If you’re embarking on an MBA and want to impress top employers, is it really worth the investment? And, if you’re one of the (diminishing number) of business school graduates with an eye on working in the financial sector, will the top-ranked universities impress a potential employer? The answer, it seems, lies principally in where in the world you decide to study.

Two large MBA employment reports have landed today – one from GMAC and another from research firm QS. Both suggest one thing – if you want to enhance your employment prospects with an MBA, it’s probably worth studying at a US business school.

Firstly, GMAC, which suggests that 87% of US MBAs on a two-year programme, 83% completing their degrees over one year and 98% of those studying part-time were in employment within three months of graduation. Aside from India – where 97% of MBAs received job offers, but median pay was just $25.2k – the US is where you are most likely to find employment soon after completing your MBA this year.

The US is also where you will earn the most – median salaries for one and two-year MBAs were $84k and $94.5k respectively for the class of 2014. This compares with $75.9k in Europe, $75.6k in Canada and $36k in Asia-Pacific.

However, assuming you have ambitions to work in finance, Asia-Pacific schools are your best bet. 26% of graduates chose to work in accounting or finance, compared to 22% in Canada and 16% in the US, says GMAC. In Europe, the largest proportion – 32% – went into consulting and finance didn’t feature among the preferred occupations.

We’ve pulled out the tables from the QS rankings below, by region. Again, they suggest that US schools are more respected among employers – the top five schools get close to a perfect 100 ‘employer score’ and those in the top ten are not far off this. In Europe, only the top two – London Business School and INSEAD – received the same score and this drops swiftly after the top ten. Few schools in Asia (aside from the top-ranked INSEAD) command the same level of respect.

It seems that Goldman Sachs may have found another way to cut the workload for its most junior staff. Parts of the pitch books that are the bane of junior bankers’ lives are being repurposed and used again.

The revelation is included in a profile on Goldman’s new technology recruiting website. There, Jackie, co-manager of the banking desktop group at Goldman’s New York office, says she worked on a project to, ‘encourage the reuse of pitch book material, for greater efficiencies.’

For anyone unfamiliar with the term, pitch books are the paper-based presentations junior bankers put together to help banks win corporate finance business. Containing everything from company valuations to competitor analysis and suggestions of acquisition targets, they absorb analysts’ days (and nights). Across the industry, it hasn’t been uncommon for senior bankers to request multiple urgent changes to pitch books at 6pm one night in time for the next morning, with the result that analysts get no sleep.

The reuse of pitch book material at Goldman follows the introduction of ‘protected weekends’ in which Goldman’s analysts are compelled to leave the office at 9pm on Friday and not to return until 9am on Sunday (still the weekend, but anyway).

Is reusing pitch books the new thing Jackie’s profile suggests it is? Goldman Sachs didn’t respond to a request for comment. But one ex-Goldman associate says it’s common practice and has been going on for years. “There are always things that can be re-purposed – if you work on the consumer team in the UK, you can re-use the slide covering the consumer market. You can also re-use the data you’ve got for multiples and company valuations.”

Follow @MadameButcher

As part of our ongoing series scrutinizing the sorts of people who achieve the highly sought-after positions on banks’ graduate programmes, we’ve looked at Deutsche Bank’s analyst class for 2014.

The list below represents a random sample of Deutsche’s most recent analyst recruits in London. Want to work for the German bank? It will help if you can emulate some of the qualities demonstrated by the people below. In particular, it seems you’ll need plenty of internships…

1. Rudi Facchini

Rudi’s an analyst in Deutche’s IBD business in London.  He has an MSc in Finance from the Stockholm School of Economics, a Masters in International Management from St.Gallen University & Stockholm School of Economics, and a BSc in Economics and Management from the University of Bolzano. He scored 10 out of 10 for his bachelor’s thesis (on “The simulation of the flow of defaults in a CDO in response to market ups and downs”) and speaks German, English and Italian fluently.

Before joining Deutsche Bank full time, he spent three months as an intern at M&A boutique Leonardo & Co. in Frankfurt and six months as an analyst at Mediobanca in Milan. Unusually, he wasn’t an intern at Deutsche Bank.

2. Jonathon Smith

Jonathon’s an analyst in Deutsche Bank’s London markets business. He joined the bank in July 2014 after completing an internship the previous summer. He has a 1^st class BSc in Accounting in Finance from the London School of Economics (LSE) and an MSc in Finance, also from the LSE (graded at distinction). He won a prize for the best overall performance on the LSE’s MSc course and came joint top in the final year of his BSc.

3. Wasif Syed

Wasif’s not at Deutsche Bank yet, but is part of the incoming analyst class for 2015. He too studies at the LSE.  He has five A*s at A level (Maths, Further Maths, Physics, Economics, Chemistry) and eight GCSEs at A* to A.

4. Biana Giller

Biana works in Deutsche Bank’s IBD (investment banking division) business. She has a first class degree in economics and finance from the London School of Economics and a Masters of Science and Strategic Management form HEC. She completed numerous internships before joining Deutsche, including six months at BNP Paribas, five months at Barclays, and two months at Aton, an investment bank in Moscow. For added colour, Biana has spent three years ballroom dancing at a ‘national level’.

5. Giri Kesavan

Giri works in group technology and operations for Deutsche’s asset and wealth management business in London. A graduate of Imperial College London (First Class Honours, Electrical and Electronic Engineering), he has five A*s at A level and nine A*s and one A at GCSE. Before joining Deutsche full time, he completed a six month industrial placement with the bank as well as a three month summer internship. He was also a spring intern at Goldman Sachs. Giri also spent a year and a half as president of the Imperial College Finance Society and is an active fundraiser and volunteer (with his own website focused on fund raising).  For his final year masters project at Imperial, Giri completed an esoteric project on the ‘detection of seismic activity on Mars using a diamagnetic sensor with levitating pyrolytic graphite.’

6. Lawrence Xu

Like Wasif, Xu hasn’t arrived at Deutsche yet. However, he’s joining in 2015. An economics student at Cambridge University, Xu has scored first class grades in the exams he’s taken so far. Last summer he spent three months as an intern at Credit Suisse. The summer before, he spent at UBS. He’s also spent one month respectively as an intern at Standard Chartered and at HSBC. He’s received a heap of academic prizes for excellence at Cambridge, and was the regional finals winner in the Bank of England’s Target 2.0 competition.  He also came 12th in the UK’s maths olympiad. And he has a black belt in karate….

