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As bond trading begins to flow from Hong Kong to China for the first time, banks in Hong Kong are hiring extra salespeople – and more trading jobs may be on their way, too.

Northbound trading under the new Bond Connect scheme started earlier this week, giving eligible foreign investors (such as banks, brokerages and asset managers) access to China’s US$9 trillion bond market via the Hong Kong exchange.

Chinese banks have already been bolstering their Hong Kong sales teams in the lead-up to the launch of Bond Connect.

“Chinese debt is the new sexy job. Since Q4 last year CICC, CITIC Securities and BOCI have asked us to recruit institutional salespeople – based in Hong Kong, selling Chinese debt to Wall Street,” says Jason Tan, a partner at search firm Carlson Harriet.

“The hires they’ve made have been Hong Kong and mainland nationals who speak Mandarin and English and have at least 13 years’ experience. These salespeople have received pay rises of 23% on average at Chinese banks,” says Tan.

Western banks have generally not been increasing their sales headcount, although this may soon change. The first day of Bond Connect saw US$1bn worth of trading.

“After day one being so robust, I believe global banks will start looking for some international fixed-income salespeople to market Chinese bonds to their offshore investor base,” says former UBS banker Benjamin Quinlan, now CEO of Hong Kong finance consultancy Quinlan & Associates.

“HSBC, Standard Chartered and Citigroup are among the Western banks likely to hire in sales because they’ve indicated their role as market makers in the new scheme,” says Stanley Soh, a Hong Kong-based regional country director of financial services solutions in Asia.

If Bond Connect fulfils its goal of generating more foreign investment into China, banks in Hong Kong will hire traders to support and execute increased flows, says Quinlan. Foreign investors currently hold only 1.3% of the mainland bond market.

“There may also be a positive knock-on effect in the longer term for FX jobs – hedging RMB exposure – and DCM roles, if the debt capital market picks up because of greater foreign interest in Chinese bonds,” says Quinlan.

In the short term, if you want a sales job in Hong Kong that takes advantage of Bond Connect, you need “onshore relationships” and the ability to “price bonds with strong margins, while delivering returns to Wall Street”, says Tan from Carlson Harriet.

Foreign candidates need not apply. “I recently presented some of the best bond salespeople from New York, London and Tokyo to the heads of fixed income at large Chinese banks,” says Tan. “They were interviewed in Hong Kong but were later rejected because they lacked China bond experience and didn’t know local regulations.”

It’s a similar story for bond traders. “They need to understand how to make profit from the fluctuations in the value of Chinese corporate or government bonds, based on China market conditions,” says Soh. “So knowledge of China’s interest rates and market dynamics is an important point of entry to trading roles.”

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Summertime and the living’s easy? Actually, not so much. Wall Street traders and portfolio managers have found that making money in the current low-volatility environment is difficult.

Experienced money managers and traders used to pouncing on price swings are desperate for opportunities to capitalize on market inefficiencies. They fear that the fundamental analysis that informs their investment decisions will give way to a herd mentality where everyone is chasing the same crowded trades.

Well, fear not, because Goldman Sachs has the cure for what ails you during this eerily quiet period for the markets, as reported by Business Insider. If you’re looking for an easy summer with the markets, you might want to heed Goldman’s advice.

First of all, despite worries that equities are overvalued, Goldman suggests you should not be too pessimistic about stocks. In fact, you should be buying them: Goldman notes that the S&P 500 has seen large risk-adjusted returns relative to other asset classes in low-volatility periods since 1990.

Further, Goldman asserts that stocks see the biggest improvement in risk-adjusted performance when prices are relatively stable, especially emerging-markets, European and Japanese equities.

Goldman is also bullish on high-yield bonds, but it pretty much always is – not just during low-volatility periods.

Overall, Goldman strategists’ recipe for success during this quiet summer is to be overweight in global equities and neutral in credit. It advises steering clear of bonds and commodities and to avoid the Treasury market. Despite the fact that government bonds historically reap strong returns during low-volatility periods, coupon income has been dwindling, rendering it unable to counteract any losses from rising interest rates.

So follow Goldman’s advice and head to the beach with the knowledge that your investments and those of your clients are in good order. Just be prepared to return if volatility suddenly spikes.

Separately, billionaire Mike Ashley, owner of the Sports Direct sporting goods retail chain and the Newcastle United soccer club, may have to pony up £14m ($18.16m) if the ex-Bank of America Merrill Lynch investment banker suing him wins the High Court lawsuit currently underway. However, regardless of the outcome, Ashley is confident that he could drink his opponent under the table, saying he’s a “power drinker” in stark contrast to Jeffrey Blue, the “lightweight” banker whom he despises.

Ashley said that he does not drink often, but when he does, he’s “trying to get drunk,” according to The Telegraph.

Blue accused Ashley of reneging on a verbal agreement he made in a pub to pay him £15m ($19.45m) if the Sports Direct share price doubled to £8 ($10.38) within three years. He says Ashley paid him only £1m ($1.3m) – and he wants him to cough up the other £14m ($18.16m) that he allegedly promised after a heavy drinking session.

Testifying in court under oath, Ashley dismissed his comments as mere drunken banter, saying that within an hour he drank four or five pints of beer: “It was a fun evening – drinking at pace. I like to get drunk. I am a power drinker. My thing is not to drink regularly. It is binge-drinking. I am trying to get drunk.”

Ashley said he had been trying to “get pissed and have a good night out” but that Blue “would never have been able to keep up. He’s a lightweight when it comes to drinking.”

Meanwhile:

European regulators and government officials are luring London finance companies with the promise of cheap rents and to protect bankers’ bonuses ahead of Brexit, sparking a continent-wide backroom bidding war. (WSJ)

Britain will lose its status as Europe’s top financial center unless it keeps borders open to specialist staff, improves infrastructure and expands links with emerging economies. (Reuters)

The head of the U.K.’s financial regulator argued that financial firms shouldn’t have to relocate from the City to maintain access to the E.U.’s financial markets. (WSJ)

The City of London wants the U.K. to offer a digital skills visa. (FT)

Moelis & Co. hired Pablo de la Infiesta as a managing director and the head of the private funds advisory group in EMEA. Previously, he was a managing director and European head of the private capital advisory group at Lazard. (PE Hub)

BAML, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, RBC and StanChart are among the banks transferring staff from equities and foreign exchange, where electronic trading is more mature, to other areas to speed up the spread of e-trading. (Risk.net)

Almost one in 10 staff at the U.K. central bank earned at least £100k ($129.7k) before benefits and bonuses last year. (Financial News)

As the financial services industry goes, so goes Connecticut. (The Atlantic)

Many smaller hedge funds can still make a profit despite the expense of greater compliance demands from regulators and investors if they cut costs by outsourcing roles. (WSJ)

What’s high-performing developers’ secret? (Daftcode)

People perform better when competitive impulses are sparked with trash talk and other banter. (WSJ)
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If you’re applying for a graduate technology job at an investment bank now, you’ve probably been asked to do a coding test. If so, you’ve likely been directed to HackerRank. Founded four years ago by two Indian engineers at IBM and Amazon, it’s becoming a big beast on the bank hiring circuit.

