eFinancialCareers » News & Analysis

Many of the most prestigious, best-paying jobs on Wall Street aren’t posted, making networking absolutely critical. Don’t just pick up the phone and start dialing, though – networking is a bit of an art form. Here are the six dos and six don’ts.

Do: Squeeze every drop out of every meeting

If you spend every networking opportunity asking about getting hired, you are selling yourself short. Look to these people as a sounding board for your search strategy, types and names of firms you are targeting, and new roles and directions you are considering, said Anne Crowley, managing director at Jay Gaines and Company. “Prepare for that conversation beyond asking ‘is your firm hiring?’ You don’t know where these discussions might lead.”

Don’t: Beat around the bush

Mention a mutual connection in the body of a message or in an initial conversation and be as specific as possible with what you are asking for, said Jesse Marrus, founder of Wall Street career search firm StreetID. “People are busy and even if they would like to help, you need to let them know what exactly you want from them.”

Do: Be bold, yet targeted

In today’s world, compared to 10 years ago, networking is even more acceptable than it used to be. Know the best places to network for your role and the part of the industry to which you belong and put yourself out there.

Relationships are the key to accessing the “hidden job market” – unadvertised or early-access jobs – where the best jobs are these days. Reconnect with people you’ve been out of touch with, using a simple “hello and update” email.

“I don’t care who you are – this gig may not last, and there might be a day I might need to find another job, get advice or something else,” said Jeanne Branthover, a managing partner at DHR International, a recruitment firm. “Networking is so important today because there are very few people who are closed-minded to talking to you and helping you.

“Learn to network correctly, wisely in a targeted, smart way,” she said.

Don’t: Try to go to every industry conference under the sun

There are many conferences, and you can’t go to all of them, so the first thing to ask yourself: Is it a worthwhile conference given the time and expense required to attend?

“You have to research each conference,” Branthover said. “Find out who is going to be there and decide whether it’s somewhere you should be spending my time and money to be at – what is it going to do for me?

“It’s about networking – if the right people aren’t there, why would you want to network with people who are wrong for you?” she said. “Before the conference, you should know who is going to be there, and you want to make sure you’ll meet before you leave there.”

Do: Embrace social media

Social media outlets like allow you to efficiently catch up with colleagues and associates who you’ve lost touch with. “Expand your knowledge and use of these sites and tools,” said Crowley. But…

Don’t: Overestimate their power

Don’t expect someone to help you just because you are connected on social media – networking is a process of making deposits before you can take credit, said Peter Laughter, chief executive at New York-based Wall Street Services. Tools like LinkedIn can supplement traditional networking, not replace it.

“Endeavor to help them by making connections and providing information,” he said. “That way, when you need something your network will be primed to give back.”

Do: Tap into your alumni network

This is particularly helpful for less experienced professionals who may need a mentor to assist in the networking process, said Marrus. Most alumni love to help their own. Even if you don’t hold much of a connection to your school, others likely do.

Don’t: Be afraid to be old-school

With all the technology available today, candidates often forget that putting in a little extra effort can make a big difference. A hiring manager at Barclays’ investment bank believes that sending a hard copy cover letter via snail mail can be beneficial when networking.

He and his colleagues have mailed signed cover letters to smaller companies – newly launch hedge funds or private equity firms – to stay on their radar, he said. “Do some research, tell them you’re interested in what they’re doing and toss in a business card.”

“Everyone opens snail mail because no one gets it anymore,” says Jane Cranston, a New York-based career coach who works with Wall Street executives.

Do: Show your industry knowledge

Whether connecting online, over the phone or in person, try to drop some industry knowledge to subtly show that, while looking for work, you’re actively engaged in the market. “For example, if the person you met works at private equity firm and you saw the firm made a recent acquisition mention that in your follow up,” said Marrus.

Don’t: Cold call

Unless you know the person intimately, cold calling their office should be avoided. “If that person is not prepared for your phone call, they may shoot you down immediately,” said Roy Cohen, a finance-focused career coach and author of The Wall Street Professionals’ Survival Guide. Give them advanced notice; tell them in your letter or email that you’ll follow up with a phone call at a specific time, he said.

Do: Your homework

Before attending an industry conference or networking meeting, try to contact the organizer of the event, said Marrus. “Give him/her a little background on what you hope to accomplish through the event and they can make some introductions for you.”

Look up the names and social-media profilesof panelists and guest speakers, looking for interests, where they went to school and the jobs they’ve had throughout their career. When you meet in person, prepare to immediately engage: “Pleased to meet you. I believe we went to the same school/share a similar interest/belong to the same community board.” Finding common ground is always an asset.

Don’t: Embellish your connections

If you are going to name-drop or reference a mutual contact, make sure you are being 100% accurate and do so in a subtle way, said Marrus. If you pretend to be best friends with the CEO of a company, but aren’t really, then you’ll lose all credibility.
Follow @danbutchrwrites

Photo credit: ER_Creative/GettyImages
““

Private equity firms have been ramping up junior pay and targeting investment banking analysts ever earlier as they look to attract the best people from the banks’ graduate pool. Salaries have shot up by 14% year-on-year, but there’s one element of PE pay that takes it into the big leagues – carried interest.

New figures from headhunters Heidrick & Struggles suggest that average salaries for associates or senior associates in the U.S. – a role that juniors move into after two to three years’ experience – are now $125k, an increase of 14% on last year, while vice president salaries were up 13% year on year, to $198k. But salaries are only one part of pay on the buy-side, and even bonuses are dwarfed by carried interest. What’s more, how much you receive is very much dependent on the size of the fund you work for.

In private equity, generally speaking, bigger is better. Heidrick & Struggles figures suggest that carried interest heads north of $1m for associates and senior associates once assets under management at the private equity firm go above $6bn. Smaller funds tend to compete on salary and bonuses, but their overall pay is tiny compared to big buyout funds once carried interest comes in to play.

This trend continues into the senior ranks, with managing directors and partners hauling in tens of millions of dollars in carried interest alone this year. For example, Heidrick & Struggles figures suggest that managing directors working for a private equity fund with more than $15bn in assets under management brought in $52.8m in carried interest on average. The comparable figure at a fund with less than $250m in AUM was $2.4m.

Follow @paultclarke

Have a tip, story or comment? Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

It’s nearly December and hiring in investment banks has virtually ground to a halt as everyone waits for bonuses to be paid. The exception appears to be Delta One desks. Delta One desks in NYC are still welcoming new staff, especially at Citi.

In the past month, Citi’s hired three senior Delta One traders from rivals. They are: Kai Chen from UBS; David Rustico from Barclays; and Christopher Shanks from Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

All appear to have left previous jobs, suggesting Citi has compensated them for lost bonuses at ex-employers. The hires are understood to be replacements after traders left following the arrival of Tom Regazzi from UBS as Americas head of prime finance in March.

Citi isn’t alone in hiring for Delta One. Deutsche Bank is also understood to have poached Rahul Shah from Barclays. Shah left Barclays in October and has yet to land elsewhere.

