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Q&A: RBS’s Middle East CEO on why arrogance has no place in investment banking
Simon Penney, chief executive for the Middle East and Africa at Royal Bank of Scotland, who oversees its investment banking activity in the region, has been with the same firm for over 12 years. You might assume, therefore, that he’s not the overly adventurous type. The reality is, however, that he has travelled the world [...]
The unspoken nightmare faced by non-EU nationals working in the City of London today
Many non-EU nationals working in the City of London are being heavily penalised under new immigration rules which came into force in April. Most notably, a high proportion of non-EU nationals who lose their jobs in the City of London are now obliged to leave the country for a year before they can come back [...]
Why is the expat divorce rate spiralling in Dubai?
Is moving to the Middle East bad for your marriage? Apparently, yes, if new figures from the Dubai Statistics Center are anything to go by – divorce rates among expats in the emirate have swelled by nearly 30% since 2009. Back in 2008, of course, a move to the Middle East was seen as a [...]
GUEST COMMENT: The problem is, it’s too frightening to resign from a financial services job
If you still have a job in the City then you have something in common with the great novelist, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. In 1849, the writer was about to be shot by a firing squad for dissent when, at the last moment, he was pardoned by the Czar. Living with the threat of layoffs is like [...]
Q&A: Mike Connarty, director of international investments at Standard Life, advocates learning Mandarin if you want to get ahead
Mike Connarty is based in Edinburgh but he’s an international figure in financial services. As director of international investments, Mike manages Standard Life’s fast-growing joint venture investments in India and China. If you want to work for him, you’ll need a genuinely international outlook – and ideally the capacity to speak Mandarin. Q: How long [...]
GUEST COMMENT: I can’t tell you how many dinner parties I’ve been to where people tell me I work in a declining industry
If you pick up a newspaper in the UK or US, you’d be forgiven for thinking that bankers are currently a bit of a social pariah. Barely a week goes by without one headline talking about excesses in the sector, and finger pointing about the recent crises continues (perhaps justifiably). You will not see the [...]
GUEST COMMENT: The 8 main reasons why people become investment bankers
There are different reasons why individuals become investment bankers. Chance plays a role, but deep-seated motivations are usually the determining factor. These motivations explain why so many bankers agree to work unusually long hours, put up with abnormally high levels of stress and sacrifice personal and leisure time. Take a look at the faces of [...]
GUEST COMMENT: I have attended a positively mind-blowing class as part of my Masters at the London Business School
Gabriel Chen is a Singaporean student at London Busines School and a former financial journalist for Singapore’s Straits Times. I recently wrapped up one of the best courses of my Masters in Finance at London Business School (LBS). Called Topics in Asset Management, it was taught by Robert Jenkins, an external member of the Interim [...]
A Q&A with Anil Hansjee, the former investment bank software engineer who became Google’s main M&A man in EMEA
Anil Hansjee has had quite a career. Having started out as a programmer at Swiss Bank Corp, now Union Bank of Switzerland, he moved into a risk-product role at Chemical/Chase (now JPMorgan) before making an unusual move into corporate finance. From there, he moved to the buyside and venture capital, and from there he moved [...]
GUEST COMMENT: In 2010, I accepted a comparatively low-paying job in Kuwait, but it’s worked out well. Here’s why
I took a job in one of the hardest hit areas of the Middle East financial sector at the height of the crisis and have managed to secure a 60% pay increase during my first 18 months in the role. Doing the same yourself is relatively simple – all it really takes is a change [...]
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