There was a time when banking careers were all about high prestige, high potency and high pay. Now, they are more associated with tedium and huge hours. Unsurprisingly, this combination does not appeal to today’s teenagers, who view banking careers as only marginally more appealing than a future working on building sites.
The Financial Times reports that survey of 1,100 parents of children under 18 found that most young people (34%) now want to work in IT, following by engineering (23%), followed by policing, healthcare, architecture, law, hospitality, social work and pharmaceuticals. Only 9% of young people these days want to work in financial services, just ahead of the number who want to work in the construction industry. Financial services jobs are seen as “boring” and numerical. 66% of parents think finance jobs are very stressful; 44% think they have no social value.
Separately, if you want an MBA but you don’t want to spend a fortune upfront and then wait years for the returns on your investment to appear, then you should maybe be thinking of studying an MBA at HEC in Paris. The French school ranks top of the Economist’s table of high-returning MBA programmes, offering a return on investment of 67% in just one year. By comparison, the short-term returns from top U.S. MBA schools like Wharton and Harvard are minimal at just 5% and 15% respectively. The London Business School fares marginally better, but is still far behind HEC on 26%.
“Students at HEC make enough extra money upon graduation to pay off their degrees in less than two years,” says the Economist. Studying at an MBA school like Wharton entails huge costs ($330k) and won’t lead to much payback in the short term, partly because people who study at top U.S. MBA schools tend to be so well paid in the first place…
Meanwhile:
Calls are mounting for Brady Dougan to resign from Credit Suisse. (Financial Times)
Deutsche Bank has cleared its top management after an internal investigation into manipulation of the Libor benchmark interest rate. (Reuters)
Bob Diamond, John Varley, Roger Jenkins and Chris Lucas, are being questioned under caution by the UK’s serious fraud office regarding £322m paid to Qatar in 2008, when Qatar bailed Barclays out with £6bn. (Financial Times)
At Barclays, capital-heavy FICC trading will still account for half of income (based on 2013 figures). (Financial Times)
The average decline in FICC revenue from 10 major U.S. and European banks in the first quarter was 14%. (Reuters)
Schroders has just hired Geoff Cheetham from Blackrock into a new role as head of UK Institutional Clients. Cheetham will lead a team of 20 people. (Financial News)
Banks are rebuilding their real estate investment banking teams. (Financial News)
Robert Mandeno, head of electronic FX trading at Deutsche Bank, has retired. (Reuters)
Tullet Prebon is cutting £20m in costs this year. Jobs are likely to go in the process. (Financial Times)
Terry Smith, chief executive of Tullett Prebon, received a £2.2 million bonus despite falling revenues and profits. (The Times)
Antony Jenkins is partial to some ‘smooth jazz’ whilst working. He also likes to listen to radio stations like Gold. (The Sunday Times)
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