Good news for hedge funds, bad news for skinflint banks.

Would you like to hear something adorable?

“Whoever writes the biggest check is the winner,” Jason Kennedy, chief executive officer of U.K.-based recruiting firm Kennedy Group, said in an interview. “There is no loyalty left.”

Too true, Jason: From star athletes to fast-food employees, money talks, and whoever’s willing to part with the most of it for your talents and time is likely to win them. Under any circumstances, in the year 2021, plaintive, nostalgic sighs for the good old days when proletarians knew their place and stayed there until they received their walking papers would be hilariously quaint and naïve if uttered unironically. In this case, it’s even more so, because Kennedy is talking about bank credit traders.

Hedge funds fresh off their best performance in years are aggressively hiring, recruiters say. Banks including Barclays Plc, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and HSBC Holdings Plc have suffered senior defections to the buy side in recent weeks. Barclays has tried promotions and pay promises to stem defections…. While spring moving season is nothing new on Wall Street trading desks, observers say star performers in the world of corporate credit are in particularly high demand.

I mean, seriously: Who could imagine leaving such archetypes of appreciation and loyalty as Barclays, Goldman or HSBC, places that have definitely not artificially held down bonuses for appearances’ sake or canned colleagues for convenience’s sake, sometimes in the middle of a pandemic, or made it abundantly clear how little you are valued no matter how large a portion of the bottom line you’re responsible for? Sick, sad world if you ask me or, presumably, Jason Kennedy, a man whose job it is to facilitate the movement of people from one company to another, usually for more money.

Credit Traders Flock to Hedge Funds as Banks Keep Lid on Pay [Bloomberg]