Are you looking for a job at a global bank in Asia? You may want to apply to firms that are currently expanding in Asia and focusing a comparatively high proportion of their recruitment efforts on the region.
We’ve trawled through the careers website of several large banks to work out their Asia (ex-Japan/India) vacancy numbers as a percentage of the total jobs they are advertising globally right now.
With more than 35% of their current vacancies currently based in Asia, Citi and HSBC lead the field by a large margin. Asia Pacific ex-Japan made up 19% of Citi’s global earnings in the fourth quarter of 2014, the largest percentage of any region outside North America. The US bank is also a big player it China – its branch network has increased from 50 to 150 in the past three years and its jobs website is littered with mainland vacancies across the front and back-office.
HSBC’s high ranking isn’t much of a shock given that its Asian franchise represents around 80% of the group’s valuation, according to analyst estimates. The bank is also contemplating moving its headquarters from London to Hong Kong.
Standard Chartered, which earns about 75% of its profits from Asia, finishes further down our rankings at a surprisingly low 8.44%. Many of Stan Chart’s current vacancies are in India – a market excluded from our Asia percentage – and as it cuts costs and restructures its operations it has comparatively few openings in Singapore and Hong Kong.
J.P. Morgan (4.78%) and Bank of America Merrill Lynch (1.67%) are towards the bottom of our chart partly because they have thousands of US corporate and commercial banking openings which force down their Asian vacancy percentage. By contrast, Morgan Stanley (13.34%), Deutsche Bank (12.16%) Goldman Sachs (11.26%) have fewer jobs on offer at home and rank among the top deal-makers in Asian investment banking.
UBS (10.81%) and Credit Suisse (8.67%) are already the first and second largest private banks in Asia respectively – and both plan to focus even more of their Asian hiring on their wealth divisions as they pivot away from investment banking. As the region’s millionaire population continues to rise, expect the percentage of Asian jobs at these two banks to increase.