Delta One desks are popular as banks seek to bolster their prime brokerage businesses and increase revenues from synthetic financing without exposure to additional risk. BNP Paribas also appointed a new head of global prime trading in September this year.

Delta One can also be risky, however: both Jerome Kerviel and Kweku Adoboli worked in Delta One, and lost $7.2bn and $2bn respectively.

Follow @MadameButcher
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by actual human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)

““

More evidence that Credit Suisse is getting more out of its private bankers in Asia: the bank now says its APAC ‘wealth management and connected’ (WM&C) unit, of which private banking is the major revenue generator, is on track to meet its 2018 income target a year in advance.

Credit Suisse announced at its investor day on Thursday that WM&C income in 2017 would come to about CHF0.7bn this year, the same figure that it had originally forecast for 2018. Its income goal for next year has also been upped to CHF0.85bn, as shown below in a chart from the bank’s investor presentation.

As we reported in early November, total net revenues for WM&C in APAC were up 14% year on year (and within that private banking revenues rose 16%). But the number of RMs employed by Credit Suisse in the region fell 9% – from 650 to 590 – over the same period. Average AUM per banker is now CHF322m, compared with CHF258.4m in Q3 2016 – an increase of about 25%. In short, Credit Suisse private bankers are getting more productive.

To meet the revised 2018 income target, however, Credit Suisse will need to increase its RM headcount, especially in the private banking hubs of Singapore and Hong Kong, says Rahul Sen, a former Merrill Lynch private banker, now head of wealth management at search firm The Omerta Group. “The bank’s existing RMs will, of course, grow their books organically, but there has to be hiring as well,” he adds.

Credit Suisse is unlikely to hire as aggressively as when it took on 100 RMs in the year to end-June 2016. “It will hire more quietly next year. The focus will be quality over quantity – good senior bankers from VP to MD, who current manage at least $200m,” says Sen. “I don’t think there’s much space left for pure managers, unless they bring teams of at least 10 RMs with them.”

“The bank will attract RMs who need to have the CS brand behind them. For example, bankers whose clients need the kind of investment banking products that CS has been successfully selling to entrepreneurial private clients in Asia,” adds Sen.

Credit Suisse continues to pursue its strategy of being the “entrepreneurs’ bank” in Asia, a focus it reiterated during the investor day.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. Credit S

Source: Credit Suisse

Follow @simonmortlock

Image credit: g-stockstudio, Getty

Last month Jeff Chen joined Chinese online healthcare firm WeDoctor as its chief strategy officer after 14 years in banking. But coming on board wasn’t an easy decision for Chen, who was previously head of technology investment banking for Asia Pacific at HSBC. “I took a few weeks to think about the job, which is sensible when you’re making a big career change,” says Chen. “If I had an offer from another bank, it would have been an easy yes or no.”

Hong Kong-based Chen is the latest senior banker to shift to a Chinese technology company, in a trend that began to gather pace about two years ago. Alibaba, for example, appointed 20-year Goldman veteran Michael Evans as its president in 2015, and a year later named another ex-Goldmanite, Douglas Feagin, as head of international business for its online finance arm, Ant Financial Services.

“I think more bankers in Asia will make these moves, including juniors. Tech companies offer interesting work, pay competitive base salaries, and there’s more potential upside at a senior level if the company performs,” adds Chen.

While Chen has only been in his role for a matter of weeks, he’s already drawing positive comparisons with investment banking. “When you’re in-house, you think more strategically and long term. Completing a transaction is only the first step, you then need to work on successful implementation and integration,” he explains. “Your role is advisory at a bank, so once a deal closes, you move on to the next one.”

Chen says bankers should not to jump at any opportunity within China’s burgeoning online sector. “If my job offer had come from just another e-commerce company, I probably wouldn’t have been so keen. But we’re doing something worthwhile: we’re trying to improve the Chinese healthcare system, which has many pain points, leading to significant inefficiency for both doctors and patients.”

Working for WeDoctor, whose investors include Tencent and which was reported to be valued at $1.5bn after it completed a $394m funding round in 2015, also gives Chen the opportunity to “help shape the future of the whole business rather than work project to project like you do in banking”.

The company, which was founded in 2010 and provides online consultations, diagnosis and appointment booking, is now looking to raise about $500m in private funding ahead of its likely IPO next year. “My job involves looking after capital market activities, strategic cooperation and investment, M&A and international expansion,” says Chen. “Currently, an important focus for me is to craft our market positioning so it’s clear for investors to understand our business and competitive strengths.”

Despite his recent move away from technology investment banking, Chen recommends it as a career. “Technology is the best sector to cover in Asia as there are constantly new companies and concepts being developed, which provide you with new clients and keep the work interesting. It’s also the only industry where companies can go from zero to multi-billion dollar valuations in only few short years.”

While Chen did some technology work when he was an analyst at Credit Suisse in Hong Kong in 2004, he moved into the sector full-time in 2011, at the same bank. His stand-out deals at Credit Suisse include Lenovo’s acquisition of Motorola from Google in 2014 and ASE’s takeover of rival Taiwanese semiconductor firm SPIL, which was approved last year. “Most TMT bankers in Asia focus on China internet IPOs. But I was also doing M&As deals for about 40% of the time, and I worked across Asia Pacific, not just China,” he says. “This gave me a more holistic view of the market, which is helpful in my new role.”

Chen left Credit Suisse for HSBC in December 2016. “As TMT, especially technology, continued to be the most active sector in Asian capital markets, HSBC senior management decided to develop a team to focus on technology sector coverage,” he says. “HSBC had been interviewing standard China technology bankers for the role and hadn’t found the right fit. They were bankers who’d been focusing on taking Chinese internet companies public in the US, which doesn’t play to HSBC’s strength of leveraging its balance sheet and global network.”

“My suggestion to them was that HSBC shouldn’t just focus on internet IPOs. It should start off by growing revenues via traditional technology, such as semiconductors and hardware, and do M&A advisory where it can add value by also providing acquisition financing,” he adds.

Chen built a five-strong team at HSBC, which worked on deals including the Hong Kong IPO of Tencent’s online publishing arm China Literature, which saw its shares surge more than 80% in their debut in November.

Follow @simonmortlock

The issue of pay levels in the financial services industry remains divisive.

Sergiot Ermotti, ex-trader turned chief executive of UBS, butted heads with Sir Paul Tucker, the former deputy governor of the Bank of England, after the latter said the former’s pay is too high. The boss of the Swiss bank suggested such criticism was fueled by envy.

Tucker retorted by arguing that UBS bankers took the big paydays when times were good, but taxpayers had borne the losses when Switzerland’s biggest bank had to be bailed out in the crisis.

Ermotti, a former Citi and Merrill equities trader, countered by saying: “I think this discussion is made by people who are maybe frustrated that they do not make that kind of level of money.”

