Welcome to Wall Street Insider, where we take you behind the scenes of the finance team's biggest scoops and deep dives from the past week.

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For Wall Street banks, this earnings season told a tale of diverging fortunes: big wins on the trading floor, and mounting worries about the health of the consumer — and the overall economy.

Top execs across Wall Street sounded the alarm on a tough economic recovery ahead. JPMorgan CFO Jennifer Piepszak, for one, warned that government stimulus and loan forbearance programs are hiding the potential pain consumers and businesses could feel in the coming months.

"The relationship between the business cycle and the health of the business sector and the health of the household sector is broken," she noted.

Trading-heavy banks nonetheless enjoyed a big boost from both their equities and fixed-income desks. But some Wall Street execs downplayed that win. JPMorgan says trading already started to cool off toward the end of June and projected performance could fall by half in the next two quarters.

Apollo Global Management has a reputation for being one of the most aggressive investors on Wall Street. So it may come as a surprise that it's undergoing a cultural makeover of sorts, which could help lure talent for a big growth push and cultivate a more family-friendly work atmosphere.

Casey Sullivan talked with Matthew Breitfelder, Apollo's head of talent, about initiatives he's been rolling out since joining from BlackRock last year.

Read the full story here:

Apollo is revamping recruiting and trying to soften its culture amid a big growth push. From kids' story time to a new MBA summer internship, here's how.

Keep reading for a look at how PayPal is leaning into the buy now, pay later frenzy; a checkup on the health of the co-living sector; and to learn more about Google Cloud's strategy for making inroads with financial-services clients.

Have a great weekend,

Meredith

PayPal doubles down on BNPL

Shannen Balogh has been writing a lot about how buy now, pay later is booming during the pandemic thanks to a surge in online shopping, with startups like Afterpay and Klarna all seeing a boost as consumers look for ways to stretch their dollars.

While PayPal has had a buy now, pay later solution since 2008, its focus is shifting to shorter-term payment plans geared toward young consumers. The payments giant just launched a buy now, pay later solution in France that offers buyers the ability to split purchases into four installments.

Read the full story here:

Here's how PayPal is looking to boost its credit business by leaning into a buy now, pay later frenzy

Google Cloud's financial-services push

As Dan DeFrancesco reports, Google Cloud has enjoyed a string of big wins recently, especially when it comes to nabbing clients in financial services. On Wednesday, Chicago-based exchange operator CME Group said it would extend its relationship with Google Cloud to offer additional forms of its market data via the public cloud.

Ulku Rowe, technical director for financial services at Google Cloud, told Dan there's been increased momentum among financial firms to adopt the public cloud after years of resistance. "I think it's kind of past the tipping point in financial services. That hesitation to move to the cloud has been overcome by the industry as a whole," she said.

Read the full story here:

From Deutsche Bank to CME, Google Cloud has nabbed a string of big financial clients. Here are 3 ways it's making its pitch to win over Wall Street.

The first inning of distress

Distress investors — those specializing in buying companies in bankruptcy or close to it, and reorganizing them — are excited about the opportunities that have come from the novel coronavirus pandemic. Jason Mudrick is no different.

Mudrick, who runs the $2.4 billion Mudrick Capital, said on a webinar hosted on Tuesday that he is expecting the biggest opportunity set of his career over the next three to five years.

There is going to be a "huge supply of distress" coming, and Mudrick thinks that we are only in the "first inning" of it — and that the bounceback in equity and bond markets won't dent these kinds of opportunities.

Read the full story here:

$2.4 billion hedge fund manager Jason Mudrick says there's an unprecedented supply of distressed debt still to come. Here are the opportunities he's eyeing.

The outlook for co-living

The co-living industry has grown rapidly in recent years, but it's facing its first downturn and a pandemic that threatens to upend the core of its business model. And tens of thousands of new co-living units are still being readied, creating the threat of a supply glut. Dan Geiger took a look at how the sector is positioned.

So far, industry players say the sector has weathered the crisis, although rents and occupancy have appeared to fall more than the overall rental market in cities such as New York.

Read the full story here:

Co-living is the real-estate industry's big bet on dorm-like housing for young professionals. Here's why players like Nuveen and Cushman & Wakefield remain bullish even during the pandemic.

