@SteveSageBut not far from the minds of its bankers will be the...

@SteveSage

But not far from the minds of its bankers will be the challenges being faced by its major shareholder Magellan. Most left top investment banks such as UBS and JPMorgan last year to join Barrenjoey, creating what some may see as an all-star cast of dealmakers.

Investment bankers typically get compensated partly in shares from the firms they work at on a deferred basis, and since they have left, the stocks in their old employers have sky rocketed.

Generally speaking, should an adviser leave a firm, they are required to forfeit shares that have not yet been vested.

The understanding is that those who joined Barrenjoey were compensated from the shares in the banks they left that were unable to be vested with scrip from Magellan, the 40 per cent shareholder of Barrenjoey.

Magellan contributed about $90m of cash towards the launch of Barrenjoey and about 1.2 million Magellan shares which in September last year would have been worth about $66m.

The remaining 50 per cent is owned by the staff. British bank Barclays holds 10 per cent, with the two together seeding the business with $200m of capital.

However, since September last year, when Magellan shares were around $55, they have fallen dramatically to about $19 and there has been chatter about unease from Magellan investors over the Barrenjoey investment and the $87m it spent buying a 10 per cent interest in Mexican food chain Guzman y Gomez.

In turn, the share prices of investment banks UBS and JPMorgan where staff departed from have soared.