eFinancialCareers

ABN AMRO Australia is about to disappear into the mothership, Royal Bank of Scotland, with an accompanying and immediate purge of management. Royal Bank of Scotland has announced it will buy the remaining equity in ABN AMRO's local unit and that Stephen Williams, RBS Australia's managing director, will run the combined ABN and RBS business. Angus James, head of ABN Australia and New Zealand, will step down. Will this... Read more

Lehman Brothers staff in Australia have been given breathing space to decide their future by Nomura’s expected takeover of their firm in Asia-Pacific. All employees in the region will be offered Nomura jobs if the deal goes through as planned. And in the meantime, the Japanese bank is said to be sticking to Lehman’s current salary levels for the rest of 2008. Patrick Everest, a partner at Jon Michel... Read more

Don’t be shy about showing off your extra-curricular experience on your CV – it may just set you apart from the candidate pack in today’s tough employment market. Jon Michel, principal of Jon Michel Executive Search, says including all-around abilities indicates that a candidate can work hard, play hard and is therefore robust enough to cope with the long hours in the banking sector. “Successful candidates will ideally be good... Read more

A slow final quarter awaits the recruitment market in Singapore and Hong Kong. With Wall Street and Europe delivering daily doses of bad news, many banks in Asia are simply too scared to sign off on new jobs. But the reflective mood in Raffles Place and Central also means that massive layoffs are unlikely. Financial employers are playing wait-and-see, leaving the chainsaw in the shed for now. James Carss,... Read more

Summer is coming to the City of London and Wall Street, but that won't do much for investment bankers cosseted in air conditioned offices far from a decent beach. By contrast, Sydney bankers are spending the coming down-under winter reminiscing about surfing and lolling about on the city's 37 beaches. It's a distinction worth noting. Not only is Sydney a good place to live (with stretches of world class sand and... Read more

National Australia Bank is to slash jobs in its UK businesses by almost a fifth over the next 18 months to cut costs by A$285m (€169.8m) a year. NAB, which owns the Clydesdale Bank in Scotland and Yorkshire Bank in England, said on Wednesday that it is to axe 1,700 of its 10,300 UK staff. NAB said it was five months into its UK restructuring and has already informed 400 of those... Read more

The hedge fund sector in Australia and New Zealand is set to expand. For job seekers keen to move into the sector, now could be the time to get in. A recent survey by Russell Investment Group found Australia’s institutional investors are the most optimistic globally about hedge fund returns and plan to increase their exposure to the asset class in the next few years. The survey, which covered 327 tax-exempt investors... Read more

Australian IT recruiters report a rush of hiring as investment banks seek to enhance their technology systems. “We’ve seen a marked increase in demand for technologists,” says Sam Vargas, a consultant in the technology division of recruitment firm Robert Walters. “Banks are trying to become a lot more competitive in terms of their trading platforms and are looking to integrate trading and wealth management platforms. Most are adding staff.” Steve Hutchinson,... Read more

It was a year of two halves for Aussie bankers: the first good, the second bad. But some had it better and worse than others. 2007 was a good year for: Wealth managers 1 July 2007 marked a radical change in the way Australians plan for retirement. As a result superannuation inflows went through the roof. Recruiter Luke Heath from Chandler Heath, says wealth managers, in particular, made hay. “Private bankers, stockbrokers, financial... Read more

Australian infrastructure investor Babcock & Brown has set a new record for staff cuts at a going concern. It announced this morning that it plans to cut headcount by almost two thirds between now and 2010. Babcock’s stock has plummeted 99% this year, and today’s announcement followed a warning that it was in danger of breaching its covenants and needed to reduce costs by $150m in order to halve... Read more

With strong hiring conditions internationally, now may appear a good time for Australian finance professionals to land a job offshore. But recruiters say the advisability of such a move is a question of timing. Vincent Bailey, from search firm Bailey Executive, says people should be looking to move offshore in their mid to late-twenties and then return in their early thirties. Bailey says investment bankers in particular can benefit from increased... Read more

Australia’s established fund management players are losing staff to smaller boutique players. Ratings agency Standard & Poors highlighted the problem in a recent report on the Australian market. As boutiques have proliferated Ben Sheehan, fund analyst at S&P, said established funds have suffered high staff turnover over the past six months as employees defected to smaller rivals. Sarah Elias, a consultant at Ambition Recruitment, says the majority of vacant fund... Read more

UBS, Citigroup and HSBC all plan to increase their market share in Australia's wealth management market, which could see some fierce competition for top advisors. UBS appears to be leading the race after poaching at least seven wealth management advisors from Citigroup, according to The Australian. Another two Citigroup advisors have reportedly left to join Macquarie. Simone Mears, director of search firm Profusion, believes that there is strong demand at all... Read more

Macquarie Bank has enlisted the services of a top business school to help it attract and retain staff. theage.com.au says Australia's top investment bank is collaborating with French business school INSEAD to offer a tailored Masters in Finance degree to its employees. As long as they pass, their fees will be paid by the bank. Nicholas Moore, Macquarie Bank's head of investment banking, is quoted as saying he hopes the course will... Read more

Australian investors are leaping aboard CDO bandwagon. Recruiters say it’s creating demand for people who know how to deal with these complex products. Put simply, collateralised debt obligations, otherwise known as CDOs, are securities which allow banks to sell slices of securitised loans according to the risks of default. Global growth in the CDO market has been huge in recent years. But growth in synthetic CDOs has been bigger still. US-based... Read more

KPMG's 2005-06 capital markets survey came out recently and showed that the Australian capital markets had raised $42.5 billion in funds for the year. That’s a 22% increase on the previous year, a record amount raised in Australia, and bodes well for hiring. With this level of activity set to continue, there is strong demand for people at the associate director level with six to eight years of experience. “Companies are... Read more

As strong economic conditions keep pushing banks to look for top staff, it has been a busy week in Australia’s investment banking scene with some key people moves. The Australian Financial Review reports that Citigroup’s head of mergers and acquisitions, John Hanson, is heading to Merrill Lynch. Merrill's Geoff Brunsdon, managing director and head of investment banking at Merrill Lynch, has also snapped up Greg Quinn from Goldman Sachs JBWere and... Read more

It looks like UBS has done away with the concept of annual bonuses. The Swiss bank today unveiled details of a new bonus scheme, under which ‘top executives’ will receive (at the very, very most) a third of each year’s bonus at the end of the year in question. The rest will be put aside and only awarded if the bank/employee performs well and behaves nicely in subsequent years. “Should UBS's... Read more

Bankers are sitting on a profit of more than $25bn (€21bn) on their share options on the back of the meteoric rise in financial stock prices on both sides of the Atlantic over the past 12 months. The recovery in banking stocks has left staff at the biggest US and European banks with share options worth a total of almost $100bn at the start of this year. Figures compiled by Financial... Read more

Investment banks operating in Australia need financial controllers, management accountants, financial accountants, and people with Sarbanes-Oxley experience, and they are pulling out all the stops to get them. This is the verdict of recruiters active in the sector. “To say we need accountants here is an understatement,” says Elizabeth Warren, an associate director at Michael Page in Sydney, “We’ve had candidate shortages before in 2000, but this is definitely worse.” The lack... Read more