Follow @MadameButcher

After a year in which banks cut headcount by tens of thousands in some situations, Wall Street has found more balance in 2014. Banks have continued to cut in areas like fixed income and equities trading, but have selectively added in M&A and in the back office. They’ve also had to backfill more positions as a growing number of people are leaving the industry, recruiters tell us.

It pays to be young

Looking forward to 2015, banks will continue to hire up on middle and back office staffers while filling most front office roles with younger, cheaper talent.

Banks like Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Bank of America have all announced plans to increase the size of analyst classes along with base pay as recruiting has become more of a challenge. But perhaps the best place to be if you are a banker isn’t necessarily a business unit. It’s a level of experience.

“There’s a real dearth of talent at the associate level,” said Ross Batlic, managing director of Wall Street search firm Mercury Partners. This is a particular problem on the sell-side, as buy-side firms have been picking off investment bankers with two to four years of experience, he said.

“That analytical modeling and fundamental knowledge is hard to teach,” he said. “Top-tier mid-level bankers are seeing a plethora of opportunities,” both on the buy-side and from sell-side firms that need to re-fill seats.

M&A heating up

Advisory may be the hottest area on the sell-side, Baltic said. After a blistering first half, activity slowed during the third quarter but has since picked back up. There were 98 M&A deals announced on Monday, including two that accounted for $100 billion and $316 million in fees. TMT (technology, media and telecommunications) is said to be a particularly hot area within M&A.

Big banks are hiring, but so are boutiques like Moelis, Greenhill and Paul Taubman’s new firm that he is merging with Blackstone’s M&A unit. Six boutique advisory firms climbed into the top 20 of M&A league tables through the first three quarters. Four of them – Centerview Partners, PJT Capital, Evercore Partners and Perella Weinberg – own greater market share than UBS.

The rest of front office hiring on the senior level in the US will be through a piecemeal approach with more backfills than newly created positions. With new regulations still pouring in, banks are remaining careful about expenses.

“My investment banking clients are being very cautious about 2015 and several critical ongoing projects do not have funding past January 1,” said Peter Laughter, CEO of Wall Street Services. “I suspect that that trepidation is a sign of anxiety for next year and I expect a significant amount of volatility with lots of fits and starts in the hiring arena.”

Middle office the true growth area

With new regulations and fresh scandals abound, the middle and back office will see much more hiring than revenue generating units.

Risk management, audit and compliance were hot in 2014 and will continue to be in the coming year, said Anne Crowley, managing director at Jay Gaines and Company. However, Laughter thinks the compliance hiring binge will “level off” in 2015. “The manic pace of corrective hiring to cover for gaping holes in process is just not sustainable.”

Indeed, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Citi and BNP have all announced major compliance hiring plans for the US and abroad, but the hiring mania may slow a bit in 2015. “Banks are figuring out how to plug the holes with better processes and outsourcing,” Laughter said.

Other key areas for hiring include liquidity risk management, including funding and interest rate risk management, Crowley said.

Information security

Highlighted by this summer’s J.P. Morgan breach, cybersecurity has become a huge priority – the new compliance if you will. Banks are desperate for information security specialists, especially at the senior level.

A recent report found that banks will spend roughly $2 billion on information security over the next two years alone. Some of that will be with consulting firms, but the efforts will include in-house hiring as well.

Trade finance professionals in Asia already enjoy one of the most buoyant job markets in the region. As we reported in September, Mizuho is staffing up in the function as it launches a new transaction-banking unit in Singapore. DBS and UOB are also among the most aggressive recruiters in trade finance in the city state, while Australian and Middle Eastern banks were expanding in Singapore earlier this year.

Now BMO Capital Markets, the investment and corporate banking arm of Bank of Montreal Financial Group, is adding trade finance booking capabilities in Hong Kong, reports Reuters. BMO wants to serve North American clients with offshore renminbi accounts and the move follows currency agreements between China and Canada.

Wholesale transaction-banking revenues in Asia Pacific are expected increase to $139 billion by 2022, from $46 billion in 2012, according to a September report by the Boston Consulting Group. Banks in Asia, predicable enough, are finding it tough to source the talent they need. “With high demand…but a limited supply of good candidates, hiring managers are open to considering candidates from other functions of banking,” a Singapore recruiter told us previously. “Corporate-banking, credit, risk or even client-services professionals can be a good fit. For cash side of the business, the logical flow would be from IT, projects liquidity or risk.”

Meanwhile:

Reasons not to work for a mid-tier Chinese bank. (Business Times)

Stock Connect failing to meet trading expectations. (WSJ)

World Bank says Hong Kong protests haven’t impacted city’s business climate. (South China Morning Post)

ANZ suspends seven traders in Australian rate-rigging case. (Financial Times)

Singapore leads APAC in corporate governance requirements. (Straits Times)

China’s internet censors turn attention to HSBC websites. (The Guardian)

Lloyd’s of London plans India branch. (Economic Times)

Why bankers still love to box. (Straits Times)

Follow @simonmortlock

Private banks in Hong Kong are in an expansionist mood – but because their growth is fuelled by China, they are finding it hard to source enough staff with mainland client networks. Meanwhile, relocating relationship managers (RMs) from Asia’s other private banking hub, Singapore, to plug gaps isn’t always an easy option because China-coverage bankers based there are typically reluctant to move to Hong Kong.

Financial markets liberalisation in China and the growth of private wealth in the country are driving demand for private bankers in Hong Kong, a city where rich Chinese typically park a proportion of their assets.

“Most private banks are expanding and their emphasis is definitely on mainland clients. For example, if a bank wanted to hire 100 Hong Kong-based RMs, roughly 60 would cover the mainland and the rest would cover Taiwan or Hong Kong itself,” adds Rahul Sen, a former private banker and director at search firm Sheffield Haworth.

The launch of Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect on Monday, which directly links share trading in the two cities, is expected to encourage even more Chinese nationals to use Hong Kong as a platform to invest internationally. Meanwhile, the amount of high-net-worth people (those with more than US$1 million to invest) in mainland China is on the rise – it increased by 17.8% between 2012 and 2013 to 758,000, according to the World Wealth Report 2014 by Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management. The wealth of these Chinese millionaires shot up 20.5% to reach US$3.8 trillion during the same period.

