eFinancialCareers

Sustainable responsible investment (SRI) is getting hot along with the planet. Shame about the jobs. The latest AMP Capital SRI Median Study says the SRI median outperformed the benchmark ASX 200 index by more than 1.5% over one year, and 2% in the two years to 30 June 2007, returning a healthy 30.2% in one year, 26.7% over three years and 19.3% over five years. Little surprise, therefore, that investors are marginally... Read more

Following suggestions that it's about to report record first half profits, some analysts are wondering if Sydney-based Macquarie investment bank can keep up the pace. Macquarie, also known as the millionaire’s factory because of the massive salaries earned by its executives, announced last month that it expects to achieve a half-year profit of around AU$1bn when it reports in November. This will be down on its AU$1.46bn record result for the... Read more

How many people will Stan O’Neal cut following yesterday’s revelation that Merrill made third-quarter losses greater than the GDP of a small African state? Our reckoning is quite a few. O’Neal is not, after all, averse to a spot of staff hacking. As head of the bank in 2001 he initiated a programme that eliminated nearly a third of the bank’s staff, largely through voluntary redundancies. This time things look a... Read more

With the Hang Seng breaking through 30,000 for the first time this month, now’s a good time for Aussie bankers to break into Asia. Andrew Valentine, from recruiter Jon Michel Executive Search, says, “Unemployment is low and regional GDP growth is outpacing the rest of the world, so demand for investment banking services and for skilled investment bankers is likely to continue.” “The advantage for Australian bankers is exposure to larger and... Read more

There are several advantages to working for Australia’s top investment bank – including the opportunity to take a degree programme run by a world-leading business school. Macquarie Bank has arranged for leading French business school INSEAD to provide a Masters programme for staff in its investment banking business. Ian Woodward, programme director for Macquarie’s new Master in Finance, says it’s something a bit special: “There are plenty of courses [run by other... Read more

With industry jargon increasing as quickly as the average carbon footprint, Australia’s major banks are embracing corporate social responsibility in a big way. By building up dedicated CSR teams, big banks like Westpac, National Australia Bank (NAB) and ANZ are moving to adopt processes that are seen – both internally by employees and externally by suppliers and investors – as ethical, transparent, environmentally friendly and sustainable. NAB, through its institutional banking and... Read more

A high-profile case, which has embroiled ANZ in controversy, illustrates the danger of being misled about career prospects. Former head of institutional banking Steve Targett is seeking AU$2.1m in damages, after claiming the Aussie bank left him with the wrong impression about its financial health and his future prospects when he signed on in 2004. Targett is claiming that he left his AU$2.5m a year job with Lloyds TSB after being assured... Read more

Forget the sub-prime crisis, Australia’s bankers still expect to cash in with higher bonuses this year. Our survey of 20,270 global bankers found that 50.3% of those based in Australia expect to receive higher bonuses this year, with only 8.3% expecting their bonuses to be lower than the bumper payouts of 2006. 23% of Aussie respondents expected their bonuses to increase by less than 10%, and 10% expected bonuses to rise more... Read more

ANZ Bank’s new chief executive, former HSBC boss Mike Smith, has wasted little time in putting his personal stamp on the bank. With strong plans to extend ANZ’s domestic and international reach, Smith – who joined in October – has been tweaking the bank’s management ranks since arriving. Two recent appointments include former colleague Susie Babani to take the role of group general manager human resources, a position formerly known within the... Read more

2007 ended badly, and 2008 may well start the same, but this year will be better for some things than others. 2008 will be a good year for… Ops jobs Junior and more menial roles may be heading to Asia, but recruiters say there’s still going to be ample demand for senior banking operations staff in Australia. “People with 10 years-plus operations experience, who want to broaden their experience, will have plenty of... Read more

Losses of $13.7bn aren’t a great look for UBS, especially with some analysts predicting more write-downs in 2008. Globally, jobs at the Swiss-based bank are on the line, with 1,500 cut at the investment bank in the months leading up to Christmas, and the possibility of more to come. Does this include Australia, where UBS ranked number one as the leading M&A advisor in 2007? Apparently not: the official word is that... 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

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

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

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