“If bankers were paid less, that would [help you to] cover your cost of capital. Why has pay not come down?” argued Tucker, who left the BoE in 2013 and is now chairman of a U.S.-headquartered regulatory advocacy group.

Ermotti, who has run UBS since 2011 and had his 2016 pay cut slightly to CHF13.7m ($13.93m), admitted that he is “very well paid,” but said that banks needed to pay enough to attract the best talent.

The UBS CEO then identified the nub of the matter: “If you basically say banks should pay much less, and you allow other parts of the economy like big tech or shadow banking to pay whatever…it’s a competitive [market]…people made a choice to do good for society while also getting their desired level of compensation,” he said. “They are going to do something else.” – In other words, banks haveto pay more than competitors because of their “moral taint:” people prefer to work for big technology firms where they feel like they’re “doing good” and banks pay more to compete with that.

After Tucker pointed out that UBS had been bailed out by the Swiss taxpayer in the financial crisis, Andreas Treichl, CEO of Austria’s Erste Bank, tried to lighten the mood by joking that he was “paid less than the Goldman Sachs doorman.”

Separately, as bitcoin has grabbed headlines with dizzying volatility and fear of a bubble, a senior UBS economist says there’s a fatal flaw in cryptocurrencies, and other bankers have piled on.

The chief investment officer of UBS says it’s too risky to be added to the firm’s portfolios.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said it’s too early for his bank to need a bitcoin strategy and that he doesn’t consider the digital currency to be a store of value, citing the latest spell of wild price volatility.

Others have called it “the very definition of a bubble” and even “a fraud.”

However, even the biggest skeptics concede that blockchain, the distributed-ledger technology underlying bitcoin, could be transformative. By reducing the need for central intermediaries, it holds out the promise of processing transactions of various kinds more efficiently than today. Many banks and exchanges are exploring such uses of blockchain, according to Bloomberg.

Meanwhile:

U.S. merger-and-acquisition activity is on pace to clear $1 trillion for the fourth year in a row, and Robert W. Baird sees robust activity continuing through 2018 as private-equity-backed companies grow in number and outbound Chinese investment remains strong. (Business Insider)

Goldman Sachs is poised to sign a lease for a new office in Milan that will significantly boost its presence in Italy as Britain prepares to leave the E.U. (Reuters)

Goldman is transferring up to 40 senior investment bankers from London to continental European cities as part of a global strategy – already underway in the U.S. – to bring its financiers and dealmakers closer to clients in lower-cost cities. (Financial News)

Goldman said the party isn’t over yet, but the lights will go off sooner or later. (Bloomberg)

Credit Suisse is the latest to promise to return half of earnings to investors, a heart-warming Christmas promise that it may not be able to keep if it wants to pay out decent 2017 bonuses. (Bloomberg)

Everyone on Wall Street and beyond is talking about the competing proposals in Congress to change the U.S. tax system – and millennials are among the groups that are extremely concerned. (New York Times)

On the other hand, many investors are placing bets that the Republican tax plan will benefit regional banks. (Bloomberg)

Actually, bulge-bracket bank stocks are getting a boost too now that it looks like a version of the Republican tax bill will eventually pass. (Business Insider)

Repurchase agreements (repos), which banks use to borrow large amounts of short-term cash safely by selling a security and pledging to buy it back at a slightly different price in the near future, are making a post-crisis comeback. (WSJ)

Barclays announces an eclectic board for its new ringfenced bank. (FT)

Trends-following hedge funds are eyeing juicy returns by shunning mainstream markets to trade in esoteric, less-liquid areas such as electricity or cheese prices and natural gas or milk contracts. (FT)

Big Four accounting firm PwC now accepts payment in bitcoin for its advisory services. (WSJ)

Up to 800m global workers will lose their jobs by 2030 and be replaced by robotic automation, according to McKinsey. (BBC)

Photo credit: numbeos/GettyImages
““

The KCG Holdings diaspora keep landing new jobs. After the London bloodbath following the $1.4bn merger with rival high frequency trader Virtu Financial in April, senior staff have been landing new jobs across the City.

The latest to bag a new role is Paul Bermingham, the head of ETF European trading at KCG Holdings in London. He’s just joined Susquehanna International Group (SIG) as a senior trader.

Bermingham started out as an ETF trader at SIG in 2007 and has focused on ETFs throughout his career. He has worked at Credit Suisse, as an ETF strategist, and was also formerly head portfolio manager at rival HFT, Tower Research Capital.

He was one of a group of senior electronic trading specialists ousted from KCG Holdings following its high-profile merger with Virtu, after the firm decided to move its market-making business to its European office in Dublin.

Robert Crane, the former head of electronic market making at Goldman Sachs who joined KCG as head of European client execution in 2015, has since been hired by HSBC as global head of cash execution. Graham Wayne, the former head of EU electronic trading, joined Barclays last months as a managing director within its electronic equities product group. Ivan Gilmore, another former Goldmanite who was head of exchange-traded fund sales trading at KCG, also left in June but has yet to land elsewhere.

Meanwhile, KCG’s senior technology team are also moving on. Andy Schneider, the former head of prop trading technology, is now chief technology officer at trading firm Epoch Capital. Mike Blum, KCG’s chief technology officer, was hired by Goldman Sachs as a partner and CTO for its electronic trading unit.

Follow @paultclarke

Have a tip, story or comment? Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

““

If you want an easy life in financial services, you don’t want to work in New York City. Nor do you want to be a managing director or someone engaged in a “support function.” You might want to work in compliance, but you’ll need to be prepared to be bullied if you do. You might also want to work in IT, where you’ll feel nicely nurtured, but will still have to work hard. Most of all, you probably want to work in Paris, where the pace is sedate and your boss will be respectful of your time and help you get along. Failing that, you can always try moving into consulting instead.

So says a new survey of 579 financial services and consulting professionals from Emolument.com. Emolument asked a selection of questions about bullying, overwork, and work-related exhaustion across front, middle and back office positions in finance. The results are “informative.”

The most burned out bankers are in New York. The least are in Paris

If you’re looking for an easy life in banking, you don’t want to go to New York City. As Mark Romeo, a former Credit Suisse prime brokerage client relations manager, wrote here in February, people don’t take sick days or annual leave in New York. “You can smell the competition,” said Romeo. People in New York are “willing to work harder than anywhere else,” he added. In Manhattan, you “don’t get sick.”

All this is borne out by Emolument’s survey results. The found that 73% of bankers in New York felt that work had made them ill and that a similar proportion had worked when they were sick.

By comparison, just 11% of bankers in Paris said work had made them ill, and just 44% said they’d worked while unwell.

Paris, in other words, is gentle. It’s no wonder that senior Goldman Sachs bankers want to move there.

The most brutal jobs are in the “support functions.” The least are (maybe) in technology

You might think that front office corporate finance jobs are the worst in banking for long working hours and general exhaustion. After all, it’s here that people most commonly complain of 80 hour weeks.

