was me”)

Though we are not too familiar with the column, we do recall coming across it a few years back thanks to another reader. Though for obvious reasons Anderson will no longer be writing it, he will be starting a new column for thelondonpaper called “Boy in the City” — that’s right, a rebirth of sorts.

Judging from an interview and excerpt of the book, the life of a City financier is more about Scarface than the FT — llello, private jets, prostitutes.

But as for the man? Though his high flying allowed him to sock away approximately £3 million (last bonus: ~ half a mil) and a house in Shepards Bush, in classically self-hating banker fashion, he calls Cityboy life useless, competitive and hateful: “No, I do hate it. These people could be doing something useful, like curing cancer or stopping global warming.”