Financial News points out that UBS investment banker, Hermann Prelle, who was formerly co-head of EMEA investment banking and head of German M&A business, has come back from a sabbatical to what appears to be a promotion: he is now chairman of M&A in EMEA.

Whether this is really a promotion is questionable: chairman roles are often less hands-on than departmental headships and can be glorified schmoozing positions. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Prelle went away a year ago and has come back to a fairly important job.

Given that things are not looking all that great right now, should you do this too? The internet is, after all, alive with financial services types who have taken time off, like the senior Goldman Sachs HR professional currently chilling in Greece until 2012, or the executive director at JPMorgan who spent 2008-2009 backpacking in South America, Iran, India and driving around Central Asia before getting a new job with JPMorgan in Asia. Or the risk professional, who left RBS in August 2008 and went off to learn Scuba diving for a year.

Appealing as this may sound, however, for every backpacker who reinserts him/herself into a lucrative front office role, there are two others who return to a life of consultancy work. Therefore, if you fancy getting out of this market and doing something different for a few months, there are clearly things to consider first.

1) Your stock

If you simply resign to travel the world, you will lose your stock. It’s far better therefore to engineer your redundancy or to go on a firm-approved sabbatical programme at the end of which you will still have a job.

“If you can afford to do take a sabbatical, you should do it if you have it in writing that your job is secure and ensure that this commitment has been certified by HR and an independent lawyer,” says Anton Kreil, an ex-Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan trader, who resigned from JPMorgan and traveled the world between May 2007 and May 2008

2) Your bonus

This probably won’t exist this year anyway, so is not an issue.

3) Your mind

By the end of your sabbatical, you may have grown a pony tail and be burning joss sticks. “I found it very difficult to come back and do a proper job,” confesses one financier who went the Padi diving instructor route. “It was easier for my wife – she was a lawyer and she came back to be a project manager, but I pretty much returned to the same role.”

4) Your boss

Even if you have a contract saying you’ll still have a job to come back to, the current probability is that things will look very different when you return. “This industry is going to be very different in a year from now,” says one opinionated insider. “It’s going to be half the size.”

You may therefore come back to a new boss who knows nothing about you and will dump you anyway.

5) Your seniority

If you’re junior, you should not take a sabbatical says Kreil, an ex-Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan trader, who resigned from JPMorgan and traveled the world between May 2007 and May 2008. “If you can do your first two or three years in this industry during a recession then you’ll get promoted into a better market.”

If you’re more senior, taking a traveling sabbatical can be dressed up as a round the world investment reconnaissance trip in the style of Jim Rogers. You can also write a book about your experiences.