Emolument’s research suggest it’s the support staff working in back office operations jobs who are worst off though. Not only do a very high proportion of support staff (over 90%) say that work has made them ill, but 80% of them say they’ve been bullied at work. Similarly, 80% of compliance professionals say they’ve been bullied and only 10% say they feel “nurtured.”

By comparison, the least amount of bullying goes on in technology teams. This might be because many teams are located in remote offices and are therefore protected from stressed-out traders. In testimony to banks’ attempts to keep technologists on side, a high proportion of technologists also say they feel “nurtured” and respected by their bosses. However, nearly 70% also claim that work levels have made them ill.

Vice presidents have the easiest time, but are bullied. Analysts and managing directors have the worst, but (analysts) feel nurtured

The middle years are the sweet-spot for finance careers. Although vice presidents have their own stresses (lack of promotional opportunities, trying to juggle the demands of MDs with the capacity of analysts and associates), a comparatively high proportion of VPs told Emolument they were coping physically with their workloads. – Only 47% said work had made them ill and only 44% said they’d worked when unwell. This compared to 67% of analysts (on both measures) and over 90% of managing directors.

It’s not all great in the mid-ranks though. Mid-ranking and senior staff in investment banks also feel put-upon. A comparatively high proportion of VPs and directors complained of bullying, along with a very high proportion of MDs. Although directors feel nurtured (possibly because they’re being groomed to become managing directors), MDs feel cast adrift, bullied and abused by their bosses. None of this apparent at the start, however. – Banks’ efforts to make their most junior staff happier appear to be paying off: all the analysts Emolument spoke to said their bosses respected their time, half felt they were being encouraged to grow.

Move to Paris and start your career in finance and get out before you reach the top. Alternatively, move to consulting. Emolument found just 20% of consultants have ever had work-related illnesses. Consultants typically earn less than finance professionals, but there’s a definite upside.

““

If you’re a junior investment banker in your 20s, you need a career plan. That may be switching to private equity. It may be kicking off a fintech firm or starting a baby app. But if do you want to stick in investment banking, now is the time to do the groundwork.

Juniorisation is all the rage in investment banking, particularly on the trading floor, but only a select few make it into the senior ranks before they hit 30. You must carefully manage your career in the meantime. This, according to former senior bankers at J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs is what you must (and must not) do if you want to make it.

1. Learn how to influence

If you’re a junior banker, you don’t have any authority. The increased focus on the junior ranks has empowered analysts and associates more in the past couple of years, but realistically you’re nowhere near in a leadership role.

“Understanding what it means to influence without authority is a great first step in acquiring leadership capability,” says Graham Ward, the former head of equities at Goldman Sachs and now adjunct professor of leadership at INSEAD. “Often the first leadership role that you will be given will come out of the blue. Mine certainly did. You need to be prepared for unforeseen opportunities.”

2. Don’t sharpen your shoulders

Or, more specifically, says Kevin Rodgers, the former global head of FX at Deutsche Bank, who is now an author and market commentator, “don’t be a cock”. You should be looking to make friends, not burn bridges because it will come back to haunt you.

“You can just about get away with it if you are a genius, but, even so, if you ever screw up the knives will be out,” he says. “Be a human being and you’ll get more slack when the inevitable failures hit you. Plus, it’s easier to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning.”

3. Develop a track record

Yes, millennials in investment banking want vindication early on. That might come from a highly-competitive move to the buy-side, or it perhaps moving to another firm can ensure a promotion, but jumping around doesn’t look good.

“I think it’s not a great idea (unless your employer is really bad or you get the king-hell offer you can’t refuse) to move jobs repeatedly in your first 4-6 years. Get a track record,” says Rodgers.

4. Focus on relationships, not just skills

Obviously, you must be technically capable to make it in investment banking. In the early years, this is more important than ever and being among the top-rated analysts will undoubtedly help you move up. But “building a network, managing up, looking beyond one’s narrow business silo” are things that you need to do to get noticed, says Ward.

“We tend to overlook the importance and power that those things ultimately bring,” he says. “Being connected to decision-makers often gets you far more traction than simply being capable. Like it or not, politics is a fact of life. To pretend that it doesn’t matter is naive.”

5. Seize opportunities when they present themselves

Being a specialist is good, but if you really want to move up the ranks, you need a broad range of experience.

“I never really wanted to go into banking, so when I arrived I was flexible about where I ended up,” says a senior DCM banker speaking off the record. “Part of this is seizing opportunities across sectors or geographies when they appear. But it’s also a mind-set – don’t pigeon-hole yourself and realise that any experience will help you in the long-term. The time to do this is early on in your career.”

6. Always have one eye on the long-game

Ups and downs will happen throughout your career. Don’t dwell on either, says Mark Franczyk, a former vice president in equity capital markets at J.P. Morgan who is now a pastry chef and blogger.

“Don’t give up because of short-term setbacks, and don’t become overly confident from short-term success,” he says. “Remember that the career really pays off once you’ve reached the senior levels.”

7. Understand your motivations

If you want longevity in investment banking, understand early on why you’re here. Commitment will only come if you’re in it for the right reasons.

“If you are genuinely interested in finance, you can get through the frustrations of the working day, week, month and year,” says Rodgers. “If you aren’t and your only incentive is the cash, or because all your friends want to be in finance and you’re scared of missing out, it will be a long, long slog.”

“Knowing yourself, your motivations, your value system and your goals, will help you to orientate yourself to leadership,” adds Ward.

8. Seize on any leadership training

Investment banks used to promote on performance. This meant that managers, or leaders, were merely those who brought in more business than their peers. In such circumstances, management training seems like a distraction. It’s really not, suggests Ward.

“Any opportunities to attend managerial or leadership training should be accepted,” he says. “Junior people sometimes believe that the leadership is what happens at the top. In fact the leadership happens at all levels in organisations.”

Follow @paultclarkeHave a tip, story or comment? Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

Photo: Getty Images

““

Nomura has made a major addition to its U.S. operations with the hiring of Chris Shilakes from Bank of America Merrill Lynch as managing director of its technology investment banking group in San Francisco.

Shilakes is a technology veteran. In total, he’s spent over 20 years with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, most recently as head of venture capital banking, but previously as a technology salesman and technology researcher. He’s also had a spell as a venture capital entrepreneur, having founded Blueshift Venture Advisors in San Francisco in January 2005, where he worked for two years before returning to banking at BAML.

Shilakes’ arrival at Nomura comes as the Japanese bank is seeking to boost its presence in U.S. M&A by hiring in new bankers, although it said in April that this may “take time.”

Japanese companies made a record 339 overseas acquisitions between April and September, the first half of the Japanese fiscal year. That was up 14% on the previous year, though the total value was down more than 20%, mainly due to the effect of SoftBank’s £24.3b purchase of UK chipmaker ARM Holdings in 2016.