“Demand for relationship managers is strong in Hong Kong as private banks are not only going after a bigger wallet share of existing Chinese wealth, they are also targeting newly created wealth,” adds Clarence Law, a business advisor in private banking.

BNY Mellon, which last month launched a wealth management unit in Hong Kong, is the newest entrant to the city’s private banking scene. Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank, an established player in Hong Kong, is moving Ravi Raju, its managing director and regional head of asset and wealth management in Asia Pacific, from Singapore to Hong Kong in a bid to capitalise on growth in the Chinese market.

However, reports earlier this week that Deutsche Bank is also relocating its Asian wealth headquarters to Hong Kong from Singapore are unfounded. “There is no intention of moving headquarters to Hong Kong. Both Singapore and Hong Kong are important to Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management,” a spokesperson for the German firm told us.

Talent shortages in Hong Kong private banking

The stock of mainland-coverage private bankers in Hong Kong is limited and most career moves involve “a talent merry-go-round among banks”, says Sen from Sheffield Haworth. Private banks have been forced to hire corporate bankers and investment bankers with Chinese client networks to help tackle skills shortages. “Occasionally they move onshore mainland private bankers to Hong Kong if they have strong enough relationships and can speak good English – but the onshore industry is immature and the products are limited, so it’s not a common move,” says Sen.

Sourcing talent from Singapore generally isn’t a solution either – primarily because many private bankers there cover Southeast Asian (or even Indian and European) clients. “Given this, the two cities largely complement each other rather than compete with each other for high-net-worth clients and bankers,” says Law.

While most private banks in Singapore do also employ mainland-coverage bankers, most of them are reluctant to relocate – unless, like Deutsche’s Raju, they are in senior-management rather than client-based roles. “Bankers have Chinese clients who have deliberately chosen to base part of their wealth in politically-stable Singapore – sometimes out of a growing concern that China may meddle in Hong Kong’s private banking industry. They risk losing clients if they move to Hong Kong,” explains Sen.

He adds: “Older private bankers are particularly reluctant to move from Singapore to Hong Kong as it’s generally easier to raise a family in Singapore. In fact, there are more moves the other way – Hong Kong-based RMs going to Singapore – and these are mainly for family and lifestyle reasons.”

Follow @simonmortlock

You might not think that an investment banking analyst has much to offer as a mentor, but to those struggling to make it into the industry, their advice on how to navigate the graduate recruitment process could be invaluable. The problem is that few banks are likely to put their juniors forward as mentors for wannabe bankers and most students have to rely on resources outside of the industry for guidance.

Rajdeep Dosanjh, head of global market listed derivatives client services IT at Deutsche Bank, and Sandip Sekhon, who has a background in asset management, believe they have the answer – get mentors to offer their help to anyone who asks online. They’ve launched Wiseround, an online service that matches willing mentors to people looking for advice on their financial services careers – this can be students looking to break in, mid-rankers struggling to advance their career or those hoping to switch out of the industry and do something new.

This is a kind of social media – or online dating – method for meeting people who could give you a helping hand with your career. Mentors range from analysts who have just landed their first job to seasoned directors, across a wide range of financial services roles. Most people volunteering their services are not doing it out of the goodness of their heart – they usually charge a fee, but Dosanjh says that while some use it to supplement their income, many mentors donate this to charity.

“This is a cost-effective method of training,” he says. “A few of hours with a specialist career mentor would incur a cost, but compared to courses costing thousands of pounds, the benefits protégés gain are substantial: an actual mentor from the banking or finance industry has a real insight into what it takes to be successful, providing years of experience and hard to come by knowledge.”

Most investment banks and financial services organisations already have in-house mentoring schemes, matching senior staff to juniors to help them tackle tough career questions. In theory, there’s little need for an external provider, but Dosanjh insists there’s a gap in the market.

“Occasionally protégés are not comfortable in expressing sensitive concerns in-house, and there are there are some firms and universities where mentoring is not available,” he says. “Furthermore, if you’re not in the industry already, it can be difficult to get a suitable mentor to help your career.”

Getting tips from seasoned investment bankers – who appear only too willing to dole out advice to students – is great for retrospective guidance, but can often be out of date for those at an entry level. Fresh analysts, who have just overcome the hurdles themselves to get their first job, can offer more practical tips.

“We have mentors who have just landed their first job after graduating,” says Dosanjh. “Although far less experienced, they provide a valuable insight to protégés on how to get on the banking and finance career ladder, having just experienced it themselves.”

WiseRound is still in its relative infancy and currently has around 100 mentors and proteges, although Dosanjh insists that “more are joining every day”.

Citi has been making redundancies. Reuters reported yesterday that the U.S. bank cut ’35 traders’ from is London business. Only one was named, and that was Valentin Marinov, head of G10 currency strategy, at the U.S. bank, suggesting the beleaguered FX division may have been hardest hit.

In fact, the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA’s) register suggests that Citi’s recent exits have been more widespread. And ‘traders’ haven’t been the only losers. Salespeople have been eradicated too.

Since October, the FCA Register suggests the following individuals have left Citi in London. Some will have left of their own volition. Some will not have. They are: Evangelos Fanis, an options trader who’d been with the bank since 2011; Benoit Fulton, an FX salesman who joined in 2007; Simone Hoiss, a cross-asset derivatives saleswoman who joined in 2010; Viktor Jensen a delta one trader (and racing driver) who started out as a sales assistant in 2010; Sally-Anne Martin, a director in warrant trading in Citi’s equity derivatives group, who’d been with the bank since 1998; Ana Rolim, a fixed income saleswoman who joined the bank from Goldman Sachs in 2010; Wayne Sepala, a rates trader who joined Citi 16 years ago, Joanna Smit; a rates saleswoman who joined in 2006; and Saurabh Tandon, a ‘trader’, who joined in 2006.

The 35 most recent redundancies at Citi don’t seem to have hit the FCA Register yet, and Citi was unable to immediately respond to a request for information on its layoffs. However, it looks like the clear-out in Citi’s markets business has been going on for a while. Fixed income professionals have most to fear. And salespeople and traders look equally vulnerable.