“There’s been a huge surge of interest from financial services clients,” says Vivek Ravisankar, HackerRank’s co-founder and CEO. “It began picking up in 2015, and has been gathering pace. Financial services is now our biggest client sector, on a par with technology and internet companies in the Bay area.”

HackerRank isn’t the only coding site vying for financial services custom. – Rivals include Codility, HackerEarth and TopCoder. However, HackerRank’s client list is testimony to its popularity in financial services. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Bloomberg, BNY Mellon and Deutsche Bank are signed-up. So too are hedge funds like Two Sigma. At Goldman Sachs, the technology graduate recruitment process has evolved so that applicants segue seamlessly from a HackerRank coding test to a Hirevue digital interview – and only get to see an actual human being if they impress in both.

What can applicants expect from banks’ HackerRank challenges? Goldman’s questions for the 2016 graduate hiring round were reputedly simple, involving string manipulation and dynamic programming (solving a complex problem by breaking it down into a collection of simpler sub-problems). Ravisankar agrees that West Coast technology firms pose, “deeper,” algorithmic challenges than banks, but says banks are moving toward real world problems. “Six months ago, you might have been asked to devise an algorithm that could sort a set of 100 numbers in ascending order. Now you’re more likely to be asked to identify and isolate problematic transactions.”

You can attempt banks’ HackerRank challenges without practice, but you don’t have to. Ravisankar says 30% of people partaking of company-specific coding challenges on the site already belong to its community of 2.5m developers. This community competes to solve generic challenges, to achieve “badges” and to win a place on HackerRank’s leader-boards. “HackerRank is a place for anyone to come along and solve challenges for fun,” says Ravisankar. “You can be anonymous, or you can be yourself. We’re a place for people to learn and improve their coding skills.”

Ravisankar says the community is HackerRank’s biggest strength. In future, he predicts banks will cherry-pick more experienced coders there: “The community is where companies can identify people who’ve had their skills validated. If a client asks to connect with you, you’ll be able to upload your profile.”

As the site evolves, Ravisankar says finance firms are already engaging it for more than just their junior technology hiring. Bloomberg already uses HackerRank to recruit 90% of its technologists at all levels.

Nor do HackerRanks’ aspirations stop with engineer-identification. The company wants to own the whole hiring process. Two years ago, it launched a digital interviewing platform, CodePair, which has the potential to render face-to-face technical interviews obsolete. “The combination of an online coding challenge and an online coding interview gives banks a much better signal about the best people to hire,” Ravisankar says. “HackerRank might become the industry standard.”

And if you fail a HackerRank test? Are your dreams of joining Morgan Stanley shattered at the first hurdle? “Companies have different requirements,” says Ravisankar. “But most will let you retake after six months.”

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If you make it to MD on the trading floor of a large investment bank, then quit for a big pay-day at a hedge fund and it doesn’t work out – what next?

Many traders who jumped to the buy-side are flooding back to investment banks once again (as they have been for the last two years, anyway), but in the case former Goldman trader David Perez, the answer is to go it alone.

Perez, a former managing director and senior equity index volatility trader at Goldman Sachs in New York, has just started an alternative lending platform called YAD Capital.

We haven’t spoken to Perez, but his career since Goldman seems to typify that of ex-bank traders who find themselves at challenging hedge funds. Perez left Goldman after 13 years in 2014. He joined hedge fund MKP Capital Management, but left again in November and has just resurfaced as co-founder and CEO of YAD.

When Perez joined MKP, it was in growth mode. It had just opened an office in London and was hiring for its New York operation. MKP tapped senior markets staff at investment banks, many of whom have since departed after a difficult few years for the hedge fund.

With YAD, Perez is tapping the trend for hedge funds moving into the lending space as banks downsize their balance sheets.

He’s not the only ex-bank trader who joined MKP to decide self-sufficiency is best. Andrew Quessy, a senior macro portfolio manager who joined MKP’s London operation from UBS departed in November and started Affiniti Finance – a company that supports “individuals and companies seeking access to justice”.

Some of MKP’s traders have simply gone back into banking, though. In New York, Eric Winograd, a managing director within strategy and research at MKP Capital who came from HSBC in 2010, departed for Alliance Bernstein in February. Stephane Dannibale, the former head of US government bond trading at Citigroup who joined MKP as a macro portfolio manager in 2015, joined HSBC as an MD in the middle of last year.

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Maybe you should’ve gone into law? Life in a law firm might not be as exciting as in banking, but it still pays. If you make partner, you’ll make big money, and you’ll make it sooner than in an investment bank.

Several of London’s magic circle law firms have reported the levels of profit they paid their equity partners in the past week. You can see these in the chart below. You will also see that pay is rising and that there’s a surprising degree of uniformity: if you make it to partner in a magic circle law firm, you’re going to earn approximately £1.5m ($1.9m).

This is a lot money, particularly when you consider that it takes an average of around 10 or 11 years post-qualification to make partner at a top law firm in London. Qualifying takes two years, so newly promoted partners who join out of university are likely to be around aged 33 to 34. By comparison, becoming a managing director (MD) in an investment bank typically takes around 18 years to achieve. Moreover, IF you make MD in banking, you’ll typically be paid less than these partners in law firms: Emolument.com , the real time salary benchmarking company puts median total compensation for MDs investment banks in London at just under £500k.

Suddenly, a career in law looks rather appealing.

Except, there’s no guarantee that your magic circle law career will culminate in a partnership. Law firms are just as fussy about promoting partners as banks are about promoting managing directors. Analysis last year by The Lawyer magazine found that only 37 people out of an intake of 1,000 were promoted to partner between 2009 and 2016. That’s a success rate of just 3.7%. By comparison, if you can survive in banking your chances of becoming an MD are thought to be as high as 20%.

This isn’t all that banks have going for them. Although you’ll make a packet if you make partner in a law firm, if you don’t make partner, you’ll earn more in a bank. Emolument says pay for the two professions evolves as in the chart below. If you ride the peak of banking pay and stay employed until the bitter end, Emolument suggests you can expect to earn a cumulative £2.3m. Do the same in law and you’ll walk away with £1.2m.

“The mindset in law is very different to the mindset in banking,” says one recruiter. “There’s an intellectual superiority with lawyers – but at the end of the day, very few of them become properly rich.”

This superiority is echoed by lawyers when they talk about their jobs. “Law is an intellectual challenge,” says one senior lawyer. “I look across to banking and think I might have been financially better off if I’d taken that career path, but I don’t wish I was a banker in terms of the work that’s involved.”

There are also similarities between the two industries, however. Whether you go into law or into banking, you’ll need to have an appetite for the grind. “Law is comparable with banking in terms of hours,” says one counsel at a US law firm. “Bankers and lawyers work hand-in-hand. When a deal is going through, they’ll both be working all night and at weekends.”

