AU
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 Executive Search, comments: “While Lehman staff will naturally still be considering all their options, some may now be more inclined to stay on, at least until the end of the year, to see what Nomura does. This time is a chance for them to make informed, rather than rushed, decisions.”
The Nomura takeover of Lehman should not cause too much direct upheaval locally because there would appear to be limited overlap in their respective businesses, says Everest. “With respect to Australia, it could be similar to the proposed Bank of America/Merrill Lynch merger,” he adds.
Turn for the worse
But the Lehman lifeline won’t stop a general downturn in financial recruitment in Australia. The global banking crisis and local worries about the business models of Macquarie and Babcock & Brown are conspiring to kill confidence in financial-sector hiring.
“The job market has turned in recent weeks, because of what’s been happening in the banking world,” says Neil Dyball, associate director of banking and finance at recruiters Robert Walters.
There is an over-supply of talent on the market, especially with the recent increase in Australians returning home, he adds. “We will see many banks in Australia reduce the size of their external recruiter panels. The focus is now much more on the quality of candidates rather than sheer numbers.”
Dyball says some leading local banks remain “fairly strong” on the employment front and have roles open, especially in accounting and operations. Everest adds: “Certain sectors, in particular risk and restructuring, remain active and it’s still difficult to find good people.”
The quality of recruiters in the market should lift as well – the plethora of fly by nighters at the multi-national firms will hopefully diminish and the standard in the industry as a whole will increase – only the quality recruiters survive in tough times, not the flick and “hopefully’ stick attitude of the heavily target/KPI driven firms.
It’s not like selling fruit at the markets iniit “know wha I mean”