eFinancialCareers

The proportion of new MBA holders worldwide who received a job offer before graduation climbed for a fifth straight year, edging up to 53 percent from 52 percent in 2006. Demand is up dramatically since 2003, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council. In that year, just 36 percent of new MBAs had a job offer by the time they were awarded the degree. The average respondent to this year's GMAC Global... Read more

First came asset write-downs. Then came bailouts. Now, the U.S. government is taking a large, voting equity stake in Citigroup. The chain of events pulling significant pillars of the financial industry from shareholder to government control is coming to look increasingly inexorable. But what does nationalizing a bank do to the careers and compensation outlooks of professionals who work there? Constrained upside will drive producers and senior executives to seek... Read more

Does the 40-hour work week law cover Wall Street back-office staff who process trades and resolve discrepancies? And legal niceties aside, could paying workers for overtime ever be put into practice in the frenetic and hyper-competitive securities business? Those questions arise from a lawsuit filed this week against Merrill Lynch and its new corporate parent, Bank of America. Plaintiffs Andrea Levine and Ivey Moore are derivatives settlement specialists who joined Merrill... Read more

Citigroup reportedly is reshaping its bonus system to emphasize divisional cooperation and overall corporate performance. "We have to put a premium on partnership-like behaviour," an unnamed Citi executive told the Financial Times. The FT describes the change as a key plank in Chief Executive Vikram Pandit's strategy to revitalize the "universal banking" model by fostering synergies among investment banking, commercial banking and wealth management. Pandit reportedly asked Citi's HR chief to... Read more

The market meltdown combined with high-profile hedge fund swindles are giving personal financial advisers a heavy dose of the pain their clients feel in their portfolios. Cratering asset values directly compress fee income for the large universe of personal wealth managers who charge clients a percentage of the assets they manage. In other cases, clients hit with shrinking net worth are asking advisers to reduce fees. And a tidal wave of... Read more

What's it take to get an offer of employment these days? First and foremost, an openness to major adjustments, especially in pay. Second, don't be too quick to dismiss online job postings. Those are two takeaways from The Wall Street Journal's update on seven laid-off M.B.A. holders who eventually found new jobs after spending time as guest authors in the "Laid Off and Looking" blog series the newspaper inaugurated last December. "Four... Read more

When a poll of eFinancialCareers users last October found two in three expected to receive a bonus for 2008, the results sparked outrage beyond financial circles. New data indicate that statistic may have been too pessimistic. Nearly four in five eFC users (79 percent) who responded to a similar survey in early January said they received a year-end payout. Among the overall group of 900 respondents, 36 percent received the... Read more