Provided you continue to perform – and the bank doesn’t undergo a huge restructuring – it’s possible to become a ‘lifer’ in the large investment banks. Morgan Stanley offers its employees a chance to work across geographies – as the recent move of Klaus Froehlich from the Middle East to Germany demonstrates – while Goldman Sachs tends to hire analysts and associates and then mould them into the sort of loyal bankers it wants to work for the ‘firm’.
If you do decide to move on, even if that move is being fired, it’s best not to leave acrimoniously and close the door to a return. After all, experience in another sector or company could result in being able to move into a more senior role at your previous company at some point in the future.
Credit Suisse, it seems, is keen to leave the door open to employees who move on for pastures new. Karl Green, who previously worked as director and head of the pan-European support services equity research at the Swiss bank, left for boutique investment bank Altium Capital in 2010. He has now rejoined the bank, as a director within the business services division of Credit Suisse’s equity research team. Credit Suisse declined to comment.
This is not an isolated incident – in the past few months a number of former employees have returned in senior positions. Neilan Govender, a former currency trader at Credit Suisse who left to become a senior portfolio manager at Brevan Howard, returned after eight months as an FX trader. Meanwhile, Julien Eisenberger, a rates trader who also left for a role at Brevan Howard, returned to the Swiss bank last month.
Investment banks are obviously keen to hire their former alumni, who would have undergone their in-house training and are a proven entity rather than a complete unknown – even if they have a good track record.
In the case of Govender and Eisenberger, it could also be a case of hiring someone the bank trusts. As we pointed out previously, banks have a need to hire for their FX teams, but the ongoing investigation into the alleged manipulation of currency markets has made firms wary of hiring traders from outside the firm just in case the new employee has been caught up in the scandal.
However, Credit Suisse has also been hiring externally for its FX division, having recently added Lotfi Bensassi as director and head of emerging market forex for central and eastern European, the Middle East and Africa from Unicredit.