Shilakes appears to have decided to go directly to Nomura after his long career at BAML and hasn’t taken any time off. This is a surprise given an historic predilection for chilling out between jobs. The first time he left Merrill Lynch, in 2003 he told the Wall Street Journal he was taking six months off to drive U.S. “back roads” with his family.

Follow @MadameButcher
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

““

Are you overpaid? Do you deserve your bonus? I mean really deserve your bonus? What gives you the right to earn that money when so many people earn so much less? Particularly when your job isn’t explicitly helping humanity.

This is the argument of people like prospective UK prime minister Jeremy Corbyn and former deputy governor of the Bank of England, Paul Tucker. Three years ago it was also employed by my managing director (MD) as he cut my bonus to almost nothing.

I knew he was going to screw me over even before I went into the bonus meeting. The MD in question had arrived midway through the previous year, replacing my previous MD who’d hired me, paid me and kept my back. He’d left for another job. This new guy was out for himself: everyone knew he wasn’t to be trusted; he’d already shown a willingness to twist facts and blame people unfairly – even the other MDs knew this. Worse, he didn’t like my previous MD and by inference he didn’t like me.

He started with all the usual chat you get when your bonus is going to be abysmal. He told me how the financial crisis had changed everything, how people aren’t paid the same way they used to be. He told me how banks everywhere were being fined, how regulatory costs were up and margins were down, how the bank itself wasn’t doing well.

Then he told me my total compensation number. For a moment I was confused: was this my bonus? No: it was my total compensation. The actual bonus was almost nothing. I knew it was going to be bad, but I had no idea it would be this bad. It was far below even my lowest expectations.

What could I say? This was my boss: I couldn’t complain too much or I’d be out of a job. I wanted to resign on the spot, but I had rent to pay. So, I just sat there and asked how the numbers had been allocated. The MD told me more generic stuff about team performance and the size of the pool and another division taking a hit and so on. He didn’t acknowledge that I’d had a good year, that personally I was one of the better performers in the team. Or that he’d just given me a huge pay cut.

I guess that he could see that I was annoyed because next he reached for his “Corbyn rationale.” He told me I had no right to expect a bigger bonus anyway. Specifically, he said that his wife worked for a charity and earned £25k a year and that she was doing far more, “good in the world,” than I was working in rates sales. The implication was that I should be grateful for just having my salary.

What could I say? That this was the height of hypocrisy? That the man across the table who was lecturing me on my moral inferiority had shown no compunction about screwing over the team even before this? That his wife might be earning £25k but that he himself was easily earning over twenty times that? That I’d probably put in more hours than his wife over the previous year? That banks and charities aren’t really comparable, and that charities can get away with paying less precisely because they “do good” and this means people want to work there despite their low pay?

I could have said all of this, but at that moment I wanted to keep my job. So I said nothing.

I quit the following year. Banks need no excuse to cut pay. The only way you can get paid for the work you do in banking now is to have a managing director on your side. It’s better to get out than to listen to all the platitudes from your manager (“It’ll be fixed for you next year”), when the MD makes the real decisions. If your MD is a devious hypocrite, you’re wasting your time.

Sebastian Speaks is the pseudonym of a VP in sales

“”

Photo credit: #juniordoctorsstrike Jeremy Corbyn by Garry Knight is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Another boutique private bank is likely to increase its hiring in Asia next year: Pictet. Following the surprise appointment of Boris Collardi as its co-head of global wealth management last week, headhunters are tipping Geneva-based Pictet to add relationship managers in Singapore and Hong Kong.

During his tenure as Julius Baer chief executive, Collardi oversaw the bank’s expansion across Asia. Last year Julius Baer hired 110 relationship managers, taking its headcount to 380, the fifth largest of any private bank in Asia. The region now accounts for about a quarter of Julius Baer’s business.

Collardi will also try to grow Pictet in Asia, but not at such a rapid rate, says Rahul Sen, a former Merrill Lynch private banker, now head of wealth management at search firm The Omerta Group. “He will selectively add more people in 2018; it won’t be a JB-style hiring spree.”

Pictet has a lot of catching up to do in Asia, where it remains a minor player compared with other boutique private banks. It will be hiring at the same time as rivals LGT, VP Bank, EFG, Safra Sarasin and UBP are also ramping at their Asian recruitment.

While Pictet has had an office in Hong Kong since 1986 and in Singapore since 1995, it only employs about 50 relationship managers in Asia and ranks outside the top-20 private banks regionally by RM headcount and assets under management. Globally, however, Pictet’s profits were up 29% to CHF247m in the first half of this year.

“Pictet will be recruiting more in Asia under Collardi, but it generally prefers big-book bankers – people with about $500m in AUM,” says Liu San Li, an ex-private banker, now head of banking at search firm IGS Asia in Singapore. “Only seniors should apply for jobs there.”

While former employer Julius Baer will be a hunting ground for Collardi, there are no other obvious targets. “Pictet could recruit from UBS or from a boutique – the main criteria is whether the candidate fits into the culture there,” says Sen. “If Julius Baer in Asia is a Ferrari – flashy and visible – then Pictet is more like a Rolls Royce: a high-class but less aggressive bank. It’s not the place for RMs whose clients demand FX trading or structured products, for example. It’s not a sales-driven environment.”

If you want to join Pictet in Hong Kong or Singapore, your main challenge will be convincing your clients to move with you, says Liu. “Pictet is actually a strong brand in Europe, but not many clients in Asia know about it. It’s not easy to change this mindset,” he adds.

Pictet could be a good option for RMs who want a “step up in seniority and recognition”, says Sen. “At HSBC, for example, you’re working with hundreds of other RMs and you can easily get lost in the crowd. Pictet’s small size in Asia means you should enjoy more visibility internally.”

“There are advantages to joining Pictet. For example, it’s well established in asset management and discretionary portfolio management,” adds Liu. “And it’s one of the few banks that value pure wealth management over big revenues.”

Follow @simonmortlock

Image credit: razihusin, Getty

Have you heard that you won’t have to work as many hours if you move from the sell side to the buy side? How about that as you climb the financial services ladder and take on loftier job titles, your work/life balance will improve, because you can start delegating more tasks to juniors? Well, both are fallacies, or at the very least, they do not apply to everyone.

Take Rick Rieder, the chief investment officer of fixed income at BlackRock who oversees $1.7 trillion. The first thing he does when he wakes up – at 3:30 a.m. – is check his Bloomberg terminal to see what’s happening in global markets. Then he goes onto Twitter and searches for the latest headlines, opinions and hot takes. After that, he checks his email to catch up on what he missed during his brief sleep. He then begins trading heavily.

“I tend to trade a lot between 3:30 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. because markets tend to overreact in those hours,” Rieder told Business Insider. “Every day is truly insane. There’s not a minute when I don’t have my eye on the markets.”

Every Monday at 6:30 a.m., Rieder hosts a weekly call with his Asia-based team, followed by a “daily events” call at 6:55 with includes every BlackRock fixed income team worldwide. At 11 every Monday, he hosts a macroeconomics meeting.