One lawyer told us he loves his job because of the thrill of, “being part of a close-knit high calibre team, working on high value cross-border deals that take place under a lot of pressure and stress, with no two transactions ever the same.” Bankers describe their oeuvre in strangely similar terms.

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Investment bankers leaving the industry don’t always end up starting a fintech firm, or investing the millions they stowed away from years of big bonuses. They start pubs, become chefs, or in the case of two former senior traders open up their own holiday homes for rich people looking for a winter escape.

Coincidentally, two traders have given up long careers in investment banks’ markets business for the good life – running ski chalets on different sides of the world.

Paul Spurin, the former head of European government bond trading at Royal Bank of Scotland who was latter a managing director at Nomura, has quit banking after 30 years and is now running Chalet Chardonnet in the French Alps.

If this seems like an opportunity to hit the slopes, bear in mind that this at the high end of skiing holidays. A week at the chalet in peak season comes in at £10,000 and is still £6k in January when the Alps are usually freezing and bereft of deep snow.

Another former banker to start his own B&B is Andrew Koczanowski, who was head of AUD debt syndicate at HSBC in Sydney. As of May, he’s the owner and proprietor at luxury B&B PURE Chalet Thredbo in the Australian ski resort. Again, it’s at the high end of the market, with deluxe rooms coming in at A$550 (£325) a night.

There’s a history of senior investment bankers quitting for mountain life. Rudolf Woetzel, who formers ran M&A at Lehman Brothers for the DACH region (who left two months before it collapsed), retired to run an alpine hut in the Swiss Alps. Maybe mountain life loses its appeal after a while – he now also provides entrepreneurs with advice on strategy.

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If you’re a quant, you probably want to be a “desk quant” – working with traders, building derivatives pricing and risk models that feed directly into P&L. Alternatively, you might want to copy the career of Nicolas Hutchings, a top quant in the FX derivatives space who’s just joined Morgan Stanley in London.

Hutchings’ specialist subject is creating the kinds of analytics that feed into electronic systems trading FX derivatives. He has a PhD in “quantum chaos” from University College London and started life as a quantitative developer (someone who translates quantitative models into computer programs) at J.P. Morgan in London. He moved to BAML in 2007 and has spent the past five years as head of e-FX Options Analytics. Hutchings is a master of the automated volatility surface. He’s also a master of creating automated bid-ask spreads and hedging for G10 FX currency derivatives.

While human FX traders lose their jobs as G10 FX revenues shrink and trading is automated, someone like Hutchings is therefore very valuable.

At least Morgan Stanley seems to think so. It’s hired Hutchings as its lead FX derivatives quant. It’s not clear how much he’s being paid, but given Hutchings only joined last month, there’s a strong possibility he received some kind of reassurance on this year’s bonus.

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Internships are, as any student with a chance of getting into investment banking knows, the simplest route into a full-time job. What do you do to get ahead? Ask questions? Network? Complete your work on time? Teamwork?

Well, yes, but these are the basics. In a blog post on LinkedIn, Johann Shulick, Goldman Sachs’ global head of diversity recruitment has offered some insider advice. And it’s gold.

Shulick, who moved across to HR from his job as head of TMT investment grade debt capital markets in May last year, suggests that getting ahead in an internship is a combination of surviving in the corporate jungle, planning way ahead for your banking career and…enjoying the perks.

“Start saying “we” instead of “I” – you are a representative of the firm officially, and you speak on behalf of all of us, not just yourself,” he says, giving you an indication of exactly how your sense of self is immediately absorbed into the bank.

Arrive in the office early, he says, understand why you’re doing something rather than just how to do the task, and if you have to ask questions on an issue you don’t understand, try to avoid badgering the same person over and over.

But then, Shulick offers some real insider tips for interns eager to be both frugal and meet the right people: “In the cafeteria, the food is 20% discounted before noon and after 1:30; best times for people watching are 11:59 am and 1:31 pm.”

“They have (free) pantry espresso machines down on the some of the trading floors,” he adds. “They’re a great excuse to make (new) friends down on the lower levels.”

Shulick’s tone is relaxed and inclusive, but the content of the blog makes it clear that interns have to work hard to avoid screwing up. “Reserve the right to say no, but understand that there may be consequences,” he writes.

“The more senior the person who asks you for something, the more quickly you should try get it done,” he adds.

Success as an intern, in short, is getting stuck into everything and showing as much interest as you can – with as many people as you can, he suggests.

“Volunteer for everything; nothing will earn you respect quicker than being there for someone who really needs help,” he says. “HOWEVER, be sincere – don’t ask others if they need help after your coat is on and your bag is on your shoulder.”

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While some Wall Street interviewers go by the book when it comes to asking candidates questions, others try to keep financial services job-seekers on their toes by throwing them curve balls. Some Wall Street job interview questions are just plain weird.

Broadly speaking, these kinds of out-of-left-field questions often involve ethical or moral issues or matters that are related to logic or math so that the person conducting the interview can evaluate your values and how you think when you’re put on the spot. You may have heard stories from someone who interviewed at an investment bank or hedge fund who was given a paper and pencil before being asked, “What’s 42-squared times 46-cubed plus the square root of 64?” and had to come up with an answer right then and there.

The following are weird, random, tricky or unexpected questions that Wall Street recruiters, HR executives and hiring managers may ask you during a job interview.

Candidate vs. candidate debate

“In terms of the weirdest or most interesting [interview tactics], there is a smaller financial services firm that always interviews multiple candidates for each position on the same day, and they’ll put two candidates in the same room and give each one a point of view and make them argue against each other,” said Brianne Toole, principal consultant on the investment banking team, Americas, at Selby Jennings. “They have to stick to a side and demonstrate clear communications skills.”

What would you do if I gave you a million dollars right now?

Translation: Pitch me an investment idea.

“I want to know if you’ve got good ideas, and if you’re as passionate about the market as you say you are,” said Roy Cohen, careers coach and author of the Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide. “Prove it and be prepared to debate it, because the interviewer may rip apart your argument and expect you to defend it.”

Tell me about a trade where you lost your shirt.

In trading interviews, interviewers typically ask general questions, like “How do you manage risk?” Another common one is, “What’s a recent trade you’ve made that went really well?” However, you should also be prepared to answer the opposite: “What’s a recent trade that hasn’t gone so well and what did you learn from that?”

“You should have trade recommendations ready, and be able to talk about a bad trade and what you learned.” said Dylan Pany, principal consultant and the head of the trading team at Selby Jennings.

What’s the present value of a spouse, child or parent?

While rare, this one is designed to discombobulate the candidate.

“How do you evaluate what that individual is worth to you?” Cohen said. “It touches on emotional and psychological factors.

“Someone who is cutthroat may ask such a question with the idea, ‘Can you show me that in a difficult situation can you be ruthless if need be? Can you conduct an evaluation of an emotional situation on an objective basis?’” he said.

