Morning Coffee: Seems Goldman Sachs intends to hire 3,600 people here. Banking pay chaos in London

Where is Goldman Sachs hiring? If you’ve been paying attention to presentations by CEO Lloyd Blankfein and COO Gary Cohn, you’ll already know the answer: Goldman Sachs is hiring in ‘high value locations.’ Where are these high value locations? Try Salt Lake City. But more than that, try Bangalore.

Goldman has around 1,800 people in Salt Lake City. That’s a lot of staff. But that’s nothing compared to Bangalore. Goldman reportedly already has 5,400 people in the Indian city, and it’s just declared its intention to invest $200m in a new campus that can hold up to 9,000 people in total. Will Goldman be making 3,600 new Indian hires then? Maybe, but it won’t be doing so for a while – the new building won’t be finished until 2018.

Separately, the Financial Times reports that banks’ attempts to sidestep the EU bonus cap could be about to go disastrously wrong just months before the 2014-15 bonus round. It’s all down to the European Banking Authority, which has finally come good on its threats to clamp down on cash allowances. If cash allowances are to be allowed, the FT reports that they will need to be i) awarded for a set period and impossible to adjust midterm without staff consent, ii) to include no forfeiture provisions if someone quits, iii) to be attached to a job rather than a person. Points i) and ii) sound like good news for bankers who’ll then be assured of receiving allowances and can switch jobs without paying them back. Point iii) sounds more dubious. – The FT says everyone with the same job title would need to receive exactly the same allowance and salary, with capped bonuses the only element of performance-related pay. Banks have three months left to devise job titles that discriminate on the basis of performance and to categorise people accordingly.