Follow @MadameButcher

In a reassuring sign that public pronouncements from investment banks that they’re retreating from certain business lines aren’t permanent fixtures, Morgan Stanley has been hiring for commodities again.

The US bank has just hired Nigel Felgate as managing director and head of power and gas trading for Europe, according to sources close to the situation. Morgan Stanley confirmed the appointment.

Felgate joins from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he was head of emissions trading in London. He has been a managing director at the bank since May 2011 and was previously an executive director in JPMorgan’s commodities trading team for nearly five years.

Last year, like a number of investment banks, Morgan Stanley said that it was pulling back from certain areas of commodities. It shed 35 jobs, or around 10% of headcount in the division, and exited some Eastern European markets for power and gas, as well as shutting down its agricultural products division.

In 2014, though, this policy was reversed and it was reportedly hiring around 12 traders and sales staff for commodities. However, this was in the US and Felgate’s recruitment shows a new-found willingness to hire in Europe.

It does, however, follow the exit of Ben Ansellem, who was previously head of trading for power, gas and coal for Asia and Europe at Morgan Stanley, but left for hedge fund Citadel in September.

BAML, meanwhile, bit the bullet and closed its European gas and power trading desk in Europe at the beginning of this year, following a prolonged period of scaling back.

Felgate started his trading career as head of forward trading at British Energy in 2002, and moved to JPMorgan in July 2006.

He has a PhD from the University of Southampton and his thesis was on “blue light generation from all-solid state Nd:YAG lasers”.

 Follow @paultclarke

The December sitting for the CFA Level I exams is fast approaching. As we noted last week, many will fail. In most years, the December pass rate is way below the June pass rate – sometimes significantly so (e.g. in December 2010, it was just 36%). So what should you be doing now if you want to pass in a few weeks’ time? And on a separate note, is it worth persisting on until Level III?

We put these questions on CFA exams, and more, to Stephen Horan, PhD and co-lead of education at the CFA Institute. This is what Stephen said.

1. If you want to pass CFA Level I in December, you need to practice, practice and practice

“At this late stage, my advice is to make sure people are focusing on practice problems and mock exam. We find that candidates who are able to reserve time for this at the end tend to be more successful.

“The other big driver of success (although it’s difficult to change at this stage) is study time. Candidates who put in a lot more than 300 hours of study are more likely to succeed. Some people study a lot more than 300 hours, some study a lot less – the standard deviation in study time for the exams is 137 hours.”

2. Keep going and don’t fear failure

“It’s rare that a candidate goes through and passes all three exams in one sitting each. Most candidates sit for one exam more than once, and folks typically take four years to complete the CFA program. However, fewer than one in five of those who start the program will complete it.”

3. You have a greater chance of passing Level III when you have more experience

[In response to a question on why the pass rate for Level III has fallen in the past decade.] “We find that professional experience plays more of a role in Level III success than in Level I success. Today, the proportion of students entering the program is greater than it’s ever been in the past. Candidates tend to be younger. The level three pass rate is higher among candidates with higher experience.”

4. The hardest parts of Level III are being updated soon

“The hardest parts of the Level III exam tend to be derivatives and risk management. Every year we update 20% of the curriculum and we’re in the tail end of a process to update those two elements in 2014.”

5. 14,500 people passed CFA Level III this year. This is what that signals to employers 

“Around 27,000 people sat CFA Level III this year [54% passed]. The aim of the program has always been the same: to look at what a professional with four years’ experience should know and accomplish.” Full CFA Charterholders therefore know and have accomplished what’s necessary in today’s investment market.

Follow @MadameButcher

Yet another bank in Asia is talking up its expansionist ambitions in Asia and how it intends to differentiate itself from the competition. In recent weeks the Asian bosses of Deutsche Bank’s and BNY Mellon’s wealth management units have been interviewed about their growth plans – now it’s the turn of Vincent Chui, Morgan Stanley’s head of Asia institutional equity distribution and private wealth management.

In an interview with Singapore’s Business Times, Chui outlined how Morgan Stanley was enthusiastically perusing its “strategic objective” of leveraging its investment bank to grow its private bank in Asia (and vice versa). “In Asia, there is a lot of synergy between private wealth and the institutional business, unlike in Europe,” he told the newspaper, adding that for investment banking to continue growing, it needed more access to Asia’s business owners.

But while the strategy may differentiate Morgan Stanley from boutique private banks, other large firms are trying to bridge the gap between private banking and investment banking, too. As we reported in September, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and UBS are also integrating their operations. “In Asia, most ultra-high-net-worth clients own large or medium-sized enterprises, so they often expect one private banker to service all their needs,” Shearer Liu, a private-wealth specialist from headhunters Pro Matrix, told us.

If you’re an investment banker looking to make the move into private banking, Morgan Stanley does still look a particularly good bet, however. Chui told the Business Times that the firm expected to boost its current 100-strong headcount of private bankers in Asia by 15% to 20% over the next 12 to 18 months, with Singapore growing at a “fast past” compared with Hong Kong, where the workforce is currently higher.

Meanwhile:

Singapore tumbles down the global talent rankings. (Business Times)

Singaporean seek early promotion, says survey. (Asia One)

Meet Hong Kong’s 88-year-old insurance salesman extraordinaire. (WSJ)

Asian Bankers Association conference calls for sustainable banking. (CPI Financial)

China looks to boost bank lending. (Bloomberg)

Standard Chartered opens its 100th branch in India. (Economic Times)

Axis bank offers early retirement to over-40s. (Economic Times)

Follow @simonmortlock

Pity the investment banking salesperson. Pity – especially the salesperson who deals with mid-sized low value clients. His, or her, job is not what it used to be.

Alongside London fixed income traders, Citi has been dumping London fixed income sales staff. Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that Citi has also laid off five bond salesmen who, ‘sold debt to mid-size investment firms.’ Four of them had been with the bank for ten years. Citi now wants to focus its voice salespeople on its larger clients, said Bloomberg.

Citi isn’t the only one putting its sales manpower behind larger and more lucrative clients. Deutsche Bank has set up a lower-touch sales and trading operation in Birmingham to service clients who trade less actively and in smaller volumes. Many of Barclays’ redundancies have also been in sales as the bank shifts to a more electronic trading model too.

The disappearance of sales roles isn’t new. Banking analysts have predicted their demise for years as electronic platforms take over. In the process, the standard fixed income or equities sales person has morphed into something very different, say headhunters.

“Now, it’s all about selling the platform,” says Russell Clarke, partner at London search firm Figtree. “It’s been going on in equities and FX for sometime, but in the past 18 months it’s become much more apparent in fixed income. If you work in sales, it’s about servicing your client and getting them to use the platform more.”

It’s wrong to demarcate today’s banking sales roles into voice sales [speaking to clients about trade ideas] or system sales [selling a bank's electronic trading capabilities], says Clarke. The best salespeople now do both. “It’s not just a question of selling the platform and leaving them to it – salespeople need to add value. They need to keep on marketing the bank’s platform, to talk about clients’ trading strategies and find out what kinds of research is needed. The sales job is to bring the client into bigger and more profitable trades.”

Overall, however, fewer salespeople are now needed, and their numbers are likely to drop further. This is especially the case in FX, where around 80% of trades are already executed electronically but banks are expected to increase the electronic proportion in the wake of the fixing scandal.  “You have two options if you’re in FX sales now,” says one FX headhunter, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Either you need to have very high-level discussions with your clients so that you’re really adding value – and that means covering the full macro spectrum. Or you need to do your damndest to specialize across e-commerce and electronic systems. The younger generation are already been forced into this.”

There are third and fourth options, but not everyone will want to take them. Some salespeople have gone to brokerage firms like BGC Partners and ICAP, but they are moving towards an electronic model too.  Simon Maughan, head of the product specialist group at OTAS technologies and a former banks researcher in London, says other bulge bracket salespeople have ended up at third tier firms which don’t have big electronic trading platforms and still focus on calling clients. “But the pay is quite a lot less in those places,” he adds.

Follow @MadameButcher

Compliance is among the most sought-after functions at banks in Singapore and Hong Kong right now. But compliance professionals typically don’t do enough to tailor their careers to take full advantage of the surge in demand for their services.

If you’re looking for a new compliance job in Asia or looking to clinch a promotion at your current company, here are some of the career trends that you need to know about.

1) Upskill internally

Training and development programmes are no longer the preserve of graduate trainees and front-office high-flyers. Banks in Asia desperately want to retain their compliance talent rather than engage in costly recruitment, so even if you’re mid-career in the middle-office, don’t hold back on your requests for more training. “More professionals in compliance in Asia are setting their future careers apart by increasing their regulatory and financial knowledge outside their current job description,” says Kate Reid, an associate director at recruiters Eximius Group in Hong Kong. “Some even take this to an academic level, like undertaking the daunting and expensive CFA.” The ACAMS and CFE qualifications are popular in Asia, too.

2) And also network internally

Building up your technical knowledge isn’t enough, however. “Compliance isn’t just about regulations anymore; it’s about your ability to influence stakeholders in the business. Interviewers, both internal and external, are looking for the ability to forge deepened relationships within the business. The greater your relationships, the more valuable you will be, even when Asian markets become less buoyant,” says Reid. “Use professional networks and mentoring programmes within your bank to create relationships and negotiate with your manager to gain exposure to projects outside your day-to-day-responsibilities, where the project group spans a wider internal network.”

3) Sell your soft skills

As we noted last week, soft skills are becoming more important to careers outside the front office in Asian banking – compliance is no exception. If you’re applying to a new employer, do all you can to highlight your communication skills on your CV and pepper your job-interview answers with references to how you’ve successfully influenced other departments at your bank. “More face-time is required between compliance and the business these days, hence banks want candidates with stronger communication and stakeholder-management skills,” says Orelia Chan, manager, financial services and compliance, at recruiters Robert Walters in Singapore.

4) Don’t be afraid to specialise

If you can do all of the following you will no doubt already be on the fast-tack to promotion, says Pathay Singh, managing director of recruiters The Compliance Grid in Hong Kong: interpret new regulations; codify these into policy; implement policy into changes in bank processes; prepare for annual regulatory inspections; and “face-off” to the regulator when the inspection is complete. But such is the talent shortage in Asian compliance that banks are becoming increasingly open to employing specialists. “It’s becoming more rare to find all the above skills in one person, so now there’s a new trend of building regulatory compliance teams who can each cover off parts of the process,” says Singh.

5) Try private banking

The compliance function is also becoming more specialised on a business-level, says Chan. While corporate banking and investment banking compliance specialists remain in demand, the largest percentage increase in new staff in Asia is within the burgeoning private banking sector. “US and European private banks are shifting their focus to Asian markets at the same time as regulators here are beefing up controls to comply with international standards,” Winnie Leung, an associate director at Pure Search in Hong Kong, told us previously.

6) Seek refuge as a revenue generator

We’re already highlighted how banks in Asia are recruiting externally from the likes of regulators, law firms, the Big Four and even commercial crime units of police forces. Next year, recruiters predict an increase in washed-out front-office staff moving within their current firms to plug talent gaps in compliance. “As the number of compliance professionals within banks in Asia shows no slowing in growth, the whole profession is getting a positive makeover and is becoming an option that more revenue generators will consider,” says Singh.

7) Change companies for more cash (while you can)

Internal moves may be the way to go if you’re moving from the front-office. But if you’re already in compliance and money is your main objective, a change of company will almost certainly bring a substantial boost to your pay. “To recruit strong candidates, hiring managers need to pay a premium to attract them. A good compliance candidate in Singapore will get an average increment of 20% to 30% on their current base salary,” explains Chan from Robert Walters. “But such salary rises are not sustainable in the long-run.”

8) Don’t fear offshoring

Junior back-office processing jobs may be haemorrhaging out of Hong Kong and Singapore into emerging Asian markets, but the increasing need for compliance professionals to interact with the business means their roles are largely staying onshore.

Follow @simonmortlock

Investment banks’ support functions are under pressure – as cost-cutting initiatives clash with swelling compliance expenditure and a need to pay bigger bonuses to top performers in the front office, it’s those in operational functions who are feeling the sharp end. Bonuses are shrinking, redundancies are being rolled out and the looming spectre of outsourcing means that alternative career options are harder to come by.

Banks are funnelling bonus allocations to revenue generators and, as they struggling to contain compliance and technology costs, are cutting in the back office. This means that bonuses are likely to be dreadful this year for back office staff, but this is the least of their worries – some firms have been cutting jobs and more redundancies are expected, while the prospect of outsourcing support functions to third-party providers is something that more banks are exploring.

“You’re unlikely to get any sort of bonus this year unless you’re in the top 10% of performers – even in the back office, banks want to keep their best people happy,” says one senior operations professional in Glasgow, who declined to be named. “Costs are being curtailed all over the place – no taking people out for lunch, a minimal Christmas party.”

Most nearshore operations functions in the UK and US are relatively mature now, with large firms employing thousands in locations as diverse as Glasgow, Manchester and Salt Lake City. This cuts salary and infrastructure costs dramatically, but also results in a shift in culture, says Mike Hartwell, managing director at back office recruiters Hartwell Buck.

“There’s not the old City culture in these places where a bonus is expected,” he says. “The only way people get significant pay rises is if they’re a flight risk and the company wants to keep them or if they’re below market rate. The broad brush approach to pay rises just doesn’t happen any more.”

In London, starting salaries for operations professionals are £35-40k, according to figures from recruiters Robert Walters. Meanwhile, similar jobs in nearshore locations like Manchester or Glasgow offer just £17k to juniors. Salt Lake City operations jobs pay 30% less than those in New York. This in itself can cause a problem for the banks who are struggling to fill the open roles they have in these locations.

Existing back office workers are not really in a position to walk if they’re not happy with their lot. For a start, recruiters suggest that large investment banks are trimming their operations headcount. The numbers are not huge – 150 people globally – but enough to keep everyone acutely aware that cost-cutting is on the agenda.

Then there’s the growing expectation that investment banks could start pooling back office functions to save costs, or outsource them to providers like Markit, Accenture or the Clearing Corporation – a route SocGen has already taken – as a further reminder that support functions are not central to banks’ business models.

“It sounds bleak, but people are just keeping their heads down and trying to keep their jobs currently. Banks have the upper hand and they know it. Morale is low,” says the senior operations professional in Glasgow.

How to keep your job as investment banking operations professional  

If you want to ensure that you remain employment in the near term, both Buck and the director in Glasgow have one key piece of advice – get close to regulatory projects. If general support functions are rapidly cooling, anything to do with risk management and compliance processes is red hot.

“Banks are still willing to move people internally to regulatory projects, but it does involve managing your internal network well and being seen as someone who can adapt and get things done,” says Hartwell. “They’re struggling to fill these roles.”

“It’s a contrasting scenario – our ops guys are struggling to hold on to their jobs, but those with risk and compliance experience are switching employers for more money only too frequently,” says the senior ops banker. “Banks have no real alternative but to pay more for their skills.”

You want to work in M&A or the broader IBD (investment banking division) of an investment bank. You want to help companies buy and sell their component parts (M&A).  Or you want to help companies raise money on the debt capital markets (DCM), or the equity capital markets (ECM). So, what does it take to get that job?

We’ve looked at our own database of millions of CVs and cross-referenced them with publicly available data on IBD juniors. We’ve also added anecdotal information about what it takes to get ahead in the investment banking division. The result is the infographic below.

There are some surprises. Historically, young IBD professionals took on a two year ‘analyst’ banking contract after graduating. When that finished, they quit to study a two year MBA and when the MBA finished they returned to banks as ‘associates’. This was especially the case in the U.S. However, Goldman Sachs did away with its two year contracts in 2012, and our data suggests that more M&A bankers now have a CFA pass to their name than an MBA.

It’s also worth remembering that when they hire IBD professionals, banks are looking for an unusual personality type. As Xanyar Kamangar, a director in the Technology, Media and Telecoms at Deutsche Bank, points out, IBD professionals need impeccable attention to detail – a mistake a presentation or financial model can lose a client. But they also need to be able to step back and to see the bigger picture.

Linos Lekkas, Citigroup’s head of corporate and investment banking for CEEMEA (Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa), put it another way, At the start of your career in IBD [when you're working on spread sheets and putting pitches together for clients], he says you need to be able to work hard and to establish yourself as a, “safe and reliable pair of hands. If you can’t get that right and get the recognition you need as a solid base, you’ll be seen as talented but possibly unreliable.”

But as you progress up the hierarchy in IBD, Lekkas says charisma becomes the characteristic that defines success: “Whether you’re an industry person or a product person, you ultimately need to be good with people – both internally and externally. You can be very talented and very mathematical, but the combination of effort and personality is what will truly make you stand out.”

Follow @MadameButcher

Which university or business school should you be attending if you want to get a job in an investment bank when you graduate? Based upon our own CV database, we’ve already suggested the top 35 MBAs for getting into banking. However, this data is necessarily historical – it’s based on the schools banks recruited from in the past. Which ones are they targeting for their 2015 intakes?

Where still available, we’ve looked at the lists of campus events banks publish on their websites and used these a proxy for their target schools.

Based on the list of campus events run by Goldman Sachs during the 2014-2015 recruitment season, it looks a lot like Columbia Business School, Wharton and Chicago Booth are the firm’s favourite places for finding MBA hires for 2015. Conversely, European business schools like the London Business School (LBS) and INSEAD aren’t listed on Goldman’s current events calendar at all…

By comparison, at the undergraduate level, Goldman’s event calendar suggests it’s particularly interested in hiring analysts from Princeton and Oxford Universities. Surprisingly, the likes of Cambridge University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) don’t get much of a look-in.

Goldman Sachs didn’t respond to a request to comment on the extent to which its graduate events are correlated with its targeted schools. However, if you’re studying at Cambridge, MIT or LBS, all is not lost – you just need to join the finance society. A senior recruiter for another American bank pointed out that most firms are now quietly running events through societies rather than advertising them on their sites. “Recruiting juniors has become all about invitation-only events with the finance societies,” she says. “Most institutions don’t bother listing events on their career pages because you get anyone and everyone turning up.”

Accordingly, the calendar for London Business School’s Finance Society shows Goldman running 10 events there between September and the end of December, including multiple ‘coffee catch-ups’ and an informal networking event. Similarly, Harvard Business School’s Finance Club has just run its annual conference, sponsored by Goldman Sachs, Lazard. JPMorgan and others.

JPMorgan’s online events calendar is less transparent than Goldman’s, covering only events that are yet to come rather than events for the whole season. On this basis, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Columbia Business School are both popular, whilst at graduate level JPM looks to be lavishing most attention on the universities of Pennsylvania, Oxford, Cambridge and Bournemouth (where it has a European infrastructure centre), whilst also paying multiple visits to Imperial College London, University College London, and the London School of Economics.

The award for blanket events coverage, however, must go to Credit Suisse. The Swiss bank has a back office centre in Wroclaw Poland. Its own events page suggests that it’s running seven events at the University of Wroclaw between now and the end of the year. Irrespective of additional soirees quietly organised by Credit Suisse through university finance societies, we deduce that the bank’s particularly keen to hire from this particular school in Poland.

Follow @MadameButcher

Financial conferences present excellent opportunities for networking. They offer opportunities to meet new people who can help you move your career forward and they can help you strengthen your relationships with your existing contacts. Here’s a guide on how to power network before, during and after the conference.

Planning

Learn the conference’s agenda in advance. Identify the sessions your best prospects are likely to attend and put these meetings on your schedule. Some conferences publish the attendee list in advance, so review it to see if there are people you particularly want to connect with. Send a note to them via LinkedIn saying you’ll be on the lookout for them.

Stay at the hotel where the conference is being held so you don’t waste time traveling. If it’s unaffordable, stay nearby. Give yourself time to decompress after travel and hotel check-in so you can arrive at the conference fresh. Ask for a wake-up call just in case your smartphone alarm fails you.

It’s also advisable to think about attending with a buddy who can connect you with people he or she knows and help you ease into conversations.

Eat before you go to events where food is served. It’s awkward to try to juggle a plate of food and a drink while you’re shaking people’s hands and exchanging business cards. Avoid food that’s salty, sweet or greasy because it’ll make you thirsty. Get to the events early. You’ll feel an ‘ownership’ of the room by the time others arrive, something that’s really useful if you tend to be shy. What’s more, you find lots of people who aren’t already engaged in conversations and are more easily approached than those who are busy.

Interacting   

Try to build a few really good relationships rather than exchange your business card with as many people as possible. The best way to connect with people is to show interest in them.  Make your conversations about them, not about you.  Learn what they’re trying to achieve and think about how you can help them – with information or introductions, for example.

Don’t launch into your elevator pitch; you’re having a conversation, not making a presentation. Tailor what you say about yourself so it’s appropriate to the discussion and don’t offer your business card until you’ve established some kind of relationship. Keep your cards handy so you don’t have to fish for them awkwardly in your pocket or purse.

Give the other person your full attention. Don’t scan the room while you’re talking, if you don’t want to continue talking, exit gracefully. Be respectful of others’ personal space. Don’t tell jokes to people you don’t know well because they may not share your sense of humor.

If you smile and look friendly you’ll be welcomed as you approach people and you’ll appear approachable by others. Your posture and movement should be confident and relaxed. You may do best by listening more and talking less; show you’re listening with nods and responsive facial gestures. To remember a conversation, make some quick notes on that person’s card.

Let people see you as an idea person – but don’t be a know-it-all. You can make an impact on a roomful of people if you ask a panelist a question that shows real insight. Ask your question loudly, clearly, concisely and respectfully.If you want to meet a presenter, sit where you can approach the dais quickly after the presentation. And if you’re not sure the session is right for you, sit in the back at the end of a row so you can leave without attracting attention.

Think about staying late after the conference’s last session.  You’ll meet people who may be alone and looking for company.

Following Up

When you’re back home send a note to the people you met and want to stay in touch with. Comment further about your discussion and suggest an idea that will help them achieve their goals. Be the first to offer help; that’ll make it much easier for you to ask for help later.  Stay in touch via social media to keep the conversation going.

If you’re writing to a speaker you weren’t able to meet, put the title of the presentation in your message’s subject field. Say something that’s original and unexpected rather than saying you enjoyed the talk.

You’ve invested a lot of time and in the conference, so make sure that you capitalize on the investment fully with a thorough and consistent follow-up campaign.

Bill Rosenthal has headed employee education businesses since 1986 and is chief executive of two sister companies: Communispond provides virtual and traditional classroom training for improved communications and sales.  It has served 300 of the Fortune 500 companies since its founding in 1969.. Logical Operations Inc., founded in 1982, offers more than 4,600 titles in its training curriculum library distributed to 107 countries worldwide.  It serves businesses, government, commercial training centers, and academic institutions. 

Shanghai’s finance sector has been in the headlines. Last week witnessed both the launch of the Hong Kong-Shanghai Stock Connect scheme and the announcement of upcoming reforms to the Shanghai Free Trade Zone (SFTZ) to allow more freedom to make overseas investments.

Yet despite the hype, neither of these developments is set to revolutionise the careers of finance professionals in Shanghai. Investments in the Shanghai Stock Exchange via Stock Connect have so far been underwhelming, while foreign financial institutions have bemoaned the sluggish pace of reform in the SFTZ. “Shanghai still cannot yet compare with Hong Kong in areas such as environment for business development, talent, legal environment and market maturity,” Han Zheng, party secretary of Shanghai, told the Financial Times last week.

Finance recruiters agree that Shanghai’s talent pool is much less developed than Hong Kong’s and that this sector-wide skill shortage will remain the key factor shaping the careers of banking professionals there in 2015. If you work at a global bank in Shanghai, here’s what to look out for Share on twitter.

Foreign banks will need M&A expertise

As we’ve already highlighted this month, M&A bankers, especially senior ones who’ve previously led outbound transactions, are red hot right now. Global banks in China are struggling to win deals from state-owned enterprises, who prefer to use domestic banks, but they are increasingly trying to hire bankers who can assist the global expansion of private Chinese companies. While many M&A bankers are based in Hong Kong, international banks are also expected to grow their mainland M&A ranks. “M&A should be in demand next year. In some cases more so than in Hong Kong given a combination of skill shortages, lack of domestic talent and continuing regulatory changes, particularly as the M&A market continues to open up and a larger local talent base is established,” says Alistair Ramsbottom, managing director of Shanghai search firm The Blacklock Group.

Private equity offers increasing opportunities  

While rapid promotions are on offer on the sell-side, M&A experts will also be eyeing up buy-side jobs in 2015. “In the front office, there is a greater demand for private equity professionals in Shanghai than in Hong Kong,” says John Mullally, associate director of financial services at Robert Walters in Hong Kong. “A lot of the portfolio companies that PE firms want to invest in are in mainland China, so being based in Shanghai means PE professionals can be closer to the deals.”

As does the back office

India, Malaysia and the Philippines – where English-speaking candidates are comparatively abundant – have been the prime locations to date for banks offshoring operations roles away from Hong Kong and Singapore. “But a lot of banks are now starting to locate their operations and finance functions into Shanghai due to its proximity and lower operating cost compared to Hong Kong,” says Mullally, who expects a further surge in demand for back-office roles in 2015.

Job hopping will remain rife

There is no end in sight to the retention problems plaguing foreign banks in Shangahi as finance professionals seek new jobs over internal promotions. “Candidates in Shanghai tend to have more ‘jumpy’ CVs than those in Hong Kong as they tend to change jobs about every two years,” says Mullally. “Some move for salary and/or title increments, yet often they haven’t built up any substantial skill-sets or a track record with any one company.”

As will pay inflation

The 41 international banks in China collectively employ only 44,560 people, according to the Foreign Banks in China report from PwC. And because they typically hire by poaching from each other rather than from domestic firms, they often resort to offering pay rises to new staff in excess of 30%. “In commercial banking demand for talent is very high and because there is also a shortage of talent, it’s inevitable that wage inflation follows,” says Richard King, managing director, North & Eastern China, at recruiters Michael Page.

Banks will expand their RM ranks

Relationship management will be one of the most sought-after careers in Shanghai next year – although unlike in Singapore and Hong Kong, the demand for RMs is stronger in corporate banking than in private banking. “They mainly cover large local Chinese clients, state-owned and privately-owned enterprises,” explains Rio Goh, country head of recruitment firm Morgan McKinley China. “More and more foreign banks have started to grow their China corporate desks and at the same time these candidates are difficult to find as you need an experienced RM to deal with actual decision makers in these organisations.”

The Shanghai Free Trade Zone won’t be a jobs magnet

“It will get easier to invest via the zone next year, but this won’t generate that many more banking jobs,” says Goh. “There might be an increase in demand for RMs to identify new clients who are investing entering China, while more clients means more work to be processed from an operations, risk and compliance point of view.”

More Asian expats will be needed

“Yes, there far few foreigners in Shanghai than in Hong Kong, but that is starting to change particularly as the banking sector continues to opens up and new skill sets are required that are not necessarily found in China,” says Ramsbottom from The Blacklock Group. “Asian-based candidates usually it easier to adapt. Compensation is catching up with Hong Kong in some areas, but there is still a gap and individual tax levels are higher in Shanghai.”

Follow @simonmortlock

It’s a trend we first spotted back in February: banks in Hong Kong are creating more contract jobs, while finance professionals in the city are slowly shedding their traditional reluctance to contracting. With costing cutting and offshoring afflicting IT and back-office jobs in Hong Kong, fixed-term contracts are appealing because they don’t eat into headcount budgets and they provide risk-adverse banks a way of testing out potential permanent employees.

A new survey from recruiters Morgan McKinley suggests that the life of contractors in Hong Kong is getting cushier. The majority (53%) of contractors were employed on one-year contracts in 2014, compared with just 29% in 2013. The data shows that contractors were more likely to be offered extensions (4% increase year-on-year), or permanent roles (6% rise) in 2014 with last year.

While Hong Kong, unlike London or Sydney, still doesn’t boast many “career contractors” – people who are happy to jump from one short-term assignment to another – the survey suggests that contracting is now a more viable and stable way to eventually find a permanent job. And while contract rates still lag behind mature contracting markets like London (only very senior contractors in Hong Kong are able to out-earn permanent staff), they are at least improving –  20% of contractors earned more than HK$60k per month in 2014, 7% higher than in 2013.

The Morgan McKinley statistics aren’t specific to the finance sector, although over the past 12 months several large recruitment firms in the city, including Robert Walters and Manpower, have been expanding their banking contract teams. Hong Kong’s tentative, developing fondness for contracting is set to continue in 2015, especially in  IT, finance, operations, projects, HR and office support, says Nick Lambe, managing director of Morgan McKinley in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile:

Henry Cai, the “grandfather” of Chinese capital markets, is reportedly set to leave Deutsche Bank and retire from investment banking. (Finance Asia)

Why Chinese and Indians takes different degrees when they study in the US. (WSJ)

The latest offshore yuan centre is in…Los Angeles (Straits Times)

Singapore is best place to do business, says Economist Intelligence Unit. (FT)

China proposes tighten regulations on shadow lending. (SCMP)

If you’re a CFA charterholder with ambitions to work for Goldman Sachs, it’s worth applying to its London office. Over 35% of the US investment banks’ charterholder employees work in the UK, the largest proportion of any of its global offices. Elsewhere, CFAs are more likely to find work on Wall Street.

Asia may be providing the fastest growth rate in new candidates signing up for notoriously difficult CFA exams, but the US is still by far the largest centre for charterholders. This year alone, 3,185 charters were awarded in the US, followed by Canada (831) and the UK (829).

We’ve analysed the profiles of the 120,000 charterholders on its new member directory, to find out where the large investment banks employ the most CFAs. The table below includes the countries where most CFA charterholders are to be found. Predictably, the US comes out on top, but there also appears to be an element of home bias among the different banks.

Both Barclays and HSBC, for example, employ 24.4% and 24.6% of their CFAs in the UK – a higher proportion than most other non-UK banks – while UBS and Credit Suisse have 22.8% and 18% of their CFAs in Switzerland respectively. ]Deutsche Bank may just have 5.7% of its CFA charterholders in Germany, but this is the largest proportion of any bank.

Then there are the US investment banks which, aside from Goldman, employ the vast majority of their CFAs at home. Bank of America has 81.2% of its charterholders in the US, while Morgan Stanley has 73.1%. At JPMorgan and Citigroup this figure is 58.8% and 57.6% respectively.

The CFA institute has pointed out on various occasions that Asia is the fastest growing region for those taking the exam globally. However, despite the proliferation of candidates, the large banks don’t employ many people in Asian markets, suggesting that those embarking on the qualification have yet to pass (or find employment in a bulge bracket bank), or that those who earn their stripes in Asia find a job elsewhere in the world.