At 7:15 a.m. on Tuesday, Rieder holds an investment-strategy group meeting, which painstakingly covers every asset class managed by BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world.

In addition, every day at 10 a.m., Rieder has a mutual fund portfolio positioning meeting. And there are too many more meetings to mention them all.

One weekend a month, Rieder wakes up at 4 a.m. and works straight until 6 p.m. – on both Saturday and Sunday – poring over charts and tables to fine-tune the firm’s big-picture strategy. He believes that if he didn’t do this much work, he’d be less than fully prepared for his big monthly meeting.

“You get these aha moments when you stare at so many things and they start to come together,” he told BI. “If you didn’t do the work you’d never get there. It’s not the most socially enhancing experience, but I have to do it.”

What about the other weekends? Rieder estimates that, on the average weekend, he spends between 10 and 12 hours working. No rest for the weary, as they say.

Separately, everyone is talking about bitcoin, ether and other cryptocurrencies, and it has even become a hot new skill in the job market as firms try to position themselves for success in the space.

Bitcoin-related job postings as a proportion of total listings on LinkedIn jumped more than 9X in the financial services industry over the past three years and 4.6 times in the software technology industry, according to Bloomberg. While financial services listings are growing faster, 70% of crypto-related jobs are still tied to software development.

And as bitcoin’s price surged as much as 14X over the past year, there are now 28 times as many profiles that cite cryptocurrency knowledge and experience as there were four years ago and 5.5 times more who claim bitcoin aptitude specifically.

While skeptics warn of a fearsome bubble as the price of bitcoin has surpassed $10,000, the potential for profit has caught Wall Street executives’ attention, as well as wealthy individuals, venture-capital firms and even retail investors, despite significant market structure and regulation challenges, according to James Schneider, a Goldman Sachs analyst.

The president of CBOE Global Markets believes that digital currencies will grow worldwide in the decades to come and offering bitcoin futures was a response to user demand and a reflection of that belief.

Blockchain and the cryptocurrencies that the technology enables have arrived on Wall Street, and employers are hiring accordingly. Now everyone is waiting to see how regulators will respond.

Meanwhile:

U.S. banks have quietly launched a doomsday project they hope will prevent a run on the financial system should one of them suffer a debilitating cyberattack. (WSJ)

The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond tapped senior McKinsey & Co. executive Thomas Barkin to become its next president. (Bloomberg)

Deutsche Bank’s Ken Reich, the head of emerging markets fixed income sales for EMEA, has left the company after only a couple months. (Financial News)

An unusual fight has developed between the U.K.’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and a group of Morgan Stanley strategists. (Business Insider)

‘City Corbynistas’ have become more common than you’d expect. (Evening Standard)

Nomura estimates that approximately 10k banking jobs could leave the U.K. on the first day after Brexit. (Business Insider)

Compensation for chief compliance officers was flat in 2017 but others without that title working in the profession saw increases. (WSJ)

How financial services chief information officers can build an effective human-AI decision system. (WSJ)

Private equity firms, including Carlyle, have started selling stakes in companies to themselves. (Bloomberg)

Hedge fund managers share what gets their pulse racing, both positively and negatively. (Bloomberg)

Martin “Pharma Bro” Shkreli, convicted in August of defrauding investors in two of his hedge funds, famously bought a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album for $2m, but now prosecutors say he should forfeit it, a Picasso painting he owns and his Enigma machine from World War II. (Bloomberg)

A venture capitalist who invested in Uber, Airbnb, Warby Parker and Tumblr has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women. (Bloomberg)

Some women on Wall Street fear that an unintended consequence of the #metoo movement is that some men will start following the “Pence rule” and exclude them from informal gatherings where collegial bonding and decision-making takes place. (BBC)

The strange animal jargon spoken by Wall Street professionals and other business people. (BBC)

Whether you feel contempt for your boss, a client or your entire industry, it is likely to poison every moment of your working hours. (Quartz)
Follow @danbutchrwrites

Photo credit: NorthernStock/GettyImages
““

The former head of European index and equity products trading at Commerzbank in London, who quit in November last year to join BlueCrest Capital Management as a partner, lasted just eight months at the hedge fund and has now been hired by a London-based derivatives prop trading firm.

Emmanuel Kreutzberger, who spent five years as head of European index and equity products at Commerzbank, joined BlueCrest as a partner and portfolio manager late last year. He left the hedge fund, which has a reputation for being a ‘sink or swim’ employer, in June after just eight months there.

He’s now re-emerged as a trader at derivatives market-maker Liquid Capital Group. The firm, set up in 2000 by brothers Chris and Gregg Siepman, trades options on the behalf asset managers, banks and hedge funds, and now has around 170 staff across offices in London, Chicago, Sydney and Chengdu in China.

Liquid Capital has 76 employees in London, according to its latest accounts for 2016 filed in August on Companies House, 31 of which work in trading functions. It paid an average of £108.4k per head last year.

BlueCrest has been making some deep cuts to its UK headcount over the past two years. It had 337 people in London at the end of 2016, according to its latest accounts, down from 426 in 2015 – or a reduction of 21% on the previous year.

BlueCrest rebranded itself as a family office, managing the wealth of its partners rather than clients, in late 2015, but has continued with its tendency to hire top traders from investment banks. They don’t always work out. As CFO Andrew Dodd has said in the past: “If we don’t like a trader’s risk, then departures can be quite abrupt.”

Over the course of this year, departures have continued. Christian Dalban, the former head of equities trading at Nomura, who joined Bluecrest in 2013 to head up equities trading, left in June, while Derek Flynn, its EMEA head of equity execution, left shortly after in July. Eric Childs, a portfolio manager within BlueCrest’s rates and FX team in New York, left to head up U.S. dollar swaps trading at Barclays in August.

Nonetheless, despite the recent cuts it has continued to bring in some big names. Guillaume Rabate, the 28-year-old U.S. dollar interest rates trader at Morgan Stanley named in the Forbes’ 30 under 30 in finance list in 2016, joined as a portfolio manager last month. Scott Cowling, head of market structure and electronic trading at BlackRock, joined in September. Philippe Haik, a senior short-term interest rate (STIRT) trader at Nomura, also joined BlueCrest as a partner in late September.

Follow @paultclarke

Have a tip, story or comment? Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

““

Do continental European bankers in London really want to work in the “City,” or were they only ever in London for lack of alternatives? As the opportunity to work back home becomes available, London’s appeal is fast diminishing.

Goldman Sachs said last week that it plans to increase the number of investment bankers in its Milan office by 400% – from 20 to over 100 people. At the same time, there are reportedly plans afoot to move up to 40 ‘senior bankers’ out of Goldman Sachs’ London office and into Milan, Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid and Stockholm.

For Goldman Sachs, this represents a move away from the low cost “hub and spoke” model that evolved since the mid-2000s. For individual bankers at the firm, it represents a rare chance to move back home; many are understandably eager to make the most of it.