What three items would you bring if you were stranded on a deserted island?

Easy: A private jet, a GPS tracking system and a fully charged cell phone.

What they’re looking for with questions like these is insight into how you think.

“How would you survive, make it through a life-threatening situation?” Cohen said. “What’s your logic? When you’re trying to get something done quickly at an investment bank, your ability to think with speed and efficiency is paramount.”

How many bricks would it take to reach the top of the Empire State Building?

This is to find out how you go about determining what is reasonable and making mental calculations on the fly.

“I want to know the way you think, whether your thoughts are structured and if you have a reasonable process for the evaluation of complex situations,” Cohen said. “It’s important that you can come up with an answer that makes sense, whether or not it’s right.”

How many windows are in this building?

Every once in a while, you might get a brainteaser. The hiring manager doesn’t necessarily expect a correct answer; don’t get flustered and talk through your reasoning.

Why are manholes round?

Your guess is as good as mine. Just make sure your response sounds good and convincing.

Who is your best friend?

This was asked during a final round interview at Credit Suisse. “You are” is an incorrect response or you’d have the job already.

What do you think are U.S. and European banks’ and asset managers’ biggest challenges in doing business in China?

Research various hot-button countries and markets so that you can come up with an intelligent response on the spot, even if it’s relatively brief.

How many gas stations are there in the U.S.? How many ping pong balls could you fit into this room?

This is another common type of question that catches people off guard, and there are a lot of different ways to ask it. Financial services professionals need to be quantitative, so hiring managers want to gauge whether they can think on their feet and arrive at a good answer.

Start by estimating that a ping pong ball is approximately one inch by one inch, and go from there. Hiring managers want to see your ability to quantify a number and explain how you got that answer.

If you owned the George Washington Bridge, for how much would you sell it to me?

This or something similar sometimes crops up in an interview for a sales or IBD role at a financial institution.

The best way to respond would be to guesstimate the approximate value of the scrap metal that could be salvaged from the bridge.

You are stranded on a desert island and can only take three items with you, what would they be?”

The correct answer is not “an unlimited supply of Hot Doritos, my wife and some playing cards.” The answer to this question is actually unimportant – the whole point is to gain some insight into your personality – but always bear in mind what the interviewer is trying to achieve.

Why didn’t you get a full-time offer at the end of your internship?

“No, unfortunately I didn’t, and I still cannot explain why not. I had three reviews during my 10-week internship and they were all outstanding. At the half-way point, my MD indicated to me that I would receive a full-time offer. At the end of the internship, I expected to receive a written offer within a few days. Instead, a graduate recruitment person told me that due to headcount restrictions I would not receive an offer. My MD told me circumstances had changed and that she could not make an offer now, but for me not to give up hope because they may later get headcount authorization. I would love you to call the MD and 2 VPs I worked with to ask them about me. I’m very confident that each would say that I performed really well and that I should be hired.”
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Nomura has hired a senior financial institutions group (FIG) banker for its Singapore office, in the latest sign that it is recruiting again in ex-Japan Asia.

Derrick Low has joined Nomura from Standard Chartered. He is responsible for origination and execution of FIG sector transactions across Asia, excluding Japan.

Low was in Stan Chart’s Singapore FIG team for more than four years, latterly as a director, and worked on both M&A and capital markets transactions, including the $2.5bn IPO of China Cinda Asset Management on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2013.

Like most FIG bankers, Low has spent his whole career (aside from his graduate traineeship at Citi) in the sector. He was at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Singapore between 2010 and 2012, focused on Southeast Asian FIG deals.

Low will be familiar with the boss of his team at his new firm. Last November Nomura hired James Pearson, Stan Chart’s Singapore-based global FIG head, as head of Asia ex-Japan FIG.

The recruitment of a banker as senior Pearson – he was previously in charge of Asian FIG at both ABN Amro and RBS – into a newly created role suggested at the time that Nomura was intent on growing its FIG business. This appears to be happening now with the appointment of Pearson’s former Stan Chart colleague Low.

Nomura remains a niche player in Asian FIG, but is winning business by helping clients tap Japanese markets. It recently advised Citic on a $964m Samurai bond sale, for example.

The Japanese bank isn’t only growing its FIG team. It has made other senior appointments recently, including former ANZ banker Nicolas Le Clerc, who is now head of project advisory within Nomura’s new Singapore-based Asia Infrastructure Project Office.

Nomura has alternated between hiring and cutting staff in Singapore and Hong Kong over the past few years.

In April 2016 it axed about 30 jobs from its Asian equities unit as part of a wider international retreat, which included more severe redundancies in North America and Europe. It also lost several senior Asian bankers at that time, including Asia ex-Japan head of investment banking, Mark Williams, and head of equity sales for North Asia, Stanley Wong.

While Nomura now appears to be hiring again, it is not in the top-10 banks for Asia ex-Japan revenues in M&A, ECM or DCM for the first half of 2017, according to Dealogic.

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As global banks in Asia continue to cut senior staff and restrict recruitment, headhunters say bankers are increasingly gravitating to IBs with the best recent revenue records – and the most stable jobs.

Which firms are now dominating Asian investment banking? And should you work for them? Experts give their views on the first-half Dealogic league tables (for ex-Japan Asia) in M&A, ECM and DCM.

M&A

M&A is the sector where global banks have retained their edge over their Chinese counterparts in Asia. A regulatory clampdown on overseas Chinese acquisitions has also made it hard for mainland banks to gain ground. “Western banks dominate the league tables, given their well-established foothold in cross-border M&A and ability to use their powerful global network of clients,” says Hugo Cheng, a consultant at Hong Kong financial services consultancy Quinlan & Associates.

Three American institutions – Morgan Stanley, Citi and J.P. Morgan – appear in top-five banks for Asian M&A revenue in the first half. “Global banks remain popular destinations for bankers in Asia, particularly the US houses, who dealt with many of the pain points from the financial crisis earlier than their European rivals,” says Cheng.

Top-ranked Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Citi have been generating M&A revenue predominantly from Greater China due to their “strong China origination bankers and industry experts, especially in telecoms media and technology”, says Stanley Soh, a Hong Kong-based regional country director of financial services solutions in Asia..

“They’re good at sourcing global targets or buyers on behalf of China clients. Credit Suisse is strong across Southeast Asia too, and pays its bankers very generously,” says Soh. “Junior bankers in these three firms can work on healthy pipelines and high-profile deals. Their M&A bankers can expect high bonuses this year if they’re involved in closed deals.”

ECM

Mainland banks have cornered the ECM market in Asia, particularly as more companies from their home country use Hong Kong’s exchange to go public. While some Western corporates have listed in Hong Kong in the past – Samsonite in 2011, for example – few do so now. Chinese banks have also landed IPOs by offering fees as low as 1%, well below the rates of their global rivals.

