eFinancialCareers

About 100 employees of Morgan Stanley Investment Management are moving to State Street Corp. as part of a deal under which the Boston-based financial firm will provide investment management services for some $300 billion in assets. State Street will provide MSIM with global outsourcing services including trade settlement, portfolio administration and reporting and reconciliation services for a majority of MSIM’s assets under management.   Most of the workers involved are in the... Read more

We've all seen variations on the list of common questions interviewers ask, but how much have you thought about what questions you should ask a potential employer? The best interviews are really conversations, as well they should be. You want to know if the position is the right fit - just as much as the company does. After all, the work you do makes up a good portion of your waking... Read more

American Express names former Thomson Reuters executive Ed Jay to lead a new global information analysis and consulting business, American Express Business Insights [American Express, via BW] Citigroup taps Willem Buiter, an outspoken LSE professor and former Bank of England policy maker, to the long-vacant post of chief economist [Bloomberg News] Michael Parker joins M.R. Beal as a VP to lead the firm's expansion into international equity trading [M.R. Beal, via BW] Brewer... Read more

The impending default by Dubai World threatens to set back emerging financial markets just as they've moved to the forefront of an incipient global economic recovery. As a result, near-term career prospects for bankers in the Middle East look to suffer a second serious blow in little more than a year. Fallout from the crisis might put a damper on other emerging market careers as well, depending how events unfold. Local... Read more

Analysts specializing in fundamental research, consigned to oblivion just a few years ago by proponents of mathematical finance, are regaining favor. In recent survey, JPMorgan Asset Management found more than a third of European institutional investors felt less positive about quantitative equity strategies than a year ago, while 80 percent of the largest ones felt more positive about a fundamental approach. That reinforces indications from elsewhere that the credit crisis is... Read more

When it comes to trading, experience matters after all. So say Cambridge University researchers who measured the risk-adjusted performance of 53 high-frequency traders in a study published in the Public Library of Science journal. Reuters reports that the traders' Sharpe ratios increased markedly with the number of years they had been trading - a result suggesting that learning plays a role in increasing returns, the researchers concluded. The study also found... Read more

In the past decade or so, early-career analysts in research and investment banking departments have faced the threat that work they perform can be outsourced to India. Two sentences squirreled away in a Standard & Poor's announcement this month raise the prospect that China might soon play a similar role. "Looking ahead, S&P also will look to draw on China's rich talent base to provide data and analytical support for S&P's... Read more

If you regularly win at online poker, that's a career asset. The widely discussed correlation between poker ability and trading ability has practical value in the job market, because many hiring decision-makers at hedge funds and other trading shops act on their belief. A recent Bloomberg News story names several prominent hedge funds and other firms that consciously recruit successful poker competitors. They include AQR Capital Management, D.E. Shaw, Two Sigma... Read more

The kudzu-like proliferation of hedge funds earlier this decade brought a spike in concerns that the sector's overcrowding all but eliminated alpha-earning opportunities that could justify the funds' high fees. Now that conditions have flipped around, a shrinking fund industry will spur both return opportunities for investors and career opportunities for hedge fund professionals, according to a report released last week. First, a caveat: The report's author, Eric Attias of newly... Read more

Is JPMorgan Chase's chief executive maneuvering to jump to Washington to replace the embattled Timothy Geithner as U.S. Treasury Secretary? Separate stories in Forbes and the New York Post imply as much, yet still leave Jamie Dimon plenty of wiggle room to demur if the Treasury post does come open. Under a succession plan announced plan in September, were Dimon to leave JPMorgan his presumptive replacement would be Jes Staley, who... Read more

If your career path meandered at any point, you won't get far with Aaron Patzer, the Web entrepreneur who built Mint.com and who now heads the personal finance group at Intuit, which acquired his company this month. When hiring, "I look for someone who has made conscious, rational, well-reasoned decisions from high school through college to internships to your first job to now," Patzer told Fortune magazine. "If you've floundered,... Read more

As the world climbs back from the brink, India and China loom larger than ever in the growth plans of top-tier financial institutions. As a result, relocating to Asia is returning to the front burner as a career accelerant for bankers. "JPMorgan’s India branch is increasingly targeting intra-Asia regional business, particularly between India and China," reports the Financial Times. The bank plans to introduce onshore private banking services in India in... Read more

If the misfortune of selecting Lehman Brothers as your employer straight out of an expensive MBA course weren’t enough to deal with, some members of Lehman’s associate class of 2008 say they’re now being stung for the $40,000 sign-on bonus the bank paid them when they arrived. The requests are allegedly coming from PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is administering Lehman’s estate in the UK. “More than 60 percent of my class received this... Read more

A public library program on researching companies and potential contacts tops our weekly rundown of low-cost and free events of interest to financial professionals. All the following events take place in New York City. *** New York Public Library's Science, Industry, and Business Library (SIBL) offers free classes to help job-seekers research companies and locate individuals to contact for job leads. Tuesday, Nov. 24, 3:15 p.m. "Job Seekers Contact Research." Science, Industry, and... Read more

Are complaints that Goldman Sachs overpays its employees finally trickling from Main Street up to Wall Street? Yes, says Friday's Wall Street Journal. Some of the firm's largest shareholders have urged Goldman to reduce the size of its bonus pool, the paper reports. "Their complaints in private conversations with the company and at analyst meetings show how anger over its big-money culture is spilling into the ranks of investors who typically... Read more

John Mack, the Morgan Stanley chief executive who'll become non-executive chairman six weeks from now, has created something of a stir by saying he loves being under Federal Reserve oversight. "We have probably 15 to 20 Fed regulators in our building 24 hours a day," Mack said Wednesday during a panel discussion hosted by Bloomberg News and Vanity Fair. "They test our models. They question everything we do. I’ve never been... Read more

Compensation at U.S.-based private equity funds is declining broadly for the first time in more than a decade, a new report shows. The 2010 Private Equity Compensation Report by Glocap Search and Thomson Reuters finds pay growth "has come to a halt with total compensation now trending down" across all segments of the market – including buyout/growth equity, venture capital and private equity fund of funds. Among specific findings: - Established... Read more

While careers related to restructuring corporate debt have been in the spotlight, Thursday's Wall Street Journal spotlights an ongoing hiring boom for the retail equivalent: jobs restructuring home mortgages. Bank of America, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo have collectively hired almost 17,000 people this year, mostly to work with financially ailing homeowners, the Journal says. More important: "With the number of defaults rising, many are planning to keep adding... Read more

Networking your way to a job is hard, but it works. A CNNMoney story this week offers a road map. The article traces the path to re-employment for Ebony Blue, a 24-year old Ithaca College graduate laid off from Citigroup's investment banking division in December, 2008. Although she made contacts through a diversity network, the essential tactics she used can also help job-seekers who lack such access. Blue put in heavy-duty... Read more

Securities industry employment in New York City bounced strongly in September, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli says in a report issued Tuesday. However, the reported pickup apparently stems from a statistical adjustment that isn't performed on similar data covering states and cities published each month by the U.S. Department of Labor. Citing a strong profit recovery by Wall Street, the comptroller's report forecasts job losses in the securities industry in... Read more