“You’re going to see a lot of people moving to Milan between February 2018 (post-bonuses) and September 2018 (when schools start),” says one Italian managing director. “Then, there will be another wave in the first quarter of 2019, depending upon how Brexit negotiations go.”

It’s still early days for Goldman’s plans, but first movers are expected to be managing directors and vice presidents. If junior bankers move out of London at all, they will do so later – unless of course the firm simply hires in local graduates, potentially rendering some of its existing French, German, Spanish or Italian analysts and associates in London surplus to requirement. Italian juniors at Goldman Sachs in London are already voicing disappointment: “A good portion of us would like to move home,” says one Italian IBD analyst at the firm.

In the 1990s U.S. banks like Goldman had staff dispersed across Europe. This changed under the hub and spoke model introduced after the lean years at the start of the 2000s, since which time headcount in overseas offices has been kept to a bare minimum. Goldman’s Paris office, for example, is currently understood to contain no more than 30 investment bankers. The small Paris team can originate and execute deals alone if necessary, but it often has help from pan-European sector teams in London.

European offices are due to be staffed-up under Goldman’s plan to chase mid-market deals using “local bankers for local clients.” Last month’s comments by co-head of investment banking John Waldron, imply that large deals will still be originated and executed in London in future, but that contact with ‘small firms’ (with market caps of between $1bn and $5bn) will be pushed to local offices.

Senior European bankers in London seem eager to seize the opportunity this presents to go home. “People want to move to Milan to make the most of the non-dom tax breaks that were introduced by the Italian government earlier this year,” says the Italian MD. These exempt people from living in Italy for more than half of each year from paying income tax on overseas income in return for a single payment of €100k. The implication is that Goldman’s senior Milanese bankers will be paid offshore. Some say they will keep their families in London and work in Italy part time.

Not all Italian finance professionals are convinced of the merits of moving home, however. One Italian private equity professional who’s setting up a new fund in London said the tax allowances will only really apply to retired non-doms and that the Italian government’s tax promises aren’t to be trusted anyway: “In Italy, governments will say these things and then go back on them and demand money in restitution. It’s very difficult to plan long term.” Until now, he says this wasn’t the case in London: “The UK was a pragmatic and stable country.” However, he notes that this historic pragmatism is being replaced by ideological extremes: “This is the real fear for Italians working in London now.”

““

A senior Deutsche Bank salesman, who has spent the past nine years in roles across Hong Kong and London, has just signed up to BNY Mellon in a big role straddling Europe and Asia.

Harvey Twomey, who was latterly global head of sales for Deutsche’s listed derivatives and markets clearing business in London, has just joined BNY Mellon as head of sales for its markets business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa as well as Asia-Pacific.

Twomey relocated to London in 2014 from Hong Kong, where he was head of prime finance distribution for Asia-Pacific and was replaced by Marlon Sanchez. We understand that he left Deutsche Bank during the summer.

Twomey is the latest senior sales professional to leave Deutsche in recent months. Marcelo Pizzimbono, the former head of prime broking in the U.S, returned to Goldman Sachs in a senior equity sales role in October. Meanwhile, Ken Reich, the head of emerging market fixed income sales at the bank, left last week after just three months in the role, according to Financial News.

However, Twomey has been replaced by Nigel McGee, the former head of sales for listed derivatives and markets clearing for EMEA. He took the global role in November.

Follow @paultclarke

Have a tip, story or comment? Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

““

Cubist Systematic Strategies, the computer-driven trading business of Steve Cohen’s Point72 family office is hiring slowwwwly. In the past year, headcount has risen by around 12% to over 125 people, including – most recently – a former top strategist from Goldman Sachs.

Yonatan Kaspi joined Cubist’s New York office this month according to his LinkedIn profile. The timing is curious given he could have hung on for another 45 days (or so) and picked up his 2017 GS bonus, but seemingly this wasn’t a priority (and maybe Cubist bought him out).

Kaspi was a vice president (VP) in Goldman’s strats team. While juniors in the investment bank division can expect to work at Goldman for around five years before making VP, Kaspi was promoted after just fourteen months, following his graduation with a PhD in information theory from the University of California, San Diego. As a specialist in ‘feedback information theory,’ Kaspi would have been valuable to Goldman as it seeks to boost its algorithmic trading business.

Unfortunately for Goldman, Kaspi is unlikely to be the last of its quants that Cohen has his eye on. Previous Cubist hires include Steve Jeneste, a former managing director in Goldman’s quantitative investment strategies group, who joined last year, and Kevin Lu, a former Goldman quant strategist who joined from AQR Capital Management in June.

While hiring quants for Cubist, Point72 has also been busy proclaiming its interest in non-finance, non-quant students. “There might be a rogue nerd studying computer science, or music, history or geography students who have a passion for investing,” Jaimi Goodfriend, head of Point72’s training Academy, told us last month.Similarly, Jonathan Jones, head of investment talent development at Point72, recently took to Quora to explain that it’s perfectly possible to move into finance if you’ve studied medicine or classics.

““

If you’re a student who’s thinking of working in a markets job in an investment bank, you can be forgiven for feeling confused about your options. Firstly, do you want to work in equities or fixed income sales and trading? Secondly, how do all the different products (managed by different “desks”) fit together?

Last week’s global markets investor day presentation from Credit Suisse went some way to answering the latter question. While it didn’t solve the equities/fixed income dilemma, the charts below provide a helpful beginner’s guide to the various equities and credit products on offer, and how they’re grouped into different business areas. If you’re a student looking for a quick primer on all the different trading desks, they should be invaluable.

The Credit Suisse guide to equities trading jobs

The chart below shows Credit Suisse’s segmentation of business areas (and therefore jobs) in its equities business.

If you work in cash equities at Credit Suisse, you could work in: origination and capital markets (ie. equity capital markets, raising money for clients looking to issue new stock), in “high touch trading” (advising large and important clients on particular trades), in program trading (trading whole baskets of stock as so-called “block trades”), or in electronic trading (using electronic systems to execute trades automatically).

If you work in “prime”, providing special financing and trading services to hedge funds, you could find yourself working in: margin financing and securities lending (providing financing to hedge funds buying securities or lending securities to hedge funds, often so that they can place short trades), constructing index products, or clearing and executing trades.

If you work in research, you could be an equity researcher who covers single stocks (ie. individual companies), someone who suggests equities investment strategies across whole markets and industries, or you could work on Credit Suisse’s bespoke Holt stock database.

Similarly, you could originate or trade convertible bonds, or you could work on flow equity derivatives that are traded on exchanges, or more complex equity derivatives that are structured for particular corporate or ultra high net worth (UHNW) clients.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. Equities sales and trading

The Credit Suisse guide to credit trading jobs

While the wheel above describes Credit Suisse’s categorization of equities trading jobs, the wheel below shows the Swiss bank’s categorization of its credit trading roles.