“About 85% of Asia ex-Japan ECM revenue comes from China, due to the large number of IPOs from Chinese firms. The Chinese banks also have stronger onshore relationships with mainland corporates and they price more aggressively,” says Cheng.

“Chinese banks like GF Securities, CITIC Securities and Haitong Securities have excellent distribution and corporate banking networks, resulting in robust pipelines. Junior bankers are joining these firms to enhance their execution skills and enjoy generous bonuses,” says Soh.

DCM

“The traditional Asian debt houses such as HSBC and Citi continue to appear at the top of the league tables. However, because of the development of the Chinese market, Chinese firms are also posting strong results, leveraging their balance-sheet relationships to drive DCM deal flow,” says Cheng from Quinlan & Associates.

Mainland banks are taking advantage of debt-fuelled acquisitions by Chinese companies and the increased use of bonds issued in the RMB currency.

“The Chinese firms are pushing their way up the rankings, which is opening up alternative career opportunities. The narrowing pay gap between mainland and international players is also luring bankers to some of the more prominent Chinese institutions,” says Cheng. “But distinct differences in culture mean it can take some time for bankers to make an effective career transition.”

Junior DCM execution teams at Chinese Banks are now being bulked up “mainly to cope with an extremely high workload”, adds Ed Goh, principal consultant in sales and trading at recruiters Selby Jennings in Hong Kong.

Follow @simonmortlock

Image credit: alexvav, Getty

““

Financial services professionals should be concerned that the best and brightest young people may want to eschew Wall Street and the City and instead follow the example of Marcus Hutchins.

He’s a 23-year-old self-taught computer-security researcher and avid surfer. He wears a mop of curly hair, baggy jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers rather than a suit and tie and has never worked in an office of any kind, much less a bank or hedge fund. He gets to work remotely from the seaside town of Ilfracombe in the U.K., surfs a lot of the time, and is able to get out of bed at 6pm on a weekday if he so chooses.

In an echo of Navinder Singh, the British trader accused of causing the flash crash, Hutchins also lives a very low key life living with his parents. His parents and friends didn’t even know that he had a job until last month.

Unlike Singh, however, Hutchins put his talent to use in ‘saving the world’. He is credited with putting a stop to the vicious WannaCry cyberattack in May. Having learned to program computers at the age of 12, Hutchins was quietly hired by Los Angeles-based cyberthreat-intelligence firm Kryptos Logic in 2015.

Newly famous, Hutchins could probably name his price. Even before WannaCry, he was being pursued by some of the world’s biggest cyber security firms. Except – and in a lesson to bankers used to bigging themselves up – he’s surprisingly self-deprecating. “My employer was already paying me way more than I was worth, so the whole WannaCry thing didn’t really change anything,” he told Bloomberg, adding that he’s not thinking of asking for a pay rise because he was given one before this all happened. “My friends still don’t believe that I have a job,” he adds, before going to bed after another all-night party.

Separately, despite the fact that everyone assumes electronic trading has won the war against open-outcry pits and that trading floors are in their death throes, old-school pit traders adept at shouting and hand signals aren’t going down without one last fight.

If you’re among the Wall Street traders lamenting the end of good old-fashioned floor trading, then you should know that there’s one exchange in your corner: Box Options Exchange is trying to launch the first new open-outcry pit in the U.S. in decades. Its plan is to create a new open-outcry floor for about 40 human traders at the Chicago Board of Trade Building.

While most trades are done electronically these days, open outcry has persisted in options trading – it accounts for about 13% of U.S. options trading, according to Burton-Taylor Consulting. Box Options Exchange has one of the smallest market shares in U.S. options and is trying to grow its business.

Some options traders said the open-outcry model could help investors who want to prevent prices from moving when their large options orders are getting executed.

“There is still a role for human traders,” said Andy Nybo, a director at Burton-Taylor Consulting.

However, rival exchanges and market makers have filed critical letters arguing that another trading venue will exacerbate the market’s fragmentation and lead to less transparency, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission plans to decide the fate of the proposal for a new trading floor by Aug. 2.

Meanwhile:

UBS is among the banks looking to use AI to boost traders’ performance. (FT)

The heads of trading desks are spending less time trading than ever before as rapidly evolving regulations are taking up more of their time. (The Trade News)

Execution brokerage ITG hired Michael Onofrio, previously an executive director of the European equities electronic coverage team at J.P. Morgan, as director of the U.S. electronic coverage team in New York. (Finance Magnates)

Morgan Stanley’s people have their swagger back, and they are determined to press home their advantage with a ruthless approach to deploying the firm’s capital – both financial and human. (Euromoney)

J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon met Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Dublin to discuss expansion in the Irish capital city. (Reuters)

Parisians are rolling out the red carpet for City bankers looking to relocate post-Brexit. (FT)

In a non-confidential IPO filing, the SEC sometimes requests changes in the registration statement, which can be embarrassing for the company, as well as its lawyers and bankers, so confidential filings have proved to be reasonably popular, but will they lead to more insider trading? (New York Times)

Soon, brokerages will have to decide how much to charge for research and the access to top executives that typically comes with it, and many will offer cable TV-like subscriptions. (Bloomberg)

David Solomon, the president and co-COO of Goldman Sachs, is selling his 83-acre Aspen, Colorado, estate for $36m. (Business Insider)

Brevan Howard has something to hide, and it successfully sued Reuters to keep it hidden. (Reuters)

Ready, set, go! The data science arms race is underway. (Barron’s)

How to find out whether your job will be automated. (Bloomberg)

Engineers are using cognitive psychology to figure out how AIs think and make them more accountable, so if this whole financial services thing doesn’t work out, then you might consider a career as a robot psychologist. (WSJ)

There are 125 very important people in finance who you’ll want to follow on Twitter. (Business Insider)

Are you well-off, rich, super-rich or stratospherically rich? There’s a big difference. (Business Insider)
Follow @danbutchrwrites

Photo credit: Surf by Claudio Jofré Larenas is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
““

If you’re an analyst who wants to work for Goldman Sachs, Chris Miess can show you how to do it. And if you’re an analyst who wants to leave Goldman for a tech firm that specialises in getting people to spend cryptocurrencies, Miess can show you how to do that too.

Miess spent around three years at Goldman, where he was latterly an M&A analyst in London. His LinkedIn profile suggests his route to GS was a study in moving up the banking brands: after leaving the London School of Economics, he spent four months at Deutsche Bank and then four months at Morgan Stanley before settling for 36 months at GS.

Miess is financial advisor at TenX. The firm’s four founders, who are all German-speaking, include three technologists and one former hospital doctor. Miess, who is Austrian, appears to be the only ex-banker on the staff.

Miess didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article. He will be based at TenX’s office in Singapore.

Miess isn’t the first Goldman employee to quit for crytpocurrencies. Fred Ehrsam, a former FX trader, left in 2012 and set up Coinbase, which allows users to buy and sell Bitcoins using things like Paypal and their own bank cards. “I didn’t think I was fulfilling my full potential at GS,” Ehrsam told Khe Hy, the ex-Blackrock MD who quit finance at 35. “When I stopped work, I’d look around and ask myself if I wanted to be any of these people in the next ten years. The answer was no.”

