eFinancialCareers

Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. has hiring plans. According to Investment Dealers' Digest, the New York-based company plans to hire 100 people for its fixed-income business alone this year. Already, the firm's hired 20 specialists for a developing high-yield bond business, and is bringing on as many as 25 investment bankers, along with sales and trading professionals. "The talent pool out there is very deep right now and the opportunity to grow... Read more

This is a good time for financial professionals who are fluent in Chinese, Japanese or other Asian languages. Why? Consider: Big Japanese banks may pump billions of dollars into struggling Wall Street firms, says the Times of London. The trade deficit with China continues to break records and Chinese markets attract U.S. investors worried about volatile stocks. South Korea's economy continues to be strong, as is Taiwan's. Though there are openings... Read more

As the chief investment officer of the student-run M.A. Wright Fund, Rice University M.B.A. student Will Shen was able to post returns that beat his fund’s benchmarks. Translating that success outside of the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management is proving to be difficult. The 31-year-old, who chose asset management after he found dental school and the import/export business did not suit him, is in a better position than many... Read more

The ranks of Charter Financial Analysts in Canada are growing. More than 9,990 are registered to take the CFA exam in June, up 68 percent from 5,914 in 2006. Bob Johnson, deputy chief executive of the non-profit CFA Institute, says that's a sign of growing interest in the certification by employers, and the greater availability of training at colleges. Moreover, Johnson says, the number of candidates taking the exam for the... Read more

To laid-off financial analysts, the federal government is starting to look pretty appealing. About 400 people - double the tally from similar events last year - have signed up for a job fair in New York later this month featuring recruiters from nine government agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the FBI, reports Bloomberg News. The jobs are attractive even though they pay less than private... Read more

TD Bank Financial Corp., parent of Toronto-Dominion bank, and its corporate cousin TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. are continuing to hire workers, giving good news to Canadian job seekers worried about financial problems flowing north from the U.S. Toronto-based TD Ameritrade Holding has been adding sales and support staff to attract and retain customers - to the point where personnel expenses soared by $27.7 million, or 25.6 percent, in its quarter ended... Read more

Bank of America, which has received $45 billion in government aid, plans to give some investment bankers raises of as much as 70 percent as soon as next month. Bloomberg News says the Charlotte-based bank may increase the annual base pay for some managing directors to about $300,000 from $180,000. Salaries for less-senior directors would climb to about $250,000 from $150,000, and vice presidents would get $200,000, up from about $125,000. In... Read more

For years, people in the Philadelphia area eager for high Wall Street salaries have endured brutally long commutes to New York. Now, residents of the Big Apple are taking a shine to their neighbor to the south. Laid-off Wall Street workers are increasingly looking for opportunities in the City of Brotherly Love, which seems like an undiscovered country to many New Yorkers even though it's less than 100 miles away. Philadelphia... Read more

Over the past few years, Calgary has joined Houston and New York as a leading hub of energy trading. Keeping its desks staffed remains a challenge. Competition remains fierce not only among Canadian firms, but with big Wall Street companies and players eager to hire people away from the frigid north to the somewhat warmer climate in the U.S. Still, there are plenty of opportunities for financial professionals in the industry,... Read more

Boston-area investment firms aren't hurting for resumes. Thousands of bankers laid off from Wall Street firms are eager to make a change to areas of financial services that appear to be weathering the economic downturn, such as private equity, venture capital or hedge funds. Moreover, people living in New York - especially those with ties to New England - are willing to relocate to Boston, making the job market there... Read more

The details around the government's $700 billion rescue package of Wall Street are starting to be filled out, including plans to hire the firms and the professionals needed for the massive undertaking. This week the Treasury Department chose Bank of New York Mellon to provide a broad range of services for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, including accounting of record for the portfolio, holding of cash and assets, and pricing... Read more

Boston's financial job market appears to have been less impacted by credit-market turmoil than other regions, but it hasn't escaped entirely. Nathan Strange, a partner with Chicago-based BCI Financial Recruiting who serves clients in the Bay State, says Boston's no better or worse than other parts of the U.S. Pay, he says, is "slightly lower than NYC but competitive with other major metro areas on the East Coast." Among the skill sets... Read more

The latest quarter was one that many Canadian banks would rather forget. That may make them less eager to hire. After reporting a loss of C$1.1 billion, or C$3 a share, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce announced plans to lay off 100 people from its CIBC World Markets. Other big banks, though they didn't announce any cuts, also had dismal results: Profit at Royal Bank, Canada's No. 1 lender, slumped 27... Read more

Canadians working in the securities industry don't want their work to be their life, or their life to be their work - even at a time when employers are trying to do more with less. Twenty six percent of CFOs recently polled by Accountemps said heavy workloads were the greatest source of work-related concerns for finance and accounting professionals in Canada. Work/life balance ranked second in the survey of 270 finance... Read more

Boston draws job seekers from outside the region, even in times of economic uncertainty. Many of the people who want to move to the region already have ties to it and seek to return to where they went to college or grew up. On top of that, the perception is New England financial firms are weathering the current turmoil better than their counterparts on Wall Street. Further adding to the area's appeal... Read more

Yes, the incarnation of Wall Street that people have known since the 1980s no longer exists. Thousands of jobs are in danger, even after Congress extended a $700 billion lifeline to the industry. At the same time, some companies see chaos as an opportunity to add people they might not have been able to get otherwise. Whatever happens in coming months, job applicants will face challenges standing out from the crowd.... Read more

Hiring isn't a top priority for Canadian banks as they face a worsening economy. While they've managed to avoid Wall Street-size layoffs so far, they've notably slowed hiring. Says Michel Verdoold, president of recruiter Brunel Multec in Toronto: "The orders that we had we were able to fill, but we were not given any new assignments." Verdoold's comments were echoed by Michael Gooley of Robert Half International in Toronto. He's finding... Read more

Swiss banking giant UBS hired 200 brokers in the U.S. during the fourth quarter, according to Bloomberg News. The bank poached a five-member team from the Dallas office of Goldman Sachs Group with $4 billion in assets under management, and a team of the same size from Morgan Stanley's Houston office with $2.1 billion in assets under management. UBS was willing to write some big checks to attract these workers, Bloomberg... Read more

Finding a job in hedge funds and private equity firms, difficult under the best of circumstances, keeps getting harder. Financial News is reporting that Cerberus Capital Management, whose returns have been hurt by its investments in finance company GMAC and the automaker Chrysler, is cutting 10 percent of its staff of 250. Cerberus didn't comment on the newspaper's claims, though it didn't deny them either. For the displaced Cerberus workers to find... Read more