eFinancialCareers

Operational risk specialists are commanding higher salaries and tackling more complicated issues as banks focus on increasing the quality of their ops risk teams, rather than boosting headcount. The new Market Survey on Risk Management from Jon Michel Executive Search says outsourcing of low-level banking jobs to Asia is creating new challenges for ops risks professionals back in Australia. Mike Ritchie, a risk advisory services partner at KPMG, says outsourcing generates environmental,... Read more

Will 40-year-old Cameron Clyne’s appointment as NAB’s new chief executive lead to more youngsters heading up Aussie finance firms? (The Australian) “Age is really irrelevant to the choice of who does what job. It’s about ability and skills for the job,” says David Miles, COO at JP Morgan. “Employers want people with fire in the belly, young and hungry and willing to go the extra mile. They’ve got the energy... Read more

The bad news for banking jobs has continued with the latest release of the Oliver Job Index. The monthly report says total banking and finance job advertisements fell 3.8% in July and 13.92% over the previous 12 months. The year-on-year decline was the worst of any sector. Report author Bob Olivier, director of recruiter Olivier Group says retail banking jobs were hardest hit, while i-banking job ads were down 2.9% for... Read more

Ultra high net worth (UHNW) clients are far from ordinary individuals. They typically have at least US$20m – and often more – in liquid assets to invest and are at the pinnacle of private wealth operations. Many banks are still looking for specialist private bankerrs to service them. Recruitment of UHNW bankers in Singapore has been driven by the rapid growth of individual and family wealth across Asia, says... Read more

Get out your Java handbook. Australian retail banks are going to upgrade their IT systems and plan to spend billions doing it. But not all the jobs created will be in Australia. Firms will be jostling for candidates for hundreds of positions. National Australia Bank, which expects its upgrade to cost AU$1bn, is talking 600 new jobs. It will be sending some of its technology platforms and systems off shore,... Read more

Insurance Australia Group (IAG) is set to slash 600 jobs but recruitment and salaries in the insurance sector are still staying strong at a senior level. The Sydney-based firm also reported its first loss in six years and says it will sell its floundering UK business (Melbourne Age). Grant Williams, of Reynolds Stockbrokers, explains: “They’ve had a fairly big exposure to the equities market…Apart from problems with their UK operations, they’ve also... Read more

Australia’s private equity scene has taken a breather over recent months, in line with global financial markets. Likewise, the private equity jobs scene is also having a quiet spell at the moment, according to recruiters, with the biggest activity on the cards likely to be from private equity firms shedding staff, rather than hiring. But it seems that even if some staff are lost from the big firms, there’s still enough... Read more

Carlyle Group is expanding in Australia with the appointment of ex-ANZ banker David Balint as director of leveraged finance. The US-based private equity firm will now have two dedicated teams Down Under – buyout and leveraged finance – with eight executives based in its Sydney office. According to Balint, this is just the start of a determined push by Carlyle in the region. “The leveraged finance team sees... Read more

National Australia Bank has declared an interest in buying ABN AMRO’s Australasian wing, a move that would catapult it fully into the investment banking club and could create fresh job opportunities. Takeovers usually mean lay-offs, but perhaps not this time. NabCapital – NAB’s institutional and capital markets unit – operates in debt capital markets. Buying ABN would give it an equity capital markets capability, according to one banking industry... Read more

Global firms are beefing up their Australian debt restructuring teams as recruitment heats up. While local commercial banks still dominate restructuring recruitment, foreign i-banks are building their teams and should have “real numbers” in 12 to 18 months, says Toby Aikins, a consultant at Jon Michel Executive Search. Goldman Sachs announced plans last month to set up a restructuring group in Sydney, while Morgan Stanley has hired Ben Babcock from... Read more

Just when you thought offshore jobs were in decline, ANZ pops up with an expanded growth strategy for South East Asia. The bank hopes to be a trailblazer for other Australian firms as 'emerging Asia' comes to mean more than just China and India. ANZ has strong penetration of Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia. And in Cambodia the three year-old ANZ Royal Bank is the largest in the market and... Read more

You might want to head to Singapore or Hong Kong to land an equity research job. Compared to hiring for sales and trading positions, research jobs in Asia appear relatively unaffected by the crunch: banks and hedge funds are still busy hiring in the area. Lehman Brothers has recently created the new role of head of equity research, Singapore and Southeast Asia, and poached Jit Soon Lim from Citigroup to fill... Read more

Boutique investment advisers are picking up the slack as overseas i-banks continue to take heat from the credit crunch. Lazard Carnegie Wylie, which recently announced that it almost trebled its profits in the last half of 2007, is leading the way (Business Spectator). Victoria Biggs, from Jon Michel Executive Search, says tough times often provide local operations with access to quality candidates as the big boys take a... Read more

Private equity recruitment is only just keeping its head above water in Australia, but opportunities are still out there for those bold enough to switch jobs. The liquidity crisis has made debt harder to come by and this is putting a dampener on growth and hiring within private equity, according to Tony Garrett, a corporate finance partner at Deloitte. “At the moment, most PE fund managers are going back... Read more

Massive hiring sprees, skyrocketing salaries and crippling talent shortages – just another year in the life of the foreign banks in China. A new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, based on interviews with 42 overseas banks, shows just how colossal recruitment in China has been over the last 12 months. The report highlights a 10,000-strong surge in staff numbers, a figure dominated by Asia-orientated heavy-hitters such as Standard Chartered and HSBC. “The... Read more

Banking jobs down under are looking increasingly attractive to both Americans and expat Aussies. But taking overseas experience to Australia doesn’t mean you can shift to a sexier job function. Grant Lovett, head of fixed income at UBS and a recent returnee himself, explains: “You can’t come back and say ‘I was a good credit trader overseas and now I want to try something completely different.’ The quality of people... Read more

Aussie banks are growing in India but they’re not taking too much talent from Down Under with them. Macquarie Bank is expanding its retail and structured products divisions, a sign of where it sees potential for growth. The four majors are divided between disinterest (Commonwealth and NAB) and active plans (Westpac and ANZ). “From a property and infrastructure perspective, India is massive and its retail potential is simply incredible,” says... Read more