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Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

“”

Photo credit: Bitcoin statistic coin ANTANA by Antana is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Investment banks’ summer interns are just three weeks or so into their placements, but already some firms have opened up applications for 2018 roles.

Banks typically open their summer analyst programmes to new applications in September, but some investment banks have already set the clock ticking in July.

Citigroup has, for instance, just opened up applications for its 2018 summer internships for both its investment banking division and markets functions in London, and has a deadline of the end of this month.

Like a lot of investment banks, Citi recruits on a rolling basis and says this is a chance to “apply for early consideration” and take part in “early access ‘live chats’ and events where you can meet Citi”. Suffice to say, this is much earlier than usual. Last year, Citi opened its 2017 summer internship programmes to new applications on 1 September and had a deadline of 9 December.

Citi isn’t alone. Goldman Sachs has also opened applications to its internships for next year, but has a December deadline. UBS also has 2018 summer programmes open to applications, but only in the Americas and not in EMEA. J.P. Morgan’s open 2018 internships are for Australia, Melbourne and the U.S. Credit Suisse is also accepting applications for next year.

Even getting on to summer internships has become more of an uphill struggle. Increasingly, investment banks offer places to top-performing students who have completed insight weeks the previous year. But over 70% of full-time places at most firms come from summer internship conversions and front office roles are particularly likely to be filled early on. J.P. Morgan, for instance, usually fills all its markets and IBD roles with interns.

Competition for places is increasingly stiff. Goldman Sachs, for instance, said that it received 130,000 places for 5,000 internships last year, which means a 4% chance of success.

Follow @paultclarke

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

Image: Getty Images

““

I’ve done my time in banking. I’ve worked in this industry nearly 20 years and I’m ready for a change. I’d say I’m pretty employable: I’ve run whole markets businesses. I know how to extract costs and how to implement a strategy that works. I’m a good catch for a hedge fund or a fund manager looking for someone to run the business while everyone else gets down to raising new funds and achieving high returns. Except that it’s almost impossible to get a look-in.

As a banker trying to move to the buy-side, I have several things against me. Firstly, I’m too senior. Secondly, I’m a woman. Thirdly, I don’t know that many people on the buy-side because my career has always been in banks (the sell-side).

If juniorization is a thing in banks, it’s an even bigger deal in funds. All the big guys – Blackrock, Fidelity – are trying really hard to reduce their senior people right now. They want to hire in juniors instead: it’s all about VP-level and below. As far as they’re concerned, the future of finance is Millennials with great grades from top schools who are prepared to work hard. Who cares that these juniors don’t have any experience of the industry?

Then, I’m a woman. If you think banks are bad at promoting women, you clearly know nothing about hedge funds. These places are almost all men. And those men almost all know each other: they hang out together; their wives hang out together; their kids have play dates. Most of them used to work in banks (together) back in the day and they look at someone like me sort of skeptically.

I’ve had a long and illustrious career in banking. I’ve proved my worth over and over in 20 years, but to these buy-side guys I’m still an outsider. In a lot of buy-side firms there’s kind of a culture of being an arrogant asshole: of only valuing the revenue earners and looking down on the people providing the support. When you’re not in the front office, the pay isn’t even that good: you’re supposed to be in it for the prestige of working for a big name, the culture and the perks.

Did I not mention the perks? Well, there are plenty of these at top funds. At the right place (any big prestigious fund) you’re going to get breakfast, lunch and dinner. There’s basically going to be free food all the time. There are going to be parties – not just small parties, but renting a private jet and flying the whole staff to Jamaica with their families parties. You’re going to be living the life with all these elite guys.

It’ll be different at a smaller fund. There, there aren’t any perks. It’s all about being entrepreneurial and rolling up your sleeves, making do and problem solving. You’re supposed to buy-in to the whole idea of the, “journey.” That’s your perk.

I’m actually happy to work for either kind (yes I want to get out of banking that much). It’s not going to be easy though. I’m having to network one fund at a time. I’m gritting my teeth. I’m working these elitists. I see it as a challenge: they’re going to want to hire me. I’m just what they need.

Alice Fischer is the pseudonym of a senior banker in NYC

Follow @MadameButcher
Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

““

Deutsche Bank has been hiring senior bankers in the past few months, but managing directors also been departing – often for roles on the buy-side.

The latest senior banker to secure a role at an alternative asset manager is Lars Lücking, a managing director within its commercial real estate division. But Lücking has departed a struggling investment bank for an asset manager that’s going through its own period of turbulence.

He’s just taken a role as a director of asset management at Fortress Investment Group in London. Fortress, which has about $70bn in assets under management, has been struggling in its hedge fund business for a couple of years and shut its macro hedge fund in 2015. In February, it announced that SoftBank – the Japanese telecommunications firm – had agreed to buy it for $3.3bn.

SoftBank also has connections with other senior Deutsche Bank employees. Colin Fan, the former head of its corporate banking and securities arm, has joined Softbank, which has been making a string of high-profile acquisitions in recent months. Rajeev Misra, Deutsche’s former head of global credit trading, has been running SoftBank’s $100bn technology private equity fund since January.

Lücking joined Fortress earlier this month after close to four years at Deutsche Bank, where he was a managing director focused on debt restructuring, asset management and disposal of non-core assets, predominantly in the German and Spanish markets. He is, according to the Financial Conduct Authority register, only the second recruit in Fortress’ London operation this year.

Before joining Deutsche Bank, spent three years at the investment management arm of Develica Deutschland Inc in London, which he joined from a securitisation role at Citigroup.

Lücking is also the latest Deutsche Bank MD to switch to a buy-side firm. David Waill, who spent 18 years at the bank in leveraged finance, moved across to private equity firm Benefit Street Partners last month.

Follow @paultclarke

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

Image: Getty Images

““

Can’t get a job at a top tier U.S. investment bank? Maybe you should give Barclays a go? It’s seemingly going through something of a renaissance.

“If you look beyond the U.S. investment banks, Barclays is now top of the pile,” says one headhunter who works for the bank. “Historically it was Barclays or Deutsche, but Barclays is the big European heavyweight now.”

While Deutsche would have something to say about this, and the headhunter is undoubtedly partial, there does seem to be some truth to this assertion. Dealogic’s recent first half review for M&A and capital markets activity in the Americas shows the British bank coming sixth behind its U.S. rivals for investment banking fees for the first half of this year (Credit Suisse comes 7th, Deutsche comes 10th). Similarly, Barclays was the only European bank to feature on Greenwich Associates’ most recent U.S. and global tables for fixed income market share table, for 2016. It’s only in equities that Barclays lags, both in the U.S. and globally. And the bank is trying hard to do something about this.