On the left are all jobs relating to Credit Suisse’s huge securitized products division – including finding assets to finance, helping clients finance growth through securitization, trading standardized securitized products issued by U.S. government agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or trading private label securitized products issued by non-government clients.

On the right are all the jobs relating to all the other areas of credit trading. There’s investment grade origination (helping highly solvent and established clients to issue tradable debt products) and investment grade sales and trading (selling and trading these products on secondary markets). There’s also leveraged finance origination (helping less established and less solvent firms to raise capital and issue tradable debt products) and then leveraged finance sales and trading. And then there’s so-called “client financing,” for all other forms of debt-focused capital solutions…

Credit Suisse’s charts aren’t all encompassing – they don’t cover the FX and commodities trading arms of other banks’ fixed income businesses, but they offer a quick summary of how trading desks fit together. If you’re applying for sales and trading jobs in investment banks, or attending an internship at an investment bank, you might want to familiarize yourself with the categories before you start. That way you will at least know what’s on offer.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. Credit sales and trading

““

An experienced corporate sales professional has left Societe Generale in Singapore for Goldman Sachs, in a rare year-end senior hire. Desmond Hu joined Goldman’s corporate sales team as an executive director last month, according to his online profile.

He was poached by Goldman after just 15 months at SocGen, where he focused on Southeast Asia corporate sales, including FX and interest rates derivatives, and investments and money markets.

“The timing is slightly surprising. Goldman doesn’t make many front-office hires at ED level or above in Singapore – which is mainly a back-office base for the bank – let alone at this time of year when bonuses are around the corner and recruitment in sales generally dies down,” says a Singapore-based recruiter.

“But FX is a strength for Singapore as a financial centre, so people with FX backgrounds are generally in demand at banks here,” he adds.

Hu worked for Citi in Singapore between 2011 and 2014 and drove FX revenue from a portfolio of large corporates and local SMEs, according to his public profile.

The Columbia University graduate then moved to OCBC and spent two and a half years as a treasury advisor for corporates. He led the FX derivatives business within his team, providing execution, risk management and hedging advisory services.

“Moves between local and global banks in Singapore are becoming a more common occurrence on front-office CVs,” adds the recruiter.

Image credit: lolostock, Getty

Follow @simonmortlock

The job market in Asian banking has been tight this year, with more layoffs in the front-office and more offshoring in the back-office. As a result, recruiters in Singapore and Hong Kong have noticed an uptick in candidates attempting career changes into more stable functions.

If you’re thinking of making a major job move yourself, these are the sectors where you’re most likely to succeed.

1. Tech bankers into corporate development in Chinese tech firms

Chinese technology firms are increasingly building large in-house corporate development teams and are recruiting investment bankers to help them with takeovers and listings. “In 2016 I’m seeing more and more Chinese tech corporates hiring bankers,” says Hubert Tam, managing partner at search firm Sirius Partners in Hong Kong. Last month, for example, HSBC’s head of APAC technology investment banking, Jeff Chen, joined Chinese online healthcare firm WeDoctor as its chief strategy officer. Chinese tech companies want to grow overseas and are interested in bankers who have cross-border deal expertise.

2. Sell-side operations to buy-side operations

With large banks still offshoring back-office roles away from Singapore and Hong Kong, some operations people are seeking sanctuary in the buy-side. “We had a candidate who moved from an investment bank to an investment management firm, focusing on derivatives operations,” says Orelia Chan, an associate director at Pure Search in Singapore. “The employer initially preferred someone from the buy-side, but they realised that some operations skills are transferable, so they became open to banking candidates with the right product knowledge, managerial experience and personality fit.”

3. Commodities salespeople into commodities companies

Commodities salespeople at banks are moving to in-house roles at commodities companies in Singapore, says Angela Kuek, director of search firm Meyer Consulting Group. This career change combines both push factors away from banking (redundancies at FICC teams at global banks) and pull factors into the corporate sector (commodities firms continue to expand in Singapore, the industry’s Asian hub). “They usually go to an ex-client and look after the financing structures for the company, liaising with banks on its behalf,” says Kuek.

4. Everything into audit

“I’ve recently seen more people from a non-audit background moving into the audit function in Asia,” says Richard Fennelly, a director a recruiters Hartwell Buck in Hong Kong. “The main examples have been from operations, trading, technology and risk. The reason banks hire them – in addition to their potential for developing strong audit skills – is because of their subject-matter expertise in the areas they will be auditing. In this market, where it’s important to identify the next big control gap, someone with first-hand knowledge of their space potentially has a lot to offer in audit.”

5. Audit into product compliance

Audit can itself be a platform for a career change into compliance. “It’s usually challenging to break into compliance once you’re at AVP level and above,” says Fennelly. “But in recent months I’ve seen a few surprising instances, particularly auditors – who were strong in either equities or fixed income – moving into product-compliance advisory. Banks hire them for their product knowledge, communication skills and previous interactions with the business.”

6. Bulge bracket MDs to emerging markets consultants

Global investment banks in Hong Kong and Singapore have been trimming their senior ranks over the past year. “As a result, a number of displaced directors and MDs have taken consultancy and training contracts at small local banks in developing markets like Indonesia, Myanmar and Vietnam,” says Pan Zaixian, general manager of Singapore search firm Kerry Consulting. “Their assignments include developing business strategies, compliance frameworks and trading platforms. It takes some adjustment to move from head-honcho positions at IBs – where they enjoyed great infrastructure support – to now doing their own PowerPoints and booking their own flights.”

Follow @simonmortlock

Image credit: baona, Getty

Do: Squeeze every drop out of every meeting

Don’t: Beat around the bush

Do: Be bold, yet targeted

Don’t: Try to go to every industry conference under the sun

Do: Embrace social media

Don’t: Overestimate their power

Do: Tap into your alumni network

Don’t: Be afraid to be old-school

Do: Show your industry knowledge

Don’t: Cold call

Do: Your homework

Don’t: Embellish your connections

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Meanwhile:

Related articles:

Related articles:

The most burned out bankers are in New York. The least are in Paris

The most brutal jobs are in the “support functions.” The least are (maybe) in technology

Vice presidents have the easiest time, but are bullied. Analysts and managing directors have the worst, but (analysts) feel nurtured

Related articles:

1. Learn how to influence

2. Don’t sharpen your shoulders

3. Develop a track record

4. Focus on relationships, not just skills

5. Seize opportunities when they present themselves

6. Always have one eye on the long-game

7. Understand your motivations

8. Seize on any leadership training

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Meanwhile:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

Related articles:

The Credit Suisse guide to equities trading jobs

The Credit Suisse guide to credit trading jobs

Related articles:

Related articles:

1. Tech bankers into corporate development in Chinese tech firms

2. Sell-side operations to buy-side operations

3. Commodities salespeople into commodities companies

4. Everything into audit

5. Audit into product compliance

6. Bulge bracket MDs to emerging markets consultants

Related articles: