Morning Coffee: The cunning new career path for Hong Kong finance graduates

Are you a finance student or new graduate in Hong Kong? Do you want to look beyond traditional career choices like investment banking or equities trading?

Commodities trading in Hong Kong may be emerging as a good long-term career bet. The Hong Kong Exchange is now planning a new scheme to connect the mainland’s commodity exchanges with the international market, a model similar to Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect, reports the South China Morning Posts.

As we noted earlier this month, the increased trading volumes generated by Stock Connect are now leading to a spike in hiring of equities traders in Hong Kong. Should a commodities link-up be successfully launched, Hong Kong banks and brokerages could want to boost their commodities teams too.

There won’t be any immediate recruitment boom, however. HKEx chief executive Charles Li Xiaojia says the scheme is at least three years away. “We are in the early stage of setting up the commodities connect,” he told the SCMP. “But the success of the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect proves such a mutual-market-access model would work.”

For current finance students the timescale could potentially be perfect: graduate in 2016, finish an analyst rotational traineeship two years later and start to specialise in commodities just as the new programme gets underway.

Meanwhile:

Tom Lanners, co-head of Asia ECM at HSBC, has reportedly left the bank. (Global Capital)

How career concerns influence banking analysts’ forecasts of banks that could become their future employers. (Harvard Business School)

Why China’s Bank of Communications could soon be hiring in Brazil. (Bloomberg)

Alleged Chinese con man is accused of faking a career as an HSBC boss in order to marry four women. (Telegraph)

Singapore-based UBS foreign-exchange strategist Gareth Berry has resigned. (Bloomberg)

CIMB Q1 profit falls 45.6% on loan provisions (Reuters)

Singapore takes third spot in new ‘Business of Cities’ ranking. (Straits Times)

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