Barclays declined to comment for this article. However, it’s unquestionably making a splash. Led since January by ex-J.P. Morgan equities man Tim Throsby, Barclays is understood to be in the process of adding between 50 and 100 people to its investment bank, seemingly with a focus on the markets division. It’s already hired 20 equities professionals in London this year, including Rupert Jones from Morgan Stanley as head of equity research, Graham Wayne from KCG as a senior product person in electronic trading, Andrew Alder from Instinet for electronic sales trading, and James Sylvester Evans from Morgan Stanley for portfolio sales and trading. Concurrent fixed income hires include Asita Anche, the Goldman quant trader, who joins this month as head of markets quantitative e-trading and data science, Filippo Zorzoli who joins from BAML as head of EMEA macro distribution, Shrut Kalra, who joined from Goldman Sachs to build out the CLO franchise, Kristen Macleod, who joined from GS in U.S. FX sales, and Chris Leonard who joined from a hedge fund as head of U.S. rates trading.

For a bank that latterly boasted of its ability to cut headcount by freezing hiring, Barclays seems to be making up for lost time. It also seems to be hiring from some big name rivals.

Headhunters working for the bank are certainly keen to talk it up. “Barclays has become an interesting sell,” says one. “It’s in growth mode and there’s an interesting story there. In Jes Staley, you have someone with an investment banking background running the whole bank and in Tim Throsby you have someone with an equities background running the investment bank. It’s a good place to work. Good management. Good set-up, Good technology. They’re able to be discerning about who they hire.”

Headhunters who aren’t working for the bank hold a rather different opinion. The point to the various big-name exits from Barclays this year (Eg. Joe Mecane, Neal Hallett, Carsten Keller and Timo Tatzel, an electronic sales trader who’s allegedly gone to Goldman Sachs.) These naysayers suggest most of the recent hires are simply gap-filling. More damningly, they claim that Barclays’ poor bonuses are dissuading some senior U.S. bankers from joining, and that even though Barclays has eliminated 100% deferred bonuses for its managing directors it’s unable to pay the kinds of two year guaranteed bonuses that are back in fashion at U.S. banks on Wall Street.

“Barclays paid well below the line for the past couple of years compared to U.S. banks,” says one London headhunter, speaking on condition of anonymity. “I wouldn’t say they always have the pick of the crop, particularly in equities.” A U.S. equities headhunter agrees: “Barclays is trying to attract people with big titles rather than multi-year pay deals,” he says.

Of course, not everyone who wants to leave a U.S. bank for Barclays may be able to do so. As the Financial Times reported, Barclays promised to stop poaching J.P. Morgan bankers last October. The U.S. Department of Justice is now looking at whether this breached antitrust laws.

Follow @MadameButcher
Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

“”

Photo credit: Barclays by Gideon Benari is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Over the past three years, I’ve managed to secure internships across all aspects of the buy-side – I’ve interned at hedge fund Perry Capital, private equity firm BayBoston and am currently spending my summer at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

For those of you working as an intern or summer analyst, especially if this is your first internship in finance, here are three simple ways you can make the most of your summer and set yourself up for success on the buy side down the road.

1. Write everything down

I was able to sit in on calls with very important people whose companies were a part of the Perry Capital investment portfolio I was working on. All of the individuals on these calls were financially astute and spoke about economic concepts and their company’s figures and objectives at a very high level. It was common for me to hear industry jargon and acronyms like “QE” and “ECB,” which made it difficult for me to understand the bigger picture.

Writing everything down helps tremendously – once you get back to your desk, you can look everything up and put the pieces of the meeting or conversation together. Then if you still have questions, you can bring to the table a better understanding of the concepts to your team and get a better idea of the specifics of the call, rather than just the basics.

The most senior people at financial services firms genuinely want their interns to learn, so take the opportunity to build your financial vocabulary to get a leg up when you’re looking for your next internship or first full-time position post-graduation. You can always refer back to your notes and have pertinent examples that help put each thing you learn into context.

I would also recommend keeping a career journal of all the projects, both big and small, you work on throughout the summer. You’ll be surprised how much you can accomplish in one summer. If you don’t write anything down, then it can be very easy to forget some of the specifics by the end of the summer.

At the end of my internship, I put together a slide that had details of all the ways I added value to my team throughout the course of the summer to show the owner of the hedge fund and all of the other people on my team how much I had learned and contributed to the firm. It really helps to set you apart when you can go back and explain exactly what you did during the summer with the facts and details to back it up.

2. Find a way to take initiative on every project

Hedge funds invest in public companies, so odds are you’ll be doing research within a certain industry to help with a possible investment pitch.

I spent roughly half of my internship at Perry Capital researching a company within the grocery industry, knowing that at the end I would be pitching the company to the owner of the fund, my analyst and the investor relations team. I knew this was my opportunity to prove my worth and show that I was a valued member of the team, and I was able to participate in every part of the research from start to finish.

The two main catalysts for the pitch were the rise of organic groceries in traditional grocers and the rise of e-commerce within the grocery space, so I wanted to see the effects of these first-hand, as opposed to just reading about them in the sell-side reports that my analyst gave me. Twice a week I would visit these stores and put together a basket of essential items to compare prices throughout the summer, in addition to checking how much that basket would be from an online grocer like FreshDirect or AmazonFresh. My analysts didn’t ask me to do this, but they absolutely loved the idea.

I was able to provide real data that we added to the pitch to corroborate our thesis, and it showcased how much I cared about the work I was doing. Taking that extra step is huge in showing that you are more than an intern and have a unique skillset that helps you think outside the box and adds value to the team you are working on.

3. Build relationships, not a “network”

One of the biggest and most surprising lessons from last summer was the friendships I made as a result of the Girls Who Invest program. In addition to the professional relationships I forged interning at the hedge fund, the Girls Who Invest program introduced me to 29 other girls who were just like me: hard-working, smart, interested in finance and looking for a unique experience that would bring us one step closer to figuring out what we want to do with our careers.

We had a built-in support group while we were all going through our internships, with people our age to turn to whenever we had questions or tips we wanted to share with the broader group. I wasn’t expecting to become so close to the girls in the program when I first started. I was pleasantly surprised to find that everyone was collaborative and willing to help each other, even during recruiting when some of us were applying for the same jobs.

I am currently an intern at J.P. Morgan in the asset management division, and during the recruitment process I called up several of my friends from the program to hear about their experiences. I had friends who interned at private equity firms, hedge funds and large asset managers. It was so helpful to hear about their experiences so I could put myself in their shoes and picture what my life would be like at their firm.

My advice would be to take the time to get to know your fellow interns, professionals of all levels at the firm where you’re interning and people you meet at other firms over the summer. You can learn from their mistakes and lean on each other, but that’s only if you really take the time to get to know one another. These are the people who will advocate for you later on in your career and potentially become some of your best friends if you put the time in, so get to know your fellow interns, find mentors who are willing to answer your questions and treat your internship experience like it’s more than just a 10-week gig.

