UK
If life weren’t hard enough already for the average MBA student with 30k of debts and uncertain job prospects, a little article in today’s Financial Times will make things seem a little harder. The FT quotes Jamie Dimon, who apparently told the JPMorgan shareholder meeting that due to TARP-related restrictions on hiring foreign workers, he’s had to “look 40 or 50 overseas [graduates] in the eye” and tell them their job offers have been rescinded. A careers officer at an illustrious European business school confirms that this is indeed the case, but insists that banks in Europe are picking up the slack.
Banks paying bonuses out of life insurance. (Wall Street Journal)
Nomura hires someone from Goldman. (Financial News)
Ken Lewis made a packet out of those BofA shares. (Dealbreaker)
BofA raises $13.5bn. (Financial Times)
BofA still needs to raise $17bn. (CNN)
Morgan Stanley revives old Wall Street. (Wall Street Journal)
How I became a famous economist. (Krugman)
Rural GPs earn 115k before tax. (The Times)
Drunken traders’ trading frenzy (one trade every 7.5 seconds for one hour) costs him 105k, plus his job. (The Times)
the overseas gypsies of the banking world will no doubt be trying to buy their way in to UK jobs.
The foreign worker restrictions are asinine (foreign workers create on average another 3-5 jobs for every one of theirs), but what puzzles me is why they could not have been reassigned to any one of J.P.’s global offices, at least until they repay the TARP funds and are no longer subject to those restrictions.
Were these all positions that could only ever be served in the US and could not wait until the repayment? Or was this simply a convenient excuse to reduce headcount?
Zero sympathy for MBA students. Not smart enough to get right in the first place what career they want to do, so waste 2 years of their life (and at least $500k earning potential) trying to switch.
@djm,
“foreign workers create on average another 3-5 jobs for every one of theirs”.
maybe true. But what type of jobs do they create? nannies…bar staff…dry cleaners…..
What about the home grown brit who wanted a banking job but was displaced by the foreign worker? They are the ones who suffer and since they are middle class they are a part of the elecorate that needs to be won over. That is why the rules are assinine.
All the best.
”Zero sympathy for MBA students. Not smart enough to get right in the first place what career they want to do, so waste 2 years of their life (and at least $500k earning potential) trying to switch.”…
the number of douchebag comments on this site is astonishing…
Agree with UKGrad and Norman. Go home !!
if there had been less smart guys like you BSc millionaire and more MBAs in investment banks, perhaps we would not be in such a mess. MBAs “waste” 2 years learning how to think outside the box and work in team, both concepts you ignore the meaning of.
“MBAs “waste” 2 years learning how to think outside the box and work in team”
Hahahaha! Think outside the box!! With an Ivy school teaching them all generic conformist concepts? Work in a team, “every man for themself” MBA students? Utterly hilarious, just stop talking!
MBA proud, you are utterly deluded if you think an MBA is remotely useful for banking. These guys don’t appear to have learnt a single thing, they are no better at the job than 21yo graduate analysts most of the time!
@UK GRAD, I seem to detect more than a little envy with a hint of Xenophobia in your comments. Bank hire foriegn graduates not out of sympathy but out of compulsion, there are not enough qualified UK grads to fill in those positions. UK Grads have everything in their favour.Given two almost equal candidates most will hire UK citizens because of the hassle it is to hire foriegn graduates. If you did not make it to banking it is because you are not good enough, not because a foriegner snatched your job away.
All the best with your job search though.
“Bank hire foriegn graduates not out of sympathy but out of compulsion, there are not enough qualified UK grads to fill in those positions.”
What a load of rubbish!
These are jobs that people did in the 80s and 90s without degrees, for the large part! There are easily enough Britons with good Oxbridge/etc degrees who want banking jobs to fill them. Its just the foreigners may be better with their additional few years studying but don’t think there’s not enough UK grads to competently fill the places!
Totally agree with SageOfOmaha. Bear in mind that those foreigners that you would find within the industry have gone through tougher filters than most of the Brits – they need to speak a foreign language at business level to begin with. If just the best entered the market you would see less Brits and more foreigners – not because Brits are not good but because there are lots of brilliant foreigners queuing up! It is all about, say, taking the top 10% of each country… I’d buy the stock of a company with such a composition.
Marginalproductivity,
taking the top 10% of each country…
Lehman Brothers was such a company doing just that…..did you buy and hold their stock? ;-)
@SageofOmaha: “Given two almost equal candidates most will hire UK citizens because of the hassle it is to hire foriegn graduates.” — this is a myth propagated by HR parasites. The total hassle in sponsoring someone, is dropping a job ad onto say Bloomberg and filling out a single-sided A4 form. Or: just throwing the form at the corporate lawyer. This whole “we only want to see candidates with valid UK work permits because it’s so-oooooo much hassle to get visas” is just complete bullsh*t. and yet: it’s HR’s standard line.
Mind you, it is interesting to see that the UK Govt’s relatively recent and widely publicised “overhaul and improvement” of the immigration system, nominally moving towards an open Australian-style points-system, has in actual fact “Gurkha’d” the rules so as to keep out non-asylumseekers. The revised Tier 1 HSMP (highly skilled migrant programme) has had the details of the rules and procedures adjusted so as to prevent people applying for it/getting it. Nice one, kids.
to dd,
it has always amazed me that Britain has always tried to open up UKimmigration to people from around the world….behaving as if we are USA. We are not.
We are a middle sized european nation whose economy is dependent on integration with rest of the european continent. Not a world power where London based investment bankers think they rival bankers based in their NY headquarters.