Merrill Lynch restarts trainee hiring

Bank of America's Merrill Lynch has resumed hiring into its massive financial adviser training program after a temporary pause instated in early spring. And the wealth manager is also starting to bring back the group of some 650 or so adviser trainees who were reassigned to help customers in other parts of the bank earlier in the pandemic.

Rebecca Ungarino took a look at what this means for Merrill's talent pipeline, especially as the wider wealth industry has had to grapple with more advisers leaving than new blood coming in.

Read the full story here:

Merrill Lynch has restarted hiring for its ultra-competitive 3,000-person financial advisor trainee program after hitting pause for months amid the pandemic

BlackRock eyes demand for private-market strategies

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is excited about expanding private-market offerings to clients, and he's feeling optimistic around the US government's move to allow private equity into retirement funds — though he cautioned it remained to be seen how that would be implemented.

Rebecca Ungarino took a look at how BlackRock is setting itself up to better cater to growing demand in the world of alternative investments as clients crowd in for non-public assets like private equity and private credit.

Read the full story here:

BlackRock's Larry Fink is pumped about the possibility of private equity in your retirement fund. Here's how the $7 trillion manager is positioning itself to benefit.

On the move

Billionaire Ken Griffin has poached another executive from a top rival. Griffin's Citadel has recruited AQR's head of trading Isaac Chang to be the Chicago-based firm's first-ever head of execution trading for its fixed-income business. He'll join the firm in September. The $33 billion hedge fund is also adding a top Two Sigma tech executive to its team to handle everything "post execution", Bradley Saacks reported in May.

One-click checkout startup Fast raised a $20 million Series A from investors including Index Ventures and buzzy fintech Stripe in May.

In an exclusive webinar this week with Business Insider, Fast's cofounder and CEO Domm Holland and Jan Hammer, general partner at Index Ventures, walked us through how to build a pitch deck, what investors are looking for, and how founders should approach fundraising.

WATCH: The cofounder and CEO of one-click checkout startup Fast and an investor from Index Ventures walked us through the fintech's pitch deck and what it takes to win over investors

Banks

• Wells Fargo execs are setting their sights on $10 billion in cost-cuts, putting layoffs and branch closures on the table. Here's how it could play out.

Investing and trading

• Goldman Sachs quants overseeing $200 billion rolled out a new model for handling COVID-19 risk way back in January. 2 exec walked us through how it works, and how they've fine-tuned it amid market madness.
• The first half of the year was the worst stretch for hedge funds since the financial crisis. Now, investors expect a serious bounce back for the $3 trillion industry.

Careers

• How commercial real-estate giant JLL is pivoting its trainee program to help early-career brokers land deals virtually
• An admissions officer from Darden Business School, one of the first MBA programs to go test-flexible, explained how the school's evaluating applicants and who can skip the GMAT
• One of Wall Street's highest-paid CEOs is hosting a virtual lunch with followers of finmeme account Litquidity. Jefferies' Rich Handler explained how he's 'trying to help in a small way while the world is so upside down.'

Deals and IPOs

• KKR is making a big push into the $30 trillion insurance industry — here's why private equity is starting to look more and more like Berkshire Hathaway
• The parent of mortgage giant Quicken Loans is prepping an IPO pitch valuing it more like a payments company than a lender. Here's why.

Real estate

• Office-rental startup Knotel bragged it was a nearly profitable anti-WeWork. Now lawsuits are stacking up. 12 insiders reveal what happened to the $400 million Knotel said it raised last year.
• Two former South Korea WeWorkers just launched a real-estate tech startup. Here's a look at the growing network of WeWork alumni founding and funding new companies.
• Real estate power players are doubling down on virtual tours. We got an exclusive demo of a new platform that helps businesses find office space from their phones or laptops using 250 different data points.
• WeWork is leasing a big new office in Jersey City to house the headquarters of a planned spin-off from pharma giant Merck. Here's how the deal will work, and why it's a big win for the struggling coworking giant.

Law

• A litigator who ran elite law firm Boies Schiller's Washington DC office is jumping ship and following other BSF partners in joining King & Spalding