Meagan Loyst is a student at Boston College and a summer analyst at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. Previously, she interned at Citi, the hedge fund firm Perry Capital and the private equity firm BayBoston. Loyst participated in the Girls Who Invest program at Wharton in 2016.

““

ANZ has recruited a senior Hong Kong banker – and former airline industry executive – as it starts to hire again in Asian institutional banking.

Felix Nie has joined ANZ’s debt capital markets (DCM) team at director level. He was previously at Standard Chartered in Hong Kong, where he spent two years as a director in China corporate sales, according to his online public profile.

After several years of general expansion in Asia under former CEO Mike Smith, ANZ last year sold its Asian retail and wealth operations to DBS, closed its ‘emerging corporate’ business in the region, and cut jobs in Singapore and Hong Kong.

The bank is now focusing on its more profitable Asian institutional unit. In February, head of institutional Mark Whelan said key markets for ANZ in Asia include DCM, syndicated lending and trade finance.

The hiring of Nie suggests that ANZ is now starting to expand its DCM team. It also comes as Asia Pacific (ex-Japan) international DCM volume reached $270.8bn in the first half of 2017, up 44% year-on-year, and the highest first-half volume on record.

Chinese and bulge bracket banks dominate DCM in Asia, but ANZ wants to carve out its own niche but giving Asian clients better access to Australia markets, and vice versa.

While Nie has a degree in corporate finance from the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, he has reached director rank in banking despite spending the first 10 years of his career working for airlines.

He was in the finance department at China Eastern Airlines in Shanghai between 1998 and 2004, latterly as a manager, before he moved to Hong Kong for a 19-month stint as a management trainee at Cathay Pacific.

China Eastern then poached him back and he spent three years working in sales in its Hong Kong office, according to his online profile.

Nie moved into the banking sector in 2008 when he joined the global markets division of HSBC. He stayed there until 2015, most recently an associate director in corporate sales.

Follow @simonmortlock

Image: RyanJLane, Getty

““

You would think that after about six years of tough market conditions in the banking sector in Singapore most candidates (particularly people who’ve been laid off) would have curtailed their expectations when it comes to job hunting.

However, there are still a lot of people here who obviously feel like the banking industry simply can’t do without them.

I recruit in-house for a US bank in Singapore. Just recently I approached a candidate who had been let go by one of the British banks. She had been out of work for around three months and hadn’t had any promising interviews. Her background was predominantly within operations, an area that has been shrinking in Singapore for more than four years.

The role I had would effectively bring her in at exactly the same level as her previous job, both salary and responsibility wise. But she told me outright that unless it carried a director title, she wasn’t interested.

I assured her that the role was not a director position but it was very well suited to her for a number of reasons. She still wasn’t interested unless it carried a director title.

I was completely gobsmacked her obnoxious attitude. Here I was offering her a chance to re-enter the banking sector in a time where just being employed in a senior role in the back office of a foreign bank in Asia is becoming very rare. Yet she felt this was the perfect time to play hard-to-get and push for a promotion.

A few weeks later, I was referred to another banker who had also unfortunately been made redundant.

Once again I had an opportunity for him to go back into a job at a very similar level to that of his last role. But during the initial briefing for the position – it wasn’t even a formal interview – his first question was: “what’s my bonus likely to be in my first year?”.

To me this isn’t an example of someone standing up for being paid what they’re are worth. This is an example of an ‘entitlement culture’ among job seekers in Singapore that continues to astound myself and other banking recruiters and hiring managers.

The facts are simple: the banking industry is shrinking and opportunities for senior people who have been made redundant are becoming much rarer. I would even say ‘scarce’ is a better word for senior support-based roles at VP level and above in operations and finance.

For the majority of candidates who are in this position, my recommendation is to become far more realistic when it comes to your expectations. Your focus should be to re-enter the market and rebuild your career.

At this point in time, you don’t have much leverage at all in the job market. But remember that not many other people are doing amazing well-paid roles in banking support in Singapore any more.

If you’ve been offered a new job, grab it. There are many other people who have been made redundant recently and will probably never return to the banking sector. It’s time to ditch your sense of entitlement.

The author has been recruiting for the banking industry in Asia – in both agencies and in-house – for more than 10 years.

Follow @simonmortlock

Image credit: DragonImages, Getty

““

This “new sexy job” in Hong Kong banking will get you a 23% pay rise

Morning Coffee: The Goldman Sachs guide to an easy summer at work. Lightweight banker vs. power drinker

Meanwhile:

Is this how all banks will hire their technology staff one day?

Top Goldman trader who quit for a hedge fund is going it alone

Earn £1.5m ($1.9m) a year aged 33 and avoid banking

When senior investment bankers quit to run ski chalets

Morgan Stanley just poached a top quant from BAML

This Goldman Sachs MD has just unveiled some amazing insider tips for summer analysts

How you should respond to these weird Wall Street job interview questions

Candidate vs. candidate debate

What would you do if I gave you a million dollars right now?

Tell me about a trade where you lost your shirt.

What’s the present value of a spouse, child or parent?

What three items would you bring if you were stranded on a deserted island?

How many bricks would it take to reach the top of the Empire State Building?

How many windows are in this building?

Why are manholes round?

Who is your best friend?

What do you think are U.S. and European banks’ and asset managers’ biggest challenges in doing business in China?

How many gas stations are there in the U.S.? How many ping pong balls could you fit into this room?

If you owned the George Washington Bridge, for how much would you sell it to me?

You are stranded on a desert island and can only take three items with you, what would they be?”

Why didn’t you get a full-time offer at the end of your internship?

Nomura hires new Singapore investment banker as Asian recruitment recovers

The best five banks to work for now in Asian M&A, ECM and DCM

M&A

ECM

DCM

Morning Coffee: 23-year-old with ideal lifestyle gives bankers lesson in modesty. Return of the pit trader?

Goldman analyst quits for Bitcoin

Investment banks start asking for ‘early bird’ internship applications

I’m trying to break into the buy-side and it’s full of elitist snobs

This Deutsche Bank MD has just switched to a struggling hedge fund

Has Barclays become the best alternative to working for a U.S. bank?

How to succeed at a buy-side internship

1. Write everything down

Man who worked in aviation for 10 years lands senior Hong Kong banking job

Bank recruiter slams “entitlement culture” among Singapore job seekers

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Candidate vs. candidate debate

What would you do if I gave you a million dollars right now?

Tell me about a trade where you lost your shirt.

What’s the present value of a spouse, child or parent?

What three items would you bring if you were stranded on a deserted island?

How many bricks would it take to reach the top of the Empire State Building?

How many windows are in this building?

Why are manholes round?

Who is your best friend?

What do you think are U.S. and European banks’ and asset managers’ biggest challenges in doing business in China?

How many gas stations are there in the U.S.? How many ping pong balls could you fit into this room?

If you owned the George Washington Bridge, for how much would you sell it to me?

You are stranded on a desert island and can only take three items with you, what would they be?”

Why didn’t you get a full-time offer at the end of your internship?

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