eFinancialCareers

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

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

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

Chinese private equity is surging ahead – but don’t just expect a job on the back of the boom. Total funds invested in China grew to US$20bn in Q1 2008, up by almost 60% from the previous quarter, according to new figures from research company Zero2IPO. But while established Hong Kong-based professionals are spearheading the charge into China, bankers who’ve been laid off in London and on Wall Street... Read more

Aussie banks are on the prowl overseas, picking up choice hires because the Australian market is robust and financial services is short of candidates. Grant Chamberlain, Deutsche Bank’s deputy head of M&A in Australia, says the firm is finding it difficult to source candidates who live locally. Most of its interviewees are Australians living abroad. “We haven't had to spend a lot of time trying to convince foreign nationals to come out... Read more

The bottom has fallen out of the leveraged finance market, but there don't seem to have been many redundancies – yet. Sharad Jain, director of the financial institutions ratings group at Standard & Poors, says there’s certainly been a significant increase in pricing associated with lending into leveraged finance transactions. “Given the current market volatility, the Australian banks are increasingly cautious about lending to corporates, particularly those who are more leveraged,” he... Read more

It's not looking good if you fancy landing a job in the Australian financial services market. The Aussie banking sector job market is floundering, according to the most recent monthly instalment of the Olivier Job Index. Report author Bob Olivier, a director of recruiter Olivier Group, attributes the poor results – down 5.12% in February – to the credit crunch, interest rate rises and the stock market sell-off. “Sub-prime write-offs have hurt... Read more

Forget US business schools, a new study suggests MBAs from China see the biggest boost to their earnings once the course has finished. The Financial Times’ 2008 MBA report found that alumni from Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University and Beijing’s China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) land the biggest salary increases upon graduation – 177% and 157% respectively. By comparison, graduates from a big name like the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School... Read more

There are signs that Australia’s appetite for banking talent isn’t quite what it was. According to the latest Olivier Internet Job Index, banking and finance was one of the slowest growing sectors in the past 12 months, dropping 1.45% in January. Is the sky falling in on the banking recruitment market? Bob Olivier, the report’s author, and director at Olivier Recruitment Group, says he’s not convinced: “We’re putting it down to interest... Read more

Senior women in Australia earn 50% less than their male counterparts, according to a Federal Government report. Is the same true in banking? No – at least not according to Bob Olivier, a director at the Olivier Recruitment Group in Sydney. He says the report’s findings astonished him. “My experience is that clients won’t offer a job to Julie rather than Steve to save on salary. It might be that if... Read more

Australia hasn’t lived up to its promise for ANZ’s ex-group managing director, Steve Targett. How common is it for immigrant bankers to come unstuck? In the case of Targett, the stakes are high and getting higher. Last month, he upped his damages claim from AU$2.1m to a hefty AU$57m, according to a report in the Australian Financial Review. Targett, a former banker with Lloyds TSB, claims he left his well-paid job... Read more

It’s often the case that when senior management changes occur, the after-effects can be felt through the organisation for some time to come. It’s too early to tell what sort of executive after-effects might develop following the departure of Macquarie Bank’s long-standing CEO Alan Moss in May, but most believe it will be pretty much business as usual on the recruitment front when new boss Nicholas Moore steps in. Macquarie expects to... Read more

Regardless of market uncertainty, there are several reasons why banks in Asia should keep hiring. And they are…. Talent shortages Matthew Hoyle, Asia Pacific director of headhunter Matthew Hoyle International, says: “There is still a tremendous shortage in the five to nine years' experience bracket across nearly all divisions, due to SARS and the Asian Crisis. No one was trained and hardly anyone hired during that period.” China Mainland Chinese banks have huge... Read more

Who’s hiring in Victoria? Big banks, according to recruiters. Sadly, the spokeswomen for both Melbourne-based ANZ Bank and National Australia Bank were unwilling to comment on their organisation’s hiring needs for 2008, but recruiters assure us both banks are staffing up in Melbourne during the first quarter of this year. “We have seen a big increase in demand for business development and relationship management staff due to new sales budgets that have... Read more

Stock markets have further to fall, Bank of America’s making redundancies, and recruiters say some banks are already scaling back Asian hiring plans. Reuters reports that Bank of America is scaling back its DCM business in Asia Pac and making around 15 people – mostly structurers and originators – redundant. After steep falls of 20% or more from last year's peaks, many equities now look cheap. But even after the Federal Reserve's dramatic “emergency”... Read more

Collapsing stock markets and tightening credit are bad news for most investment bankers. Restructuring specialists are the exception. If, as looks increasingly likely, the US economy lurches into recession, one senior economist warns that it’s only a matter of time before local defaults start to hot up. Shane Oliver, head of investment strategy and chief economist at AMP Capital Investors, says, “I would expect that if the US goes into recession... Read more

There's more to the Middle East than sovereign wealth funds. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have made headlines in the past few weeks, thanks to the hyperactive investments of their sovereign wealth funds, which have helped several international banks out of a sticky sub-prime situation. But there’s more to the region than state investments. International banks are also present – and hiring. Macquarie opened a Dubai office around two... Read more

With one breath local banking chiefs are assuring everyone jobs here are safe, with the other they’re quietly telling staff to pack their bags. Last week, Citigroup Australia became what may be the first of many banks to publicly let staff go. The struggling US bank retrenched around 20 staff in its Sydney equities and fixed income divisions, including members of its prop trading desk, just days after its local chief... Read more