Layoffs are a natural part of the banking world and, when affected, most people pick themselves up and look for their next banking job. Claire Castera, an ex-equity structuring director at Deutsche Bank, had a different plan when she was laid off back in 2010: she executive produced a movie.
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Castera had always been interested in movies but, as a finance graduate, “a career in finance made more sense.” At a drinks event following her layoff, however, she was introduced to a colleague that had contacts in the film industry and knew of a creative team in need of a production company. “We raised the money around our own network and we made it happen.” Her executive producer partners included Philippe Derimay, a Credit Suisse quant at the time who now is head of risk engineering at hedge fund Citadel.
Castera had a hands-on role in production; “I was the one opening the studio at 6:30am every day while the other producers were busy arguing costs with the creatives back at head office” She said that there’s “a really tough work-life balance when you work in production; you pay a lot for the studio, and you want to get the most out of it.” The work rate was similar to her time in banking, where she would spend “12 hours a day doing pricing; it was very focused, hard work.” Neither role, she said, is a 9-5.
Other ex-bank staff who left to work in film suggest the latter industry is more intense. Bill Dale, an equity researcher who left to film a low budget horror movie, told us that creatives should “be prepared to work far, far harder than you ever have in banking.”
In banking, Castera worked with “small teams of highly skilled people,” whereas the film crew was larger and more generalist, working across multiple departments. Both teams, though, were “driven by a passion and a love for what they do.”
Castera’s structuring experience even had a direct impact on production, as she used “creative methods” to pay the film’s actors, directors and production managers. She used “structured term sheets to pay the actors with digital options”, where pay for key team members correlated to the film’s success. For example, the actors would receive additional pay if they won an award for their role. “You may leave banking, but you never stop thinking like a structurer,” she said.
Sus (2010), the film Castera produced, was sold to the BBC. “There was also the scenario where we made a movie, and it only lived on my shelf at home,” she said. “It was a huge risk compared to getting a big job in banking.”
After producing Sus, Castera did end up returning to banking via UniCredit where she worked for 14 years and was most recently an MD and co-head of cross-asset solutions for market structuring. She said that, while working in film didn’t directly help her land her next banking role, it helped her to be treated more as a senior employee capable of taking risks, and accelerated her career growth.
Castera’s role at UniCredit was moved to Milan recently as part of the bank’s broad restructuring efforts; she decided to move into fintech rather than move out of London. She’s now head of financial engineering at Quantessence, a niche fintech owned by Euroclear focused on building technology for designing and scaling personalized investment strategies.
We previously spoke to Quantessence’s founder, Peter de Clerq, who started the firm after he too was laid off from Barclays and said that roles in his fintech are hard to hire for due to requiring both quant and commercial skills. Castera said that she joined the firm because she “could see how the world was changing” because of technology, and that fintech would be a faster-paced industry to work in with a more flexible approach to working. “I wanted to move forward, not backwards.”
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